Pictures of selected points, 29 more images after the break...
Thursday, February 3, 2011
The New Supercar Pagani Huayra
Pagani has released official images of its highly anticipated supercar Huayra. Car is powered by a Mercedes AMG built 6.0-litre V12 twin turbo engine, capable to putting out 700 horses and more than 1000Nm of torque. The top speed for the car is said to be in the region of 370km/h. Now if you have so much power and only 1350 kgs of weight, you could be quite sure to go from 0-100 km per hour in less than 3 seconds. While the Huayra looks like a rocketship from the outside, from the inside, it is done up in classy, rich interior bits. There is an old world charm about the leather draped interior of the Huayra. There is exposed aluminium and then there is lots of carbon fibre to delight all those new age speed nuts. To make this marriage of class and modernity work in perfect harmony you have some natty blue backlit gauges and multi-function displays for navigation and communication. 14 More images after the break...
Cap o Rushes by Ben Hatke
It is so rare to find illustrations for Cap o Rushes, one of my favorite Cinderella variants, especially in the U.S., that I was thrilled to find this collection by illustrator Ben Hatke on a message board on a completely random side twist to a web search last week. No, these are not from a book and Hatke doesn't describe the circumstances of the project. These have been floating around the web since at least 2007, often with no artist attribution so I wanted to share them here. Hatke has a fascinating blog, too, which documents his new book release, totally unrelated to fairy tales, but hopefully helping at artist make a living, so I want to flog it here, too. It's Zita the Spacegirl, a graphic novel, and one I have to admit hits some of my non-fairy tale related buttons. Hee, the story starts when Zita pushes a big red button, too. Wish it had been around when I was kid.*
And a video for the book:
Zita the Spacegirl: Trailer from Ben Hatke on Vimeo.
* Seriously, I had a hidden stash of Batman comics that I had traded off the neighborhood boys probably with Mork & Mindy trading cards or something. It wasn't because I was forbidden them. My parents wouldn't have cared. In fact, my mom helped me buy a large oversized Batman comic that was more kid friendly several months later. It was more that I thought they were for boys and I was somehow strange to prefer them to Barbies and such. I was six or seven and it took a few more years to discover Nancy Drew who finally gave me a literary heroine outlet that wasn't related to the rarely seen Wonder Woman or Charlie's Angels on tv who I realized were oversexualized even if I didn't understand that term or its full import yet. Thus Sabrina was my favorite Angel. My parents were pretty strict about the tv viewing at that age, more about the quantity as well as some of the quality. In other words, at age seven I probably would have worn out a copy of Zita the Spacegirl. There are many more options today, but I would have loved this one all the same.
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
'Buffy' writers sell Grimm's Fairy Tales pilot to NBC
When I first saw the new headline, I thought this was the same series I'd written about before (Once Upon a Time Coming to ABC) until I investigated further. Nope, different project and I don't know the status of the ABC one.
From 'Buffy' writers sell Grimm's Fairy Tales pilot to NBC by James Hibberd:
NBC has picked up another pilot mixing fantasy with a crime drama: The network has greenlit Grimm, described as a “dark but fantastical cop drama about a world in which characters inspired by Grimm’s Fairy Tales exist.” (Gotta love mining expired copyrights in the public domain!).So the real question is are you more interested in a series from the producers of Lost
The project is from Jim Kouf (Angel) and David Greenwalt (Buffy the Vampire Slayer
), with executive producers Sean Hayes and Todd Milliner.
or one by the writers for Buffy and Angel?And my question is: Will we actually see two fairy tale based series on two different networks? Hmmmm....
East of the Sun and West of the Moon by Rosie Lauren Smith
This is an illustration for East of the Sun and West of the Moon by Rosie Lauren Smith. The Arthur Rackham and Tasha Tudor influences are perhaps the most apparent. It also reminds me a little of Trina Schart Hyman. What I love the most about it is the autumn setting which appears to be the artist's favorite season. So many of the illustrations of the heroine riding the polar bear offer a winter setting. You can see more of Smith's art on DeviantArt (there's a lot of faeries and such) and she also has a blog.
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Fairy Tales, Controversy, and 100 Young Adult Books for the Feminist Reader
Well, the blogosphere is lit up tonight with the controversy over Bitch Magazine's removal of titles from their 100 Young Adult Books for the Feminist Reader. First, let me make clear that I'm not posting here to jump onto any bandwagon. This isn't the forum for that although I welcome your comments if you want to comment on that aspect. I'm approaching this post from the SurLaLune viewpoint which is, wow, two of the three removed titles are fairy tale retellings. And they weren't removed for that reason either. I'm just, well, I don't know the emotion, but fascinated is the overwhelming feeling at this point. From the images above you can see that the removed titles are Sisters Red by Jackson Pearce and Tender Morsels
by Margo Lanagan.
Yes, our January SurLaLune Book Club Pick was removed from the list.Here's the reasons for their removals by Ashley McAllister:
A couple of us at the office read and re-read Sisters RedCount me fascinated that fairy tales once again have found a way to be in the middle of a controversy. They are lovely, malleable creatures aren't they?this weekend. We’ve decided to remove these books from the list— Sisters Red because of the victim-blaming scene that was discussed earlier in this post, Tender Morsels because of the way that the book validates (by failing to critique or discuss) characters who use rape as an act of vengeance, and Living Dead Girl because of its triggering nature. We still feel that these books have merit and would not hesitate to recommend them in certain instances, but we don’t feel comfortable keeping them on this particular list.
We’ve replaced these books with Howl’s Moving Castleby Diana Wynne Jones, The Blue Sword
by Robin McKinley and Tomorrow, When the War Began
by John Marsden. Thanks to several commenters who pointed out the need to include these excellent books on our list. I’m excited to add a few more rad girls to our list and I can’t say how happy I am to know that there are WAY more than 100 young adult books out there that tackle sexism, racism, homophobia, etc… while presenting us with amazing young adult characters. Young adult lit has come a long way. We’re really excited to keep talking about feminist-friendly YA books on the blog.
And, no, they weren't the only fairy tale retellings or at least fairy tale influenced novels on the original list either. (I say original because it may change more as authors request their titles to be removed out of protest of the changes.) Here were the other three on the list, some rather surprising. So there were five, now there are three.
And I was fascinated that The Blue Sword was used to replace the removed titles and not McKinley's Deerskin
instead. (Which would have at least replaced a fairy tale with a fairy tale, smile.) Deerskin seems a better fit for the original list either way. There is even a comment on the page supporting Deerskin so I wasn't the only one to think this.And, yikes, there was a comment on the Bitch Magazine page that called LRRH a sexist fairy tale. Ouch. I would love to argue with that, but will simply end this post for now.
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