Alice In Wonderland review: Disney and the Opium Wars

Rather belatedly, I'm posting a review of Tim Burton's 3D movie adaptation of Alice In Wonderland. Being a sucker for the technology (especially now that you get proper stylish Rayban-style spectacles and not the horrid — if nostalgic — cardboard face-wear of old), I had gone to see Alice the first week it opened at the local multiplex. I'd been a fan of the Rev Dodgson's finest since childhood, natch, and knew "Jabberwocky" and "The Walrus And The Carpenter" by heart. Many's the time I've watched politicians, big and small, and thought of the Carpenter weeping for the fate of the poor oysters as he stuffs as many as possible into his blubbering gob under cover of his handkerchief.

So I was determined not to miss out. The visuals didn't disappoint, even though the movie came hot on the heels of James Cameron's Avatar blockbuster. The performances positively sparkled. I will say, though, that Matt Lucas, brilliantly cast as both Tweedledum and Tweedledee, was criminally underused. Johnny Depp in best Vivienne Westwood drag and eyes enlarged through CGI by 25 per cent, put in another one of his trademark oddball performances as the Mad Hatter who, played by the box-office pull, morphed into a centre-stage action hero. Burton's missus, Helena Bonham Carter as the Red Queen, allowed her director husband to commit gross uglification by hydroencephalising her pretty head. One laugh-out-loud moment is when this mass-murdering monster looks up at her evil swain and flutters her outsized eyes in a manner she assumes is appealing. Oh, the joy in the recognition that some of us just can't do 'cute'.

Mia Wasikowska played Alice as a feisty 19-year old Victorian miss, and very attractively too. In her shining armour and flowing pre-Raphaelite hair (be still, my beating heart!), she made the most stunningly beautiful boy in her climactic fight with the Jabberwock (voiced, in full-on stentorian mode, by no less a personage than Christopher Lee).

But the script ... something failed to fully emotionally engage and I didn't know what it was. Hmm ... made for Disney, huh?

As the film was made for the Fascist Rodent corporation, I was surprised to see it foregrounding the druggy perspective, an interpretation popular since the tripped-out 60s, with a very stoned Caterpillar (Alan Rickman) sucking on a hookah which was more opium pipe than shisha.

Now, everyone seems to have assumed that Tim Burton had taken his eye off the ball with Alice and turned out a nice safe movie for Disney, and that the hint that this might be an opium dream was just a cheap way to reclaim a bit of his old transgressive credibility. Well, yes. But much more than this, oh, yes.

The framing device, before she falls down the rabbit hole and enters Wonderland, is set around Alice's real life and her imminent engagement to Hamish (Leo Bill), a twittish minor aristocrat (aren't they all?), offspring to Lady Ascot (Geraldine James) who wants Alice's beauty in the family gene-pool so they can breed beautiful grandchildren for her. At the end, fresh out of her adventures in Underland, Alice rejects Hamish and a life of a privileged brood-mare, telling everyone what she thinks of them, and taking charge of her late father's business in partnership with Hamish's father, Lord Ascot.

Laid on with a shovel, Alice's anachronistic feminist feistiness may have been irritating as an unconvincing attitude which was not so much seeing the age refracted through modern eyes, as completely rewriting history. But, in a great Tim Burton sleight-of-hand, there was something else going on which seems to have bypassed the studio execs. The Powers That Be may be congratulating themselves that this is a nice conventional tale of how white folk in the Imperial West (for the glory days of Great Britain, read the nostalgia for America's 'finest hour') advanced themselves through trade, all with a dash of Girl Power.

But where did all that wealth come from? Burton and co-writer Linda Woolverton focus you on the business of how money is made in the opening scenes.

Alice's father, (Marton Csokas as Charles Kingsleigh — does that make Alice a water baby?), is in shipping to the East Indies and Indonesia. But what looks at first glance as a ho-hum story of middle-class folk innocently making their fortune in the world with a feminist twist is dealt a sly kicking by the writers.

