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healygJeez, I've been putting this off for way too long. Alright, from the top, we got:
Film and Fairy Tales, by Kristian Moen, which is a brief history of fairy tale tropes in film, from the French feeries (i.e., 19th Century theatrical spectaculars that partly inspired the English Pantomime), to the works of Georges Melies, to fairy tale silents (e.g., The Blue Bird, the Mary Pickford Cinderella, finally ending with Disney's Snow White and other fairy tale inspired films from the sound era. It's a great look at a forgotten era of fairy tales in the movies, particularly the chapter that takes a deeper look at 1918 the silent film version of The Blue Bird (from a 1908 play by Maurice Maeterlinck). It also has a take on Snow White that I haven't seen before. Highly recommended.
Fairy Tale Comics, edited by Chris Duffy, is an anthology of fairy tales retold by a bunch of comics people you may have heard of, including Craig Thompson (Blankets, Habibi), Emily Carroll (various online horror comics, like His Face All Red), the Hernandez brothers (Love and Rockets), Gigi D.G. (Cucumber Quest), and David Mazzucchelli (Asterios mother-flippin' Polyp). Some of the stories are a little disappointing (for example, I felt Gilbert Hernandez's take on Hansel and Gretel was too dry for me, even though I thought his brother Jaime's Snow White, which is done in a similar style, to be quite charming), but most of them are quite good, and the styles vary widely enough that if one story doesn't grab, the next one will. Standouts for me would be The Prince and the Tortoise, which is drawn by the ever-talented Ramona Fradon, and Graham Annable's Goldilocks and the Three Bears, which has the charming touch of being drawn without dialogue.
The Turnip Princess and Other Newly Discovered Fairy Tales, by Franz Xaver von Schonwerth (there is a theme this week, can you tell), is a collection of fairy tales that were discovered in Schonwerth's papers in the city Regensburg's archives. They're all really rough, compared to Grimms, Schonwerth's contemporaries; most of the fairy tale collections of the time were heavily edited by the collectors, and Schonwerth didn't really get a chance to do that here. There's a lot of weird, inexplicable crap in this tales, and the plots often feel a bit rushed; few tales go longer than two or three pages in this collection. On the plus side, the bawdy, jokey tales in the collection come off fairly well, being a little longer on average than most other tales, and also built on such timeless jokes such as strong, foolish oafs making a mess outta everything and folks murdering the pastor's mother and all the good peasant classics. If you see it at the library, maybe check it out?
Film and Fairy Tales, by Kristian Moen, which is a brief history of fairy tale tropes in film, from the French feeries (i.e., 19th Century theatrical spectaculars that partly inspired the English Pantomime), to the works of Georges Melies, to fairy tale silents (e.g., The Blue Bird, the Mary Pickford Cinderella, finally ending with Disney's Snow White and other fairy tale inspired films from the sound era. It's a great look at a forgotten era of fairy tales in the movies, particularly the chapter that takes a deeper look at 1918 the silent film version of The Blue Bird (from a 1908 play by Maurice Maeterlinck). It also has a take on Snow White that I haven't seen before. Highly recommended.
Fairy Tale Comics, edited by Chris Duffy, is an anthology of fairy tales retold by a bunch of comics people you may have heard of, including Craig Thompson (Blankets, Habibi), Emily Carroll (various online horror comics, like His Face All Red), the Hernandez brothers (Love and Rockets), Gigi D.G. (Cucumber Quest), and David Mazzucchelli (Asterios mother-flippin' Polyp). Some of the stories are a little disappointing (for example, I felt Gilbert Hernandez's take on Hansel and Gretel was too dry for me, even though I thought his brother Jaime's Snow White, which is done in a similar style, to be quite charming), but most of them are quite good, and the styles vary widely enough that if one story doesn't grab, the next one will. Standouts for me would be The Prince and the Tortoise, which is drawn by the ever-talented Ramona Fradon, and Graham Annable's Goldilocks and the Three Bears, which has the charming touch of being drawn without dialogue.
The Turnip Princess and Other Newly Discovered Fairy Tales, by Franz Xaver von Schonwerth (there is a theme this week, can you tell), is a collection of fairy tales that were discovered in Schonwerth's papers in the city Regensburg's archives. They're all really rough, compared to Grimms, Schonwerth's contemporaries; most of the fairy tale collections of the time were heavily edited by the collectors, and Schonwerth didn't really get a chance to do that here. There's a lot of weird, inexplicable crap in this tales, and the plots often feel a bit rushed; few tales go longer than two or three pages in this collection. On the plus side, the bawdy, jokey tales in the collection come off fairly well, being a little longer on average than most other tales, and also built on such timeless jokes such as strong, foolish oafs making a mess outta everything and folks murdering the pastor's mother and all the good peasant classics. If you see it at the library, maybe check it out?
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