Tag Archives: Red Riding Hood

Grimm Times

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TheTramp finds that fairy tales are back – and they’re grimy.

All the magic in the world couldn’t protect the cast of Once Upon a Time from the curse of Photoshop.

Once upon a time, fairy tales were Disney’s domain. They took the old Grimm boys’ stories and lightened them up a little with a combination of beautiful art work, princess dresses to die for, Technicolor and happy ever afters. Publishers followed suit, updating the fairy tales we all know and love – like Cinderella, Red Riding Hood, Snow White, Beauty and the Beast – and creating pretty illustrated books that children could read with their parents and enjoy the pictures to help aid sweet dreams.

Readers of the Grimm tales will know they’re not designed to aid sweet dreams. They are social lessons and morality tales. They make it quite clear that the world is full of nastiness and only the smart, the cunning and the manipulative will survive. There may be dashing princes, but don’t rely on them ladies – what if you find yourself with a wolf and there’s no prince in sight?

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Preview of 2012 – Blockbusters

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by Ron Swanson

Any preview of 2012, (or at least one that wants to rouse the collective interest of ‘the Internet’, should probably start with Christopher Nolan’s the Dark Knight Rises. The UK’s cinematic summer slate will be more crowded than ever, with studios running away from two sporting events – the European Football Championships and London 2012. We’ll see a lot of movies congested into a squeezed window of opportunity.

The Dark Knight Rises, released on 20 July, is the only major release to have committed to going head-to-head with the Olympics, and given the franchise’s strength, you can understand the confidence (the Dark Knight took three times the money in the UK as Batman Begins, and is far and away the biggest comic book movie of all time, while the trailer for the Dark Knight Rises received more attention than most full releases).

Nolan’s films are hugely popular, and there’s no denying that he has managed to carve out a niche and be perceived as the director of intelligent blockbusters (Inception took £35m in a very competitive market). The Dark Knight Rises sees Nolan include three of his Inception cast in key roles – Tom Hardy plays brutish villain Bane, Joseph Gordon Levitt as a young Gotham beat cop and Marion Cotillard (swoon) as a possible romantic interest for Batman (played once more as the growliest of dangerous, psychopathic vigilantes by Christian Bale). It will, undoubtedly, be one of the event movies of 2012, but not, by any means, the only one…
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