New (& Rather Epic!) Trailer for Gans' 'Belle et La Bête' (lotsnlots of pics)

Oh my word!

Apparently there is a lot more magic and fantasy to Gans' La Belle et La Bete than we first thought. Take a look at the latest trailer, released late Wednesday (yesterday). Despite there being no subtitles, it's pretty clear what's going on:

Belle et La Bête
If you can't see the video above (as I've been having trouble making the embed code "stick"), go HERE to view it. Full screen is recommended.

I also found some storyboard art (and a whole lot of concept art but I'll save that for a later post, hopefully this afternoon, if I have time.)

  

And here are a few more screencaps from the new trailer:

I do like seeing more of this Beast's backstory. If he truly loved and lost before, having Belle appear as his way out of the curse can't be exactly straight forward. After all, it's not like women/girls can just be substituted (oh please let that be the case!). And it appears there is more "magically-assisted peril" for the Beast than we first realized: actual magic, devious plots and (it appears) sisterly deception?

Hopefully the film proves to have lots of good - and delicious - layers in this retelling and isn't just adding twists for effects and visuals' sake.

Here are three extra behind-the-scenes videos, the casting one is in French sorry, but still interesting, while the Director interview has Gans explaining his vision and inspiration in English (4 min 36 secs - minimal visuals but his explanations and commentary on choosing how to do special effects for the film are very interesting). The very brief "making of" video is also in French, with lots of behind-the-scenes visuals and interesting notes from the Set Designer (although, boy is my French rusty!):

The fact that Gans did the SFX interview in English, gives me renewed hope for a subtitled theatrical release and an English version of the DVD/Blu-ray.

Interestingly, I found a Russian trailer online - complete with "Il etait une fois.." written in Russian and a Russian narrator and a German one, with the same treatment...Where is the English one?! Please?

Oh yeah - more official pics...

Just two weeks till we start hearing reviews from Paris...

What do you think of the film - and of how Beauty & the Beast as a fairy tale will come across - with the new footage reveal?

Source: HERE

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 ✒ ✒