At the end, breadhead Alice — child of the British Empire — drags Lord Ascot into a room where she lays out the map of the world and analyses their current Eastern trade routes. Her new-found leadership skills (she has just slain the Jabberwock with her vorpal sword) take her beyond what's known and into the relatively new area of trade with China. She points triumphantly at Hong Kong. THIS is where they will make their fortune. Her brush with the stoned Caterpillar and his drug habit has taught her where there is money to be made.

Anyone even slightly familiar with that slice of history knows about the Opium Wars, and exactly how Britain acquired Hong Kong. How, when our taste for China's silks, spices, tea and porcelain threatened to empty the treasury of its silver, Britain cultivated cheap opium in Bengal and forced it on China at gunpoint. This was what Britain's trade with China meant: in turning what had once been an aristocratic vice into a mass addiction, Britain became the world's Number One Pusher and turned China into a nation of junkies.

And that's where I nearly fell off my chair. Mr Burton, you sly dog, you. Never mind the lovely Johnny, I think I'm a little bit in love with Tim.

Alice In Wonderland review: Disney and the Opium Wars

Rather belatedly, I'm posting a review of Tim Burton's 3D movie adaptation of Alice In Wonderland. Being a sucker for the technology (especially now that you get proper stylish Rayban-style spectacles and not the horrid — if nostalgic — cardboard face-wear of old), I had gone to see Alice the first week it opened at the local multiplex. I'd been a fan of the Rev Dodgson's finest since childhood, natch, and knew "Jabberwocky" and "The Walrus And The Carpenter" by heart. Many's the time I've watched politicians, big and small, and thought of the Carpenter weeping for the fate of the poor oysters as he stuffs as many as possible into his blubbering gob under cover of his handkerchief.

So I was determined not to miss out. The visuals didn't disappoint, even though the movie came hot on the heels of James Cameron's Avatar blockbuster. The performances positively sparkled. I will say, though, that Matt Lucas, brilliantly cast as both Tweedledum and Tweedledee, was criminally underused. Johnny Depp in best Vivienne Westwood drag and eyes enlarged through CGI by 25 per cent, put in another one of his trademark oddball performances as the Mad Hatter who, played by the box-office pull, morphed into a centre-stage action hero. Burton's missus, Helena Bonham Carter as the Red Queen, allowed her director husband to commit gross uglification by hydroencephalising her pretty head. One laugh-out-loud moment is when this mass-murdering monster looks up at her evil swain and flutters her outsized eyes in a manner she assumes is appealing. Oh, the joy in the recognition that some of us just can't do 'cute'.

Mia Wasikowska played Alice as a feisty 19-year old Victorian miss, and very attractively too. In her shining armour and flowing pre-Raphaelite hair (be still, my beating heart!), she made the most stunningly beautiful boy in her climactic fight with the Jabberwock (voiced, in full-on stentorian mode, by no less a personage than Christopher Lee).

But the script ... something failed to fully emotionally engage and I didn't know what it was. Hmm ... made for Disney, huh?

As the film was made for the Fascist Rodent corporation, I was surprised to see it foregrounding the druggy perspective, an interpretation popular since the tripped-out 60s, with a very stoned Caterpillar (Alan Rickman) sucking on a hookah which was more opium pipe than shisha.

Now, everyone seems to have assumed that Tim Burton had taken his eye off the ball with Alice and turned out a nice safe movie for Disney, and that the hint that this might be an opium dream was just a cheap way to reclaim a bit of his old transgressive credibility. Well, yes. But much more than this, oh, yes.

The framing device, before she falls down the rabbit hole and enters Wonderland, is set around Alice's real life and her imminent engagement to Hamish (Leo Bill), a twittish minor aristocrat (aren't they all?), offspring to Lady Ascot (Geraldine James) who wants Alice's beauty in the family gene-pool so they can breed beautiful grandchildren for her. At the end, fresh out of her adventures in Underland, Alice rejects Hamish and a life of a privileged brood-mare, telling everyone what she thinks of them, and taking charge of her late father's business in partnership with Hamish's father, Lord Ascot.

