Breaking News: EW Puts 'Beauty and the Beast' on the Cover & Shares 9 New Stills

All aboard the roller coaster ride to the release of Disney's live action Beauty and the Beast!

About an hour ago, Entertainment Weekly shared the cover for their upcoming cover, which has exclusive photos and cast interviews on the movie. Already going viral, the EW website has shared nine stills from the movie, giving fans the best taste to-date of what the film will be like.

From EW:

 For this week’s cover story, EW visited the film’s U.K. set and spoke with [the cast], as well as director Bill Condon and costume designer Jacqueline Durran, who talked about creating the new version of the iconic yellow dress Belle wears in the original film’s ballroom scene. In addition, we chatted with Ewan McGregor, who voices the enchanted, “Be Our Guest”-performing candelabra Lumière, and Sir Ian McKellen, who plays the clock Cogsworth and was apparently desperate to get his own big production number. “I kept singing what I thought would be a rather good addition to the score,” says the X-Men franchise star. “‘My name is Cogsworth!/ And I’m a clock!/Ticktock!’ But I didn’t get my own song.” 

Readers can also find out about the film’s new songs — penned by Alan Menken and Tim Rice — and feast their eyes on an array of exclusive photos featuring all of the aforementioned characters as well as Belle’s father, Maurice (Kevin Kline), Mrs Potts. (Emma Thompson), and Plumette (Gugu Mbatha-Raw).

Clark Collis, Senior Editor for Entertainment Weekly, gave a brief and entertaining interview, talking about writing the cover story for the upcoming issue, which you can see (along with sneak peeks) below:

G-nome. Heh.

Okay then.

Are you ready for the images? 

Here they are:

We have no doubt there are fans out there in happy tears right now, while others are still scratching their heads over those enchanted objects. Overall, it doesn't appear to be a great departure from the animated classic at all. Our one query is that it seems a bit dark with lots of browns and dark, moody lighting, but then, these are production stills, and they can often look quite different in tone from the movie. Either way, everyone in the office here has announced they'd happily cough up for silver screen tickets.

Bustle grabbed this preview from the video shared above, a cropped shot of one of the spreads from the upcoming EW issue, specifically discussing costuming and design. If you look closely you can see comments about that famous yellow dress.

The one we like best is:

“For Emma, it was important that the dress was light and that it had a lot of movement… In Emma’s reinterpretation, Belle is an active princess. She did not want a dress that was corseted or that would impede her in any way.”

To see more you'll need to pick up a copy of Entertainment Weekly, which will be on stands this Friday, and/or subscribe for the exclusive access features.

The current Twitter header for Entertainment Weekly. You can see a larger version, showing all the nuances in expressions, HERE.

Update at 1:16pm, same day: We have just learned that Emma Watson has been participating in the Books in the Underground movement, leaving copies of books they love, all around the London Tube. The BBC reported:

“The star left the novels as part of the Books On The Underground movement which sees ‘book fairies’ leave their favourite reads for people to enjoy. Watson left about 100 books with some including a hand-written note….Books on the Underground started in 2012 and leave about 150 books in stations across London each week.”

Emma Watson is a book fairy! Can we like this woman any more?

Fairy Tale Bonus of the Day:

Ever wonder who was Linda Woolverton's inspiration for writing Belle as she did? (Woolverton was screenwriter of Disney's animated Beauty and the Beast.)

EW and Bustle shared some behind the scenes on this earlier in May this year, which we're now sharing some of below:

Entertainment Weekly... interviewed the legendary screenwriter behind the movie, Linda Woolverton, to ask her about Belle's development as a character — and, in turn, to uncover one big thing about Beauty and the Beast that even hardcore fans don't know... Probably the most unexpected part of the interview centers on how Hollywood back then was dominated by "the whole idea of the heroine-victim" — something hard to imagine post tough-Disney heroines like Princess Jasmine, Mulan, and Merida. Woolverton discovered her own background in the feminist movement in the '60s and '70s meant she "definitely couldn’t buy that this smart, attractive young girl, Belle, would be sitting around and waiting for her prince to come."

"That she was someone who suffers in silence and only wants a pure rose? That she takes all this abuse but is still good at heart? I had a hard time with that," she told EW.

And then she revealed her inspiration: Katherine Hepburn in 1933's Little Women (playing Jo).

When EW asked Woolverton about her having said she modeled the character after Katharine Hepburn in Little Women, the screenwriter responded:

Yes. That was a real depiction of womanhood. I think you can take on current issues of today through fairy tales or the mythic. And so that was my fight, always saying, 'The audience is just not gonna buy this anymore.'

