Fairy tale films

The films Mirror, Mirror and Snow White and the Huntsman are part of a trend of re-interpreting traditional fairy tales with contemporary twists that move beyond the bouyant Disney versions. Mirror, Mirror, which opens Friday, stars Julia Roberts in a humorous retelling of Snow White.  In a significant contract, the  Huntsman version is much darker, more brooding and somewhat in the trend of Twilight and Hunger Games. Clearly, Red Riding Hood, directed by Catherine Hardwick who directed the first Twilight film, is part of this collection of films as well and Beastly with Vanessa Hudgens. Also released in March, direct to DVD, is Grimm's Snow White. When we saw Hunger Games over the weekend, we saw a previous for Snow White and the Huntsman, but not Mirror, Mirror, which opens sooner. 

As I tell my classes, every generation re-interprets fairy tales.  The wide difference in these two Snow White films suggests the malleability of this classic story.  Disney's version is primarily from the young princess's perspective, but in the two upcoming films, the older Queen has a more prominent role.  I will be interested to see Julia Rogers as the Queen, as she seems to be relishing the role and having fun.  I am not sure how evil she is in her version.  But in the film to be released in June, the older Queen is clearly evil.  Then, too, look at the title of the second film, Snow White and the Huntsman -- the focus is on the relationship between Snow White (played by Kristen Stewart) and the handsome Huntsman out to kill her (Chris Hemsworth). Charlize Theron, who some might say has a history of looking more stunning than Kristen Stewart, plays the Queen.  Theron also has played some roles of gutsy, powerful roles while Stewart seems to be majoring in mumbling, slightly awkward young women.  Hmm, the conflicts arise.

Excitement for The Hunger Games continues

The Hunger Games film opens in a few weeks and we've noticed that several stores are featuring new covers of The Hunger Games in paperback as well as some other books. There's the Official Illustrated Movie Companion, the Unauthorized Guide to the Series, The World of the Hunger Games, and a Guide to the Hunger Games.  Quite a few.

There's also the question:  Is the Hunger Games going to be bigger than Twilight?  The possibility is there, as this article in the New Jersey Star-Ledger proposes, since the series is popular not just with girls and women but also with boys.  There's a bigger audience to draw from.  Still, as this article points out, the clip previews show that the film is going to be significant different from the book. We're still sad that the first Percy Jackson film was so significantly different.  If the Hunger Games films is too different will it alienate audiences? 

But Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters seems to definitely be in production.  And we'll probably see that.

In the meantime, we're disappointed that the Hugo DVD didn't take more advantage of the possibility to including more early film materials and clips in the basic DVD.

Weetzie Bat film?

Weetzie Bat, the imaginative adolescent book about creative kids in LA by Fransceca Lia Block, reads like a film script.  So it's exciting that there's a possibility it will finally become a film.  While teaching Block's book in Adolescent Literature, I found several Internet sources about the production.

In September 2010 actors, including Chelsea Staub and Corbin Bernsen, read the Script for Weetzie Bat and the Dangerous Angel in bookstore with Block.  Part 1  Part 2 Part 3  YT videos about 11 min each 

The film has potential for success given the popularity of similar type films for adolescents, especially based on the success of the Stephenie Meyers' Twilight series and Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland. Weetzie Bat, however, is a more poetic, slightly more surreal and perhaps more controversial.  Those ingredients have the potential for a big hit if marketed right to teenage girls.

Here is a short video based on film outtakes.  5 min

Production and Design photos for film 

Block's notes on scriptwriting

Link to Brian Gaskill's web page.  He is directing the film.

Here's the cast list, with links to their IMDB pages.

Weetzie Bat - Chelsea Staub

  

Charlie Bat (Weetzie's dad) - Corbin Bernsen

Brandy-Lynn (Weetzie's mom)  - Shannon Sturges

Dirk (Weetzie's best friend, who is gay) - Brant Daugherty

Grandma Fifi (Dirk's grandmother) - EG Daily  
She will also be reading several other characters as well as singing. 

Valentine - Dwight Ewell
He will also be reading several other characters.

Max/secret agent lover man  - Aaron Ashmore

Vixxanne - Crystal Mantecon

Buzz Cut - Jason Seitz
He will also be reading several the character of Bam Bam, Duck's friend.

Duck (surfer) - Kurt Collins

How beastly! Two films re-imagine fairy tales for teens

Wolves! Ugly beasts! Beautiful girls in hoods! Dark woods! Magic! 

