France Month: Boucle d'Or et les trois ours by Mélanie Combes (Illustrateur), Agnès Lestrade (de) (Auteur)

Boucle d'Or et les trois ours by Mélanie Combes (Illustrateur), Agnès Lestrade (de) (Auteur) is a Goldilocks offering in the same line of fairy tale books as last week's brunette Cinderella. This one has the same author but a different illustrator however. It's a fine version of the story, especially for its intended audience of young children, but nothing spectacular either.

Book description:

Une nouvelle collection de grands contes classiquespour les 4-7 ans! Un conte de toujours, des personnages merveilleux, des illustrations pour rêver et une fin comme vous ne l’avez jamais vue… Bienvenue dans la forêt des contes. Il était une fois une jeune fille un peu trop curieuse. Lors d’une promenade, Boucle d’or découvre une maison cachée dans la forêt.

Moscow Festival Ballet and Sleeping Beauty

Because I can never resist pictures of a fairy tale brought to life in a ballet, I will share these images and the news about the performance. From Moscow Festival Ballet To Bring 'Sleeping Beauty' To Life:

The fairytale "Sleeping Beauty" will come to life with Tchaikovsky's score by the Moscow Festival Ballet at the McCallum Theatre on Monday, Feb. 6.

The performance is set for 8 p.m. at the Palm Desert Theatre, according to theater spokeswoman Cate Ervin.

In Sleeping Beauty, a baby princess, condemned at her christening by an evil fairy to prick her finger and die on her 16th birthday, is saved by the gift of the good Lilac Fairy who declares that the princess will only sleep until awakened by the kiss of a prince.

The fairytale, replete with a king and queen, fairies both good and evil, a beautiful princess and a handsome prince, is presented with magical stage effects and courtly splendor.

The Moscow Festival Ballet has toured extensively throughout the United States and will tour North America for four months in 2012.

So they may be coming to a theatre near you, too. Sleeping Beauty is one of my favorite of the fairy tale ballets. And who doesn't love Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty Waltz? Even Disney used it although he added words...

From the theatre site:

The spectacular fairy tale, set to Tchaikovsky's classic score, is brought to life by the renowned Russian National Ballet. Under the direction of legendary principal dancer Sergei Radchenko, the famed company performs the magical masterpiece with grace and beauty. This production performed to recorded music.

France Month: La princesse au petit pois by Delphine Grenier (Illustrations)

La princesse au petit pois by Delphine Grenier (Illustrations) is Princess and the Pea with some unusual illustrations.

Book description:

Il y avait une fois un prince qui voulait épouser une princesse, mais une princesse véritable. Il fit donc le tour du monde pour en trouver une, et, à la vérité, les princesses ne manquaient pas ; mais il ne pouvait jamais s’assurer si c’étaient de véritables princesses ; toujours quelque chose en elles lui paraissait suspect. En conséquence, il revint bien affligé de n’avoir pas trouvé ce qu’il désirait jusqu'a ce qu'une étrange princesse frappe à la porte de son château...

UK: Celebrity Big Brother Fairy Tale Challenge

First off, I must issue my disclaimer. I have only seen part of a Big Brother episode once when I was visiting someone and had little control over my environment. If you love it, no judgment here. This is just to explain that I understand the concept of the show but have very, very limited firsthand experience.

But in my endeavours to show where fairy tales appear in pop culture (as where as everywhere else) I would feel remiss if I didn't mention that the UK version of Celebrity Big Brother had a fairy tale challenge this week. After all, it has had a lot of coverage this week, too, in entertainment news. I have no comments. I haven't viewed. I am rather ignorant, but still fascinated. Here goes:

Most celebrities live a life that seems like a fairytale for us ‘normal’ people - but this week the contestants on Celebrity Big Brother have been challenged to do it for real, in order to be successful in their shopping task.

The stars – who include axed X Factor contestant Frankie Cocozza, actress Natalie Cassidy, WAG Natasha Giggs and Loose Women’s Denise Welch – must work together if they want to get their hands on money for the house budget.

They have been tasked to carry out various tasks while playing the roles of much-loved fairytale characters including Pinocchio, Rapunzel, Little Red Riding Hood and Geppetto. These include rescuing Rapunzel from the tower that imprisons her, and protecting the house from the Big Bad Wolf.