It's not difficult to see some parallels between Belle and Hepburn/Jo, like the wandering, book reading and love of outdoors, is it? We think she made a good choice.

Article: Seanan McGuire on Fairy Tales and Poetry: Pamela Dean's Tam Lin

On tor.com this week, writer of fairy tales and and folklore based novels (among other fun books), got wonderfully nostalgic about Pamela Dean's treatment of another favorite fairy tale of ours, Tam Lin. There's quite a group of people who were greatly impacted by this book, both for the fairy tale themes and the style of writing, not to mention the poetry.

Here's an excerpt:

I liked fairy tales. I liked folk music. When I found a book in a line of books about fairy tales, with a title taken from a ballad, I figured it would be good for a few hours. 

I didn’t expect it to change my life. 

Tam Lin, by Pamela Dean, is one of those books that defies description in the best way, because it both is and is not a fantasy. For most of the book, it’s the story of a girl named Janet starting her college life, with all the changes and chaos that entails. She sees weird things on campus. Okay. Everyone sees weird things on campus. I was already taking classes at the community college across the street from my high school, and I’d seen a man with six squirrels on a leash, a woman attending all her classes in a ball gown, and a person we all called “Troll” whose wardrobe consisted mostly of chain mail and rabbit skins. College campuses are alive with weird things. 

Only her weird things are very real, and eventually they make it clear that the book is a fantasy, and more, that Janet is in some pretty deep sh*t. 

...Tam Lin is a book about choices and consequences, friendships and relationships, and the way our adult selves are built on the bones of the children we once were. It’s also about poetry. If Pamela Dean had never written another word, she would still deserve to be remembered as one of the greats, for this book alone. 

Read it.

You can read the whole article HERE.

The Nutmeg Princess Now Lives Underwater in Grenada (& A Brief Discussion of 'Story Forensics')

You've likely seen some of the incredible sculptures from this underwater park in Grenada around the place. The statues have been designed to promote coral growth and are now ecosystems themselves, in fact it would be accurate to say the statues together are a living, artificial reef. (If you visit and dive to see them, please don't touch! Just pose and selfie. ;)

It should be noted that the diver and artist-sculptor who creates these eco-encouraging art pieces (and is doing amazing things to battle our rapidly disappearing coral reef systems around the world), is specifically attuned to both the historical and the folkloric aspects of "Spice Isle', in fact, he calls those topics a 'passion':

Known as Caribbean’s ‘Spice Isle’, Grenada has much to offer its visitors, especially seagoing tourists, from amazing forest reserves to picturesque waterfalls to a vast array of gorgeous white sandy beaches to name but a few. But what draws more and more visitors from every part of the globe year after year is the stunning-and-unique-of-its-kind Underwater Sculpture Park –the newest attraction of the island’s beautiful shallow waters, based on the original sculptures of the famous British sculptor and diver Jason De Caires Taylor, who has a special passion for creating fantastic pieces of work showcasing Grenada’s history and folklore. (Travelvivi)

I couldn't resist showcasing some examples. Click on the images to see them full size:

 

 

 

The newest sculpture was just, um, 'planted', less than a month ago and now that the dust, er, sand, has settled and the local sea life is becoming acclimated, these beautiful photos are starting to appear online.

Nutmeg Princess almost ready to be 'put to bed'

From Travel Weekly:

The Nutmeg Princess statue has been added to Grenada's Underwater Sculpture Park at Moliniere Bay, just north of the capital of St. George's on the southwest coast of the island.
The 11-foot-tall statue joins 100 sculptures at the park that opened in 2007 and serves as an artificial reef that forms a substrata for the growth of marine life.
...The Nutmeg Princess depicts Grenada’s first fairy tale princess emerging from a large nutmeg pod and reaching to the heavens with a handful of the spice Grenada is known for.

This is not from a traditional tale - well, not exactly anyway. The Nutmeg Princess is a 'well-loved classic' folktale written in 1992 (yes, very recently!).

The story goes like this:

The idea for the story was the result of a school visit where a little girl put up her hand and asked if (author, playwright and storyteller) Keens-Douglas knew a story about a black princess. At the time, he didn't, but it was all he needed to inspire him. 

You can go debate about whether it's possible to write a 'real' 'new fairy tale' or not, but for the record, I'm on the side of 'absolutely it's possible - rare, very rare, but possible'. Almost always the ones that stick are grown out of older stories, with the storytellers/writers well-rooted in folklore and tales, and while most 'new' tales are really just variations, I do believe that sometimes, there might just be a new one...

