Fairy Tale Roundup: Mercer Meyer's Beauty and the Beast, an eclectic Fairy Tale Film collection, SWATH sequel, and Disney's Frozen

Oh, it makes me so sad that I don't have time for anything more than Fairy Tale Roundups right now! I am in the middle of rehearsing two plays, working my 9-5 and taking two classes for my master's degree, one of which requires me to read two (boo) YA books (yay) a week. I have many interesting ideas in the pipe, I just have to have the time to develop them and write them. In the mean time, I will point you in the direction of the genius of my fairy tale blogging colleagues:

Beauty and the Beast by Mercer Meyer
Tales of Faerie explores the beautiful illustrations of one of my favorite adaptations of Beauty and the Beast, by Mercer Meyer and Marianna Meyer. I love the sumptuous detail of the images! She riffs off of Jerry Griswald's analysis in The Meanings of Beauty and the Beast: A Handbook (which I now have to grab a copy of!)

Once Upon a Blog continues to be a never-ending font of awesome:

A New Journey into Fairy Tale Films from Fandor
Gypsy has discovered an online fairy tale film collection. Discerningly curated, the collection includes a 1902 Jack and the Beanstalk, Betty Boop's Poor Cinderella, the erotic film Cinderella 2000, a stop motion Pied Piper of Hamlin,  a Korean Hansel and Gretel, and Sita Sings the Blues. I know what I will be doing when I have more time!

Snow White Drifts To the Dark Side in SWATH Sequel?
She also tells us of the new Snow White and the Huntsman sequal, and confirms a theory I had when I saw the first one! The evil queen may be gone, but the mirror remains. Power corrupts.

The Snow Queen Cometh
Last, but certainly not least, Gypsy informs us that Frozen, the Disney movie looooooosely based on the Snow Queen, is nigh. She goes into a wonderful analysis of why it could be good, and why it could be bad. I am certainly not heartened by the character portraits. I am interested in the whole 'the Snow Queen is her sister" angle! And Disney's first female director....wha? Isn't it the 2000s? It seems like this should have happened before now. And the talking snowman.... Didn't we learn from Hunchback that you don't need to have the talking inanimate objects to make a good movie?

P.S. Oh god. The trailer is horrible. It is trying to be Ice Age, I guess? We don't get to see any of the characters that actually look interesting, and it tells us nothing about the story:

Art: Minimalist Fairy Tale Art by Christian Jackson

From Strollerderby:

"Strip fairy tales of all their pomp, circumstance, princes and princesses and you have a very basic story. And each fairy tale has some kind of hook, some sort of iconic image, item or idea that is easily identifiable. The graphic artist Christian Jackson recognized this and distilled a collection of classic and famous tales and conveyed each one into a simple, very minimalist statement.

Of his children’s story series, Jackson stated: 'My life was thrown in very childish direction when I became a father a little over 2 1/2 years ago. I guess this series was my way of releasing some of that energy creatively. I can’t really say that I “decided on children’s stories” my lifestyle pretty much demanded it. When the idea for the posters came to me, the iconic images for each story just sort of poured out.'"

 

 
 

These are beautiful! I think my favorite are Little Red Riding Hood, Princess and the Pea, Ugly Duckling, Pied Piper, and the Wizard of Oz.

Article: Into the Woods: A Whimsical Journey on the Brothers Grimm's Fairy-Tale Road

From Conte Nast Traveler (via Breezes from Wonderland):

"Once upon a time, the Fairy-Tale Road north of Frankfurt was known as a kitch- and schnitzel-strewn diversion. On the bicentennial of the Brothers Grimm's first volume of stories, Raphael Kadushin follows the breadcrumbs and discovers one of Germany's most underrated pastoral dreamscapes (plus what might have really happened to those lost children of Hameln). "

"The fact that the sucker punch of the Grimm's stories could survive even Disney's neutered translation suggests the way the tales can still throw down their own kind of curse. Sure, there is usually a happy ending. But before the wedding coems a cavalcate of our fears, marching out like the seven pitiless dwarfs: abandonment, infantacide, boiling caldrons, chopped limbs, witches warmped and creaking like old wood. And those missing children, where did they go?"

See the full article here: Into the Woods: A Whimsical Journey on the Brothers Grimm's Fairy-Tale Road

Map of the Fairy-Tale Road:

From CNTraveler.com