Posted on 03/05/2010 12:41:49 PM PST by EveningStar
...This has never been a children's story. There's even a little sadism embedded in Carroll's fantasy. It reminds me of uncles who tickle their nieces until they scream...
(Excerpt) Read more at rogerebert.suntimes.com ...
I loved Edward Scissorhands.
It did have its origins in stories Carroll would tell Alice and her sisters.
Anyone ever hear of George Macdonald (1824-1905)? The Scottish author, poet, and minister influenced everyone from Auden to Tolkien to C. S. Lewis, to Madeleine L’Engle to Chesterton to Carroll himself whom he encouraged to publish ‘...Wonderland’.
I feel the same way. His movies always look like something I should like, but end up being mostly forgettable.
People forget how superior the education was in Victorian times. Children were reading Caesar's Commentaries in Latin in 'grammar' school, and reading The Iliad in Greek before attending University. Even as late as the 1950's Ivy League Universities had their Valedictory and Salutary addresses were given in Greek, Latin, or Hebrew, and THE AUDIENCES {of parents and friends} UNDERSTOOD THEM!
Do not evaluate the knowledge of past generations by our own half literate standards.
You are probably right regarding the education standards back then. Maybe it was just that I was a sniveling scaredy cat when I was a youngster. I couldn’t watch the Twilight Zone either until I became an adult.
I will admit that there are plenty of scary parts in the Alice books.
Oh please. You protesteth too much.
You are the one who started by giving a very forceful opinion about works you had not read. That is the height of intellectual dishonesty. You formed your opinions based on some ethereal version of what you think Lewis Carroll’s works are about.
You would not answer direct questions. And then to compare yourself to Sarah Palin —— too over the top.
Sit down before you hurt yourself
I read and re-read Alice (Wonderland/Looking Glass) many times over the years and loved it every time. Disney’s version was ok but not one of my Disney favorites. I saw Burton’s Alice over the weekend and enjoyed it very much. It was dark and more mature, it was a return to ‘Underland’, not Wonderland as Alice had thought it was in her younger years and they changed up which characters delivered some of the lines (the Mock Turtle was nowhere to be seen), lines that an Alice reader would know were uttered by other characters in the books.
But I generally don’t go to a movie for deeper and hidden messages, I go to be entertained and that I was. We did hit the 3D version which was also a treat, given Burton’s backgrounds and scenery. Still love the books, enjoyed the movie, liked the 3D (a butterfly at the end, I swear was flying IN the theater!) and it was an enjoyable couple of hours. That’s all. I’m not going to attach a huge, deep meaning to a movie.
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