I don't know enough of the pattern markers to 'measure' how old a specific tale really might be (whether the writer knew that or not) and I don't have a 'story-forensics* & lexicology' database that casts a wide enough net to track it either in the multiple classification types, but there are 'tells'. For instance, at a quick read through, this tale feels like a repurposed myth, but I've also read a range of Caribbean tales and know the boundaries between myth and fairy tale are a little more blurry in this part of the world than we're used to.


Does that mean it's not new? Although unlikely, the answer really is 'No'. Because there's that sliver of possibility that it just might be. New-but-familiar is that extraordinarily elusive combination that many artists, from writers to musicians, strive for, with many never knowing whether or not their 'successes' are truly new or not!

What a brain stretcher. I'd like to hand this over to a PhD candidate please!

In the meantime, all those who would like to join me in cross-checking the story-forensics database, please put on your geek gear, ink your tattoos, bring your uber-hack skills and wear boots and your ATU credentials. I'll meet you in the lab, where the cool soundtrack is. (Note: We do accept tweed if you can 'bring it'.) Oh yes - and be prepared for lively debates... ;)

Note: I now have a yen to re-read Seanan McGuire's Indexing... man I wish that series had kept on going! Just adore the concept and have a feeling it was just a teensy bit ahead of its time.

*Yes - forensics: you can't tell me you haven't thought how people use and twist fairy tales can't be considered a crime from time to time! ;)

Fairy Tale Plot Machine

Something fun to start off the weekend for you, especially if you'd like a writing prompt. Do you like combining different fairy tale tropes, without ending up with the Red Riding Hood-meets-Goldilocks in the woods, scenario yet again? Direct from Cicada Magazine, meet the Fairy Tale Slot, er Plot Machine!

There's even a slot machine handle animation and spinning with sparkles, to encourage you to hold your breath and wish for just the right combination... so much fun!

Here are some jackpots I hit:
 

I wish I could embed it so you can try it straight away but the link HERE will take you straight there.

If you give it a go, why don't you share your jackpot sentences in the comments below? If you don't like what you were given, you can always play again. And again. And again... ;)

A note from Cicada Magazine for the on-the-go-tech people: (Tablet & smartphone pals: for a device-friendly version of the Fairy Tale Plot Machine, download the Cicada Magazine app at the Google Play or iTunes store.)

Introducing "Tiny Donkey" and the Brief Fairy Tale Essay

A donkey prince learns to play the flute and find happiness in “The Little Donkey.” by the amazing Andrea Dezsö

There's a new fairy tale journal in town! Fairy Tale Review - the respected literary fairy tale journal that publishes yearly - is supporting the launch of this new undergraduate journal, which invites people from all over to contribute.

From Fairy Tale Review:

Tiny Donkey: Brief Essays from FairylandWe are thrilled to announce the launch of Tiny Donkey, an undergraduate journal of short-form fairy tale nonfiction. The journal is the result of collaboration between Fairy Tale Review editorial assistant Wren Awry,Fairy Tale Review founder Kate Bernheimer, and Fairy Tale ReviewManaging Editor Joel Hans. 

Tiny Donkey will publish short essays (up to 400 words in length) that explore fairy tales through scholarly, personal and cultural lenses. 

We are incredibly excited to give undergraduate writers the opportunity to explore their love of fairy tales in a unique form. Through Tiny Donkey, we hope foster the next generation of fairy-tale writers, scholars, and educators—the very same kinds of people who have made Fairy Tale Review what it is today, and will continue to manipulate the contemporary fairy tale into wildly innovative forms.

And from Tiny Donkey itself, there is this information:

Donkey Prince by Paul Hey

You can write Tiny Donkey essays from a lot of different angles (our first three posts include a piece that analyzes a film in relation to Bluebeard, one that ties in wolf re-introduction in New Mexico to wolf tropes in fairy tales, and a personal essay about hollow mountains, Jack Tales and the coal industry in Appalachia). You might come up with an entirely new idea, or turn a class paper in to a polished micro-essay. We’re open to challenging and unique form and content, just get in touch!

Sounds pretty wonderful, doesn't it? I look forward to seeing future fairy tale essay innovations.

And if you're asking "why Tiny Donkey?" I can tell you that Tiny Donkey is an official off-shoot of Fairy Tale Review, which may give well read fairy tale readers a clue... (The particular donkey I believe they are referring to is a prince who is yet to come into his own.)

No matter what "skin" you are currently in, this journal gives you the opportunity to see what's really inside.

