Waiting Impatiently For 'Maleficent'? Read A Book, Have A Cup of Villain Tea...

MALEFICENT BLEND*Smooth and velvety, with a glamourous sprinkling of rose petals.
This blend is elegant with just a hint of something murky, waiting to surface.

Note: All teas shown are by Adagio Teas, the number one tea site that creates teas with pop culture themes. There are TONS of blends and themes here! All version of Disney, of course, but also Doctor Who, Harry Potter, Princess Bride, Sherlock, Buffy, Game of Thrones, Rise of the Guardians, Wonderland, Once Upon A Time, Beauty and the Beast, Star Wars, Grimm, Labyrinth, The Neverending Story, the Tolkien themed, Tales & Tea Leaves and a LOT more. Heck, there's even a Kate Crackernuts tea blend! (Be warned: it's a tea rabbit-hole!)

Fairy Tale Book Lists are popping up all over the place under the "While You Wait For Maleficent" banner.

URSULA BLEND**
Tropical and fruity, this blend
is reminiscent of the ocean, with
just hints of tanginess throughout.
It'd be very helpful if you were
to lose your voice. Not that there's
any reason that'd happen.

Ta da! This is one of those moments where fairy tale writers go - look! They're searching for us again! Not that readers have really stopped. For some time now fairy tale retellings - especially those with a little grit - have been in demand and now, if your book is currently on the shelves with the hashtag of #darkfairytale attached, there's a very good chance you will be making some extra sales this month.

A recent and decent one come from HuffPost HERE. It seemed for a while that fairy tale retelling lists had the same recommendations overall with only a slight variation between them according to the columnists taste. This list, however, has a much more variety - and many newer - books.

Specifically these are on the conflicted protagonist theme and I wasn't surprised to see Gregory Maguire's Wicked topping the list. I did, however, have the urge to give a little woot and fistpump on seeing Angela Carter's fairy tales in there. That will be an interesting fairy tale primer for the unsuspecting! Hopefully they'll fall in love and we'll have more fairy tale friends than ever.


There are NO SLEEPING BEAUTY RETELLINGS LISTED HERE! I wonder why? Or have we just not been as keen to rewrite her story in novel form as much as some others?

CHERNABOG BLEND***
Dark, bold, with hints of cocoa, this blend reflects the night with perfection. Drinking it in the morning may provide difficulties, like a choir singing to try to stop you.

I can think of lots of short stories and some older Sleeping Beauty novels but not a whole lot recently (ie the last five to ten years)... Hm.

Here's the HuffPost list:

(Note, that at the link, there is a very brief summary of the book and why it's Maleficent-esque reading)

• Wicked by Gregory Maguire
• Sisters Red by Jackson Pearce
• Queen of Hearts by Colleen Oakes
• The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer
• Cruel Beauty by Rosamund Hodge
• Snow White Sorrow by Cameron Jace
• The WoodCutter Sisters series by Alethea Kontis
• The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories by Angela Carter
• Book of a Thousand Days by Shannon Hale
• Of Beast and Beauty by Stacey Jay

THE EVIL QUEEN BLEND*****
This blend is full of the scent
of apples and sugar, a very pleasant
combination in deed. There is just
something bitter in that of
aftertaste that may leave you suspicious.

My pick to add in the "Maleficent-like" vein would be Fairest of All by Serena Valentino. It tells a very similar story, of a hurt woman changing to a downright evil woman from the Queen's perspective so that makes it even more interesting to follow (plus the writing is simply stylized yet poetic and lovely, while the story, no matter the twists it takes, stays very true to the Disney movie).

What would you add to the list, considering people want a Maleficent-like story (according to what we know from the trailers etc so far anyway)?



* MALEFICENT BLEND:  ingredients & lore: blended with black tea, yunnan jig tea, cinnamon bark, ginger root, wuyi ensemble tea, natural blackberry flavor, cocoa nibs, blackberry leaves, natural chocolate flavor, natural cinnamon flavor

teas: mambo, blackberry, chocolate chai

accented with cocoa nibs and rose petals

steep at 212° for 3 mins

** URSULA BLEND: ingredients & lore: blended with yerba mate tea, pu erh tea, apple pieces, hibiscus flowers, rose hips, dried coconut, natural coconut flavor, natural mango flavor, marigold flowers, natural pineapple flavor, pineapple pieces, mango pieces, papaya flavor

teas: pu erh tahiti, pina colada, mango mate

accented with ginger and hibiscus

steep at 195° for 4 mins

*** CHERNABOG BLEND:  ingredients & lore: blended with pu erh dante, pu erh tea, black tea, orange peels, cocoa nibs, natural chocolate flavor, blue cornflowers, natural orange flavor, natural caramel flavor, natural vanilla flavor

