Movies: ALL THE MOVIES!

My goodness. It has been a while since I have posted. I blame Master's Degree, Sickness, Vacation and First Week of School. Lots to catch up on, so lets get down to it. My first installment will be regarding all the fairy tale movies coming up.

H&G: a modern day retelling of Hansel and Gretel. 
"...I have always been struck by this fable’s portrayal of adult women. The stepmother and the witch are portrayed as heartless villains. Whereas the father, although also complicit in the abandonment of the children, is portrayed as caring and loveable. In reading about the history of the tale, I discovered that Wilhelm Grimm revised the traditional tale several times. He changed the mother character into a stepmother and he also made her less sympathetic. According to folklorist Jack Zipes, Wilhelm Grimm “deepened the characterization of the father and stepmother so that he becomes much more caring and concerned about the children and she becomes more coldhearted and cruel.” This sharp gender dichotomy, this demonization of the adult female characters, was an element of the story that I wanted to explore and challenge. 

This was my starting place for writing H&G." - Danishka Esterhazy, Writer (Begins touring to film festivals Fall 2013)

Hallmark Transforming "Mirror Mirror" Comic Into Family Movie "The Hunters"
"Hallmark Released Synopsis: Carter and Jordyn Flynn (Payne, Forbes) aren't the average mom and dad. For them, a typical workday can take place anywhere in the world, raiding ornate museums and evading pursuing authorities as Hunters, protectors of powerful fairy tale artifacts that are anything but make believe. (Edit FTNH: Definitely sounds like a special annex of Warehouse 13!)" Victor Garber and Michelle Forbes will star.

This sounds right up my alley! I love me some Warehouse 13. Hallmark does not instill a lot of confidence, based on it's past movies (aside from it's Snow Queen), but it could be really cool! I certainly want to read the graphic novel now.

What a Fables Movie Must Have, According to Creator Mark Buckingham
"I think if it doesn't have Snow White and Bigby [Wolf] in it, then... [that's a problem]. They were such a core element of the first 50 issues of the story. So I think their romance, their relationship, is a really core aspect of the series. Beyond that, the beauty of Fables is it has such a rich cast, and you can really cherry-pick a lot of different aspects from it, and create a really good story, even if you don't necessarily follow the entire narrative."

Maleficent First Footage Reactions and Full Cast
"Maleficent is the untold story of Disney’s most iconic villain from the 1959 classic “Sleeping Beauty.” A beautiful, pure-hearted young woman, Maleficent has an idyllic life growing up in a peaceable forest kingdom, until one day when an invading army threatens the harmony of the land. Maleficent rises to be the land’s fiercest protector, but she ultimately suffers a ruthless betrayal—an act that begins to turn her pure heart to stone. Bent on revenge, Maleficent faces an epic battle with the invading king’s successor and, as a result, places a curse upon his newborn infant Aurora. As the child grows, Maleficent realizes that Aurora holds the key to peace in the kingdom—and perhaps to Maleficent’s true happiness as well." (Full Cast)

First Footage Reactions from ScreenCrush: "To give you some idea of what was shown, it imagines the famous Christening scene of baby Aurora. The three fairies (Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather) fly to the castle, ready to bestow their gifts on the child. As soon as the green fairy, Fauna, is about to present hers, the candles are snuffed out and a dark whirlwind heralds the evil witch herself. “Well, well,” says Jolie, accompanied by a villainous, whispered cackle. Scenes flash forward as we see Aurora growing up into her teenage self, while Maleficent, engulfed in a green flame, casts the famed curse we can all probably recite from memory." (More from Once Upon a Blog)

Tatum Channing's Werewolf Assassin in Jupiter Ascending
In this sci-fi version of Snow White, Tatum Channing plays the Huntsman character, an albino assassin half-wolf. In Channing's own words, "I’m a splice, splices are essentially built in a test tube. I’m a hybrid wolf and human. And half albino, so I’m a little defective."

I am rather excited for this, but I hope it doesn't mean we can't have a Cinder movie too.