If you're looking for inspiration, checking out the Fairy Tale Review's mini-blog feature, Fairy Tale Files, which bring eclectic fairy tale related ideas together on a theme. They're like the written version of mini mind maps and are great for getting your creative juices pumping.

Good luck fairy tale writers!

Note: Did you know Angela Carter wrote a version of Tiny Donkey for children? It's a little illustrated book (now out of print of course).

ABC's "Once Upon A Time" Just Made One Of Its Smartest Moves Ever Revealing "The Author"

So... refresher for those who haven't managed to keep up with OUAT and a primer for the next episode for those who have:

Note: apologies for the lateness with this but I've only just caught up! 

**SOME SPOILERS AHEAD**

Henry (Regina/Evil Queen's kid and Emma-the-Savior's biological kid) was given a book of fairy tales by his teacher (Snow White/Mary Margaret) to give him hope. This set off the whole "fairy tales are real" thing for Henry and the book has been key to many story lines over the series, whether directly or by clues and foreshadowing that fans search frame by frame for.

The big drive for this season part B? Regina/Evil Queen is working her way back to humanity and doing her best to shed the "E-word" off of her name, but she's been told the only way someone who has been evil can have a happy ending is for THE AUTHOR to rewrite it. (Oh yeah - and Evil Girl Gang - Maleficent, Cruella, Ursula - came to town to complicate things but whatevs. Apart from Maleficent's arc it's just a B-side distraction right now.)

So they've (all) been hunting for The Author.

Last Sunday's episode "Best Laid Plans" had better than average amount of good stuff - lots of magical 101 stuff that wasn't so ridiculously... ridiculous. Just your average unicorn, dragon, magic egg, eggnapping aka baby-snatching (with a heart-wrenching performance by Kristin Bauer who plays Maleficent) and a magical book...  and some good magic-and-consequences writing that felt more 'true fairy tale' for the show than usual. (Yay!)

(Oh wait - magical egg - "Best Laid Plans" - it's the pre-Easter episode - I see what you did there writers.)

Long story short: last Sunday they found him - or, more importantly, they found out whom The Author is: it's... a job title (not a specific person) for the one creating the stories with the magic quill - in the magic book - at that time.*

Click on image to go to many more logo-free screen caps

Pinocchio/August: “There have been many authors throughout time. It’s a job, not a person, and the one trapped in here was just the last tasked with the great responsibility. To record… to witness, the greatest stories of all time and record them for posterity. The job has gone back eons: From the man who watched shadows dance across cave walls and developed an entire philosophy, to playwrights who tell tales of poetry, to a man named Walt. Many have had this sacred job. Great women and men who took on the responsibility with the gravity that it deserved.”

So maybe the statement isn't quite as clear as those of us who care about these things would like but it's a HUGE shift from the Disney-centric universe we've seen to date. It implies the stories were real, as in had a historical basis, but then that's the premise of the show, so with that in mind, it's fine.

Really glad to see women being referenced along with the men. And I'm OK with them mentioning Walt because it's true. (And he created the parent company that runs the show, so it's a nice "thank you" in a way.)

Whether or not it heralds a change with regard to the ideas driving the stories from here on out, and more fairy tale history is mined as a result (unlikely but I can always hope), I thought this one scene - and key building block in the OUAT universe - was noteworthy enough by itself to mark it here.

The best thing I see in this is that all those passionate fans (and there remain many) who haven't the slightest clue that fairy tales have a life beyond (and well before) Disney, are going to absorb this, and the idea will make its way back into the public consciousness.

So: cheers to writers Kalinda Vazquez, Jane Espenson and the rest of the OUAT team! You've done your storytelling heritage proud.

Prediction: Eventually Henry will become an Author. Heck - at this point it's like he's been in training for it!

Fairy tale bonus of the day:

What if Tom Riddle is The Author?

*So maybe there's been some mischief-writing that needs remedying but do they need the specific writer who wrote that in the first place to fix it? Or will any Author, past of future, do? Dum-dum-daaah!

Sondheim on Bettlelheim, and Lapine on Narrators

So Into The Woods didn't snag any of the awards they were nominated for at The Golden Globes on the weekend, but the movie (and fairy tales) are still very much being discussed, especially as the cast (and media) continue to promote the various overseas releases.

I keep seeing references to Sondheim and Lapine using Bettelheim's philosophy when writing Into The Woods, (as in the original musical, which they both then adapted for the Disney movie), however it's not quite as black and white as that. 

