Heidi Anne Heiner's Blog, page 162

Snow White and the Huntsman at Claire's Boutiques

In case the jewelry and other goods shared on HSN earlier this week to promote Snow White and the Huntsman was too expensive or just not of interest, you can always check out the collection at your local Claire's store or online. The usual type of Claire's offerings have been designed to promote the movie with several offerings to choose from. I stumbled across this during a brief trip to the mall earlier this week (I was looking for a white headband) and discovered there had also been merchandise for Mirror, Mirror a few months ago. Stuff for that movie is on clearance in stores now. BTW, SurLaLune is affiliated with neither HSN nor Claire's, but I find all of this stuff fascinating. Here's a few of the products:

Bargain Ebook: The Book of a Thousand Days by Shannon Hale

The Book of a Thousand Days by Shannon Hale, one of my favorites of Hale's books, has temporarily dropped to 99 cents in ebook format for Kindle. This book draws inspiration from Maid Maleen and is quite lovely.

Book description:

When Dashti, a maid, and Lady Saren, her mistress, are shut in a tower for seven years for Saren’s refusal to marry a man she despises, the two prepare for a very long and dark imprisonment.

As food runs low and the days go from broiling hot to freezing cold, it is all Dashti can do to keep them fed and comfortable. But the arrival outside the tower of Saren’s two suitors—one welcome, and the other decidedly less so—brings both hope and great danger, and Dashti must make the desperate choices of a girl whose life is worth more than she knows.

With Shannon Hale’s lyrical language, this forgotten but classic fairy tale from the Brothers Grimm is reimagined and reset on the central Asian steppes; it is a completely unique retelling filled with adventure and romance, drama and disguise.

MJALLHVÍT: Snow White from 1852

Today is the big release day for Snow White and the Huntsman. While I am curious to see what the overall response and box office take is, I also want to highlight some of the earlier versions of the tale this month. Today, I am keeping it simple. Here are some illustrations for an Icelandic translation of Snow White from 1852. As I look at these and compare them with the film released today, I am reminded of the old ad campaign for Virginia Slims, "You've come a long way, baby." I don't always care for the sentiment (and never the product) but it is rather apropros for Snow White this year. I am not sharing all of the illustrations, by the way, you can see them all at the book's page on Project Gutenberg. Go to MJALLHVÍT.

Someone made the comment on the blog that it was disappointing that Snow White goes from passive to aggressive and violent in the newest iteration, that a balance between being passive or brutal isn't found in these two extremes. At least there are enough Snow Whites around now for us all to pick a favorite and appreciate the various interpretations. As I will share this month, not all of them in the traditional tales are entirely passive either.

Cult Nails: Fairy Tale Inspired Nail Polish

So we all know I enjoy nail polish and always have fun when new collections inspired by fairy tales are released. Cult Nails is the newest line to introduce some fairy tale inspired polishes. They have Princess (blue), Feelin' Froggy (green), Evil Queen (red), Charming (purple), and Happy Ending (multi-colored glitter). You can preorder the set at Cult Nails. I'm only really interested in the Princess blue myself--and probably won't be buying thanks to new house syndrome--but it's a fun concept if a little general in inspiration.
You can see swatches and reviews at Vampy Varnish and Let Them Have Polish.

The Muppet Snow White

Muppet Snow White (Muppet Graphic Novels) was released a few years ago and is already out of print, but I've not shared it here in my memory so here it is! This was part of a series but only one outright fairy tale was interpreted. Although it wasn't 2012, Snow White was the tale of choice to go along with Peter Pan, Robin Hood and others. The following are some images from David Petersen who did the cover art and a few of the interior images (found on his website) and one page representing the interior work by Shelli Paroline.

And, yes, let me tell you, I think we can find some deep psychological and sociological meanings to Miss Piggy playing both the evil queen and Snow White. What do you think?

Sesame Street Book of Fairy Tales

Since I am posting about The Muppet Snow White today, I had to share another, even rarer fairy tale book, Sesame Street Book of Fairy Tales. This one dates from my youth. The book was recently featured on Vintage Kids' Books My Kid Loves where you can read more about the book and its contents as well as view more of the images. I borrowed two from there to share here. I admit the idea of The Count interrupting Goldilocks and The Three Little Pigs to count things makes me giggle because I am of that generation. John and I will even channel the count sometimes in our own conversations. Sesame Street sticks with you! I wish I had had this book back in the day, but I only had The Berenstain Bears Fairy Tales.




