More madness to come….
I was intrigued by some recent searches for “Cheshire Cat 2010,” so I went looking. I did not have to look too hard.
A huge poster of one of our favorite “pirates,” Johnny Depp, this time in “Mad Hatter” gear, was in the lobby of our local theater advertising “Alice in Wonderland,” directed by Tim Burton, to be released on March 5, 2010. Don’t ask me how I missed THIS one! (Note added August 12, 2009: I remember now! 
I can’t AFFORD to go to the movies very often!) You very young folks may have missed the 1951 film by Disney (of COURSE I own it on DVD).
Incidentally, Stephen Fry plays The Cheshire Cat in the 2010 film.
In Livermore, we have selected for paranoia as our “preferred form” of madness. (Bolinas had already “taken” xenophobia! ) Physicist Enrico Fermi once said that his friend, Edward Teller (“The Father of the Hydrogen Bomb” and co-founder and past director of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory) was the only monomaniac he knew who had several manias. (I’ll bet that Fermi knew a bunch of the “ordinary ones!” ) We measure our paranoia by the number of surveillance cameras, lights, and motion detectors that we hang outside our homes and the number of times that we rearrange and adjust them each week before we are “taken away.”
I cannot even GUESS the predominant form(s) of madness in the upcoming “Alice in Wonderland” film! (Especially with Johnny Depp….)
The film itself is an adaptation of the Lewis Carroll novels Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Look-Glass. According to the Wikipedia article, the film will use a technique that combines live action, motion capture technology (at Sony Pictures Studios in Culver City, California; Filming also took place at Culver Studios.), and stop motion. Mia Wasikowska plays Alice, Helena Bonham Carter (the domestic partner of Tim Burton since 2001… I love her as Bellatrix Lestrange in the Harry Potter films.) is The Red Queen (… but Wikipedia states that her character will [unfortunately, from a literary standpoint] also combine characteristics of the Queen of Hearts, so there should be some paranoia and homicidal tendencies. Her head will be enlarged 3-fold in the film!), and Anne Hathaway as The White Queen. Hathaway summed up her character with a caption on a magnet of Happy Bunny holding a knife as: “Cute but psycho, it evens out.” The film will be released in Disney Digital 3-D and IMAX 3-D, as well as 2-D.
Other characters from Wonderland include: Michael Sheen as the White Rabbit, Alan Rickman as the Caterpiller, Matt Lucas as those lovable enantiomers, Tweedledee and Tweedledum, Christopher Lee as the Jabberwock, Noah Taylor as the March Hare, and more!
There are also actors in the “real world,” and HUNDREDS of local “extras.” Wikipedia describes the locations in England that were used for the scenes of the Victorian era.
Alice, now 19, attends a party at a Victorian estate, only to learn that she will receive a marriage proposal in front of hundreds! She escapes and follows the White Rabbit down a hole to Wonderland, a place she visited when she was nine, yet doesn’t remember. The creatures of Wonderland are ready to revolt!
Disney Interactive Studios announced on July 23, 2009 that a video game based on the film will be released in early 2010 for the Wii, Nintendo DS and Windows PC with an iPhone version to be released earlier, in late 2009.
How about one for Macintosh, Steve? Wonderland looks better on a Mac.
A teaser trailer premiered very recently at the ComicCon, in San Diego.
-Bill at Cheshire Cat Photo™
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