Showing posts with label Grimm. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Grimm. Show all posts

Monday, 22 April 2013

Snow White; Film Trailers

Snow White and the Huntsman- 2012
Snow White and the seven dwarfs- 1937
Mirror Mirror- 2012
Snow White; A tale of terror- 1997
Enchanted- 2007


Monday, 15 April 2013

Snow White & the Huntsman

Costume designer; Colleen Atwood


Marge Champion

Walt Disney will always be remembered for his countless innovations in filmmaking and entertainment. Yet, when he set out to create his first feature film, he was like an explorer heading into uncharted wilderness. Back in 1934, no one knew if an audience would sit through a full-length "cartoon" Critics and cynics said it couldn't be done. Walt of course believed it could and did everything in his power to insure that his animators would.

One thing was to bring movement models into the studio to give the animators a reference in order to achieve realistic human motion (i.e., walking, dancing). Marjorie Belcher, around 14 at the time, was hired for $10/day to "play" Snow White. See the October 2009 MovieWeb interview with Marge as she talks about how Walt chose her for the part from 200-300 other girls. She came into the studio two or three times a month for a period of about two years. The animators "showed me storyboards and then they let me go free."



Snow White profile

http://www.fanpop.com/clubs/disney-princess/articles/24900/title/princess-profiles-snow-white

Name; Snow White
Meaning; Name given to her by her parents because of her pale white skin
Disney film; Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, 1st Disney classic, 1937
Voice;  Adriana Caselotti
Singing Voice;  Adriana Caselotti
Model; Marjorie Belcher and Margaret Champion

Based on: Many adaptions created but Brother Grimm's adaption was the one Disney’s version is most based on, ending of being kissed by the prince is borrowed from a different fairy tale - Sleeping Beauty
Based in: A fairy tale orientated land. Brother Grimm's adaption is Scottish, unsure if the Disney version is based in Scotland, it is believed to be set in Germany.
Personality: gentle, trusting, pure, loveable nature which wins her friendship and protection. She is sweet, graceful and brings out the best in people; she has lots of friends due to her lovable, caring nature. She is Sweet, Graceful and Naive.

Prince; Only ever referred to as 'The Prince
Friends: The Forest Animals, The Seven Dwarfs: Doc, Sleepy, Sneezy, Grumpy, Bashful, Dopey and Happy.Villain: The Evil Queen, Snow Whites stepmother, who grows jealous of Snow White for being fairest of the land and plots to kill her.
Links to Royalty: Born Princess, then if married to the Prince would make her princess of two lands, also considered one of the Princesses of Hearts from the Kingdom Hearts video game. Daughter of deceased rulers of the kingdom, step daughter of the ruling queen (the evil queen), first in line to the throne
Homes: Snow White originally lived in a Castle with her stepmother (possibly previously with one or both of her parent), she then lives with 7 dwarfs until she meets The Prince, of whom takes her away to his golden palace in the distance.
Disney era: Original Walt Disney Creation

Hair: Tied back with a pretty ribbon
Style: Classic
Ideal pet: Squirrel
Favourite hobby: Looking after animals
Prefer to live: In a cottage
Talents: Singing, Dancing, House Keeping, Cooking, Socialising, Authority.
Nationality: It is believed that she is German

Disney Story Book Description: "..the child grew up to be a lovely young women. Her beauty and her gentle nature won the hearts of all who knew her."
Note: The first feature length animated title character EVER, Snow White never actually talks directly to the Prince throughout the whole film, generally the least favourite Disney Princess but very significant anyway. In England, the film was deemed too scary for children, and those under 16 had to be accompanied by a parent. For its 1993 reissue the film was completely restored being the first ever to be completely digitized by computer, cleaned up, and then printed back to film.
Specific songs from original film:
"I'm Wishing"/"One Song" (Snow White/The Prince)
"With a Smile and a Song" (Snow White)
"Whistle While You Work" (Snow White)
"Some Day My Prince Will Come" (Snow White)

Difference between Disney & Grimm

http://disneyvsgrimms.blogspot.co.uk/

Snow White
In the original - the Queen requests the lungs and liver (as well as the heart) of Snow White to eat for dinner that night.
In the original - Snow White is not awakened by a kiss from the prince (like the Disney version) - she is awakened when she is jostled by the horse on which her coffin is being carried by the prince

http://voices.yahoo.com/differences-between-disneys-snow-white-grimms-605736.html

In Grimm's fairy tale, the Wicked Queen does not want Snow White's heart. She wants Snow White's lungs and liver. When the boar's insides are brought to her, she boils them and eats them, thinking that they are Snow White's.