Laid on with a shovel, Alice's anachronistic feminist feistiness may have been irritating as an unconvincing attitude which was not so much seeing the age refracted through modern eyes, as completely rewriting history. But, in a great Tim Burton sleight-of-hand, there was something else going on which seems to have bypassed the studio execs. The Powers That Be may be congratulating themselves that this is a nice conventional tale of how white folk in the Imperial West (for the glory days of Great Britain, read the nostalgia for America's 'finest hour') advanced themselves through trade, all with a dash of Girl Power.

But where did all that wealth come from? Burton and co-writer Linda Woolverton focus you on the business of how money is made in the opening scenes.

Alice's father, (Marton Csokas as Charles Kingsleigh — does that make Alice a water baby?), is in shipping to the East Indies and Indonesia. But what looks at first glance as a ho-hum story of middle-class folk innocently making their fortune in the world with a feminist twist is dealt a sly kicking by the writers.

At the end, breadhead Alice — child of the British Empire — drags Lord Ascot into a room where she lays out the map of the world and analyses their current Eastern trade routes. Her new-found leadership skills (she has just slain the Jabberwock with her vorpal sword) take her beyond what's known and into the relatively new area of trade with China. She points triumphantly at Hong Kong. THIS is where they will make their fortune. Her brush with the stoned Caterpillar and his drug habit has taught her where there is money to be made.

Anyone even slightly familiar with that slice of history knows about the Opium Wars, and exactly how Britain acquired Hong Kong. How, when our taste for China's silks, spices, tea and porcelain threatened to empty the treasury of its silver, Britain cultivated cheap opium in Bengal and forced it on China at gunpoint. This was what Britain's trade with China meant: in turning what had once been an aristocratic vice into a mass addiction, Britain became the world's Number One Pusher and turned China into a nation of junkies.

And that's where I nearly fell off my chair. Mr Burton, you sly dog, you. Never mind the lovely Johnny, I think I'm a little bit in love with Tim.

Peru's Tyler Durden harvests human fat for European cosmetics

Waiter, there's a tramp in my soap. Oh, what price will we pay for beauty?

I read gruesome news from Peru where a team of serial killers, who probably smoked too much crack while watching Fight Club, have nicked (or influenced) Tyler Durden's macabre business plan, harvested the fat from scores of victims over the past  30 years, and sold it to the European cosmetics industry. Oh, yes, the victims had to be dead in order to extract every bit of fatty goodness from their cadavers.

And so capitalism crawls into its final decrepit stage where it's gone gaga as well as sclerotic. In Fight Club, Chuck Pahlaniuk's magnum opus, Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) finances his bid to bring down the whole sorry edifice by stealing liposuction fat from cosmetic surgeries. Not only the finest fat there is, but also one of the finest metaphors for what capitalism is doing to us.

"We're taking their own fat and selling it back to them," he gloats — posh hand-made soaps that he supplies to department store beauty counters at the silly prices silly women will pay.

The authorities have arrested the perps but are still seeking the middle-men who bought the fat off them.

So I cast a sharp eye over the rows of oils and unguents cluttering my vanity shelves and ask myself — who's in this?  Puh-leaze don't let it be the Clarins ...

Peru's Tyler Durden harvests human fat for European cosmetics

Waiter, there's a tramp in my soap. Oh, what price will we pay for beauty?

I read gruesome news from Peru where a team of serial killers, who probably smoked too much crack while watching Fight Club, have nicked (or influenced) Tyler Durden's macabre business plan, harvested the fat from scores of victims over the past  30 years, and sold it to the European cosmetics industry. Oh, yes, the victims had to be dead in order to extract every bit of fatty goodness from their cadavers.

And so capitalism crawls into its final decrepit stage where it's gone gaga as well as sclerotic. In Fight Club, Chuck Pahlaniuk's magnum opus, Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) finances his bid to bring down the whole sorry edifice by stealing liposuction fat from cosmetic surgeries. Not only the finest fat there is, but also one of the finest metaphors for what capitalism is doing to us.

"We're taking their own fat and selling it back to them," he gloats — posh hand-made soaps that he supplies to department store beauty counters at the silly prices silly women will pay.

The authorities have arrested the perps but are still seeking the middle-men who bought the fat off them.

