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Tim Burton's Disney-produced "Alice" topped the US box office this week

PARIS (AFP) - For Tim Burton, whose movie "Alice in Wonderland" has broken through the looking glass to come up a box office winner, "dream life and fantasies are real."

The powerful mind-bending Lewis Carroll classic, Burton said in an interview, "is like exploring your dream life and fantasy life."

In real life, 2010 is looking a winner year for the somewhat dishevelled 51-year-old. His Disney-produced "Alice" topped the US box office this week and New York's prestigious MoMa is running a show until April spanning his many talents -- painter, photographer and illustrator as well as film-maker.

And from May 12-23, the creator of some of the darkest and most evocative movies in cinematic history -- including "Beetlejuice", "Edward Scissorhands" and "Planet of the Apes" -- is to head the Cannes film festival jury, an event he describes as "a dream come true."

"I haven't had time to see films for the last two years," he said of Cannes and the making of "Alice". "I feel like I've been raised by wolves and now I'm coming back to civilization, so I'm really happy and excited!"

Burton's live-action 3-D "Alice" is a free-ranging interpretation of 19th-century British writer Carroll's "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and its sequel "Through the Looking Glass".

"So many people have analysed 'Alice in Wonderland' and it's still cryptic, it's still something people can't put a finger on, and yet it remains in people's consciousness. That's the great power of any myth or folk tale -- it just stays there, in clothing, fashion, everything."

©AFP/Getty Images/File / Kevin Winter

"Alice in Wonderland" stars (from left) Mia Wasikowska, Helena Bonham Carter and Anne Hathaway

Featuring sumptuous digital fantasy worlds, the movie stars 19-year-old Australian actress Mia Wasikowska fleeing a forced betrothal to return to the fantasy world she discovered as a child thanks to a white rabbit and his hole.

With the help of Mad Hatter Johnny Depp, in his seventh Burton movie, and other heroes of the classic tale -- the Cheshire Cat, or Tweedledum and Tweedledee - Alice tries to oust the evil queen played by Helena Bonham Carter.

"This was about using Carroll's characters, but almost more about what effects his work had on me, which is like exploring your dream life and fantasy life."

"I always had this horrible reaction of people going 'This is fantasy and that's reality'," he told AFP. "It's like, wait a minute! A lot of us use our fantasy and dream life to actually work out problems in our real life. It goes in psychology, it goes into a lot of things."

"They're not exclusive," he said. "Those fantasies are quite real."

The movie is the visionary story-teller's first with Disney in 30 years, after the studio produced two of his first short films "Frankenweenie" and "Hansel and Gretel".

"It's like a family: we have our good days and our bad days. I've been embraced into the company and kicked out of the company about five or six different times! So I guess it's just like a real family," he said.

A technically complex movie that mixes animated characters with real-life actors, with Alice constantly changing size, Burton said:

"It's like making a puzzle...it was a really chaotic and disturbing process."

©AFP / Pablo Porciuncula

Uruguay exported 1.2 mln liters of wine in 2004. In 2008, it sold 13.4 mln liters

MONTEVIDEO (AFP) - Argentina has its Malbec. Chile has its Carmenere. Now Uruguay, not to be out-muscled by its more famous wine-producing neighbors, is taking the world of viticulture by storm, with its distinctive Tannat wines.

Uruguay, the fourth most important wine-producing country in South America, grows a variety of grapes, but none more celebrated than Tannat, which is fueling this tiny country's rise to prominence in the wine world.

Over the years Tannat has come to be seen as the quintessential Uruguayan grape and wine, representing about 40 percent of the country's entire wine production.

Now bold and full-bodied Tannat wines are putting upstart Uruguay on the map, and winning prizes against competition fronted by more established regional rivals.

"Tannat is opening doors for us," winegrower Virginia Stagnari proudly told AFP. Her Italian immigrant family founded the Antigua Bodega Stagnari, some 20 kilometers north of Montevideo, one of this countries leading vineyards.

Although Uruguay's wines are just beginning to gain a global foothold, it has a long history of viticulture, dating back some 250 years when French and Spanish immigrants brought the vine to the New World.

The hardy Tannat grape, originally from southeastern France, was introduced to Uruguay in 1870 by the Basque Frenchman Pascual Harriague, an immigrant who was looking for a varietal that would thrive in Uruguay's soil and climate.

Since the 1990s, Uruguay has been exporting high-quality wine throughout Latin America, the United States and even in the countries of the Gulf.

This tiny country of some 3.4 million inhabitants, dwarfed by its larger neighbors Brazil and Argentina, now enjoys a growing reputation as a producer of superlative wines for a reasonable price.

Some 8,200 hectares of vineyards have been cultivated by some 1,800 wine producers.

Stagnari said her family's vineyard was established in 1929 by her maternal grandfather, an immigrant from Italy, and today produces 140,000 liters of various types of wine, exporting every fifth bottle out of the country to destinations like Brazil, Mexico, Belgium and Sweden.

Another highly regarded label here, Bouza, although barely a decade old, produces what are generally deemed to be some of this country's most exquisite wines including not only Tannats but varietals as Albarino, Chardonnay and Merlot.

To obtain top quality wines "we have to expend a lot of man-hours," said the company's resident eonologist, Eduard Boido.

The quest for memorable wines also means "maintaining the biodiversity of the vineyard," Boido said, as well as cultivating the grapes "in parcels of land no larger than a half-hectare in size."

©AFP / Pablo Porciuncula

Small scale viticulture allows for quality control

Small scale viticulture allows for quality control and ensures the "traceability" of each bottle -- something that Uruguay's industry overseers INAVI, the national institute of wine culture, insists upon.

According to INAVI Uruguay exported 1.2 million liters of wine in 2004, with a value of some 3.3 million dollars. In 2008, it sold 13.4 million liters valued at 10.6 million dollars.

But viniculture in Uruguay was dealt a major setback by the global financial crisis. In 2009, it succeeded in selling only two million liters, worth about six million dollars.

Uruguay expects to make up lost ground quickly now that the economic recovery is underway, especially given its position as a purveyor as one of the best values to be had in any wine store.

But even the most avid oenophiles agree that Uruguay's wine industry will rise and fall on the quality of each individual bottle of ruby red Tannat.

And they say downing a glass as much of an art form as producing one.

First uncork a bottle pour it into a glass and allow it to sit for a half-hour.

Then swirl it in a slow, circular motion. Next, close your eyes, inhale deeply into the wine glass.

Finally they say, sip the Tannat, holding the contents in your mouth a few second before swallowing, in order to fully savor the full bouquet of Uruguay's most treasured export.