teas: pu erh chorange, pu erh dante,tiger eye

steep at 212° for 4 mins

**** QUEEN OF HEARTS BLEND: ingredients & lore: blended with green tea, rose hips, hibiscus flowers, apple pieces, orange peels, natural wild cherry flavor, dried cherries, rose petals, natural orange flavor

teas: dewy cherry, blood orange, cherry green

accented with hibiscus

steep at 205° for 4 mins

***** EVIL QUEEN BLEND: ingredients & lore: blended with black tea, rooibos tea, apple pieces, cinnamon bark, natural caramel apple flavor, natural caramel flavor, natural apple flavor, natural cinnamon flavor

teas: candy apple, caramel, rooibos cinnamon apple

accented with aniseed

steep at 212° for 4 mins

QUEEN OF HEARTS BLEND****
Paint this tea as red as you want. With levels of cherry, blood orange, and hibiscus, the longer you brew it, the redder it becomes.

Breaking News: Gans' "La Belle et la Bete" Trailer Released This Morning

Released exclusively to Premiere Magazine France first this morning, and now spreading like wildfire through the web, we can now see the seriously gorgeous trailer for Christophe Gans' newest movie La Belle et la Bete (full screen recommended!):

And here's Premiere's write-up below the trailer (auto-translated from French & kept intact as our power is about to go out for a few hours here!) with some added screencaps I quickly made this morning:

"Monsters movie should be beautiful creatures" stated Christophe Gans comment out the first pictures of Beauty and the Beast exclusively unveiled in the pages of First - and kept secret his vision of the Beast.  

The first trailer and it lets see the creature suggests that the filmmaker was keen to put this statement into practice.Worked in computer graphics from the expressions of Vincent Cassel , facial animation of the Beast was one of the main technical challenges of film Christophe Gans and seems to have been beautifully statement. Another splendor of these raw images, scenery, grand, first announced an aesthetic gem through visions and magical interpretation of Gans away from the confined atmosphere of Cocteau's film. 

We also know that the director of the  Brotherhood of the Wolf wanted to return to the original tale of Madame de Villeneuve, which gives greater emphasis to the context - the social status of a family - and therefore the father, played by André Dussollier, as well as 'behind the transformation of prince beast tracks barely sketched in versions of Cocteau and Disney. And in fact, the trailer highlights the father figure and shows Vincent Cassel without the mask monster, opening the field to explore the story of the lesser known public areas. 

The voiceover narration and the "Once Upon a Time" still remember we are on familiar ground and the film is all public wants. And the sequence of scenes where we see  Léa Seydoux move from fear to attraction emphasize especially that it is primarily a love story.Beauty and the Beast  will be in theaters February 12, 2014.

Wow. All the iconic scenes from the story appear to be present (I do love the reflection and Belle grabbing the knife!) and I can already see more of Villeneuve's story in there than we usually would, though with Gans' sensibilities and preference of course.

It's obviously family friendly (I'm not quite sure what I think of the little CG creature yet) and is very unlikely to have the raw sexual energy of Premiere Magazine's photoshoot with the two stars (see below) but it does seem as if it will stand among the best  - and most beautiful - Beauty and the Beast films to date.

I can't wait to see this!

Note: There appear to be some formatting issues today but since I'm about to go offline, I'm not going to keep trying to fix it.

Fairy tale bonus of the day:

Premiere Magazine also had a special photoshoot with Léa Seydoux and Vincent Cassel regarding their new film and the resulting images look a lot more Angela Carter than Cocteau!

Here they are:

Theater Review Articles: "Imaginary Beasts Troupe Makes a Meal of ‘Hairy Tales’" & "Matchless Magic"

Amy Meyer (front) and Poornima Kirby as the Countess

'To bicycle is in itself some protection against superstitious fears. That is because the bicycle is the product of pure reason applied to motion. Geometry at the service of man!' (Quote from Imaginary Beasts FaceBook page, on Hairy Tales)

You may remember my post last Thursday about Angela Carter's dramatized radio plays Hairy Tales (specifically, Vampirella & The Company of Wolves)? Now that a few performances have run we have some reviews available to give us a peek behind the curtain.

Here are some excerpts from a review in The Boston Globe "Imaginary Beasts troupe makes a meal of ‘Hairy Tales’":

Presented by Imaginary Beasts under the umbrella title “Hairy Tales,” as part of the company’s “Once Upon a Time . . . ” season at the Boston Center for the Arts, they posit that the beast in us all is anything but imaginary. 

