The Secret of Kells on DVD

 

The Secret of Kells (or The Secret of Kells (Blu-ray/DVD Combo)) has been put up for preorder on Amazon but I don't see an official release date yet.  This one has been on my list to see for a while and the reviews as it appears in little theatres around the country have only kept that desire alive.  I have yet to see an unfavorable review.  And, yes, I know it was an Academy Award nominee, but that doesn't always mean something will appeal to me either.  I know I won't see this until the DVD is released, but that is usual for me.  I still haven't seen Robin Hood, although I managed to escape for a few hours this week and see Babies with my sister. (It's excellent, by the way.)

Here is Amazon's editorial review:

In contrast to big-budget Hollywood CG features, The Secret of Kells is a welcome reminder of how warm, personal, and compelling traditional drawn animation can be. The story takes place in the eighth century, a perilous time when Viking raiders threatened to destroy Irish civilization. Since his parents were killed by Vikings, 12-year-old Brendan (voice by Evan McGuire) has lived within the walled monastery of Kells under the stern eye of his uncle, Abbot Cellach (Brendan Gleeson). But his life changes when Brother Aidan (Mick Lally) arrives at Kells with a wondrously beautiful but unfinished illuminated manuscript, created to be "a beacon in these dark times." Brendan realizes he wants to become an illuminator and complete the book, despite his uncle's opposition. His decision helps him win the friendship of Aisling (Christen Mooney), a silver-haired wood fairy--and requires him to battle the monstrous pagan god Crom Cruach. The visuals in The Secret of Kells were inspired by the eighth-century manuscript the Book of Kells, which has been preserved in the library of Trinity College, Dublin. Fans of Samurai Jack will recognize another influence on the flat, angular figures and their stylized movements. Brendan's adventures are exciting enough to keep children entertained, while its graphic beauties will delight adult viewers. The Secret of Kells surprised many observers when it earned an Oscar nomination for Best Animated Feature, and it's a film no one interested in animation should miss. (Unrated: suitable for ages 8 and older: some scary imagery and violence.) --Charles Solomon

As you probably know by now, the movie is a fictionalized origin story of the real Book of Kells, an illuminated manuscript of the four Gospels of the New Testament, that incorporates Irish mythology.  You can read an informative article about the Book of Kells on Wikipedia.  There are also some excellent books about the Book of Kells:

The Book of Kells: An Illustrated Introduction to the Manuscript in Trinity College Dublin

The Book of Kells: Selected Plates in Full Color

 

I'm also adding the Color Your Own Book of Kells (Coloring Books) and Book of Kells Stained Glass Colouring Book (Dover Pictoral Archive Series) for anyone who wants to color some of the imagery themselves.  I always enjoy these Dover coloring books and these would make a nice tie-in for children who watch and enjoy the movie.

 

The Book of Kells is a DVD documentary about the Book of Kells which may also interest you.

Finally, you can learn more about the movie itself at it's official website: The Secret of Kells.

And here's one of the many trailers, one of the longer ones:

New Book: The Beautiful Between by Alyssa B. Sheinmel

The Beautiful Between by Alyssa B. Sheinmel was released earlier this month but I am starting to catch up with my posts so here it is.  I haven't read it and I'm not sure how overt the fairy tale references are, but since the description uses Rapunzel and I've seen other allusions in the review at MTV, I thought it would fit here just fine.

Book description from the publisher:

If high school were a fairy-tale kingdom, Connelly Sternin would be Rapunzel, locked not in a tower by a wicked witch but in a high-rise apartment building by the SATs and college applications—and by the secrets she keeps. Connelly's few friends think that her parents are divorced—but they're not. Connelly's father died when she was two, and she doesn't know how.

If Connelly is the Rapunzel of her school, Jeremy Cole is the crown prince, son of a great and rich New York City family. So when he sits down next to her at lunch one day, Connelly couldn't be more surprised. But Jeremy has a tragic secret of his own, and Connelly is the only one he can turn to for help. Together they form a council of two, helping each other with their homework and sharing secrets. As the pair's friendship grows, Connelly learns that it's the truth, not the secrets, that one must guard and protect. And that between friends, the truth, however harsh, is also beautiful.

