Blog Ritemail: 2011-02-13

Saturday, February 19, 2011

Robber Bridegroom Musical

From New musical 'steals' the stage 'The Robber Bridegroom' overcomes production woes by Mary Kate Martin:

"The Robber Bridegroom" tells the story of Jamie Lockhart, a man who has two sides: one as an ordinary person and the other as the "Bandit of the Woods." Jamie rescues a rich farmer, Clement Musgrove, and, to thank him for rescuing him, Musgrove offers Jamie marriage to his daughter Rosamund.

Rosamund eventually stumbles upon the Bandit of the Woods, and they soon fall in love, not knowing who the other truly is.

Throw in Salome, Clement Musgrove's scheming second wife, and two villainous bandits, and chaos ensues.

This is the first department musical in 18 years and director Peter Reader said he "wanted to do something based on a book." "The Robber Bridegroom" is based on a novel by Eudora Welty, which is, in turn, loosely based on the Grimm fairy tale of the same name.

I would love to see this one! I love Welty, but alas I don't live near New Jersey to see this one.

Beauty & the Beast by Kirsi Salonen

It's Saturday and I am needing a little break from blog entries. Never fear, I have quite a few things planned for next week, things that were planned for yesterday and today, but will come a few days later instead.

Anyway, on Saturdays I am always prone to simply share pretty pictures because I was raised by an art historian. And I love pretty pictures. So here is an illustration for Beauty & the Beast by Kirsi Salonen. (Click through to see a large image of it.)

You can see more of Salonen's work at her gallery although this is the only piece there that is directly fairy tale inspired. I first saw the image through a great blog, Children's / Fantasy Illustrations. Now what does it say about me that this piece reminds me of Eleanor Vere Boyle more than anything else? (Besides that I have spent many, many hours looking at classical illustration....) They are quite different in style, but the tone is similar to me, perhaps me alone.

Friday, February 18, 2011

Namitha Latest Stills

Namitha latest stills, More images after the break...

Emma Watson ELLE Style Awards 2011 in London

When Emma Watson chopped her long locks last summer, it was to mark the end of her Harry Potter days — contractually, she couldn’t cut her hair while playing Hermione. But since debuting her pixie cut in August, the actress has been trying to grow the ‘do a bit — this time, to get acting roles. At the ELLE Style Awards in London last night, where Watson received the Style Icon award from Vivienne Westwood, the starlet revealed to reporters that she’s liking her extra length.

“I am trying to grow it but it’s slow, it’s taking a while obviously,” she told ELLE. 10 more images after the break...

Modern Paris and Paris 1940

Very interesting historical project of Sergey Larenkova. On each of his work combines modern Paris and Paris 1940.

By early June 1940 the main forces of the French armies were broken or cut off to the north. The road to Paris with the German troops had broken through was open. 14 July 1940 the German army entered Paris. Started during the occupation. Upper picture - Paris, 1940. Hitler leadership of the Reich at the Trocadero | Paris, 2010. Military governor, General Henri Fernand Denz declared Paris an "open city", the empty three-quarters of the capital a month after the beginning of Germany's active military operations against France, were without fighting German troops. Paris, 1940. German soldiers marching down the Arc de Triomphe. 17 More images after the break...

20 facts about YouTube

1. YouTube (Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, Jawed Karim) All three founders of YouTube (Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, Jawed Karim) worked on Paypal, when you started your project.

2. YouTube domain was registered at St Day. Valentine's (February 14, 2005).

3.70% of registered YouTube users from the U.S., 50% of YouTube users under 20 years of age.

4. If YouTube was a Hollywood movie company, it would have enough material to produce 60 000 new movies every week.

5. To produce as many videos as it was uploaded to YouTube over the past 2 months, broadcasters NBC, ABC, CBS would have to work around the clock seven days a week since 1948.

15 More after the break...

4 Year Old Girl Drives Motorcycle — Video

Thursday, February 17, 2011

Film: Tales Of The Night by Michel Ocelot

Tales of the Night (Les Contes de la Nuit) by Michel Ocelot just premiered at the Berlin Film Festival. From Tales Of The Night by Mike Goodridge:

In Tales Of The Night, French animation master Michael Ocelot returns to the same format as his 2000 film Princes And Princesses (Princes Et Princesses), itself a compilation of short fairy tales in silhouette from his short-lived 1989 TV series Cine Si. The six new short stories possess plenty of the charm, wit and visual boldness for which his films are celebrated, but only newcomers to Ocelot’s work will be filled with wonder. For aficionados, there is very little fresh here and even some of the tales feel like rehashes of his previous work.

Ocelot’s fame should make the film a success in France when it opens in July and international sales will be strong, especially to buyers who took Azur Et Asmar (2006) or the Kirikou films; Ocelot’s DVD and TV value is timeless, and easily suited to redubbing in local languages.

In an age of multiple thousand screen releases for Pixar and DreamWorks titles, however these classical Tales are bound to find a niche in the specialised arena. The portmanteau nature of the concept and the silhouetted characters will hamper the chances of a wide acceptance among kids used to the digestible longform and easy visuals of Toy Story 3 and Tangled.

