Snow White and The Huntsman

I got to see Snow White and The Huntsman this past week. It was…well, it was like they took the basic storyline of Snow White and greatly expanded it.

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Okay, yes, possible spoilers, but if you know the basic story of Snow White, you really already know this whole story.

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Over the spoiler alert? Okay, so the story goes like this: Snow White’s dad married the evil Queen Ravenna (Charlize Theron), yes the evil queen inherited the kingdom–by killing the king.  She locked Snow (Kristen Stewart) in the dungeon…and (here’s where it starts to diverge from the fairy tale)  she starts draining blood from other young female villagers–Elizabeth Bathory style. The queen’s icky brother* (Sam Spruell) takes a liking to Snow (that’s the icky part), Snow attacks him and escapes. The mirror (in this case an almost-T-2 type man-form) tells Queen Ravenna she needs Snow’s heart to solidify her beauty. Queen Ravenna hires the huntsman (Chris Hemsworth) to find Snow and bring back her heart.

However, when he finds her (in the dark forest, of course) she talks him out of killing her. He joins with her,  in an endeavor to deliver her to the castle of Duke Hammond. On their way,  they meet the dwarves (who the huntsman apparently knows), and a village of families whose wives and daughters scar themselves to save them from the queen. A ghostly elk gives Snow his blessing, and they move on.

The Queen tricks Snow by taking the form of her old friend, the duke’s son William (played by Sam Claflin). He/She gives Snow an apple, Snow eats it and dies….true love is not the true love you think it/he is. He kisses her. She’s still dead. He walks away, she comes to life, walks dreamily into the courtyard, into the midst of the assembled army, and gives them a Braveheart-like “inspire the troops” speech. The army  heads off to kill Queen Ravenna. The two armies clash, Snow confronts the queen alone.

Oh, and the battle with the Queen’s mirror army? Way cool!

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Possibly spoilers below, but , you know, if you’ve read this far–and let’s face it if you know the fairy tale, you know how it ends…

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Anyway, Snow defeats the queen, takes the throne. (Virgin Queen-like. No marrying the prince to be seen. I guess you guys can see what I feel about that being an end goal of stories. What can I say? I am a feminist).

All right, Kristin Stewart needs acting lessons, they need to explain why she was wearing pants under her gown (yes, like tight jeans) when the story takes place in a clearly  Medieval/Renaissance world, and let me just log a protest here, I hate when the raven is always associated with the bad guy–but all in all, I found Snow White & The Huntsman a fantastic spin on the fairy tale. Very, very dark, and might I add, very gorgeous cinematography. Oh my, I loved the Elk scene! Brought Jolene Dawe‘s story “The Elk Prince” (from The Fairy Queen of Spencer’s Butte) to mind.

Keeper? Possibly. Star grading? Well…I don’t know?4? 4 1/2? if only for that *cough* anachronism of the jeans and the raven association–but that’s my particular quirk.

At any rate, I want to see it again when it hits video. So yes, I’d say, if you suspend what you know of the story, you may find it’s very well done. (Oh, and I have to say…love that Florence + the Machine contributed a song to the soundtrack. What me? A fangirl? )

*By the way, that’s the technical term, “icky”. By the way, I’m sure Mr. Spruell isn’t icky in real life–but man, does he pull it off here!

My Favorite Movies A-Z: Alien 3

Continuing my favorite movies A-Z:

Alien 3.

Unfortunately, this one’s going to…well, not exactly spoil Alien 2, I suppose. You’ll see.

Here’s the Trailer:

So, I finally got a chance to see this movie again, after—what? 20 years? Sigourney Weave and Lt. Ellen Ripley returns!  *Squee* The story goes that after the fiasco on LV486, Ripley, Newt (Carrie Henn) and Hicks (Michael Biehn) escape…except that, during hypersleep, an alien sneaks out of its hiding place and—well, bad things happen.

Ripley’s awakened later when her craft crash lands on Fiorina 161. A planet hosting an ore refinery and a maximum security prison. They inmates don’t like the idea of taking a woman into their population, but the warden and the prison doctor, Clemmens, (played by Charles Dance) decide to do the honorable thing and help. They call a rescue ship to come get her. In the meantime, she’s stuck there. The three of them form an uneasy relationship, trying to keep her away from the other men. Well, I say uneasy, but Clemmens develops a thing for Ripley, and the feeling is mutual.

Newt and Dwayne are dead and Ripley needs to find out why—was it a stowaway Alien, perhaps?

She convinces the doctor to perform an autopsy on Newt. They find nothing, just water on her lungs. She drowned, he says. Yet, Ripley can’t breathe easy. A dog has gone missing, and while Ripley and the doctor’s attraction blossoms, a prisoner, and two others are “murdered”.

Of course, we know what did it—Ripley knows what did. Enter the alien. Down goes the population count of the prison.

