Archive for January, 2010
Alice in Wonderland will inspire many costumes this year for Hallloween. The story of Alice, the little girl who falls through the looking glass and into a fantasy world filled with strange creatures who lead her on all sorts of crazy 
adventures, is one of the most popular tales in history. Author Lewis Carroll , whose real name was Reverend Charles Dodgson, didn’t publish the story until years after it was told. He originally created the story for Alice Liddell, the 10 year old daughter of a friend of his, Henry Liddell, who was the Vice Chancellor of Oxford and the Dean of Christ Church. Carroll originally made up the story in one sitting, on a boat trip where Alice Liddell and her two sisters were bored and restless. He made up the story to amuse them, and eventually wrote it down because Alice kept begging him to write it out for her. The story featured people and places familiar to the two girls but twisted into fantasy representations where both the locations and the people were caricatures of the originals.
Alice’s adventures continue to captivate generation after generation of children because they appeal to children on a very visceral level. Children love adventure, they love to be surprised, and they love to use their 
imaginations. Dodgson’s tale of the magical places that Alice visits, and her interactions with such remarkable characters as the Mad Hatter, the Queen of Hearts, and the White Rabbit are all very plausible in a child’s imagination. Giving animals human qualities is also something that comes very naturally to children so they can accept without question the very human personalities of animals like the Cheshire Cat, the Caterpillar, and the Dormouse.
Many different interpretations of the story of Alice in Wonderland have come to life on film and through television through the years. Each different interpretation adds another layer of personality and imagination to the Alice story. But the 2010 film version of Alice in Wonderland by director Tim Burton is one of the most anticipated versions of the Alice story that has ever existed. Fans of Tim Burton’s work on cult classics like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Nightmare Before Christmas, James and the Giant Peach, and Sleepy Hollow have been waiting for a long time to see what type of Wonderland Tim Burton would create.
Tim Burton’s Alice story is actually a sequel to the original. A grown up Alice in Victorian England is about to be proposed to by someone she doesn’t want to marry. When she finds out about the impending proposal she runs off, and follows a white rabbit down a rabbit hole, which plunges her back into Wonderland. She has no memory of her adventures in Wonderland at first, but comes to remember her friends as she battles to save Wonderland from the evil Red Queen, played by Helena Bonham Carter.
The casting of Tim Burton’s Alice tale is what sets it apart from other interpretations of this beloved fairy tale. Audiences everywhere were thrilled with Burton’s casting of Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter, Alan Rickman as the Caterpillar, and Sir Christopher Lee as the Jabberwock. The landscape of Wonderland created by Tim Burton is also something that fans can’t get enough of. Tim Burton has brought to life a Wonderland as crazy, beautiful and fierce as most people always imagined it to be.
Avatar is expected to inspire Halloween costumes for many people this year. Hollywood hitmaker James Cameron scored another mega movie success with 2009′s Avatar. The film is the second highest grossing film in history, beaten only by Cameron’s previous film Titanic. Originally Avatar was 
supposed to have been released soon after Titanic but the technology that existed at the time wasn’t advanced enough to create the world that James Cameron had in mind as the setting of the film. Filming didn’t begin until 2006, and the film was released in 2009.
The film is set in the future, where humans are mining a precious mineral on a planet called Pandora in the Alpha Centuri system. The native inhabitants of the planet, the Na’vi, don’t like the humans being on their world and actively fight back against the growing mining operations conducted by the RDA corporation. Parker Selfridge, played in the film by veteran character actor Giovanni Ribisi, is the head of RDA and is becoming more and more concerned about the Na’vi’s disruption of their mining operations. He hires some ex-Marines to work as security and body guards at the mining site and during transportation of equipment, the mineral, and personnel to and from the planet. Unfortunately the surface of Pandora is toxic to humans, so humans originally used breathing masks to function. Human scientists began experimenting with genetically engineered bodies that could operate in the Pandora environment and created avatars. Avatars are genetically engineered bodies that are copies of the Na’vi body. Avatars are controlled through the use of computer equipment by humans on ships outside of the Pandora atmosphere. When a doctor working on the avatars is killed his twin brother, paraplegic ex – Marine Jake Sully is tapped to take his place. The doctor in charge, Grace Augustine who is played in the film by sci fi favorite Sigourney Weaver, assigns Jake to be her bodyguard as she and Dr.Norm Spellman head into the Pandoran jungle.
During the trip into the jungle Jake becomes separated from the others and gets lost. He is found and protected by Neytiri, a female Na’vi played in the movie by Zoe Saldana. As he is drawn into the Na’vi society and becomes close to Neytiri Jake sees how the mining operations of RDA are destroying Pandora and the Na’vi culture and he begins to work with them to stop RDA.