The film is presented in 3D, although for a film told with silhouettes, the device doesn’t add much visual enhancement. The imagery and colours are ravishing enough, and a 2D version is also available.

The article goes on to describe the tales in greater detail. Ocelot credits Lotte Reiniger as his greatest influence. You can read a review from the festival at Berlin 2011 Review: LES CONTES DE LA NUIT (Tales of the Night) by Robert Beames.

Here are some of his previous films.

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

New Book: Cloaked by Alex Flinn

Cloaked by Alex Flinn was released last week and I let it slip through the cracks, alas. This is Flinn's third fairy tale inspired novel after Beastly and A Kiss in Time.I put all three cover images up top which also reminds us that the movie based on Flinn's novel, Beastly, will be in theatres next month. It's losing visibility with the media blitz surrounding Red Riding Hood but Beastly is the first big fairy tale related film release for 2011.

Book description from the publisher:

I’m not your average hero. I actually wasn’t your average anything. Just a poor guy working an after-school job at a South Beach shoe repair shop to help his mom make ends meet. But a little magic changed it all.

It all started with the curse. And the frognapping. And one hot-looking princess, who asked me to lead a rescue mission.

There wasn’t a fairy godmother or any of that. And even though I fell in love along the way, what happened to me is unlike any fairy tale I’ve ever heard. Before I knew it, I was spying with a flock of enchanted swans, talking (yes, talking!) to a fox named Todd, and nearly trampled by giants in the Everglades.

Don’t believe me? I didn’t believe it either. But you’ll see. Because I knew it all was true, the second I got CLOAKED.

Unlike the her previous two novels, which were predominantly Beauty and the Beast and Sleeping Beauty interpretations respectively, Cloaked borrows from several fairy tales. Alex's afterword provides a guide to the most influential tales. They are:

The Frog Prince

The Elves and the Shoemaker

The Six Swans

The Golden Bird (sometimes better known with Russian Firebird)

The Valiant Tailor

The Salad (often titled Donkey Cabbages) (This is where the cloaking elements come from.)

The Fisherman and His Wife

And Alex, thank her, gives a shout out to SurLaLune in the afterward as a place to read more about these tales and others. Thank you, Alex!

Finally, here's a book trailer, too:

LittleBigPlanet and Hansel and Gretelbot

I try to keep informed about many areas of society out of fascination and plain old desire to participate in conversations in the real world. Discussing fairy tales doesn't really work well for me often in my time away from the computer unless I am at a conference meeting you dear readers.

However, one of my greatest knowledge base weaknesses is in gaming. I'm not a gamer. I play FreeCell and a few simple word and brainteaser games online. That's the extent of my playing besides some occasional social bouts with the Wii. (I had a slight addiction to Link's Crossbow Training for a few weeks last year. I finally mastered it and then my gaming obsession went away again.)

So when I read about and see things like this:

I am amused but slightly confused. I know LittleBigPlanet and LittleBigPlanet 2 are popular. That little guy is a familiar image. But that is where my experience ends.

So I am not going to try to explain how or what this Hansel and Gretelbot really is. I know it is part of LittleBigPlanet 2 and that is sufficient for my needs at this point although I say that and will probably spend the next half hour trying to figure all this out.

If you understand the game, this may make more sense to you. From LittleBigPlanet 2 – New Community-Created Playable Theme Coming Soon:

Hi guys – I’m sure that lots of you LBP fans out there have worked your way through the LBP 2 Story mode, confronted the mighty Negativitron, and are now exploring the intricacies of Create mode and the hundreds of thousands of new user levels.

If you’re hungry for some more Story mode-type Sack-venture, or looking for some creative inspiration and examples of just how powerful the new tools are, then here’s some very cool news for you, direct from Media Molecule…

We are very proud to present to you the preview trailer for Hansel & Gretelbot [see above], a very special community project based loosely on an old fairy tale, and that’s nearly ready for you to play!

LittleBigPlanet: Game of the Year Edition

Oh, and here is more about the actual story. I understand stories!

Once upon a time, in a little cottage on the edge of the Dark Western woods, lived a humble Woodsman, his wife, their son Hansel and robotic daughter Gretelbot. One sad day, the Woodsman’s wife was taken ill, and passed away not too long afterwards. Time passed, but eventually the Woodsman became stricken by loneliness, and he remarried.

The Woodsman’s new wife was a wicked woman, who hated her new step children. They were the reason, so she said, that they had to live in such poverty. They would eat them out of house and home, the Woodsman must get rid of them! His will weakened by his heartbreak, the Woodsman relented, and led Hansel and Gretelbot into the Dark Western Woods, leaving them to fend for themselves, with no idea how to get home…

Hansel & Gretelbot should be out later this month, keep your eyes peeled for more info!

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

ABC's Once Upon a Time Series

Well, it's been about time! With all the recent buzz over NBC picking up a fairy tale based series, the first series that ABC announced a while back had disappeared from the limelight. Now we are finally getting more news about ABC's Once Upon a Time series, starting with interviews with the creators/writers as well as an announcement of who will direct the pilot. CBS and Fox should get on the bandwagon next, don't you think?

