(no subject)

[rhondacrockett]

I met up with Ruth and LJ last night for pizza and cinema. We saw The Brothers Grimm. I really enjoyed it; I loved spotting the folklore and mythology references: Little Red Riding Hood, Sleeping Beauty, Rumpelstiltskin, The Princess and the Pea, girls disguised as boys, talking animals, Rapunzel, The Snow Queen, Ophelia from Hamlet, Cinderella, kelpies and infernal horses, the golem legend, The Two Brothers, the Greek myth of Talos, The Twelve Dancing Princesses, werewolves, sacred/enchanted forests, The White Cat, Jack and the Beanstalk, stolen children, vampires, Hansel and Gretal, Snow White, The Gingerbread Man, The Goose Girl, witches, spells, beautiful and vain queens, The Frog Prince, Grandfather Death, animal helpers (and enemies), the youngest as the hero, Manypelts, three siblings, enchanted weapons, curses, and maybe - only maybe, mind; I'm stretching a bit here - a story I once read about a boy with odd-coloured eyes, one which sees the world as it really is and one which sees all that it could be (but isn't). Some bits were pretty creepy like the horse with the cobwebs coming out of its mouth swallowing the girl, another girl whose eyes and mouth got stolen by a living glob of mud, the Mill Witch, the death of the white kitten and the bugs pushing the crypt lids shut. The juxtaposition between the superstitious German peasants and the rational French forces, coming out of the anti-superstition French Revolution, worked well, I thought, and brought out the nationalist motivation behind the collecting of fairy tales (if there's a folklore, there has to be a folk - a race of people linked by blood and land, with a common national identity). And I am Jake Grimm! You don't know how painfully I've wished sometimes for stories to be real *pets Jake with his cute little glasses*

Also, you know you've been spending too much time in Forbidden Planet when you start to dream of being accused of shoplifting from it.