Once Upon a Dream

It's interesting how things stack in my life. I watched The 10th Kingdom a couple of weeks ago. Wonderful piece and it's perhaps put me in an odd fairytale sort of mindset. It was a good way to finish up moving.

In the new house, I have my own room, my own private space where I have all my things arranged just as I want them and no one I have to share the space with. There's open floor I can lay in. There's desks I can write, draw, animate, and work at, my books on shelves all around me, my animation stand, but maybe most important, a return to the old things n my life. My candles and incense which I can burn without bothering anyone, my music. The air is mine. The window is wide and full of sun. It's a peaceful sanctuary to me, something I've not had in close to ten years, something I missed. Something I needed.

A few days ago, I received The Illusion of Life and have been reading a little each night and staring at the artwork, most longingly at the wicked queen of Snow White. She's drawn in such a strange way, her eyes and lips seem to drip, the are molten, not the smooth pleasing olive shape of most Disney characters. They should be horrible but they are seductive, powerful, magnificent. The mirror lied, she was far more beautiful.

Last night, Stacey and I watched 'The Brothers Grimm'. I think it was good to see the 10th kingdom again so recently before seeing this film, we enjoyed it thoroughly, and the evil frisian queen was most beautiful and wicked, though I'm lead to wonder about the quality of 'happy' endings. Yes, in time, Napoleon would be overthrown but at the end of the film, Germany was still held by the French. The queen was not so horrible. Twelve girls to give her eternal youth as well as life? Compared to how the French ruled Germany, would she truely have been more horrible to her people than they were? 12 for immortality is not too much in my opinion. Likely as not those girls would all grow up to marry pig farmers anyhow. Their lives would better have been expended in giving the queen her power. As for the movie, it was enjoyable. It was not a straight retelling of the fairy tales but was mixed around in ways that were enjoyable to me. Definetely worth the admission IMO, and something more to whet my appetite in anticipation of The Corpse Bride and MirrorMask

This morning, still thinking about what Peggy said about preferring Malificent to the wicked queen of Snow White (and craving evil queens in general and not having a copy of Snow White) I watched the DVD of Sleeping Beauty that Stacey had got for me. Funny, I protested when she first got this DVD for me. As a feminist, princess movies tend to grate on me. I do not need to be rescued, I am not a kitten stuck up a tree. I think though, that my experience with princess movies had been more recent ones. The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Pocahantas, and The Hunchback of Notre Dam While the female character is presented as someone strong, in the end, she does not slay the villian, and no matter how strong-willed and independent, she somehow magically falls in love with the Hero. The Little Mermaid is a slut, she falls in love with a guy she sees for 20 seconds and is willing to give up everything for him and has to make out with him to become a woman. Ugh! She repulses me, I'd far rather the Hans Christian Anderson version where she is tricked and can live on the land but each step burns as if walking on hot ash and she dies miserably, alone, and in pain. Beauty and the Beast is perhaps the most loathesome to me. Belle flees town from a big arrogant brutish man to... Fall in love with a big arrogant brutish man. Total fucking sell-out! Die Belle, Die! Pocahantas, I've never liked as a historical figure and I liked her that much less in the movie, and in Hunchback, I think largely the movie was ruined for me by the farting gargoyle statues wrecking what could have been a good film. I was disappointed though that at the end, though the hunchback had helped her, saved her, cared for her, and been her friend, she magically fell in love with the handsome young man and forgot all about the man she should really have loved, once again making women seem fickle, shallow, and vain.

I think what I had neglected in Disney films though was the villianesses. The Queen, Malificent, Cruella, Ursula, Ozma. Each of them beautiful, not in the usual pinup porn for men way as their opponent was, but in a self-confident and powerful way. Our society can't allow such women to exist. They're a threat to the stereotypes, they don't NEED the handsome prince, they know who they are. I can watch the films for them and sneer at the hero, riding in on the white horse his father gave him and the suit of armor that was bought and fitted for him. Happily Ever After is such nonsense anyhow. It implies stagnancy. Better to live and die with passion than exist pointlessly.

Anyhow, I have the widescreen collectors version of Sleeping Beauty and I looked at the features and noticed there was a commentary track which has commentary b Eyvind Earle, Mary Costa, Ollie Johnston, Marc Davis, Frank Armitage, Mike Gabriel, Michael Giaimo, and hosted byt Jeff Kurtti. I watched the movie with the commentary track on and I have to say this is one of the best commentary tracks I've seen on a film. Most commentary tracks are a bit of backpatting, a bit of memory and eulogizing over past friends and aquaintences and a few interesting nuggets about the production of the film, things going on at the time, little known factoids, and so on. The commentary track for Sleeping Beauty is mostly about the design elements in it. How the shots were composed the way they were, the feel and stylization they were trying to achieve, how shapes and colour schemes were used, and on and on and on. They also mixed the sound so that the background audio rose and fell in time with the commentary track, adding life and production value to it. I really hope more commentary tracks in the future take this kind of approach, it was really great to listen to.

Now I'm going to go back to avoiding the internet and lie in the floor with my cat and read. Good day for it. Maybe later I'll see if prickvixen minds if I drop by for a visit.

Quiz thingy.

( What kind of lover are you? )