This lovely and memorable debut by Alyssa B. Sheinmel contains many of the hallmark themes found in young adult literature—friendship, coming of age, finding a place to belong, and overcoming the death of a loved one. Emotionally moving from start to finish, The Beautiful Between introduces a strong new voice to the genre, a voice with a long future ahead of it.

From 'The Beautiful Between' Book Report: Judy Blume Angst In A 'Gossip Girl' by Sabrina Rojas Weiss:

In her day job at Random House, Alyssa Sheinmel spends a lot of time thinking about what's hot in children's and young-adult fiction. Maybe that's why for her debut novel, she avoided writing a trendy vampire story or a clique-y series. Instead, "The Beautiful Between," which came out on May 10, is a melancholy tale about a girl who may inhabit the same Upper East Side New York as the "Gossip Girl" set, but whose inner life is a whole lot deeper than Serena's or Blair's.

"My husband's big joke is that if only I could write a book with vampires in it, we would be rich," Sheinmel told us. "I don't follow trends as a reader or a writer. I tend to write just what I want to tell."

Connelly Sternin has lived alone with her emotionally distant mother since her father died when she was 2, and to cope with her desolation, she relates everything to fairy tales in her mind. Though she's no poor Cinderella at her fancy prep school, she is pretty shocked when the school's Prince Charming, Jeremy Cole, decides to befriend her. But he's not sweeping her off her feet, and he's not just using her for her brains as they study physics and SAT vocab together. He's looking for someone who understands what he's going through as his little sister suffers from leukemia.

Though Sheinmel said her biggest literary influence was "the fairy tales that I grew up with," the story of how Connelly and Jeremy's friendship thrives in the shadow of tragedy calls to mind Judy Blume's classic YA stories of the '80s.

An excerpt from the book is available on its Amazon page.  You can also read more about the author at her website: Alyssasheinmel.com where there is also an excerpt.

The Short Story With a Happy Ever After

     

This short salute to the short story--with references to fairy tales and oral tradition-- appeared in the Daily Express this week in the UK. From The Short Story With a Happy Ever After by Caroline Jowett:

Once upon a time there was the short story and it was very popular.

It was popular with little children who loved Listen With Mother, Aesop’s Fables and the Brothers Grimm.

And it was enjoyed by their mums and dads who read bedtime stories and knew themselves how wonderful it was to be read to. They remembered the cosy tucked-up feeling from childhood.

The instant gratification of a well-crafted story: a 10-minute, time-machine journey into another world. The delicious satisfaction of a tale well told. Its perfect completeness. They knew what it was like to be terrifi ed by WW Jacobs’ The Monkey’s Paw, to laugh at PG Wodehouse or to be moved by what is perhaps the shortest: Ernest Hemingway’s “For Sale. Baby shoes. Never worn”.

The short tale has its roots in the tradition of oral story- telling. Chaucer knew its power when he wrote The Canterbury Tales but it was in the mid-19th century that the short story really came into its own. People bought collections every week or month in journals and magazines. Writers became famous for specialising in short stories: HG Wells, Guy de Maupassant, Dickens, Chekov, Tolstoy.

The article goes on to discuss the re-emergence of the form thanks to the internet. It's short and sweet, but not too much so.  Just a nod to fairy tales, but a refreshing change from all my news searches resulting in sports stories.  Really, sports writers need some new metaphors...

MAC and Disney: Venomous Villains

From MAC and Disney Present: Venomous Villains via The Shades of U Makeup:

MAC Cosmetics is teaming up with Disney to create a limited edition color collection, intended to launch globally in late September in all MAC locations. The products will feature four Disney characters, on which the brand is keeping mum at the moment — although with a collection name of Venomous Villains, it is assumed that we’re not talking Donald Duck and Minnie Mouse here. Lipstick, powder, lip gloss and blush shades will be sold, ranging in price from $12 to $29.50.

The image above is a screen capture from the teaser video viewable here. OPI and Shrek, Urban Decay and Alice and Wonderland--the movie tie-in stuff just isn't for kids anymore.  Of course, MAC has already had Barbie and Hello Kitty collections as well as a Liberty of London one.  I don't wear much makeup due to allergies--mostly just have fun with nail polish when I can--but it is fun to watch what these companies will do to get our attention...

And I am curious to see the names of the products when they are released, if they will simply be character names or more fairy tale oriented...

