A Wilde Weekend! (A Multi-Arts Weekend Event Celebrating the Life & Works of Oscar Wilde)

I was completely blown away when I followed the breadcrumbs to this four day event, titled A Wilde Weekend. And it sounds... completely amazing.

First of all - it's a four day, multi-disciplinary Arts event (!), celebrating the life and works of Oscar Wilde, in various locations around beautiful Irish countryside and landmarks.

What does that mean?

It means there is a four day program filled with:
- plays - full and partial
- readings & dialogues
- film presentations
- live music
- magical mystery garden tour
- a tour of an amazing period house, complete with scenes of Wilde plays in various rooms
- artwork
- photographs
- period costumes wherever you go with actors helping set the atmosphere
- period social events (like dinner parties under the stars as Wilde himself loved, hosted and attended)
- talks and discussions by experts and scholars
- community costumed picnics
- and more!

And - I have to include notice of two things:

One -  they're GILDING A STATUE, just like The Happy Prince, and will be leaving it to the elements to flake off over time..!

Two - they're having a DINNER IN THE DARK, to simulate the silver mine dinner Wilde had in Colorado (the US). This will be a dining experience complete with blindfolds and pitch darkness to try your dinner, dessert and drink in...

I'm just astonished. It's EXACTLY the sort of immersive, Arts-based event I think people should experience - with excellence and professionalism on every level available to the public, from locations and presenters, to involving every sense (taste, smell, touch, sound, sight, and all the other ones too).

Even the whole PDF for this program is gorgeous (click on any of the side-by-side images shown above to see and read it full size). It's also huge - pages and pages - and I can't figure out how to embed the whole thing so I'm including some pages that may catch your eye. You can find the full, beautiful PDF HERE (just the program is creatively inspiring!).

The date is the Bank Holiday weekend (May 1st to 4th) and takes place in Enniskillen, County Fermanagh (Ireland) and you can pay to attend various events or for the whole weekend.

Here are all the links you need:
OFFICIAL SITE is HERE
Twitter is HERE
Facebook is HERE
PDF of the program and various events descriptions is HERE

And if anybody gets to go to any of this please tell us! I want to hear all about it. (And then I want someone to do a similar event close to where I am please!)

Tons of "Fables" News: Movie Update, Willingham Teases End Of Series Details, the Fables Game "Levels Up" + Bonus Awesome Cosplay

Bigby Wolf & Snow White of Fables, "The Wolf Among Us" video game cosplay by Saskeks-Cosplay

The Fables movie news is pretty small but very significant. Warners is now in direct competition with Disney, now that Disney has bought Marvel so the amp up on superhero movies is expected and speculated on. The big question is, since it's Warner's property: will they be doing a Wonder Woman movie? The answer is "not yet" because there are a bunch of others already in production ahead in the cue, including...

...several other movies in development unconnected to the Justice League that are based on DC superheroes and fantasy and crime titles from its Vertigo line of genre comics, said Mr. Silverman and Toby Emmerich, president of Warner’s New Line Cinema label. They include “Shazam,” “Metal Men,” “100 Bullets,” and “Fables.” (Wall Street Journal)

What does that tell you? That Warners are confident enough in how the Fables movie is going that it's been put forward as a major property, currently in active development, and that other likely-to-be-hot properties (aka Wonder Woman) are going to have to wait their turn until after Fables is complete (or at least well established in actual production).

AKA: it's very good news! At least, that's where it stands right now, anyway. These things change so quickly but for the present it's full steam ahead on another fairy tale film of major proportions. *fistpump*

And regarding the long-running, critically acclaimed, Eisner Award-winning, fan-favorite comic book series, Fables ,wrap -up (cue wailing and gnashing of teeth), here's a little teaser that came out on Monday (April 29th), care of ComicBookMovie.com and DC All Access:

In this exclusive clip from DC All Access, Bill Willingham and Mark Buckingham reminisce about their long running Vertigo fantasy series and share some hints on where it's going in its final year. Plus, look for an exclusive announcement about Fables #150 and the final arc of Fables!

Did they just say "I guess there MIGHT BE A POSSIBILITY of returning to those (surviving) characters..."? I hear more fairy tale possibilities for the future care of Willingham & Co... *double fistpump!*

By the way, the images are cosplay for the TellTale Games video game Fables prequel The Wolf Among Us. The talented cosplayers are Saskeks-Cosplay team and aren't the only cosplay I've seen for the game (though their comicbook-line approach is pretty cool and unique). And you know what they say about cosplay, right? OK, I don't know what the phrase is exactly but it's akin to someone tattooing one of your characters on their body. It's considered a "level-up". 

Note: the most recent episode of The Wolf Among Us, A Crooked Mile, is getting amazing reviews. It's been called addicting and akin to The Walking Dead (which TellTale Games won Game of the Year for last year). The Wolf Among Us seemed to slump slightly with the second chapter but people are revved all over again and demanding the next chapter release dates be moved up. (I'm sure they're adding a pretty please in there somewhere... with bared fangs..)