At the BCA’s Plaza Black Box, the floor for “The Company of Wolves” is painted, or perhaps chalked, in swashes of brown, gray, and white that suggest tree trunks — or wolf fur. The back wall comprises four panels of horizontal wooden slats, in front of which is a long table and props: baskets, a chair, a stool, a red napkin, a gun, a hatchet, a feathered hat. The backdrop for “Vampirella” is a white sheet draped over the wooden wall with holes, through which the Count appears. The table doubles as a bed and at times is upended; a magic lantern projects images and information on the sheet. One of director Matthew Woods’s better inspirations is the hula hoop that serves as the Hero’s bicycle.

(You can continue reading the whole article HERE.)

Michael Underhill as the Hero

And there's a more personal review on the Boston Arts Review blog by Beverly Creasey titled "Matchless Magic". Here are a couple of excerpts from her write-up:

Of the two evening shows on the same bill, the first, THE COMPANY OF WOLVES, is what you might call a stylized “horror” story with a twist, about women and their infinite attraction to wolves... You may not recognize them because their fur grows not on the outside but on the inside... 

Lovely stomping, clapping, jumping choreography by Kiki Samko has the villagers dancing a reel, unaware of the shadows surrounding their exuberant celebration. Director Matthew Woods and company have found a delightful, inventive theatrical “language” with which to tell a story. Two actors, back to back, lock arms to become a four legged creature. Another becomes a ticking clock with outstretched arms for the hands. (A swinging pendulum is supplied by another.) Two more position themselves so that we see only the isolated head of one and just the body of the other, to add up to one “headless horseman” of a corpse.

...The piece de resistance, however, is the second play, VAMPIRELLA (Lady of the House of Love). Your breath will be taken away by the confluence of images in the play. From Joey Pelletier’s racing, tiptoeing, begging handed, lantern bearing Nosferatu (Woods pays tribute in VAMPIRELLA both to Murnau and to the original magic lantern “moving pictures”)… to Michael Underhill’s hilariously droll Brit peddling madly through the Carpathian mountains on a wild hula hoop bicycle….to Amy Meyer’s weightless, gravity defying form sliding down Dierdre Benson’s door-wall-platform-table-bed…to William Schuller’s taller-than-life Vlad, able to penetrate a castle wall at will…to Poormina Kirby’s helpless, blind bird, caged in Cotton Talbot-Minkin’s inverted hooped skirt armature (Talbot-Minkin’s costumes are extraordinary creations)…to Kamelia Aly’s bloodthirsty governess (Attend the tale of Sawney Beene!)....I could go on and on. 

Woods’ savagely beautiful set design/direction (not to mention Sam Beebe’s haunting music and Chris Bocchiaro’s chiaroscuro lighting) makes you wonder how Carter’s gorgeous language (“corridors as circuitous as passages inside the ear”) could exist without the thrill of the Imaginary Beasts to make it soar. Miss HAIRY TALES at your peril.

You can read her whole review (with many more details for the two stories), HERE.

There's another review from The White Rhino Report HERE which, although it doesn't give a whole lot of new information about the presentation or content, gives an enthusiastic personal - and clearly delighted - perspective on the double bill, which is worth reading as well.

I'm inspired just reading these three reviews! We'll have to see if it makes enough impact to travel or the rights given to other companies to perform it in other cities/towns. Here hoping. *fingers crossed*

Theater: Angela Carter's "Hairy Tales" Starting This Week

Poster Angela Carter's "Hairy Tales" by Imaginary Beasts (2013)
Writer Angela Carter kidnapped the fairy tale and took it to a very dark place -- darker than even the gloomy depths of the Black Forest where the stories themselves were born. Although the characters of her tales are familiar, the stakes are much higher, the violence much bloodier and the politics far more radical. Now director Matthew Woods presents Hairy Tales, a dramatization of Carter's most terrifying takes on works of the Brothers Grimm and Charles Perrault. This adults-only show features Vampirella, a Gothicized version of "Sleeping Beauty" tinged with bloodlust, and The Company of Wolves, a harrowing adaptation where Little Red Riding Hood discovers the beast ... within. (Goldstar)

I'd buy in ticket in a heartbeat if I had any way of getting to Boston. It's almost showtime but there's still a couple of days before it debuts to get tickets.

Here's what's happening in a nutshell:

There's an adults-only theatrical presentation and exploration of Angela Carter's fairy tale short stories and radio plays (by theater company Imaginary Beasts) AND a complimentary, family-friendly presentation (by Wee Beasties) of Carter's Puss In Boots.