In Grimm's fairy tale, it takes three attempts to kill Snow White. Each time, the Wicked Queen uses the same disguise, so Snow White must not be too smart.

In Grimm's fairy tale, there are dwarfs and they do put Snow White into a glass coffin. However, a prince does not come and kiss her. A prince comes and he thinks that the body is beautiful, so he wants it. It is only when servants drop the coffin that the piece of poison apple dislodges from Snow White's throat and she is brought back to life.

Also, in Grimm's fairy tale, the Wicked Queen does not get chased off of a cliff. Instead, she makes it back to her castle. She is then invited to Snow White's wedding. When she gets there, she is forced to wear a pair of red-hot iron shoes. She is forced to dance in these shoes until she drops dead.

Snow White; A tale of terror (1997)

Based somewhat more authentically on the Grimm Brothers' story of a young woman who is unliked by her stepmother, the film includes the talking mirror, a poisoned apple, and some ruffian gold (not diamond) miners (and they aren't dwarfs or cute). It takes place at the time of the Crusades, and depicts the attitudes of the wealthy and the peasant classes toward one another

Friday, 12 April 2013

Hansel and Gretel

http://shortstoriesshort.com/story/hansel-and-gretel/
Poor woodcutter and his wife had two children named Hansel and Gretel. Their mother died when they were young. Hansel and Gretel were very sad. Soon their father remarried but their stepmother was very cruel. One day, she took the children deep into the forest and left them there. Clever Hansel had some breadcrumbs in his pocket and had dropped them on the way so that they could find their way back home. Alas! The birds ate all the crumbs and they couldn't find the path that led back home.

Hansel and Gretel went deeper and deeper into the forest. They were hungry and tired. Finally, after walking for a long time, they saw a cottage made of chocolate, candies, and cake. “Look, Hansel! A chocolate brick!” shouted

Gretel in delight and both ate it hungrily.

Now, a wicked witch lived there. When she saw Hansel and Gretel, she wanted to eat them. She grabbed the chil­dren and locked them in a cage. The witch decided to make a soup out of Hansel and eat him first. She began boiling a huge pot of water for the soup. Just then, Gretel crept out of her cage. She gave the wicked witch a mighty push from behind and the witch fell into the boiling water. She howled in pain and died instantly. Hansel and Gretel found treasure lying around the cottage. They carried it home with them. Their stepmother had died and their father wel­comed them back with tears of joy. They never went hungry again!

Character List
- Hansel
- Gretel
- Stepmother
-Father
-Old/ Evil Woman

Origins
In the widely known version of Hansel and Gretel, we hear of two little children who become lost in the forest, eventually finding their way to a gingerbread house which belongs to a wicked witch. The children end up enslaved for a time as the witch prepares them for eating. They figure their way out and throw the witch in a fire and escape. In an earlier French version of this tale (called The Lost Children), instead of a witch we have a devil. Now the wicked old devil is tricked by the children (in much the same way as Hansel and Gretel) but he works it out and puts together a sawhorse to put one of the children on to bleed (that isn’t an error – he really does). The children pretend not to know how to get on the sawhorse so the devil’s wife demonstrates. While she is lying down the kids slash her throat and escape.

Never given a particularly high profile adaptation, Hansel and Gretel is nevertheless one of the best known of the fairy tales. Every child knows the story of the two young leads, abandoned in the woods by their wicked stepmother and forced to outwit an evil witch, bent on eating them in her gingerbread house. So why haven’t Hollywood had a go? It would be easy to pull in the punters with this, right? Well, shooting for that lucrative U certificate might prove tricky when dealing with such themes as cannibalism, murder by asphyxiation and child abuse.

