Quick, Quick, Snow

[lil_shepherd]

Currently watching Snow White and the Huntsman. The opening of this really does not compute. Why kill the king before you are crowned - and why keep Snow White alive? We are very fond of the modern translation of the Lord's prayer being used

Comments

[themis1]

Because nobody wears a hat indoors?

Seriously, a film with much promise, all wasted!

[lil_shepherd]

Because nobody wears a hat indoors?

Point!

Am now tempted to get Mirror, Mirror to see if it can be worse than this one. (I know Hansel and Gretel will be, of course, because even the Renner fangirls admit they are only watching to see him take his shirt off.)

What few makers of films in which magic plays a part fails to realise is that your magic needs, like, rules, because (all together) when anything can happen there is no tension.

[fatpie42]

I've actually heard at least one person say that Hansel and Gretel Witch Hunters is good fun (if not actually a good movie). Also the glimpses of "Army of Darkness"-style cackling witches makes me kind of intrigued.

Meanwhile, I have as yet to hear ANYONE say anything good about Mirror Mirror. A friend was showing off his 3D tv and we watched Immortals on it. It was a ridiculously dull experience. (I don't think we got even half way through it.) I enjoyed the dream visuals in "The Cell" and I loved "The Fall", but Tarsem Singh has severely lost his way as a director with the rubbish he is selling these days.

Have you seen Princess Mononoke? The sanctuary of the fairies is pretty much lifted directly from that. I thought the effects sequences were pretty cool. It's just that any scenes without effects looked ridiculously pedestrian. I'm glad I saw Charlize Theron's performance, but the film was mainly just pretty nonsense. And Chris Hemsworth's ridiculous accent was nail-bitingly bad.

[lil_shepherd]

I adore Princess Mononoke but that is drawing heavily on Japanese (particularly Shinto) myth and tradition, while Snow White is purely European and particularly Germanic. 'Sanctuary' and its cute gentle nature spirits has no place in that tradition.

Miyazaki himself has a poor understanding of European myth, if we are to take his version of Diana Wynne Jones's playful satire Howl's Moving Castle (which he fails to understand at all) as an example.

[lil_shepherd]

Apparently it goes even further down the anachronism road than Van Helsing (a really, really bad movie which is a guilty pleasure in parts) and a lot of my pagan contacts were upset by the portrayal of witches... They figured that if all the other attitudes were 21st Century, they might have updated that too.