So I cast a sharp eye over the rows of oils and unguents cluttering my vanity shelves and ask myself — who's in this?  Puh-leaze don't let it be the Clarins ...

Maclaren buggy amputations acceptable say middle-class Brits

Maclaren buggies in the wars

A finger of fudge may be just enough to give your kid the digit they're missing after helping Mummy fold away their pushchair.

Is it me or are the middle classes getting madder?

The Telegraph asks if parents are overreacting because Maclaren buggies are amputating their children's fingers. One of their resident Mr Angries blames hysteria and "pressure groups" for anxiety over a device presumably designed for comfort and safe conveyence of your Precious Ones which turns out to have a wicked safety flaw resulting in children being maimed for life when their fingers are caught in the hinges.

Reminiscent of Tyler Durden's sleazy day job in Fight Club, working out the motor trade percentages involved in crashes and deciding when lawsuits hit critical mass making it more economic to issue a recall, Maclaren has only just now offered British parents the same safety cover they had to offer US consumers.

The Telegraph's columnist is joined by a chorus of commenters overflowing with the milk of human kindness when it comes to the poor corporation yet could pinch-hit for any number of Dickensian villains when it comes to child safety.

It's an acceptable percentage kinda thang. If children have the temerity to help Mummy fold the buggy then they deserve everything they get. Good for you Maclaren — chop off those interfering little fingers and teach them a lesson they'll never forget.

And then the parents have the cheek to complain. Overreaction and hysteria and not greedy irresponsible corporations are the plague of the modern age.

That Jonathan Swift had a nice recipe for babies ...

UPDATE: British parents to sue Maclaren — report in The Guardian

Maclaren buggy amputations acceptable say middle-class Brits

Maclaren buggies in the wars

A finger of fudge may be just enough to give your kid the digit they're missing after helping Mummy fold away their pushchair.

Is it me or are the middle classes getting madder?

The Telegraph asks if parents are overreacting because Maclaren buggies are amputating their children's fingers. One of their resident Mr Angries blames hysteria and "pressure groups" for anxiety over a device presumably designed for comfort and safe conveyence of your Precious Ones which turns out to have a wicked safety flaw resulting in children being maimed for life when their fingers are caught in the hinges.

Reminiscent of Tyler Durden's sleazy day job in Fight Club, working out the motor trade percentages involved in crashes and deciding when lawsuits hit critical mass making it more economic to issue a recall, Maclaren has only just now offered British parents the same safety cover they had to offer US consumers.

The Telegraph's columnist is joined by a chorus of commenters overflowing with the milk of human kindness when it comes to the poor corporation yet could pinch-hit for any number of Dickensian villains when it comes to child safety.

It's an acceptable percentage kinda thang. If children have the temerity to help Mummy fold the buggy then they deserve everything they get. Good for you Maclaren — chop off those interfering little fingers and teach them a lesson they'll never forget.

And then the parents have the cheek to complain. Overreaction and hysteria and not greedy irresponsible corporations are the plague of the modern age.

That Jonathan Swift had a nice recipe for babies ...

UPDATE: British parents to sue Maclaren — report in The Guardian

All's Well That Ends Well at the National Theatre: review

Parolles and Helena

This is one of the rarely-staged Shakespeare plays that has eluded me thus far but I'm glad I got to see this three-hour production at the National Theatre Olivier auditorium at long last thanks to their £10 Travelex scheme.

All's Well That End's Well is a light romcom with an ironic punch hinted at in the title that's driven home in the final flash-photography horrorstruck pose from our loving couple, Helena and Bertram.

Blond handsome Bertram (George Rainsford), son of the recently widowed Countess of Rossillion (Clare Higgins) really is a dick with his floppy hair and slappable boyish charm. It's a wonder that the perky Helena wants him in the first place, but then I never found Hugh Grant a dish, either.

Played by Michelle Terry, who does a great job of filling in the spaces within the text with her appealing effervescence and would make a terrific Dr Who assistant, Helena is the orphaned daughter of the late Count's physician and has fallen in love with the brat. The Countess has taken her under her wing and facilitates her introduction at court where she treats the King of France (Oliver Ford Davies) who's been ill with a fistula.

