For those of you that don't know, I love Alice in Wonderland; I dork out on it. I remember loving the cartoon, and then the live action movie from the 90's. I had a well-loved green hard cover copy as a kid. Then I grew up...and my senior year of high school I wrote my senior paper on the presence of math in the books. My sophomore year of college I wrote a paper on word play in the books (as well as Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth) for my children's lit. class. And for these two papers I purchased a copy of The Annotated Alice, which I highly recommend and now plan on re-reading.
Long story short, it's a surprise I didn't go sooner. And because, as noted, I am a huge dork, here are some of the most important notes from the movie:
1. It's Alice Liddell and Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll is his pen-name. And you'll note that word length and vowel, consonant and double letter placement mimick Liddell's. Dork, I told you.) AND they weren't related.
2. I'm glad they preserved so many original details:
The parallels between real world and Wonderland...I especially liked that they danced the (lobster) Quadrill at the Garden Party
The simplified versions of the original prints
Original quotes
...overall, I thought it was very well done.
3. Alice = Jenny Humphrey
haute cotoure + punk rock + those locks + teenage rebellion
\4. I wish they had sang the Beautiful Soup song.
5. I would not see it on LSD.
6. I'm glad they left the raven/writing desk puzzler un-answered. There were moments when I thought they would. And I will prove my dorkyness by pulling from The Annotated Alice now in an effort to answer the question, although I believe it will always be a mystery:
The Hatter asks, “Why is a raven like a writing desk?” (Carroll 70). The Hatter of course never reveals the answer. It is reported, however, that Carroll wrote the answer in a letter: “Because it can produce few notes, tho they are very flat and it is nevar put with the wrong end in front” (Gardner 72). There was a contest put on by England’s Lewis Carroll Society in their newsletter to find an answer. They received the following answers:
Because a writing-desk is a rest for pens and a raven is a pest for wrens. (Tony Weston)
Because they both tend to present unkind bills. (M. R. Macintyer)
Because Poe wrote on both (Loyd) (Gardner 72)