Disney's Next Animated Feature (Unofficially) is Giants
They are apparently doing to "Jack and the Beanstalk" what they did for Tangled and Frozen, which was highly successful in Tangled, but debatable in Frozen. There are so many plot details over at Once Upon a Blog, so please go over there and see them! The pics on the blog are not from Giants, however!

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:

Movies: NPR's Bob Mondello on Fairy Tales for Millennials and Upcoming Adaptations

Molly Quinn in Hansel and Gretel get Baked

Bob Mondello over at NPR examines the new fairy tale movie adaptations that cater to teens and young adults coming out this year. He remarks upon Jack's lack of initiative in Jack the Giant Slayer, possibly commenting on or catering to the image of the millennial generation (I do not necessarily subscribe to this stereotype, being a cusp of millennial myself). They don't take destiny into their own hands, like Jack from the original tale, but are swept up in events beyond their control. This is perhaps appropriate for teens and young adults entering a work force that has no jobs for them:

"At age 6, as Disney long ago established, abandonment by your parents is terrifying. So is illness, so is the unknown, and so is that scary old dude down the street. But when you're 20, there's a whole new set of fears — fear of commitment, fear of getting pregnant, fear of unemployment. Or maybe of getting busted for drug use.

In the upcoming Hansel and Gretel Get Baked, a witch lures teens with marijuana, then eats them to stay young. It's a horror movie — clueless teenagers getting in trouble because they're clueless teenagers, just going with the flow, passively.

That's different from the more active tykes who populate storybooks. In the old English folk tale Jack and the Beanstalk, Jack is maybe 12, and a schemer. He steals gold from the giant, chops down the stalk, killing the giant, and lives happily ever after with his stolen gold. I'll leave it to parents to find a moral in that, but at least he went up the stalk on purpose; it was his idea.
In the new movie Jack the Giant Slayer, Nicholas Hoult is playing Jack as a 19-year-old who's kind of a slacker and is trying to impress a girl when the beans sprout under him and he gets carried up to Giant-land very much against his will. Once there, he proves less incompetent than you might expect, but he's basically reacting to things, not making them happen.

The girl is the one who's looking for adventure, though for plot purposes — she is a princess, after all — she'll spend most of her time getting rescued.

There's no real "risk" in any of this. The Brothers Grimm wrote stories that were actually grim — designed to scare children. Hollywood's new grown-up fairy tales may quicken your pulse a little, but they're centrally soothing. Yes, there's an army of giants coming, but pluck and optimism will carry the day — a reassuring thought if you're a 20-something and staring nervously at an uncertain, recessionary future. It's especially reassuring if that thought is couched in a fairy tale so familiar and comforting, you've half-forgotten it. So get ready for lots of grown-up bedtime stories."

He also updates us on the upcoming fairy tale movies:

"I was going to say we're not in Kansas anymore, but we kind of are. There are nine — count 'em, nine — Oz movies currently in the pipeline, including the prequel Oz: The Great and Powerful, a story involving Dorothy's granddaughter that's just called Oz, and a martial-arts oriented Oz Wars. Also dueling Pinocchios, from Guillermo del Toro and Tim Burton, the horror-masters behind Hellboy and Beetlejuice. Not to mention Angelina Jolie assaying the title role in Maleficent, which tells the Sleeping Beauty tale from the evil stepmother's point of view."

 NINE???? NINE Oz movies. Geeze, think of something original, people.

Fairy Tale Catch Up: Bizarre Adaptations and Meryl Streep

Wow, guys. I have been in a black hole of putting up a play (come see The Pirate Laureate of Port Town if you are in the DC area!) We have finally opened, and now I can catch up on all the fairy tale news and ephemera that has been cropping up lately!


Hansel & Gretel Is the Platonic Form of “So Bad It’s Good”
Io9 thinks Hansel and Gretel: Witchhunters is silly and fun! "If you're looking for a serious reinterpretation of the Hansel and Gretel story, this movie isn't going to cut it. Even the "dark" bits where the siblings try to figure out why their father left them alone in the woods are plain ridiculous. But if you want to laugh your ass off and see some witchslapping, it's the perfect thing. Gemma Arterton as Gretel is particularly adept at chewing the scenery in the most awesome way possible. What I'm saying is that you should turn your brain off and mainline some fairytale this weekend." I have yet to see it, but I must admit, I love the idea that Hansel now has diabetes from the witch candy and needs insulin shots. Honestly, I will see it for the fairy tale ass-kicking alone!