Even though the King gives us a clue as to what a fistula is by clenching his hand into a claw (I had images of certain exotic activities hopping into my smutty mind), I just had to search and got " ... an abnormal connection or passageway between two epithelium-lined organs or vessels that normally do not connect."

None the wiser, I'll accept the hand job.

Anyhow, fist unclenched, we know that Helena has cured this powerful dude and now claims her reward. A lesser being would have demanded title, treasure, a palace or three, but values they are a changin'. Helena keeps it real in a society that now has room for romance and asks for marriage to Bertram.

Shallow and spoilt, he rejects her for being common, and goes off to war to avoid consummation, stating that should she manage to get his magnificent ring, handed down through generations, and fall pregnant with a child of his, he'll fulfill his duty.

There follows a comedy of mistaken identity and subterfuge wherein men are revealed to be treacherous snakes in the grass, cowardly liars and deeply closeted. It leaves you wondering why any fabulous woman would spend so much time and suffering in order to lock themselves into a lifelong relationship with them.

Duh! Oh, yeah, I geddit. Money and power, romance being but the superstructural offspring of the economic base. And this, comrades, is why capitalism (OK, the last days of feudalism where aristos are being displaced by merchants and professionals) distorts the human soul.

The burgeoning bourgeoisie has triumphed and secured its position but at what cost?

If that makes it sound like a flat polemic, it wasn't. That's just me cutting to the chase of what it was about. This production is actually a lot of fun and a special mention goes to Parolles (Falstaff lite played by Conleth Hill), a hilarious vain repository of everything sluggish and snailish in the male of the species dressed up as a superannuated heavy metal peacock who gets his humiliating comeuppance at the hands of his brother soldiers.

Of course, female ingenuity, wit and solidarity win out with a midnight tryst and Helena swapping identities with Diana, a great beauty who Bertram is crazy for. Helena fulfills Bertram's demands and wedlock can now ensue with celebrations and a wedding photographer to freeze the cast in a succession of telling tableaux.

All's Well That Ends Well, except for that very last shot ...

Bertram defies the King of France

All's Well That Ends Well at the National Theatre: review

Parolles and Helena

This is one of the rarely-staged Shakespeare plays that has eluded me thus far but I'm glad I got to see this three-hour production at the National Theatre Olivier auditorium at long last thanks to their £10 Travelex scheme.

All's Well That End's Well is a light romcom with an ironic punch hinted at in the title that's driven home in the final flash-photography horrorstruck pose from our loving couple, Helena and Bertram.

Blond handsome Bertram (George Rainsford), son of the recently widowed Countess of Rossillion (Clare Higgins) really is a dick with his floppy hair and slappable boyish charm. It's a wonder that the perky Helena wants him in the first place, but then I never found Hugh Grant a dish, either.

Played by Michelle Terry, who does a great job of filling in the spaces within the text with her appealing effervescence and would make a terrific Dr Who assistant, Helena is the orphaned daughter of the late Count's physician and has fallen in love with the brat. The Countess has taken her under her wing and facilitates her introduction at court where she treats the King of France (Oliver Ford Davies) who's been ill with a fistula.

Even though the King gives us a clue as to what a fistula is by clenching his hand into a claw (I had images of certain exotic activities hopping into my smutty mind), I just had to search and got " ... an abnormal connection or passageway between two epithelium-lined organs or vessels that normally do not connect."

None the wiser, I'll accept the hand job.

Anyhow, fist unclenched, we know that Helena has cured this powerful dude and now claims her reward. A lesser being would have demanded title, treasure, a palace or three, but values they are a changin'. Helena keeps it real in a society that now has room for romance and asks for marriage to Bertram.

Shallow and spoilt, he rejects her for being common, and goes off to war to avoid consummation, stating that should she manage to get his magnificent ring, handed down through generations, and fall pregnant with a child of his, he'll fulfill his duty.

There follows a comedy of mistaken identity and subterfuge wherein men are revealed to be treacherous snakes in the grass, cowardly liars and deeply closeted. It leaves you wondering why any fabulous woman would spend so much time and suffering in order to lock themselves into a lifelong relationship with them.