For this week’s shopping task, the Big Brother house and housemates have been transformed into a fairytale.
Yesterday, the housemates took part in the following challenges:
Rapunzel and The Prince – PASSED
The Prince (Gareth) managed to rescue Rapunzel (Georgia) from the tower by successfully climbing a near-horizontal ladder without falling into the deathly swamp.
Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf – FAILED
Red Riding Hood (Natalie) and the Big Bad Wolf (Nicola) failed their challenge because they didn’t manage to complete it in the 60 second time limit. The budget is taken down to 500 gold coins (£500).
The Three Little Pigs – ONGOING
The Three Little Pigs have so far managed to keep their straw house up and will continue to be tested throughout the day.
Beauty and the Beast – FAILED
In the diary room, The Beast (Andrew) had to rate how attractive he was against his fellow housemates. In the living area, Beauty (Kristina) had to decide how The Beast would rate himself against them. As Beauty had less than 10 correct matches, they failed and lost a further 100 gold coins taking the shopping budget down to £400.
Goldilocks and the Three Little Bears – FAILED
This morning, Goldilocks (Karissa) and the Three Bears (Denise) faced an eating challenge in the diary room. Presented with three bowls of horrid porridge in the diary room – cow’s urine porridge, spicy porridge and fishy porridge – Goldilocks had to decide which bowl was best for her and eat it. The Three Bears then had to eat the remaining two bowls. As Goldilocks failed to eat a complete bowl and the Three bears failed to eat two complete bowls, they failed the task and lost a further 100 gold coins.

I blockquoted quited a bit, but these were some of the best descriptions, scary as they may be, as I could find.

Wow. Fairy tales are really taking over. Are you ready? I am! Although maybe perhaps not for this...

The images came from In Pictures: Celebrity Big Brother 2012's fairy tale task!

Once Upon a Time Ratings

From Fairytale return: ABC's 'Once Upon a Time' soars:

On a night that was dominated by the end of the Denver Broncos-Pittsburgh Steelers NFL playoff game, ABC’s new fairytale drama “Once Upon a Time” delivered its best rating in weeks.

“Time” bucked up to a 3.7 adults 18-49 rating in the 8 p.m. timeslot, according to Nielsen overnights, the show’s top outing since averaging a 3.8 on Nov. 13 and 28 percent better than the show’s last original episode on Dec. 11.

It’s possible “Time” picked up some new viewers from last Sunday’s four-episode marathon, or people who usually DVR the show may have tuned in live for its first new episode of the new year.

“Time” was the top scripted series of the night on broadcast, though not the top show overall. That honor went to what will apparently be a hugely rated Broncos-Steelers matchup.

Into the Woods Coming to the Silver Screen

 

I've been wondering about this one for a while, such an obvious choice and Hollywood finally agreed. Yes, from my post header you can see that the Broadway musical hit, Into the Woods, is going to get a movie treatment. Yes, there is a DVD of the Broadway performance, but that's not nearly the same is it?

From 'Chicago' Director Rob Marshall Tackles Fairy Tales with 'Into the Woods' at Hollywood.com:

The man behind the Academy Award-winning Chicago and minor dud Nine has signed on to shepherd a feature version of Stephen Sondheim's classic Broadway show Into the Woods for his Pirates family, Disney. Marshall began cooking the idea up a year ago when he was working with mega-producer Jerry Bruckheimer on On Stranger Tides and the adaptation couldn't make more sense in the current landscape. After Tim Burton's blockbuster Alice in Wonderland, fairy tales are all the craze, with ABC's Once Upon a Time and NBC's Grimm bringing in solid ratings and Snow White and the Huntsman, OZ: The Great and Powerful and Maleficent all prepping for release in the next two years. Into the Woods, which melds a series of fairy tale characters and stories, including Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel and Cinederella, is a perfect fit.

It's unclear if Into the Woods will be Marshall's next project—he's currently working on a remake of The Thin Man with Johnny Depp, plus a possible fifth entry in the Pirates saga—but without he pressure of the current fad, we may see the musical sooner than later.

And what? Thin Man? Oh noes! I love Thin Man. I adore Thin Man. I am very worried about The Thin Man now. William Powell and Myrna Loy cannot be replicated. We own and watch the box set regularly.

But that isn't pertinent to SurLaLune, is it? Now is your chance to think up your dream cast for a film version of Into the Woods. Who would you want to play who? Of course, we would love to see Bernadette Peters reprise along with some others. I enjoyed Vanessa Williams when I saw her in Los Angeles. But I am not really attached to any current stars. What about you?

South Side Namita

Her real name is Namita Mukesh Vankawala though she is known as Namitha in the industry. She is an Indian actress who appears in Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Hindi & Malayalam language movies. She started her career with the Telugu movie "Sontham" in 2002. Now, she is one of the most famous South Indian actresses. Eventhough she is a fat actress however she looks attractive. Enjoy her new photos. 15 more images after the break...

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