Cinderella

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0042332/synopsis
Link to the synopsis, its a bit to long to put on here.

Character List
- Cinderella
Lady Tremaine
Drizella Tremaine
Anastasia Tremaine
- Fairy Godmother
- Jaq & Gus; Mice sidekicks
Lucifer
Minor characters
-The King
-The Grand Duke
-Bruno; Bloodhound
-Major
-Prudence
-Beatrice and Daphne
-The Birds
-Suzy and Perla
-Pom-Pom
-The Baker

Origins
http://www.cracked.com/article_15962_the-gruesome-origins-5-popular-fairy-tales_p5.html
This one goes way, way back, having been told across cultures for thousands of years before being made into numerous Hollywood movies. The identity of the Fairy Godmother changes often, and in fact she only showed up in Perrault's version, along with the pumpkin coach and the mice attendants which were all used in the Disney version. There's even a Chinese version of the story from around 850 AD, where "Yeh-Hsien" is given gold, pearls, dresses and food by a giant talking fish.

A famous difference in many versions of the story is the "glass slipper." Authorities on fairy tales (who you tend not to see at parties) disagree about whether Perrault's slipper was made of glass or fur, as the words in French (verre and vair respectively) are pronounced almost the same. It's kind of important, because if the Prince was wandering the land looking for a lady with the perfect "fur slipper" ... well, it doesn't take Freud to figure that one out, and suddenly the Prince doesn't look so noble.

One thing Perrault left out that the Grimm's delighted in putting back in was the violence. The sisters, desperate to fit into the slipper, mutilate their own feet, cutting off the toes and heels all described in exquisite Germanic detail. When the Prince eventually realizes Cinderella is the one for him, birds peck out the sisters' and mother's eyes for their wickedness.

In the modern Cinderella fairy tale we have the beautiful Cinderella swept off her feet by the prince and her wicked step sisters marrying two lords – with everyone living happily ever after. The fairy tale has its origins way back in the 1st century BC where Strabo’s heroine was actually called Rhodopis, not Cinderella. The story was very similar to the modern one with the exception of the glass slippers and pumpkin coach. But, lurking behind the pretty tale is a more sinister variation by the Grimm brothers: in this version, the nasty step-sisters cut off parts of their own feet in order to fit them into the glass slipper – hoping to fool the prince. The prince is alerted to the trickery by two pigeons who peck out the step sister’s eyes. They end up spending the rest of their lives as blind beggars while Cinderella gets to lounge about in luxury at the prince’s castle.

Snow White



http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0029583/synopsis
A beautiful girl, Snow White, takes refuge in the forest in the house of seven dwarfs to hide from her stepmother, the wicked Queen. The Queen is jealous because she wants to be known as "the fairest in the land," and Snow White's beauty surpasses her own. The dwarfs grow to love their unexpected visitor, who cleans their house and cooks their meals. But one day while the dwarfs are at their diamond mine, the Queen arrives at the cottage disguised as an old peddler woman and persuades Snow White to bite into a poisoned apple. The dwarfs, warned by the forest animals, rush home to chase the witch away, but they are too late to save Snow White from the poisoned apple. They place her in a glass coffin in the woods and mourn for her. The Prince, who has fallen in love with Snow White, happens by and awakens her from the wicked Queen's deathlike spell with "love's first kiss."
Picture of Snow White and the Dwarfs from the Disney adaptation of the Grimm Story
http://disney.wikia.com/wiki/Snow_White_(character)
Character List
- Snow White 
- Prince Charming 
- Stepmother; Evil Witch
- Doc
- Sleepy
- Dopey
- Grumpy
- Bashful
- Sneezy
- Happy 
- Magic Mirror
- The Huntsman

Origin
http://listverse.com/2009/01/06/9-gruesome-fairy-tale-origins/
In the tale of snow white that we are all familiar with, the Queen asks a huntsman to kill her and
bring her heart back as proof. Instead, the huntsman can’t bring himself to do it and returns with the heart of a boar. Now, fortunately Disney hasn't done too much damage to this tale, but they did leave out one important original element: in the original tale, the Queen actually asks for Snow White’s liver and lungs – which are to be served for dinner that night! Also in the original, Snow White wakes up when she is jostled by the prince’s horse as he carries her back to his castle – not from a magical kiss. What the prince wanted to do with a dead girl’s body I will leave to your imagination. Oh – in the Grimm version, the tale ends with the Queen being forced to dance to death in red hot iron shoes!