From We Grill Two Former Lost Writers on Their Dark Fairy Tale Pilot:

Once Upon a Time (on which Damon Lindelof is also consulting) has a twisty, dual-plotted premise reminiscent of their previous gig: A young boy lives in Storybrooke, Maine, where he's convinced things aren't what they seem, and we also get glimpses — through flashbacks? flash-sideways? — of a fairy tale land where familiar evil queens and dwarves with sharply drawn personalities are quite real. Though the project is still early in its development and might not make it to air, the Lost-size hole in our heart propelled us to call up Kitsis and Horowitz to get some early details.

What is Once Upon a Time about?Kitsis: What we want to do is take a look at well-known characters and stories and kind of dig deeper than what you know, and say, "Here's what you didn't know." We want to try to bring [the characters] out as people instead of just metaphors to deal with our fears
Horowitz: For us, first and foremost, this is a character show. We want to take the iconography that we've always loved and find find a new way to look at what makes these fairy-tale characters tick.

How was this idea born?Horowitz: It was eight years ago. We had come off Felicity. And we got into a discussion about the kind of show we'd like to do, and why we write. We started talking about the myths and fairy tales that had inspired us, which led to, "How do you explore that in a new way?" We had no interest in retelling every story everyone knows.
Kitsis: And we started to say things like, "What if you were the evil queen? How annoying would it be to live in the enchanted forest ... [and] you have no hope of a happy ending?" It was that kind of weird take on it. We were younger writers, so people weren't in such a hurry to buy a crazy idea from two guys who were very young in their career. But the idea stuck with us.

There is MUCH more in the article, so do click through to read it all if you are interested.

And from ABC’s Fairy-Tale Pilot Gets a Director:

Once Upon a Time, the buzzworthy ABC drama pilot from Lost alum Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz, has found a director. Vulture hears Entourage vet Mark Mylod, who directed the pilot for Showtime's Shameless (as well as the original British series of the same name), will direct Time for the Alphabet. Damon Lindelof has been serving as a consultant on the potential ABC series, which imagines a world where fairy tales may be real. Mylod's other credits include Ali G Indahouse and the upcoming Anna Faris–Chris Pratt comedy What's My Number.

Of course, the network has to like the pilot, too, in order for this to ever hit our big little screens. But it does sound interesting.

Now the question is, after reading the descriptions of both, do you prefer the Storybrooke/FairyTale Land conceit or the grittier cop drama that NBC is considering?

I admit the ABC one sounds slightly more interesting to me. But then again, I keep getting images of Fairy Tale Police Department: Complete Series whenever I read about the NBC series. It won't be anything like, I know, but it's there in my head and it won't get out! As well as the HEA in Hoodwinked Too. I see more potential for original content with the ABC one, I guess. But I also have faith in the former Buffy writers, so I am not dismissing either and hope both make it to an eventual air date.

Fairy Tale Police Department: Complete Series

Movie Novelization and Some Creative Marketing...

From Do You Miss The Novelization Of Popular Movies? So Did The Producers Of ‘Red Riding Hood’by Brent McKnight:

In what feels like a throwback to a trend that Hollywood has largely abandoned in recent years, the novelization of big time films, Little Brown has released Red Riding Hood, an adaptation of the upcoming movie of the same name. Written by Sarah Blakely-Cartwright, the book debuted in the top spot on the New York Times Paperback Kids/Young Adult charts.

Blakley-Cartwright was on the set every day during the production of the film. From her vantage point, the author was able to weave in details of the atmosphere created by the filmmakers and cast, capturing the story’s suspense and romance as she created a stand-alone reading experience.

An enhanced ebook version of Red Riding Hood is also available, with exclusive bonus material and behind the scenes features from the film. The movie opens on March 11, and on March 14, an additional chapter to the book will be made available at 9 AM, at http://www.redridinghoodbook.com/. That’s a hell of a marketing strategy, tying a book to a movie, and then going from the movie back to the book again.

Wow, they are marketing this movie rather innovatively, aren't they?

Frog Prince Comic by Nick Galifianakis

The comic is by Nick Galifianakis for The Washington Post. It appeared with an advice column about gender roles in dating which referenced fairy tale stereotypes: Carolyn Hax: No happy-ever-after with fairy-tale ideas on gender but not anything interesting enough to share here. The comic made me laugh though. It's not the perspective we usually get on the tale.

Monday, February 14, 2011

Looking Back: Fairy Tales and Romance

Last year I produced an entire week of Fairy Tales and Romance leading up to Valentine's Day. I considered doing the same again this year, but to be honest, most of what I thought up was just a rehash of last year's entries. I try not to repeat myself too often. However, the blog's readership has also doubled in the past year, so I wanted to direct you to those many entries if you are interested in reading about fairy tales and romance. Here's a list of the entries:

Fairy Tales and Romance Week: Valentine's Day (Greeting cards)