Christmas arts round up

[nineveh_uk]

Back home, after the end of the Christmas holidays. It’s been a slightly strange fortnight, with a very disjointed second week as one by one the household succumbed to plague*. I had a very enjoyable Christmas, receiving some excellent presents, and we managed to do quite a bit, but there were various things that didn’t get done and I am not

Comments

[sonetka]

The only instances of "True love's kiss saves the princess" which come to mind are Snow White and Sleeping Beauty, stories and movies both. Whether it's been seriously used in any Disney movie made since my parents were in diapers, I don't know. I did enjoy Frozen a lot, though my five-year-old daughter was confused by the plot twist with Prince Hans -- I think she was expecting that a dramatic plot development required big dramatic songs, not whispers unaccompanied by any kind of music. And while I love the book, The Hobbit worked for me as long as I thought of it as a completely separate fantasy story whose resemblances to Tolkien were purely coincidental, plus it had bonus brooding Richard Armitage. But if they'd cut much of Lake Town and the whole "dwarves attack Smaug with molten statue" bit, it would have been just as good. I couldn't help wondering what's going to happen to Lake Town's economy once (a) all that gold suddenly starts circulating after Smaug is dead and (b) the Master's rule is disrupted, since it seems that half

[nineveh_uk]

Thank you - do you know if SW and SB actually refer to "true love's kiss" in so many words? I haven't seen either for several decades ;-)

I agree entirely about the bits to cut - I loved the look of Smaug floundering in the golden pond, but it was all a bit silly really. And someone should do a "Lake Town's economy tanks" fic. Perhaps they all learn brickwork really quickly in order to rebuild Dale.

I had not thought that about Fili, but I see where you're coming from. Dain is conspicuous by his absence.

[sonetka]

I haven't either -- and rereading what I wrote last night, I was clearly not firing on all cylinders because while the originals of SB and SW feature kisses, they're not described as "true love's kiss" -- in fact, they're more a matter of timing than of emotion. The prince in SB happens to arrive at the deadly hedge as the hundred years of sleep is over (at least in the version I read, there are probably many of them) and when he finds Sleeping Beauty, he kisses her, but it's not clear if this is needed to wake her up or if she would have woken anyway. Again, probably varies by version. In SW, the prince kisses Snow White, which causes her to cough up the bit of poisoned apple that was still in her throat and wake up. (Of course, in "The Frog Princess" a kiss will undo the spell, but it has to be a kiss from a princess, not a true love). I'm not sure about the various fairy tale versions of "The Frog Prince" -- the joke is always about a princess kissing a frog to turn him into a prince, but whether it's "true love's kiss" -- I'm not

[sonetka]

And now looking it up, the Disney version of SB does say "And from this slumber you shall wake / When true love's kiss the spell shall break." And in Snow White, "The victim of the Sleeping Death can be revived only Love's First Kiss." Sorry, I meant to put that in the previous comment but got sidetracked. So "love's first kiss" was used in 1937 at least.

[azdak]

Hmm, I'm not quite sure how "true love's kiss" is expressed in Frozen - well, actually, I don't have a bloody clue - but the prophecy about Princess Fiona in Shrek involves the transformative effect of True Love's Kiss.

I keep vaguely thinking that maybe I'd like the Hobbit and then thinking that three hours is an awfully long time to spend discovering that I'm wrong.

I realise this is a slightly indelicate question, but did Middle Sis end up in A&E because of dehydration?

[nineveh_uk]

I had forogtten Shrek, thank you! There is a "twist" in Frozen in that the crucial kiss turns out to be from her sister, whereas the love interest is a rat (not literally).

I made the decision to see the Hobbit at the cinema partly because I didn't expect it to be great and I thought that at least I'd get the impressive scenery/visuals as compensation. It is very, very long - this one was "only" 2 hr 40 mins, but the first one was truly bum-numbing.

Re. A&E - no, it was the vertigo/nausea element. She couldn't balance/walk, or tell whether she was standing up or sitting down, though there was also spectacular puking.