In the Disney film the wicked step-mother winds up dead (she falls off a cliff). So that's pretty hardcore we guess. It's got nothing on the Grimm version, though, where the step-mother is tortured by being forced to wear red-hot iron shoes, and made to dance until she falls down dead (you can picture the puppet thing from Saw spelling this out for her over a closed-circuit monitor).

The issue of Snow's actual age is a point of contention as well. The Grimm's explicitly refer to her as being seven years old when the story starts, and while there's no firm indication of how much time has passed, it's no more than a couple of years. So unless that's an eight-year-old Prince Charming who comes along and rescues Snow, we're backing away from this one before we become the subject of an NBC reality show.

The biggest change, and the bloodiest, is step-mom's ... unusual eating habits. Namely, when she asks her man to bring back the heart of Snow White, she isn't just after proof the girl is dead. She wants to eat it. Depending on the version of the story, the Queen asks for Snow's liver, lungs, intestines and pretty much every other major internal organ, up to and including one gruesome version where she asks for a bottle of Snow's blood stoppered with her toe.

Tuesday, 9 April 2013

The Brother's Grimm, 2005

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0355295/
Will and Jake Grimm are traveling con-artists who encounter a genuine fairy-tale curse which requires true courage instead of their usual bogus exorcisms.
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/brothers_grimm/
Two men who have made a career out of spinning remarkable stories find themselves bringing them to life in this inventive fantasy inspired by the creators of some of the world's best-loved fairy tales. Will Grimm (Matt Damon) and his brother Jake Grimm (Heath Ledger) earn their living by traveling from village to village and vanquishing strange supernatural beasts that have been menacing the populace. Or at least that's what their clients think has been happening; as it happens, Will and Jake are confidence men who cleverly stage the ghostly attacks and then take payment for making the creatures they fabricated go away. One day, the brothers arrive in a town and offer to help its people drive away evil spirits, unaware that the community is bordered by a genuine enchanted forest, and that young girls in the village have been disappearing at a frightful rate. The Grimm Brothers must now learn how to deal with real magic, with the help of the lovely but fearless Angelika.
Evil Queens costume

Will and Jacob Grimm costumes

Gabriella Pescucci & Carlo Poggioli

Thee were the two people that were the costume designers for 'The Brothers Grimm', 2005 film.

Gabriella Pescucci
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0675951/bio

Gabriella Pescucci was born in Rosignano Solvay in Tuscany in 1941 and began her film career as an assistant to Piero Tosi in the late 1960s. By the 1970s she was working as a costume designer in her own right with several films for Giovanni Patroni Griffi and also for Fellini, making her international debut in 1984 with 'Once Upon a Time in America', for which she took the first of her two British Film Academy Awards, the second being for 'The Adventures of Baron Munchausen'. In addition to her film work she has designed for the opera, notably 'La Traviata' at the Archimboldi Theatre, Milan and 'A Masked Ball' at the Kennedy Centre in Washington, D.C.

Carlo Poggioli
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0688231/
http://www.mastercostume.it/Carlo_Poggioli_master_costume.html

Costume and fashion designer, after studying (Art Institute and the Academy of Fine Arts in Naples), has worked for national and international productions and personalities. These include: Gabriella Pescucci, Piero Tosi, Maurizio Millenotti, JJ Annaud, Luca Ronconi, Marco Gandini, Terry Gilliam, Vera Belmon, Uli Edel, Federico Fellini, Martin Scorsese, Anthony Minghella, Franco Zeffirelli, Steven Sommers, Andrzej Bartkowiak, John Irvin Giulio Base, Terry Gilliam.

Monday, 8 April 2013

Gruesome Grimm

When looking at the Grimm Brothers stories I want to look at the original as well as the adaptations done by company's like Disney. Some of the original versions of the stories are really gruesome and nothing like how they are told now.