Sesame Street has also offered up other fairy tale retellings, including, but I am sure not limited to:

   
   

Season Rankings for Fairy Tale Shows

With the fall/winter tv seasons behind us, we can now look at the final rankings for our two fairy tale inspired series this past year. Deadline published the Full 2011-2012 TV Season Series Rankings which shows that Once Upon a Time came in 16th overall of all network shows while Grimm came in at 81. There's more data on the site, of course, but OUAT ended up one of four freshman shows in the top 20. .


Then if you page down to look at Grimm, you will see that the shows that shared its similar ranking on other networks overall were canceled or on the bubble of nearly so. So if it had been on any other network, it may have suffered the same fate but NBC didn't have a good showing overall beyond football and The Voice so the Grimm will stay with us for a while longer at least.
Grimm, along with OUAT, is available for preorder on DVD and Blu Ray, too.

Snow White and the Huntsman on HSN

Don't forget the special 24 hour event on HSN devoted to Snow White and the Huntsman starting tonight. There are several pretties and if I hadn't just bought, well, a house I might have been able to justify a belated birthday gift of the Frog Prince necklace by Heidi Daus or her Rare Beauty necklace also pictured below. But I will have to be content with pictures instead! There is everything from clothing to housewares to makeup to jewelry, some more directly related than others. You can browse here. Or you can tune in to the network and watch all the special promos for the movie along with the items for sale. I just picked a few that photographed well to share here.

Frog Prince Necklace by Heidi Daus
Rare Beauty Necklace by Heidi Daus
Enchanted Wall Mirror by Hutton Wilkinson
Enchanted Tree Table by Hutton Wilkinson
 
Enchanted HandHeld Mirror by Hutton Wilkinson

David Edelstein's Review of Snow White and the Huntsman

The above is David Edelstein's review of Snow White and the Huntsman from CBS News and it has been one of my favorites so far.

He begins by saying:

A friend recently showed her daughter the wonderful mock fairy tale "The Princess Bride," from 1987, and the little girl was horrified when the hero and heroine were attacked by a giant rat.

It's not that it was violent. It's that the princess didn't pick up a sword. What's the matter with her? Does she expect to be, like, RESCUED?

And the review is fair to the film, but is even more about Snow White and although not expressly stated, why this film and its success is important. With the token female in Avengers--as good as a film as it is this summer--it's wonderful to see some options with strong female leads. It will be interesting to see the box office on this one.

Snow White: It Girl of 2012

So I've been watching the clips and trailers for Snow White and the Huntsman and I'm curious. Of course, more of the men in my life are interested in seeing this film than the women, but at least someone is interested, right? We want a successful fairy tale movie so that the impetus continues for a while. Or at least I do. Now, I admit, that one of the first things that jumped out at me was the sound effects that are from Star Wars from a Jabba the Hut laugh to a Tauntaun's whinny (or some other Star Wars creature, I didn't replay it to doublecheck but my first instinct was Tauntaun!) You can watch some of them here.

So if you haven't read Why we so desperately want Snow White and the Huntsman to be good By Meredith Woerner at IO9 yet, please do.

We need Snow White and the Huntsman to be good. It's moved past mere desire to a full-on burning inflammation in our fantasy loins. Why? Perhaps it's because what we've seen in the trailers so far looks pretty damn good. We were raised on Beastmaster, Willow, Dark Crystal and Labyrinth, but there's been a fantasy dry spell in Hollywood for years (Return of the King came out in 2003, people). It's time for some good, new fantasy, sans Lion Jesus.

So we desperately want Snow White and the Huntsman to be good, because that would mean a victory for dark fantasy and potentially more fantastic bloody battles fought on the big screen. We're not sure if it will be. The only thing we can do while we wait is whip up a pro/con list, so here it is. Let's contemplate how Charlize Theron's Evil Queen movie could prevail, and how it could fail.

Click through to read it all.

And now I ask you, how much of a Snow White theme would you like here on the blog for the next few weeks? Is it overkill or part of the excitement and fun of all the hype? This is the biggest hyped fairy tale inspired movie in a while, especially one not animated by Disney. I can write quite a bit about the fairy tale--after all, I have an entire book on the topic with my name on the cover--Sleeping Beauties: Sleeping Beauty and Snow White Tales From Around the World. And after working on that book, I have an affection for Snow White that had never existed prior. I will do some--and anything is still a challenge since I am still painting, unpacking and trying to rebuild my nest so I can work comfortably again. The good news? I have finally unpacked my folklore library. I don't feel nearly as handicapped as I have been the last few months for I have my resources more accessible again even if my time is still limited.