Additional sources: HERE & HERE (and a ton of other reviews from gamers - official and amateur)

A Brave Cosplay Take on "Brave" (Yup, That's A Real Bear!)

The internet has been wowed this last week (at time of writing) with Jessica Chastain's new Merida look (courtesy of Annie Leibovitz for Disney Parks) but before then there was a different Brave photoshoot, with a very different Merida (and a very brave model), and it's currently going viral in English speaking countries now that Chinese and Japanese cosplay sites have spread the word.

While it's a little difficult to see Pixar's Merida in these shots, they were inspired by the fairy tale movie. In fact the model is a Russian cosplayer named, Tina Rybakova, who invited/collaborated with Dasha Kond on this project. I'm sharing this shoot particularly because I noticed that there's a whole lot of fairy tale folk who ADORE the theme of women and bears in myth and fairy tales. It turns out too, that this photographer has a strong fairy tale sensibility in setting up her photos, particularly in showing animal-human connections.

The photos are from Moscow-based fashion photographer Dasha Kond, who often uses real animals in shoots, whether they are wolves, camels, horses, snakes, and more.

Russian photographer Dasha Kond* does a lot of work with trained animals (I can't find very much info at all on the animals sorry - I wish I could, to be sure they were being taken care of properly) but it's clear to see she has a strong sense of myth and story when she shoots people with animals in particular. Though all her photography is excellent, there's something special about how she shoots different species together, implying both have a story to tell.

I have fond SO MANY beautiful images I simply can't add them all here but below the jump is a collection of my favorites so far (I've run out of time trying to see every photo, there are so many!) You can see the 2 300, or so, more photos HERE.


In the meantime, jump on over and take a look at the other fairy tale-ish images. I included some that are most definitely fairy tale but without an animal but it's clear the magical human/animal connection is what inspires most of the photography.

Oh and yes, there are more 'girls and their bears' images too.
✒ ✒ Click the "Read more" link below for MANY more fairy tale like images with animals c/- Dash Kond ✒ ✒

New Addition to Annie Leibovitz's Disney Dream Portrait Series: Jessica Chastain as Merida

You knew it was only a matter of time but there have been so many excellent cosplays of Merida since Brave hit the big screen that Ms. Leibovitz actually has quite a challenge on her hands to top them!

ET released a behind the scenes video on Wednesday afternoon:

Jessica Chastain isn't quite who I would have chosen since she looks far more fragile to me than Merida should but I have no doubt the results will looks stunning no matter what. We should see the photo some time today...

In the meantime, here are some of my favorite cosplay pics for Merida. Yes, there are a lot  - and I applaud the creativity and attention to detail of each girl (and team) that put these images together - it's kind of wonderful - and since I can't think of a time when I might show these again I'm putting them all here. Enjoy:

Aeriat

Shua-cosplay

Ida Sofie aka. Starbit Cosplay

Monique Duke

Monique Duke

Shua-cosplay

Pugoffka

GreatQueenLina

Re-Aska

AlexanderNVIDIA

shua-cosplay

Re-Aska

MikiLavi

MikiLavi

MikiLavi

AlexanderNVIDIA

Tathariel Creations

When You Wish Upon A Character... (How Design in Disney Movies Affects the Way Fairy Tales Are Perceived & Why We Should Care)

Tangled Concept Art with earlier versions of Mother Gothel & Rapunzel

Note: This post is very image heavy and I've had a devil of a time trying to get the images to stick where I put them. As I'm now out of time, I want to apologize in advance if there are any weird formatting issues through the post!

For me, I know I just have to catch a glimpse of certain H.J. Ford drawings and I'm in love with that tale all over again. The same goes for Rackham and many other illustrator's fairy tale work.

Disney images, however, aren't as subtle as sitting in a book waiting for us to open it again. They tend to work their way into our everyday lives via toys, marketing, spreading through pop culture and social media, and, as a result, tend to be a little more insidious in making their impressions on people (especially people who have no basis for comparison because they don't read/were never read many tales). Because of this, it's a good idea to take a hard look at the difference between the characters we love in fairy tales and how Disney (and other popular entertainment - movies & TV in particular) portray them to see just how big the gap is between.

What is the pop culture impression and what's missing? Because for a lot of people that "is" the tale. Though that is never the real intent of the creators of these films, the effect can be to (almost) erase any lingering non-Disney ideas and associations, rather than the effect illustrated books used to have, which was open the world of imagination further than ever beyond the text (ie. the complete opposite).

Can you tell who these characters are from their early concept drawings?
Click HERE to take the quiz...

It's one of the reasons I think it's important for concept art to get out there - to show people what could have been and, if the information is available, why these alternate/early designs were created in the first place and why they were ultimately replaced with something else.

Maleficent (Sleeping Beauty) 1

Maleficent (Sleeping Beauty) 2
The fairy aspect is a lot clearer here with the antennae

  ✒ ✒ ✒ ✒ ✒ (click the "Read more" link below this line) ✒ ✒ ✒ ✒ ✒