Today is the birthday of the venerable Lewis Carroll, creator of what is arguably the best-loved children’s tale of all time, Alice in Wonderland. He’s also the author of one of the trippiest, most psychedelic books of all time, which is, um, also Alice in Wonderland. To celebrate the occasion of his birth (he would be 180 years old today), we’ve collected the texts that we consider to be the trippiest books of all time, “trippy,” in this case, being defined as “resembling or inducing the hallucinatory effect produced by taking a psychedelic drug.” See, kids: why take drugs when you can just read these crazy books? They are much less likely to do you any permanent damage — though we can’t make any promises. Click through to read our list, and let us know if we’ve left off your favorite trippy tale in the comments!
With Alice in Wonderland author Lewis Carroll’s birthday on the horizon, we wanted to follow a few films down the rabbit hole and explore some of the fantasy worlds portrayed in the Victorian-era novel. Ignoring the recent blockbuster monstrosity that is Tim Burton’s movie, we ventured into the pool of tears, got advice from a caterpillar, and attended a mad tea party to find out what movies explore the same kinds of themes that the English author made synonymous with phantasmagorical adventures and self-discovery. Check out our gallery of Alice-inspired cinema past the break, and tell us your picks in the comments below.
Jean-Francois Fourtou’s photos of oversized people in tiny spaces and miniature humans navigating their enormous surroundings are like the best parts of dollhouses, Alice in Wonderland, and a Jan Švankmajer movie all rolled into one. An older (seriously small ) gentleman sits pensively in one photo — possibly trying to figure out how he can lift the massive watering can by his side. Meanwhile, a giant man in his undies curls up for a nap while tiny chairs and furniture appear to have crawled on top of him. Check out Fourtou’s surreally humorous world past the break. Read More »
Love can make you do some crazy things. And we’re not just talking about what happens when you fall for another person — just look at the legions of Twihards who camped out for days to catch a glimpse of the red carpet at last week’s premiere of Breaking Dawn. But you know what’s even more unpredictable? What will happen you bring two culture vultures with a mutual passion together, and give them free reign to visually celebrate their relationship and their shared obsession. Imaginations run wild, and the resulting photos can range from giggle-inducing to surprisingly touching — and in some cases, they’re a little bit of both. Need pictorial proof? Check out the collection of tradition-bucking engagement shots that we’ve rounded up after the jump. Read More »
Can you think of a more appropriate artist to illustrate Lewis Carroll’s bizarre children’s classic, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, than the master of surreal, Salvador Dalí? And yet, until we were tipped off by this post over on Brain Pickings, we had no idea that back in 1969 Dalí worked on an entire series of gouaches published by Maecenas Press-Random House that were inspired by the novel — one for each chapter of the book. Click through to fall down the rabbit hole with a selection of the strange, beautiful images, which were recently digitized by the William Bennett Gallery. Read More »
With All Hallows’ Eve around the bend, a select series of crafters and artisans have decided to pay homage to our favorite novels, authors, poems, and fairy tales through the art of pumpkin carving. But the specimens below aren’t your regular, run-of-the-mill, home-carved jack-o’-lanterns. Replacing canvas with pumpkin and paint brushes with lino cutters, each piece presents a glowing portrait of an influential writer or a scene ripped from the pages of their works.Check out our gallery of mesmerizing jack-o’-lanterns that honor literary greats like Edgar Alan Poe, William Shakespeare, and the Brothers Grimm after the jump.
With all of the insane natural disasters that have happened recently and the ominous year 2012 creeping ever closer, it seems like end-of-the-world chatter is the norm lately. So why not soothe our fears by transferring those apocalyptic visions into the comforting world of children’s cartoons and fairy tales? This appears to be the idea behind Korea-based installation artist So Hyun Woo‘s collection of stainless steel mosaic Disney and fairy tale sculptures that are adorned with an action hero evoking twist. The eccentric series, Cruel Fairy Tales 3, features adored storybook characters like Winnie the Pooh, Donald Duck, and Tinker Bell as they prepare to fight the unknown with bazookas, machine guns, machetes, and more. Check out the unsettling collection below, and let us know what you think about the combat-ready character art.
Here’s the coolest thing we’ve seen all day: You know the Mad Tea Party from Disney’s version of Alice in Wonderland? Well, fans, although that movie was animated, the tea party itself really happened. Walt Disney was known for staging scenes with his voice actors to give animators an idea of what a sequence should look like, and it just so happens that he did so for this famous moment. And there’s more — he liked the results so much that he used the audio from the take in the final film. Watch the test footage and the finished animation, placed side by side, in a video by YouTube’s lostvocals4 after the jump.
If you’re like us, you were sad to read the news that Albert Uderzo is retiring after 52 years as the artist behind Asterix the Gaul. Asterix was a huge part of Flavorpill’s childhood, and the books are also those rarest of things — children’s books that adults can also enjoy. We’ve pulled together a selection of other books from our childhood that we can still enjoy in adulthood — and, in doing so, we can’t help but notice that most of them are pretty long in the tooth these days. Are kids’ books becoming less sophisticated? Or have we just missed a whole bunch now that we’re a) not children any more and b) not parents yet?
These aren’t the paper dolls you remember from childhood. Ranging from morbid (headless historic figures) to creepy (childhood classics go steampunk) to just plain ol’ strange, these paper dolls put a unique spin on cultural icons and famous works of art. You’ll see Princess Leia on Spring Break, a date-ready Michelangelo’s David, Lady Gaga with a wig of spilled lo mein, and notorious 19th-century New England murderer Lizzie Borden, with that infamous ax in hand — not even Betty White is safe. So grab your scissors and check out our roundup of the Internet’s weirdest paper dolls, after the jump.