Two films being released in March -- Beastly and Red Riding Hood -- are re-imagining  traditional fairy tales for modern teen audiences. Historically, fairy tales have been revised to suit the sensibility of that era's  audiences.  Some critics chafe at Walt Disney and his studio's interpretations because the animated versions do not keep to the 'traditional' script. But Disney knew, as fairy tale scholars know, that fairy tales are appealing, in part, because at their core they weave interesting stories with issues that the audience wants to work out and contemplate.  The re-interpretations enable each generation to embrace and analyze the core stories and related issues through their own lens.

Fairy tales started as oral tales, and as we all know, when you tell stories aloud you change them to adapt to the audience.  These new films are doing the same thing -- seeing if they can mine the contemporary adolescent interest in the gothic,  darkness, issues of beauty, while trying to understand and unravel universal problems.

The creators of the new films, or at least the trailers, seem to have a bead on contemporary teen and young adult audiences.  For Red Riding Hood, the director is Catherine Hardwicke, who directed the enormously successful first Twilight film and the troubling Thirteen (2003).  Red Riding Hood is played by Amanda Seyfried who is the cute, slightly over dramatic girl in Mamma Mia! (2008), Dear John (2010), and Letters to Juliet (2010). She brings to the role experience in the TV series Big Love (2006-11) and Atom Egoyan's Chloe (2009). Also starring are Lukas Haas (great as a child in Witness (1985) and recently in Inception) and Gary Oldman (who I just talked about while teaching films based on Dracula since he starred in Coppola's vision). The trailer makes the film look like a Twilight fairy tale -- probably a clever calculation that will make the film have good box office.  Here's the link to the trailer of Red Riding Hood.

Beastly is set in contemporary times and is based on "Beauty and the Beast." The trailer shows the lead, played by Alex Pettyfer, as a pretty boy Beastlywho is good looking, probably a rich football player, and popular.  (Pettyfer was interesting in Alex Rider (2006). Through a magic curse, he becomes disfigured, in an interesting way.  It takes the love of a girl, played by High School Musical's Vanessa Hudgens, to see beneath the surface of his unusual appearance.

"Beautiful people get it better" is the opening line of Beastly's trailer. The line is curious here because the beautiful person is a boy, not a girl.  For years, feminists have criticized beautiful images of girls, so it's interesting just in the twist of that role being played by a boy. Will feminists consider the problems of handsome boys and men as well?

Clearly inspired by the success of the Twilight series and probably by Harry Potter and Disney, the previews show films with the moody gothic sensibility so popular with teens as they retell familiar stories in either a contemporary setting Vanessa Hudgens and Mary Kate Olsen star in Beastly(Beastly) or a dark forboding, northwoods type setting (Red Riding Hood).  I assume that the tremendous success of Tim Burton's dark Alice in Wonderland film is bouying the studio's hopes.  There are similar merchandising efforts, though not as overwhelming as for Burton's Alice. Also just reading a review in the Miami Herald for I Am Number Four, which also stars Pettyfer and is similarly aimed at the YA audience, has a similar story arc to Twilight.  Hollywood loves to get on the bandwagon.

By the way, I've also been told by our local tween that beastly means great, cool, fantastic.

Have you thought that Alice in Wonderland is frightening?

As our household gets excited for the upcoming release of the new Alice in Wonderland film, some people weAnne Hathaway as the White Queen in Alice in Wonderland, holding the Dormouse know or read in forums are admitting that Lewis Carroll's original book was rather frightening to them.  It's hard to pinpoint what some people found frightening, but others specify the oddness of the characters, the way Alice seems to loose control, the original John Tenniel illustrations, or other illustrations or films. 

After talking to a few critics who've seen the film and after watching many of the previews, I'm beKristen Stewart brooding in Twilightginning to think that Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland is going to focus on a  darker interpretation  of the book as well as heightened  conflicts.  Each generation re-interprets classics and it seems that the times are right for an Alice that's not intimidated but finds the world of Wonderland in chaos.  She's a powerful teen-age girl who's ready to fight for what's right, or what seems right anyway. This would dovetail with how Disney is marketing this Alice to tweens and teens enamored with the darkness of the vampires in the Twilight series as well as the brainy, but klutzy, teen-age girl trying to find her way in a confusing, dark world filled with unusual, surreal characters.  By the way, it's worth hanging out at your local mall's Hot Topic store just to see how this linking of Twilight and Alice comes together at the tween/teen hangout. Angst and confusion and Day-Glo stripes, cute Johnny Depp and sweet Anne Hathaway (famed modern Cinderella of Princess Diaries). While you're there, pick up a Cheshire Cat hoodie with key zipper so you can look cool.