End of the Year Roundup: Cinderella Movie, Cinderella in the News, and Maria Warner on The Brothers Grimm

Chadwick Tyler's photo of Imogen Morris Clarke

Well, well, ladies and gentlemen. I have kind of dropped the ball for the end of the year! And I am ok with that. Rather than focusing on trying to get every little bit of fairy tale news that comes down the pike, this year, I am going to focus on the things that really spark my interest, that I really feel passionate about. This will mean that my posts are fewer and farther between, but it will also mean that I will be able to devote some quality time to the posts I decide to write.

Here, however, is a digest of some other news items we missed in the mean time:

Cate Blanchett to play Evil Stepmother in New Cinderella Movie
While, yes, I still feel that we need a greater diversity of fairy tale movies, I love me some Cate Blanchett. Here's hoping that her endorsement of the movie means it has a good script. The director is Mark Romanek who directed One Hour Photo and Never Let Me Go, so here's hoping he does it as awesome as those!

We Are the Folk, Volume II: Cinderella in the Closet and Blood in the Shoe
Something to Read for the Train examines two more news stories that smack of fairy tales in modern life, and not in a happy ending kind of way. She explores schadenfreude in a way that shed new light on the idea for me (the comfort not only that we are not getting shat upon by life like those guys over there, but that we are not the crazy ones so we will be ok). She also delves into a horrible case of child abuse as a parallel to Cinderella, insisting that the marriage and the slipper do not a Cinderella story make; it is about a girl who rises from the ashes of abuse. She goes on to discuss why we shouldn't shy away from the scary or the gory in fairy tales (a favorite tune of mine): "What I would claim is that a child who hasn’t been sheltered from fairy tales is going to have a little bit more in her mental arsenal when the shit hits the fan, if only because they might have just that much more faith that all will turn out well, and that help, in whatever form, is on the way."

Maria Warner's 10-Part BBC Broadcast about Fairy Tales
While I have not listened to all of them, the topics look fascinating! She traces the ancient origins, discusses those who contributed to the tales, examines the fate of the tales in the hands of Nazis, delves into the psychology of the tales, the history of their censorship, and the future of the tales. All topics we here at The Dark Forest love to talk about!

That is all for now. For anyone who wants to know, yes I did love Once Upon a Time's midseason finale. They know how to do a finale. I do think that Mulan and Aurora should get together, and damnit Regina is awesome and deserves to be happy, but from what I have seen of the clips from "The Cricket Game," this is not going to happen any time soon. Here's Io9's recap/review.