J. Scott Campbell Draws Naughty Disney Princesses

A collection of comic book art versions of the Disney fairy tale ladies made the rounds yesterday in many articles.  The images are full on adolescent sexual fantasies, so I decided not to post them here in the interest of letting you choose what you see.  But with the intent of sharing news, here's a link to one of the many articles discussing the art where you can see the imagery, too.  From J. Scott Campbell Draws Naughty Disney Princesses by Brian Warmouth:

IDW published this collection of pin-ups in time for San Diego Comic-Con in 2009.

If you can still dig one up somewhere, you will find that it contains post-pubescent reincarnations of Ariel from "The Little Mermaid," Snow White, and Cinderella, all dolled up with clothing that was mostly just sort of colored into the lines of their silhouettes and superhumanly flexible backs that allow for 90-degree bendability.

If you're a Campbell enthusiast, you will definitely want to see the full range of princesses put to paper by the same man that first made Caitlin Fairchild's clothes burst apart and let Sarah Rainmaker warm up to her peers by bathing nudely in front of them. This time around, he even managed to make Cinderella's evil witch-stalker Maleficent look like a competitive candidate for a gentlemen's club job opening.

I'm actually amazed these aren't getting Disney's decency team or whatever they are called tied up in knots.  I've seen upset over much less through the years.  They certainly don't represent the Disney princesses in their much more innocent personas which are carefully cultivated and guarded by the Disney machine.  Disney is very careful with their image.  I temp worked for about two seconds for the company ten years ago writing copy for the Disney catalog and the list of no-no's was amazingly long.

The Godmother by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough

 

I just realized that The Godmother by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough has been reprinted and is also available as The Godmother for the Kindle. I own the original paperback edition, but haven't read it in years.  I have thought about it several times over the last year as I have flirted with Fairy Godmother research and once again after reading last year's Godmother: The Secret Cinderella Story by Carolyn Turgeon. 

Now I am happy I can read it again on my Kindle which is my much preferred reading style these days.  The title is also available for multiple ebook reader formats at Webscriptions.net with which I am not affiliated but am a regular customer.  Those editions are not DRMed and are thus my preferred formats for purchasing.

The book is quite fun and was mostly well-reviewed when it was originally released back in 1994.

Review from Publishers Weekly:

Scarborough's new fantasy adds an interesting riff to a familiar theme: What if fairy godmothers existed today and they had enough magical power to effectively meddle in real-world problems? Though Scarborough (winner of a Nebula for The Healer's War) has lots of fun with this concept, she securely grounds her tale by setting it in and around a believable social-services agency in Seattle and by making her protagonist sympathetic and realistic. Rose Samson is neither stereotypically gorgeous nor foolishly stupid, and she willingly joins forces with Felicity Fortune, a "Godmother" who shows her how the archetypes in Grimm's fairy tales are still relevant in our blighted modern world. The two work with, among others, a sweet and smart pair of Hansel and Gretel-like abandoned children named Hank and Gigi, a Snow White ("Sno") who is royal only by dint of her father's rock-star status and "Cindy," who is suing her stepmother for control of her trust fund. In each case, Rose and Felicity attempt to interweave their magical aid with large doses of human initiative and social responsibility. While this narrative blending of conscience and enchantment is undermined by preachiness and a too earnest desire to avoid simple solutions to complex issues, Scarborough's well-detailed settings and the humor implicit in the clash between magical solutions and grim reality make this tale, while not the author's best, both entertaining and compelling.

Review from Booklist:

Scarborough here enters the field of urban fantasy while also returning to the humorous approach of her earlier books, such as The Goldcamp Vampire (1987). The premise is that a frustrated social worker's wish suddenly endows the Puget Sound area with a real fairy godmother, and because she is real, her powers are limited. She still manages to keep a few serious situations from becoming completely hopeless and to find a man of princely qualities for the heroine. In the process, we are led through witty takes on Cinderella, Snow White, Puss in Boots, and probably several other classic fairy tales this reviewer did not immediately recognize. On the light side, but intelligent, careful, and certain to find enough readers.

 

There are two more companion books to The Fairy Godmother, but they are still only available in the out of print original editions, The Godmother's Apprentice and Godmother's Web.  Hopefully if enough of the first reprinted book are sold, these will also make it into new editions as well as ebook format.

I've always thought the concept of a social worker as a fairy godmother was wonderful and a great way to set a fairy godmother story in modern times.