10 of the Most Bizarre Fairy Tale Adaptations
Flavorwire gave us a facinating list of strange fairy tale adaptations: Six-Gun Snow White, Catherynne M. Valente (set in the Wild West, and written by an amazing writer!), I Was A Rat!, Philip Pullman (about Cinderella's rat footman who didn't get turned back at midnight), The True Story of Hansel and Gretel: A Novel of War and Survival, Louise Murphy (Hansel and Gretel set in WWII), and more! Most of them seem pretty mainstream to avid fairy tale adaptation fans (like Anne Sexton's Transformations, and The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter), but as widely read as those are, yeah, they are weird.



Adorable Gender-Swapped Fairy Tale Princes by Yudi Chen
Flavorwire, yet again, gave us this beautiful series of gender-swapped fairy tale art: a long-bearded Rapunzel, a merman saving an Inuit princess from drowning, a beastly beauty, a king jealous of his stepson, and several others that display a fresh look at fairy tales with surprisingly unforced tenderness.



Meryl Streep is a huge Witch in the Into the Woods movie
WHAT? Amazing. She is simply in talks for the role, and this is by no means final, but Meryl Streep would play a fantastic witch in the Into the Woods movie. While I am still nervous about Disney doing my absolute favorite musical of all time, this seems to be a step in the right direction.

Movies: No Dark Cinderella and Maybe Witch Hunters is Awesome?

Photo by Dark Cherry on DeviantArt/ Official Movie Poster

The Cate Blanchett/ Mark Romanek Cinderella is a Bust
Gah! Just when we thought we might have a top-notch dark fairy tale coming down the studio pipe, Disney has decided that Mark Romanek's Cinderella is too dark for Disney. Click the link to hear Io9 rant and rave and echo my anger at this development. Fingers-crossed that some other studio has the gumption to snatch that project up. Disney doesn't need another regular Cinderella, or another modern twee Cinderella. Disney should have had the balls to delve. </rant>

Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters Might Not Suck?
In other news, it turns out that Witch Hunters may not be so bad afterall? The new redband trailer has a tongue in cheek flavor to it:



My fellow blogger Drown My Books will probably disagree with me, but Jeremy Renner still has yet to earn a "I will see anything he is in" card from me. Gemma Arterton, on the other hand, from her performance in St. Trinians, I can definitely get behind. Something to Read for the Train (Cate, who is in fact a girl) weighs in with some really thoughtful remarks about the nature of fairy tales to reflect the values of the times, and how, while many had moral lessons, they were meant as entertainment. She also treats us to my favorite version of Little Red Riding Hood to illustrate her point.

I have a feeling it's gonna be an awesomely terrible action romp, with the cool fighting moves and awesome slow mo and dead-pan badass one-liners (I admit it! The "we'd do this shit for free" line in the trailer hooked me.) And I'm kind of ok with that. (Though, my fairy tale racism argument still stands!)

RADIO: NPR's Interview with Maria Tatar on the Origins and Interpretations of Fairy Tales

NPR's On Point did a fantastic interview with Maria Tatar recently! It delves into why and how the brothers collected the tales, fairy tales in popular culture, misogyny, Antisemitism and violence in fairy tales, and personal interpretation of fairy tales. While many of you have heard these topics discussed before, this conversation is fresh and interesting.

Maria emphasizes that the Grimm version is not sacred. Our stories that we remix and reinterpret and add meanings based on our own life experiences. I love that! While I do get frustrated when people take the tales and make them something totally other than I myself interpret them to mean or kowtow to the Disney version when there are more interesting versions available, it is important to remember that we all approach fairy tales with our own baggage. There is no right version. One of the best qualities of fairy tales is that they are so malleable. We don't get the internal monologue of the characters, just the actions, so we can infuse their actions with meanings we relate to. The tales belong to all of us. We each have our own Snow White, or Sleeping Beauty, or Little Red Riding Hood.

