Movie Anti-Hype: The Onion's A.V. dreading another Alice movie

In regards to what we wrote below, that many writers have taken on the theme of "all those awful Alice movies" in anticipation of the imminent Tim Burton 3D one (in seven days!), The Onion's A.V. Club lists Lewis Carroll's Alice books in a series on movies that have been adapted to death. Allow me to quote liberally from "Put the book back on the shelf: Literary works that should never be adapted to film or TV again" (February 17th, 2010):

[...] The world doesn’t need a fifth Indiana Jones movie, or any more big-screen retreads of ’80s cartoons that weren’t that great to begin with. And it especially doesn’t need yet another weak reconceptualization of Romeo And Juliet, or yet another stuffy screen version of Pride And Prejudice to join the wave of them that started back in 1938. In fact, here’s a list of just a few of the literary works that have officially been done to death—and some recommendations for where to find newer, fresher stories just waiting on the page.

Book: Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland and Through The Looking-Glass

Adaptations to date: More than three dozen, notably including the 1951 animated Disney musical version and big-event 1985 and 1999 TV miniseries. Other countries have released their own versions as well; there’s a 24-episode Japanese animated adaptation, an Argentinean mime version, and nationalist versions like 1966’s Alice Of Wonderland In Paris and 1979’sAlice In Spanish Wonderland. Plus, of course, the upcoming Tim Burton sequel to Carroll’s original stories.

Definitive version: The Disney version is probably best known. While it has its own charms, though, it liberally diverges from Carroll’s text, like most Disney adaptations.

Why steer clear? The Alice books are simultaneously two of the most-adapted novels in history, and among the most habitually worst-adapted. Film and TV versions necessarily tend to elide over the original books’ densely packed puns and references, and instead concentrate on spectacle or on drearily plodding through a series of events that should be sprightly and disorienting, yet somehow not manic. It’s a difficult balance, and one that directors rarely seem to get right. What’s left behind is a bunch of creative, fun ideas that have had the creativity and fun leached out through repetition. How many times can we watch Alice grow, shrink, and boggle at it all?

What to adapt instead? Other Carroll works, including his novel Sylvie And Bruno and his poem “The Hunting Of The Snark,” bring in as much clever nonsense, wordplay, and episodic adventure, but are less line-by-line familiar.

Sylvie & Bruno!! How about that? The list continues with A Christmas Carol, The Bible, and other books that will by no means stop inspiring filmmakers in our lifetimes.

Alice in the Boston Globe's daily bridge column today

Alice books plugged in Today's USA Today

A handful of new Alice books, in particular, and the revival of Alice in general, was written about by Craig Wilson in today's USA Today. They even made an online quiz (pop-culture heavy), How well do you know 'Alice in Wonderland'? - although I disagreed with a couple of the answers. Here's the books they plug, ending with a quote by Mark Richards:

•Alice I Have Been: A Novel by Melanie Benjamin (Delacorte, $25), out today. "I saw a photo of Alice Liddell (the model for the Alice character) taken by Charles Dodgson, and it made me realize that this was a lot more than just a children's story," says Benjamin, who built her novel around Alice's life after her childhood fame. "She was unflappable, not a typical Victorian. And she survived it all, just like Alice survived it all in the books. She was never beaten down."

•The Mystery of Lewis Carroll by Jenny Woolf (St. Martin's Press, $27.99), out Feb. 2. Woolf sheds more light on the mysterious Dodgson in this new biography, examining everything from his relationship with Alice and her older sister to his controversial photographing of nude young girls. "The more closely Lewis Carroll is studied, the more he seems to slide quietly away," Woolf writes.

•A new single-volume paperback edition of Carroll's two classic Alice stories ($8.95). Oxford World's Classics has reissued Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking Glass (1872) with a new introduction by Peter Hunt, an expert in children's literature. Oxford Children's Classics released a new hardcover of Alice's Adventure in Wonderland in April ($9.95).

•The Disney movie Alice in Wonderland, combining live action and animation. Alice is now 19, fleeing a proposed marriage and, yes, she follows a white rabbit into a hole, entering Wonderland once again. Depp is the Mad Hatter, Helena Bonham Carter plays the Queen of Hearts, and Mia Wasikowska is Alice. Release date: March 5.

Why is it Alice's time again?

"The timeless appeal of the Alice books lies not only in their wonderfully imaginative qualities but, perhaps more important, in the way they touch our emotions," says Mark Richards, chairman of the Lewis Carroll Society in London.

That answer seemed to be to a slightly different question. Thank you, Jenny Woolf, for sending us this article.

"Alice in Wonderland Syndrome": A Terrifying First-Person Account

"Alice in Wonderland Syndrome" - not the consequence of reading Alice's adventures too many times over - but rather the actual medical complaint, is not common. All the better for us and our already tried-to-the-limit physicians, and all the more interesting to read a rare first-person account of the malady, published last week in the UK newspaper, The Daily Mail.

Newcomers to this syndrome and ambitious hypochondriacs should know that sufferers of AIW syndrome, also known as Todd's syndrome, experience both macropsia (where ordinary objects appear unfathomably large, and the subject unfathomably small) and micropsia (visa versa). The Oxford Handbook of Clinical Medicine (Seventh Edition) describes symptoms as "Disturbance of one's view of oneself ± fast-forwarding of intrapsychic time."

Rik Hemsley, 33, was "sober and hangover-free" when he first experienced symptoms:

I stood up, reached down to pick up the TV remote control from the floor and felt my foot sink into the ground. Glancing down, I saw that my leg was plunging into the carpet. It was a disturbing sensation, but it lasted only a few seconds, so I put it down to tiredness and forgot all about it.

Then things got really weird...

Everything was now distorted all the time. Walking down the road, cars appeared the size of Corgi models, while I'd feel disproportionately tall. At work, my chair seemed enormous, while I seemed to have shrunk.

The full, strange, yet strangely familiar account can be read in the article My weird hallucinations make life seem like Alice in Wonderland, courtesy of The Daily Mail Online. For now, some final words of warning from Rik: "I'm still no wiser about what the catalyst was for me - perhaps it was too much coffee or long periods spent in a darkened room programming computers."

Snark citation

Yes, I know I'm behind the times a bit, but in case you somehow missed it, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit cited "The Hunting of the Snark"'s "what I tell you three times is true" in a recent ruling on a Guantanamo Bay detainee: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080630/ap_on_go_ot/guantanamo_chinese_detainee.

Hee!

According to Slate's "Dictionary of Obamaisms":
Jabaracky (jah-bah-ROK-ee) n. A fictional creature spawned from political fairy tales, characterized by nonsensical phrases and policies.
Example: In certain Republican circles, the phrase "Beware the Jabarack, my son!" is a shorthand for apprehension about Barack Obama's compelling personal story.

In the news

In response to Thursday's (March 27) speech by President Bush, Senator Chuck Hagel had this to say on CNN: "I think this is another episode of Alice in Wonderland. What's up is down, and what's down is up." The whole interview can be viewed here: http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/politics/2008/03/27/blitzer.hagel.interview.cnn?iref=videosearch