Avatar has been nominated for many awards because of the groundbreaking technology used to create the special effects and to broadcast the film. One of the reasons why Avatar has been such a box office smash is that the film is available in regular 2D film, 3D film, and IMAX format. 3D films and television are being heralded as the next big thing in technology. While not many films are available in 3D now the astonishing success of Avatar and the millions of dollars paid by customers to see the 3D and IMAX formats of the film, have sent a clear message to movie companies that consumers will willingly pay more to see films in these formats.
The wild success of the indie film Paranormal Activity proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that Americans love ghosts. It’s no secret that people love a good scare, which is why horror films in general are so popular, but humans have a special attraction to ghosts and ghost stories. Paranormal Activity, a mocumentary ghost story shot over a period of a few days in the filmmaker’s home for around $15,000 brought in billions of dollars at the box office. Originally the film almost was destroyed. The filmmaker tried for years to get a distributor for the film but no distribution company wanted it. Finally it was purchased, but the distribution company intended to just take the idea and remake the entire movie. Just to see what the audience reaction would be to the idea the company held a few small test screenings and the response from audiences blew them away. Audiences were mesmerized by the original film. Put into wide release it became one of the biggest sleeper hits of all time.
Some of the most popular shows on TV are shows chronicling the search for proof of the paranormal. Shows like the British import Most Haunted, Ghost Adventures, Scariest Places on Earth, Paranormal State, Ghostlab, Haunting Evidence, and the most well known and well respected ghost hunting shows Ghosthunters and Ghosthunters International all try to provide hard evidence of life after death. And audiences can’t get enough. The Atlantic Paranormal Society, or TAPS, is the focus of the Ghosthunters show. The group’s founding members, Jason and Grant, have been using scientific methods and high tech equipment to capture proof of paranormal activity for decades. They say that in about 80% of the cases they investigate they find no verifiable proof. But the other 20% of cases have yielded proof that scares and tantalizes viewers into wondering what really happens after humans die. Ghost hunting has become a wildly popular hobby, and fans have a cult like devotion to their favorite ghost hunters. The TAPS team are the most active of the well known ghost hunting groups and have network contacts all over the world. The members of the team give lectures and lead actual ghost hunts which sell out months in advance. Recently TAPS got involved in a spin off of the Ghosthunters show, Ghosthunters Academy which is a reality show competition . The carefully selected contestants vie for a coveted spot as a ghost hunter on the TAPS team. Ghost hunting has gone from an underground, sometimes ridiculed hobby to big business, and a big draw.
Why are people so fascinated by ghosts and ghost hunting? Ghost hunting is fascinating for a few reasons. One is that it’s fun to be scared, and nothing is more scary than the unknown. Another is because people want to know about death. Regardless of personal spiritual beliefs most people want to know what happens when they die. Does human consciousness live on? Is there an afterlife? Are deceased friends and relatives still here? Throughout the ages people have wanted answers to those questions. Using modern high tech equipment and scientific inquiry people are coming closer everyday to being able to definitively answer those questions.
Witches are a permanent part of pop culture. They pop up in everything from fairy tales to horror movies. Witches can be good or bad, but usually they are bad. And the uglier they are the more we love them. Witches come in many different types of ugly but usually they need to have at least one mole, several warts, ratty black hair, and green skin. The image of the witch with green skin and a mole comes from the 1939 movie the Wizard of Oz, from the Wicked Witch of the West who torments Dorothy for killing her sister. The iconic image of a good witch also comes from the Wizard of Oz. Glinda, the Good Witch is the quintessential good witch with a poofy pink dress, pretty curls, and a sweet lilting voice.
Most people prefer bad witches though. Evil witches are the personification of all the dark desires that people have but would never act on. They have magical powers that they can use to get even with people who have hurt them. They get to wear black all the time. They are feared but have no fear, and are not ashamed to give in to their desires. Witches can be found in every culture, and have been a part of culture ever since record keeping began.
Some historians say that the stories of witches as modern people know them originated with powerful men who wanted to get rid of the Goddess worshipping religions throughout Europe. In order to scare people away from believing in these Goddess religions Christian church leaders and government officials spread stories about powerful witches who would hurt or kill people that they didn’t like and said that the Christian faith could save people from witches. In these stories the powerful goddesses of legend were turned into powerful witches who were out to destroy humanity and collect souls for the devil. Religious scholars trace the origin of the myth of witches back through the Bible to Lilith. Lilith was Adam’s first wife who fled the Garden of Eden rather than be subservient to Adam and spent her time trying to lure him into sin.
No matter where the origin of the witch myth came from it’s clear that witches are here to stay. Witch costumes are one of the most popular Halloween costumes because witches can be anything you want them to be. There are ugly witch costumes complete with fake moles and scars, sexy witch costumes with vinyl dresses, high heels, and black wigs, and there are pretty, feminine good witches in pink dresses and lots of glitter. You can make your own witch costume out of accessories that you put together yourself or you can buy a witch costume that will help you look like one of the witches that everyone knows like the Wicked Witch of the West or one of the many different witches in Disney movies Maleficent, the witch who curses Sleeping Beauty.