Go to the original page for supplementary materials. 

Movie: Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters Trailer

Oh this movie. I will say, I am very glad that it is not Hansel and Gretel as adults finding a gingerbread house and kicking it's ass. However, with Peter Stormare as Ambigiously Germanic Official and the saving of the villiage children from the evil witch that is taking them, I got huge Brothers Grimm flashbacks. Even whatever filter they use looks similar to Brothers Grimm; the "it's about to rain" filter. And the vaguely olden times but still get to wear tailored tight leather outfits aesthetic. 

That being said....

I love me some Jeremy Renner, thought not as much as a fellow blog mistress I know (cough- Drown My Books-cough). And I love me some kicking supernatural ass. I am a bit worried that it doesn't seem to be much more than that? Aaaaand I have the same feeling as this when ALL WITCHES ARE EVIL:

After watching the pretty witches turn ugly, and the sheer amounts of witches fighting, I started to feel like this was subliminally a conservative, "lets kill all the earthy-crunchy people!" movie. For some reason, for me, one evil witch, all good. ALL THE WITCHES, I have troubles. I have less trouble with vampires or werewolves in that regard. But in general, I feel like it's better storytelling if you don't say "all if this race is ____" and give it some variety. 

Anyhoodle, the trailer was kinda bad at telling us anything other than "We are witch hunters because we were traumatized as children, all witches are evil, my sister gets captured and there is something more going on than just witches." Hopefully, the movie will be more complex than that! I am happy for Jeremy Renner to prance around in leather for two hours, but good storytelling/ characters would be awesomer. 

Movie: Black Forest: Hansel and Gretel and the 420 Witch

This movie looks oh so B-movie, but at the same time it could be hella fun! And it is starring the wonderful Molly Quinn from Castle!

No time for further commentary from me (school started again this week), but feel free to comment!

(PS. I discovered this through Maria Tatar's blog Breezes from Wonderland)

Movies: More Fairy Tale Adaptations in the Works

Hailee Steinfield in True Grit and Saoirse Ronan in Hanna

The Telegraph recently posted an article about the fairy tale movie phenomenon, and teased us with other fairy tale and children's book adaptations in the works, an additional "Snow White," two more "Sleeping Beauties," three Peter Pans, two "Cinderellas," one "Beauty and the Beast," one "Little Mermaid," one "Jack the Giant Killer", one "Hansel and Gretel," one Oz, and one "Arabian Nights." And a partridge in a pear tree.:

"Disappointingly, it could then be another 18 months before a third film based on Snow White is released, although Disney plans to have The Order of the Seven, it own loose adaptation of the tale, in cinemas before the end of 2013. The premise should appeal to anyone who liked the Seven Dwarfs but only wished they were taller and more violent: here, they are an elite fighting unit of average height who come to the rescue of a banished English maiden in 19th-century China.

While Snow White gets three films, Sleeping Beauty, Peter Pan and Cinderella have to make to with two apiece. Hailee Steinfeld, the 15-year-old actress nominated for an Oscar for her role in True Grit, is attached to a feminist take on Sleeping Beauty in which the princess Aurora fights her own way out of the dream world rather than waiting for a handsome prince to pucker up. Meanwhile, Angelina Jolie will play the wicked queen in Maleficent, a reworked version of the Disney animation, told from the villainess’s point of view.

Then there’s Pan, which recasts JM Barrie’s boy who never grew up as a baby-faced kidnapper pursued by Detective Captain James Hook, played by Aaron Eckhart. And indeed Peter Pan Begins, which reveals that the hero and his one-handed nemesis are in fact estranged brothers, with the former fashion model Channing Tatum attached to play either Peter, or Hook, or possibly both. A third script for a Twilight-inspired take on the story called The.Never.Land is currently unoptioned, but the threat remains that it may yet be made.
A live-action version of Cinderella has been developed for Disney by Aline Brosh McKenna, the writer of The Devil Wears Prada, which itself was a modern-day Cinderella story of sorts. When news of this adaptation broke, Universal instantly announced that it too was working on its own production.