WHEN: October 4 - 26, 2013

Angela Carter collage tribute

If you'd like a refresher on Angela Carter and her work I recommend these two articles for starters (and then go re-read The Bloody Chamber & Other Stories at the very least):

 - Marina Warner on Why Angela Carter's Bloody Chamber Still Bites (an edited extract of Marina Warner’s introduction to the Folio Society edition of Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber and other Stories)
"Carter’s fairy-tale heroines reclaim the night."

 - Femme Fatale (from The Guardian - Angela Carter's subversive take on traditional fairy stories in The Bloody Chamber is as shocking today as when the collection first appeared in 1979)
"The Bloody Chamber is often wrongly described as a group of traditional fairy tales given a subversive feminist twist. In fact, these are new stories, not re-tellings. As Angela Carter made clear, "My intention was not to do 'versions' or, as the American edition of the book said, horribly, 'adult' fairy tales, but to extract the latent content from the traditional stories and to use it as the beginnings of new stories."

I'm pasting most of the blurb from the Hairy Tales Facebook Event Page below so you have all the info ASAP and am putting some of it in bold to help you get the gist of this awesome sounding piece of theater:

___________________________________________

 "...the grey beasts howled among
the rows of winter cabbage as she
freely gave him the kiss she owned
him." by Fay Huo

Now is the time the wild beasts come out, now is the savage time of year… Shut the shutters! Bar the door! Throw more logs on the fire! Make a great blaze! Keep the wolves outside! 

And come. Be cozy by the fire as we spin for you twisted tales of terror inspired by the vivid imagination of Angela Carter. “Sleeping Beauty” becomes a Gothic tale of blood lust in Vampirella, and in The Company of Wolves, Little Red Riding Hood discovers the beast within.  

This double-bill re-imagines fairy stories of yore, challenging your perceptions. 

Considered one of the most influential British writers of the post-WWII era, Angela Carter was prolific and adventurous in her art. One of her favorite forms was the radio play. The Beasts will offer audiences the experience of "hearing" a radio play while witnessing strange, dream-like live performances. 

Artistic Director Matthew Woods helms the production as auteur/director. The production will feature original music by composer Sam Beebe and the dark and whimsical designs of IRNE award winner Cotton Talbot-Minkin.  

Laura Kerridge

To complement this adults-only exploration, Wee Beasties, an off-shoot of Imaginary Beasts geared towards audiences of all ages, will offer family-friendly matinees of Carter’s comic romp, Puss In Boots, directed by company member and fringe favorite Michael Underhill.

Imaginary Beasts is part of the Emerging Theatre Company program at the Boston Center for the Arts.
WHEN: October 4 - 26, 2013

Thursdays at 7:30 pm, Fridays & Saturdays at 8:00 pm

There will be a special Wednesday performance on October 23, at 7:30 pm. 

There will be two special Pay What You Can nights on the 2nd and 3rd Thursdays during the run, available in person at the box office only.

Written by: Angela Carter
Directed by: Matthew W. Woods

(Note: more cast and crew listed on the event page)  

_______________________________________________________________________

About imaginary beasts:
http://www.imaginarybeasts.org/

imaginary beasts...
...is an incubator for adventurous theatre making.

We provide our members a unique chance to explore and develop theatre in an ongoing studio environment.

Devoted to pushing the boundaries of how theatre is made and who can make it, we bring together traditional and non-traditional performance artists to produce work for an eclectic public.

______________________________________

Elizabeth Moriarty

A little more information about the show from BroadwayWorld:

"Vampirella," a sparkling and startling reimagining of Sleeping Beauty, introduces us to a virginal Hero who is making a trip through the Carpathians. Along the way he is taken into the home of the Lady Nosferatu, whose ancestors haunt the castle as she struggles with her desire for love and her desire to drain the Hero. In "The Company of Wolves," old Granny tells horrifying stories of werewolves meant to caution her granddaughter against wicked men. However, the stories only fuel her imagination and desires, leading to an inevitable encounter with the Wolf. In Puss in Boots, everyone's favorite feline trickster helps his master find love in the most unlikely of scenarios.

Why do we not see more Carter-inspired presentations?

I've seen a few nods to her work via illustrations and paintings in galleries but rarely any performance art and nothing really in film beyond A Company Of Wolves in 1984 (can you believe that was nearly 30 years ago??). Too visceral, perhaps? I don't know. It would definitely need a smart and sensitive director with a delicate touch  - whether for theater or film - to balance all the necessary elements but Hairy Tales sounds like a very exciting project to be involved with. I really wish I could see it. 

I do hope there are some write-ups, reviews and possibly some photos from the show afterward. I'll keep my eyes peeled.