Friday Nail Polish Giveaway Winner

We have our first week's winner of the Fairy Tale Nail Polish Giveaway (read more here). Using a random number selector, Sprite became our first winner. She won a bottle of BB Couture Poison Apple. I have already contacted her and received a reply.

I still have three more Fridays and three more bottles of polish to giveaway this month. All who have already entered and not won are still entered for the rest of the month. The contest machine will continue to accept new entries until the end of the contest, too.

Congratulations to Sprite and bonne chance to everyone else!

And thanks again to Kim at Overall Beauty for her donation to SurLaLune! BB Couture was my manicure of choice this week and I really love this nail polish line, from color choices to formula (Big 3 Free) to naming conventions. (And, yes, I paid for my own bottles long before the contest and became a fan first.)

Now I wish they had more colors, like Frog Prince (green) and Bluebeard (navy) and Gingerbread Man (brown) and Snow Queen (white) and Thumbelina (baby pink) and Fairy Godmother (sparkling anything). I could do this for a very long time, so I'll stop now...

It Begins...Disney's Princess and the Frog

The end of summer is fast approaching and thus the big publicity push for Disney's December 11, 2009 release of the "Princess and the Frog" is starting. Love it, hate it, or stand somewhere in the middle, Disney has done much to keep the interest in fairy tales alive. I intend for the SurLaLune coverage of the tale to stay more on the traditional side of the tale, but I'm certainly not going to ignore the movie. I may have to see it opening day just to get a jump on all the questions!

I'm most excited about the movie because feature films always do more to initiate interest in traditional fairy tales than any other pop culture event. "Princess and the Frog" prequels a year of several high profile fairy tale film releases.

I just received my first email blast from Disney with a link to the official website. Ironically, it wasn't working when I first clicked through the other night, but hopefully it'll be working by the time I publish this post. Here's the link: Official Site for Disney's Princess and the Frog. Visit there to get more information.

Ink Gypsy is doing a great job with more minute coverage of the movie itself over at one of my favorite fairy tale blogs: Once Upon a Blog... (She and I merge and diverge regularly in our posts, so consider our blogs complements to each other.)

And I have a few things planned to go along with the movie and the natural increase of interest in The Frog Prince so stay tuned.....

Everybody Was Fairytale Fighting

So my original post on Fairytale Fights has been quite popular. More press releases and leaks are taking place although embargoes on reviews are in effect until August 19th or there abouts. Still, there is a new trailer--beware very graphic cartoon violence--available for your viewing, well, knowledge. I'm embedding it below.

I'm not a gamer, especially not this type, but I'm fascinated with the timing of this game, released before Christmas and before the release of several fairy tale animated feature films in the next year. I want to see how this is received and reviewed by gamers, one of the choosiest and critical groups I've ever come across. Will it be a hit? A miss? Or somewhere in between? The buzz is fascinating with complaints that Gingerbread Men bleed in the trailers instead of crumble although they are supposed to crumble in the actual game, rest assured.

I have to admit I'm tempted to at least rent the game to see it in action on our Xbox 360 but the machine might run away in horror since it's used primarily for playing NCAA Football. There's not much role-playing or non-sports violence in my domain beyond the traditional fairy tale stuff, excepting what does appear on SurLaLune. :)

And no, I'm not entering the debate over video game violence. Not going there today. My interest is purely observational. This game does have a high maturity rating, so let that be your guide.

And if the video does intrigue you, the game is available for preorder for its November 10th release through Amazon and other sites. (Here are links to various platforms if you're interested: PS3, XBox 360, Windows.)

Nominees for the 2009 World Fantasy Awards

The nominees for the 2009 World Fantasy Awards have been announced. Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan is a nominee for best novel. The rest of the nominees are listed here. Congratulations to all the nominees although I'm not listing them here beyond Lanagan since her work is most pertinent to this blog. Others are quite close, such as Neil Gaiman's Odd and the Frost Giants, which was inspired by Norse mythology and nominated for best novella.

Tender Morsels is a dark retelling of Snow White and Rose Red and has already garnered nominations and awards this past year. Retellings of this tale are rare and this is perhaps the darkest to date. There has been debate over its suitability for teens with the graphic content, so be warned of such. However, the story is resonating with many with its themes of abuse and survival.

The book also joins a short list of fairy tale retellings that unabashedly deal with abuse, especially in women's lives. The long out-of-print The Armless Maiden edited by Terri Windling and still in-print Deerskin by Robin McKinley are among the best. Short stories by several authors have also appeared in other Datlow & Windling collections and those by individual authors, too. The Rose and the Beast by Francesca Lia Block may also appeal to fans of this subgenre.

Another 'Little Red Riding Hood' Movie?

Here's the link to a new article: Dark 'Little Red Riding Hood' in the Pipeline.

With David Leslie Johnson aboard as screenwriter, Leonardo DiCaprio's production company Appian Way is developing a Gothic re-imagining of the famous fairy tale 'Little Red Riding Hood'.

While the feature film project has been developed internally at Appian Way, it isn't being positioned as a possible acting vehicle for the three-time Academy Award-nominated DiCaprio.

There's actually several articles today about this. Such as Call Tim Burton, We Need a Gothic 'Red Riding Hood' Over Here which references Perrault's version of the tale and Orphan Scribe is Writing a Gothic Reimagining of Little Red Riding Hood at least quotes Wikipedia's description of the tale.

Of course, so many movies in development never make it onto film (and Appian Way appears to be notorious for this), but if this one does, it should be an interesting addition to the film genre. Dark retellings of fairy tales in film are nothing new, but mainstream ones are rare enough to be intriguing. The abundance tend to be student or indie films. Of course, Little Red Riding Hood is an obvious choice, too. The tale has become synonymous with gothic in some circles.

Oh, and the art work for the first article was perhaps the most amusing part of the entire thing. I'm not sure they could have found a more twee or cutesy Little Red Riding Hood image to imply that this will be a new and dark twist on a completely innocent tale. Smirk. As for me, I'd go with the classic Dore I used above instead. Although the one I'm borrowing from the last article and placing below is pretty good.

Cappuccino Anyone?

So I stumbled across these ads from a campaign for Bru Cappuccino in Asia in 2007. Thus they are a little dated, but of interest all the same. I think the challenging question is: What products haven't used fairy tales for advertising at some point?

But I also found this campaign interesting for using Rapunzel which is more rare outside of hair products or salons in my experience. Cinderella and Frog Prince, sure, but Rapunzel, not so much. I'm fascinated that there doesn't appear to be a Little Red Riding Hood image since that's the most popular tale to use in almost any campaign.

Overall, the campaign isn't very effective for me although I do have a soft spot for the Rapunzel image since it is a rare and unusual usage. I don't see how these are effectively pushing cappuccino either, but since these are for Indian culture (ha! using European tales, no less) I might be missing something. I also don't drink coffee, so I'm supposedly way outside the target audience.

Sarah Beth Durst's Obscure Fairy Tales

Sarah Beth Durst is one of the newest authors publishing novelized fairy tales, starting a few years ago with her two gems, Into the Wild and Out of the Wild, starring Rapunzel's daughter and offering some fairy tale adventures. Quite fun!


This fall she has a new novel, Ice, a retelling of East of the Sun and West of the Moon. I'll talk more about Ice closer to publication when I see a copy of it.

Occasionally, in case you've missed it, Durst retells a fairy tale on her blog and highlights it with a running, often snarky, commentary. Fun is had by all since she has a great love for the tales. Thankfully, she archives all the retellings on her website at Obscure Fairy Tales.