Duh! Oh, yeah, I geddit. Money and power, romance being but the superstructural offspring of the economic base. And this, comrades, is why capitalism (OK, the last days of feudalism where aristos are being displaced by merchants and professionals) distorts the human soul.

The burgeoning bourgeoisie has triumphed and secured its position but at what cost?

If that makes it sound like a flat polemic, it wasn't. That's just me cutting to the chase of what it was about. This production is actually a lot of fun and a special mention goes to Parolles (Falstaff lite played by Conleth Hill), a hilarious vain repository of everything sluggish and snailish in the male of the species dressed up as a superannuated heavy metal peacock who gets his humiliating comeuppance at the hands of his brother soldiers.

Of course, female ingenuity, wit and solidarity win out with a midnight tryst and Helena swapping identities with Diana, a great beauty who Bertram is crazy for. Helena fulfills Bertram's demands and wedlock can now ensue with celebrations and a wedding photographer to freeze the cast in a succession of telling tableaux.

All's Well That Ends Well, except for that very last shot ...

Bertram defies the King of France

Melamine found in US infant formula

WASHINGTON -- The Food and Drug Administration said Friday that it will allow trace amounts of melamine in infant formula. Earlier this week, the agency said it found the industrial chemical in at least one brand of formula sold in the U.S.

More here ...

When melamine was found in Chinese milk we all recognised this for the scandal it was. Profits should never come before the welfare of human beings especially in a nation that purports to have socialist aspirations. Chinese authorities have accordingly fallen on the perpetrators and punishment is likely to be harsh.

One disturbing byproduct of this affair was that it reinforced a widespread assumption in the West that it was somehow peculiar to the genetic make-up of the Chinese which renders us all super-villainous money-grubbing sadists. Race trumped class yet again.

The scandal of melamine found in Chinese milk now goes global as the toxic chemical that wrecks your kidneys has not only been detected in American infant formula but the US food authorities are allowing the toxin to stay in “trace” amounts.

How big is a “trace”? Would you accept a “trace” of faecal matter in your food?

One of the culprits here is our old friend, Nestlé. Not content with promoting the use of formula feed over superior breast milk in the Third World, like every other business chasing profits, the corporation moves closer to home as capitalism contracts and more markets have to be found.

And what about the acrylamides that coat your breakfast cereals?

Brecht once asked who was the bigger criminal: the bank robber or the bank? I’d ask, who is the bigger criminal: the individual killer or the corporation that markets this stuff to millions?

Madam Miaow says ... Call me mistress of the bleedin’ obvious, but greed knows no genetics.




Bookmark this on Delicious

Melamine found in US infant formula

WASHINGTON -- The Food and Drug Administration said Friday that it will allow trace amounts of melamine in infant formula. Earlier this week, the agency said it found the industrial chemical in at least one brand of formula sold in the U.S.

More here ...

When melamine was found in Chinese milk we all recognised this for the scandal it was. Profits should never come before the welfare of human beings especially in a nation that purports to have socialist aspirations. Chinese authorities have accordingly fallen on the perpetrators and punishment is likely to be harsh.

One disturbing byproduct of this affair was that it reinforced a widespread assumption in the West that it was somehow peculiar to the genetic make-up of the Chinese which renders us all super-villainous money-grubbing sadists. Race trumped class yet again.

The scandal of melamine found in Chinese milk now goes global as the toxic chemical that wrecks your kidneys has not only been detected in American infant formula but the US food authorities are allowing the toxin to stay in “trace” amounts.

How big is a “trace”? Would you accept a “trace” of faecal matter in your food?

One of the culprits here is our old friend, Nestlé. Not content with promoting the use of formula feed over superior breast milk in the Third World, like every other business chasing profits, the corporation moves closer to home as capitalism contracts and more markets have to be found.

And what about the acrylamides that coat your breakfast cereals?

Brecht once asked who was the bigger criminal: the bank robber or the bank? I’d ask, who is the bigger criminal: the individual killer or the corporation that markets this stuff to millions?

Madam Miaow says ... Call me mistress of the bleedin’ obvious, but greed knows no genetics.




Bookmark this on Delicious