We'll start with a summary so you have a better idea of the thought processes behind the writing of ITW, from an interview with Edward Seckerson, published by Stage and Screen Online in 2006. It seems to make it pretty clear the pair were anti-Bettelheim, but as I said, it's not so straight forward so keep reading:

Sondheim: "[W]e took a Jungian approach. You know, this whole thing about how we based it on Bruno Bettelheim is nonsense — it’s nothing to do with Bettelheim. In fact, I don’t know if James read the book, I didn’t." 

And when Sondheim was interviewed by James Lipton for the TV series Inside the Actors Studio, Lipton brought up Bettelheim: "There seems to be a philosophical war in that musical between the theories of Bruno Bettelheim and Jung." 

Sondheim responded, "It’s interesting you say that. Everybody assumes we were influenced by Bruno Bettelheim. But if there’s any outside influence, it’s Jung. James is interested in Jung—Twelve Dreams is based on a case Jung wrote about. In fact, we spoke to a Jungian analyst about fairy tales."

And from Sondheim's book, "Look, I Made a Hat" comes the following quoted paragraph:

"And, ah, the woods. The all-purpose symbol of the unconscious, the womb, the past, the dark place where we face our trials and emerge wiser or destroyed, a major theme in Bruno Bettelheim's The Uses of Enchantment, which is the book everyone assumes we used as a source, simply because it's the only book on the subject known to a wide public. But Bettelheim's insistent point was that children would find fairy tales useful in part because the young protagonists' tribulations always resulted in triumph, the happily ever after. What interested James was the little dishonesties that enabled the characters to reach their happy endings. 

... James was also skeptical about the possibility of 'happily ever after' in real life and wary of the danger that fairy tales give children false expectations. As his play Twelve Dreams has demonstrated, he was drawn not to Bettelheim's Freudian approach but to Carl Jung's theory that fairy tales are an indication of the collective unconscious, something with which Bettelheim would be unlikely to agree. James and I talked about the fairy tales with a Jungian psychiatrist and discovered that with the exception of 'Jack and the Beanstalk,' which apparently is native only to the British Isles, the tales we were dealing with exist in virtually every culture in the world, especially the Cinderella story. African, Chinese, Native American - there is even a contemporary Hebrew version in which Cinderella wants to dance at the Tel Aviv Hilton." 

So the answer is more like "No, they didn't base it on Bettelheim's ideas" but also "those ideas weren't exactly ignored either."

OK, that's all good then, but here's the thing that bothers me, personally, though: Lapine (who wrote the "book" for the musical, as well as co-wrote the screenplay for the current Disney movie adaptation), is reported by Performing Arts Journal in 1988 as saying this (emphasis in bold is mine):

"The Narrator is what the fairy tale is about. I tried telling the stories without a narrator and it just doesn't work. A story needs a storyteller, and the storyteller is the ultimate figure of authority. Originally we wanted a public figure, not an actor, to play the Narrator: Walter Cronkite, or Tip O'Neill—someone who disseminated information and points of view. Then when we got rid of him you would see that the news was now being reported by the newsmakers, not the news reporter; decisions were being made by the people, not the politicians. Ultimately, we defined our narrator as a kind of intellectual, a Bettelheim figure; I wanted to get rid of Bettelheim!"

If this is the case, why was the Narrator's pivotal role so greatly downgraded in the movie? It makes a huge difference not having The Baker's father as the Narrator (especially as we then lose the impact of the change of POV in story telling when he's removed). Having The Baker be the Narrator all along didn't work quite like the bookend I (now) believe it was intended to be (as in, he was telling this whole story to his child.) When watching the movie I was a little confused as to why the Baker was telling us all of this in the first place, the WAY he was telling it (especially how the telling started, then ended...). 

A last but important note: I want to be clear on one point. I am in favor of the movie, in general. I fully expected it to miss the mark - widely - but the material is more faithful than I expected too. The fact that it uses fairy tales at its center is actually what helps transcend the things that bother me about the movie. What fairy tales are, how they live in people's minds, how the stories communicate and pass themselves on, is what does it. The stories themselves, and all the history they bring with them, the social legacies and various personal contexts etc work to overcome the movie's shortcomings, simply because their essential forms (wonder stories/Märchen) are kept intact. The beauty of certain iconic images (created by Rob Marshall et al) and catchy, beautiful tunes that remind us of certain story phrases, support this too. Everything else is peripheral and people can take what they want to (or need to) from the movie as a result. It's kind of magical in a way.

So there you go - my two cents for the day. ;)

Additional sources: "Look, I Made A Hat" & HERE. All movie screencaps created by Turn the Right Corner. Go HERE to see many more.