This is not The End. Emma Watson was recently cast in a new version of Beauty and the Beast. Joe Wright, whose thriller Hanna was dotted with references to Red Riding Hood, is planning a live-action Little Mermaid. Bryan Singer’s take on Jack The Giant Killer, starring Nicholas Hoult, will be released in the 2013 post-Oscar lull, which does not bode well. The Will Ferrell-produced Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters will star Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arterton, which does.

Sam Raimi’s Oz: the Great And Powerful boasts James Franco as a young version of L Frank Baum’s Wizard. Chuck Russell’s Arabian Nights boasts former wrestler Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as Sinbad. The combinations of stars, plots and settings sound like the results of a strange Hollywood parlour game. “Liam Neeson as Rumpelstiltskin, in an action thriller! Justin Bieber as the Clever Little Tailor, in space!” (Full Article)

While I am extremely excited for all of these, who wants to sign a petition for a movie adaptation of "The Goose Girl"? Or "Wild Swans"? Or "DonkeySkin"? Or "Twelve Dancing Princesses"? Or "East of the Sun and West of the Moon"? I think the movie producers need to delve a little to come up with fairy tale movies that have not been over done.

But I am a bit giddy about the Sleeping Beauty adaptation with Hailee Steinfeld. That girl can do no wrong. And I will watch Saoirse Ronan (the lead in Order of Seven) read a phone book.

Books: Review of A Tale Dark and Grimm by Adam Gidwitz

A Tale Dark and Grimm

by Adam Gidwitz

“You see, Hansel and Gretel don’t just show up at the end of this story. 
They show up. 
And then they get their heads cut off. 
Just thought you’d like to know.”

It is true. Hansel and Gretel get their heads chopped off. And then their story begins. Hansel and Gretel were the son and daughter of a king and queen. In order to save the life of a loyal servant, they had to chop their children's heads off, so the children thought that after that, they should probably go and find new parents. 

They travel through different, more obscure fairy tales with themselves as the main characters, starting with "Faithful Johanness," "The Seven Swallows," "Hansel and Gretel," "Brother and Sister," etc trying to find a better family to take care of them, and in the process, they grow up. And they deal with some pretty deep stuff. Each of them makes mistakes with deadly consequences, but they learn from them. Each of them have to make terrible sacrifices. But they gain strength, intelligence, and willpower so they can safe the kingdom and come to grips with their horrible parental trust issues. 

This was a fantastic book! The style was delicious! Each section begins as a fairy tale; "Once Upon a Time, there was a ______" It continues in that style with frequent interruptions from a very chatty narrator, snarkily judging the character's decisions, explaining to the reader the feelings the characters must be going through, and most of all, vehemently warning of the impending gore and frightening subject matter, employing the readers to take the children out of the room, etc. It is absolute genius. It warns them, but then dares them to read on, and when bad things occur, the reader is prepared and brave, and is able to go on. They are not shocked by the horrible things happening and have to put the book down. This is juvenile fiction after all. 

In the back, the writer tells the story of how someone came into his second grade classroom and read "The Seven Ravens," in which a girl cuts off her finger. After being assured that he was not fired, he realized the kids got a lot out of it, and they begged him to tell more stories, asking questions, shouting responses, and getting involved in the story telling. 

With all the discussion recently about if kids can handle dark fairy tales, I think the answer is a resounding YES. This book shows that kids can have the strength to go through dark times and come out the other side. Kids need dark stories to know that people can survive and be better for it. If they don't put themselves in the right story when they encounter a dark time, they will crumble. If they think of themselves as a hero with a possibility of winning, they will fight. 

This is my favorite quote in the book:

“There is a certain kind of pain that can change you. Even the strongest sword, when placed in a raging fire, will soften and bend and change its form. So it was with Hansel. The fire of guilt and shame was just that hot.

Trust me on this one. I know this from personal experience. I hope that you never will, but, since you're a person, and therefore prone to making horrible, soul-splitting mistakes, you probably will one day know what this kind of guilt and shame feels like. And when that time comes, I hope you have the strength, as Hansel had, to take advantage of the fire and reshape your own sword.” 

Oh and check out the trailer. It is awesome!

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.