Video from the Boston Book Festival: My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me

An absolutely fantastic opportunity to see Kate Bernheimer, Kelly Link and Kathryn Davis read from and discuss their stories from the new fairy tale anthology edited by Bernheimer My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me, and to see commentary from Maria Tatar too...

My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me at Boston Book Festival 2010 from Boston Phoenix on Vimeo.

A feast of fairy tales...

There are so many delicious looking fairy tale treats to feast on this week. The new issue of Goblin Fruit, the fantastical poetry zine, is up. And to celebrate their fourth birthday they're giving away lovely icons, like the one to the left, for you to peruse and use (the icons have been created by Deborah J. Brannon, using Oliver Hunter's gorgeous artwork).

The second issue of Enchanted Conversation has also gone live. It's dedicated to Beauty and the Beast and is packed with retellings, reimaginings and reviews of the tale. I can't wait to dig in!

And, if you're still not full up from all that fairy tale goodness, tomorrow night Heston's Fairytale Feast will air on Channel 4 at 9pm. The pudding sounds good: 'the guests make their way through a wooded glade to find a Hansel and Gretel house made entirely of sweets'. But I'm not so sure about some of the other recipes, which, according to the Radio Times, include 'Snow White-style apples, made from blown sugar piped full of boar mousse' and 'chicken testicles done in the style of jelly beans (with a squid-ink coating).'

Hmmm I think I'll stick to reading the tales...

Addition to post: Here's the programme on YouTube if you didn't catch it. Thanks to redridingtweets for the link.

Down rabbit holes...

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is not really a fairy tale, but, like Peter Pan and the Oz books, it is often considered to be one of what L. Frank Baum called the 'newer "wonder tales". But before I get properly started I have a confession to make. Alice is not one of my favourite tales, in fact far from it, but as there's no escaping Alice this week I wanted to collect together some of the many great Alice links I've come across.

My problem with Alice is the ending. Reading a beautiful pop-up version with my sons over the last few days I've been reminded just how much I loved the stories as a child—until I got to the end. And Lewis Caroll does it to us not once but twice. In both stories we reach the dreaded waking. Why create such a wonderful reality only to destroy it with 'Wake up, Alice dear!' .... 'Why, what a long sleep you've had!'

No! Of course as an adult re-reading the books I can see all the metaphors and symbols. I can admit that we are told Alice is feeling very 'sleepy and stupid' and falling down the rabbit hole could be a metaphor for falling asleep... but the details: the sides of the well 'filled with cupboards and bookshelves...maps and pictures hung upon pegs'. As a child I read the story literally and I still want this to be an actual doorway into another world. Just as the back of the wardrobe was in The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe. These magical doorways were the most exciting thing to me about stories when I first began reading. There was the picture of the Dawntreader too, and when I was seven I had a teacher called Miss Jackson who told us wonderful tales of the Tockholes Treacle Miners. Tockholes was a village near where we lived and the doorways into the miners' underground world were to be found in the landscape all around us (and I've looked out for them ever since). In Through the Looking-Glass there is another magical entrance: the glass 'was beginning to melt away, just like a bright silvery mist' so that Alice could step through.

I just wish Caroll had provided a satisfying exit route from Wonderland too, rather than cheating us with it all having been a dream. But despite this, I await the Tim Burton film, which reimagines the Alice stories, with glee. And in the meantime I'm enjoying revisiting Alice with my sons—the eldest keeps standing on the book, trying to get down the rabbit hole...

Digitised manuscripts and illustrations:
Alice's Adventures Under Ground—the original manuscript as written and illustrated by Caroll, on the British Library site
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1866), as illustrated by John Tenniel
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1907), as illustrated by Arthur Rackham
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass and what Alice Found There (1911)
Salvador Dali's illustrations (1969)
Illustrators of Alice on the web

Early films (available to watch online):
Alice in Wonderland (1903) silent film by Cecil Hepworth
Alice in Wonderland (1915) silent film by W.W.Young

Interviews:
Tim Burton interview on Radio 4—a brilliant interview, thanks to Faye for the link.
Tim Burton and Johnny Depp on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross—a slightly more awkward interview, and as much as I love Johnny Depp I wish Ross had paid more attention to Tim Burton.
Interview with Mia Wasikowska, the new Alice, in The Times

Articles:
There's something about Alice, AS Byatt in The Guardian—an engaging article which takes in a lot of other British children's classics but says less than I would have expected about Alice.
Innocence, obsession and the making of Alice in Wonderland, Peter Ackroyd in The Times—an interesting article about the history of the story and Dodgson himself.

Additional interesting links:
A-Z of Alice in Wonderland — eclectic list of all things Alice from The Independent.
Info about Alice in Sunderland — a fantastic looking Graphic Novel, thanks to Andy Hedgecock for the recommendation.


Illustration by Arthur Rackham 'At this the whole pack rose up into the air, and came flying down upon her' P158

A must see - The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

Last night I had the wonderful pleasure of settling into the darkness of a cinema and being transported into the fantastical world of Doctor Parnassus. The early reviews I'd read had lead me to believe I would probably be disappointed by the film - and I'm not going to link to any of them here because they were wrong - it's an imaginative masterpiece!

The story is about Doctor Parnassus, a man who won immortality in a bet with the Devil, and who later, to regain his youth and win the love of a beautiful young woman, made another deal - promising to give the Devil any child he fathered once they reached the age of sixteen. Now he must win another wager with the Devil if he is to save his daughter Valentina.

For me this felt like a truly modern fairy tale; there were many echoes from older tales: the parent who has offered up their first born child as payment for what they want at the time; an unwise bargain with the devil; a character who plays a pipe and has a dubious association with a children's charity (which made me think of the Pied Piper). True to the fairy tale form, the magic of a mirror - which is the entrance to the imaginarium - is never questioned, and once someone has stepped through the mirror the world beyond is furnished by their own imagination. This leads to some wonderful settings, including a dark forest of stage prop trees, and ladders which reach up to the clouds...

But the real world is never far away; Doctor Parnassus' imaginarium is housed on a rickety theatre on wheels (read about what inspired it here) and is pulled through modern London's streets by horses. As well as the familiar tourist sites we are treated to the bleaker side of inner-city life - derelict buildings, the streets at pub chucking out time; a Homebase car park.

The corrupt Tony is clearly a comment on our despicable ex-prime minister - at one point we even see a front page from a tabloid with the character Tony's face where Blair's should be, the headline: 'Tony Liar'. Similarly a song and dance scene by violent policemen, which felt very close to Monty Python in style, had especially powerful resonance when I thought of the documented police violence at the G20 protests in April this year.

The film is flawlessly acted by a great ensemble cast, and it's visually stunning - after watching this film I can finally see the point of cgi; misapplied by so many films trying to create realistic versions of reality - here it is used wonderfully to create impossible worlds.

This is a film made with love, against the odds; as has been well documented both Heath Ledger and one of the film's producers, Bill Vince, died during production and the film struggled to find funding - a case of small-minded money men with no vision always taking the easier routes through life - and as Terry Gilliam has explained this was part of the inspiration behind the story. Most of all though this is a film about storytelling and the power of the imagination - as Parnassus at one point realises - 'the Universe is sustained by story'.

Doctor Parnassus is out at UK cinema's now - here is the official UK site.

The film is set for a Christmas release in the US - here is the US site.

The Doctor Parnassus Support Site has a list of other countries official sites, more information on release dates, and info about how you can help support this wonderful film by getting cinemas to show it.

There is also a not to be missed Doctor Parnassus section on Dreams, the online Terry Gilliam fanzine, which includes brilliant interviews, artwork, stills and clips.