How the heck did the thing get on her ship, she wonders, and—with no weapons of any kind to hand—what can she do to save these poor men? Even worse, is what she finds out from the doctor’s exam leads her to suspect she must do the unthinkable.

It was not directed by James Cameron, for one, but David Fincher, so maybe that explains the sometimes silly incongruities and silly references (Zager and Evans’ “IN THE YEAR 2525”, which pulled me out of the story. Tsk). I also could’ve lived without the “thing” between Clemmens and Ripley, (sorry romance fans, it didn’t seem to fit, to me. I’d rather see her with Hicks—alas, no). Really, though I liked Fincher’s Fight Club (we’ll get there, folks, I promise) I seem to remember not caring too much for this movie when it first came out. I suppose the idea that Alien 3 was supposed to be the final Alien movie was a bit…shocking. On later inspection, it holds up to the series—and hey, it’s Ellen Ripley and HR Giger’s Alien. What’s not to love?

Honestly, Alien 3 is good, so if you want to get a copy, by all means, do see it. But for myself, without the perspective of the next movie in the series, I may never have given it a second thought. All in all, it’s a pretty good movie. If haven’t seen it yet, I think you’ll still be able to enjoy it, with or without the others, but I recommend seeing it in sequence.

Next up…Alien Resurrection!

My favorite movies-A-z: Aliens

Good morning, folks. Sorry I missed posting last week. I had a little bit of drama in my own personal life.  Trust me, it was sad and nail-biting and heart breaking and you probably don’t want to know more than that.

Anyway, I have another one for you. Ready? The next in my list of favorite movies:

Aliens

The second in Ridley Scott’s Alien series, Aliens, is directed this time out by James Cameron, and sees Ellen Ripley (played again by Sigourney Weaver) rescued from deep space and returned to Earth—fifty some-odd years in the future. While she adjusts to the fact that everyone she loves is gone, The Company decides to hold her responsible for the destruction of the Nostromo. Her advocate is a young man, Carter Burke (played by Paul Reiser) who comes to her, with a group of Marines, to tell her they’ve lost contact with the colony on LV-426. The planet where everything happened in the first movie. Not only is she surprised that the stupid heads at the Company thought it prudent to set up colonies on the planet, they floor her by announcing they want her to go back as a consultant for the Marines. After a vivid nightmare, she agrees and heads off with the squad. Once there, a whole lot of things happen at once: she finds out the company sent along an android (played by Lance Henriksen). If you’ve seen the first movie, you can imagine she doesn’t trust him. On the surface of LV-426, the Marines enter the complex and find evidence of the Alien, and many colonists cocooned in the Aliens’ lair. They find a little girl, Newt (played by Carrie Henn), living in the bowls of the complex, and Ripley gets to play out her long-lost mother instinct.

The Marines face the alien, and of course, many of them die. Then their transport crashes, stranding Ripley and Co. on the planet, and things only get worse. Turns out Burke’s got some screwed up ideas about the Alien that would jeopardize the mission. Then Newt gets lost in the complex and the Corporal Hicks (played by Michael Biehn) and Ellen must find her before the second rescue transport arrives. Meanwhile, Ripley’s taken a shine to Corporal Hicks. And she gets to kick Alien Queen butt.

Aliens is one of my all-time favorite movies. It stands well even on its own, so you don’t really have to see them in order, although you’ll understand Ripley’s fear a little better if you do. And of course you get to see the ultra cool Pvt. Vasquez (played by Jenette Goldstein) in action.  She’s my other favorite character of course. This is definitely a Chicks Kick Butt movie, and I love it. (Did I say that already? ) If you haven’t seen it, check it out.

Trailer, courtesy of Youtube:

favorite movies A to Z–Alien

So the next in my list of favorites is Ridley Scott’s Aliens saga.

Yes, what can I say, longtime readers know this already, I love Science Fiction movies. So I recently went back re-watched the first movie–Alien. If you haven’t seen it, it’s about the mining ship, Nostromo. Off in deep space, the ship awakens the crew, including Ellen Ripley (played by Sigourney Weaver), from “Hypersleep” because of a distress signal from a nearby planet. They land on the planet from which the signal originates and Captain Dallas (played by Tom Skerritt), and a small landing crew goes off to investigate. They find an abandoned ship and decide to investigate.

Inside one of its chambers, they discover this really weird set of eggs—thousands of them. One cracks open and this spider-like thing jumps out and attaches itself to crewmember Kane’s (played by John Hurt) face and throat. Ripley doesn’t want to allow the distressed Kane back on board the Nostromo, but Ash, (played by Ian Holm), the science officer, disobeys her order, and he tries to remove the thing from Kane without killing him. The thing dies, falls off and disappears…Kane goes back to life as normal, until a baby version of the thing rips his chest open, pops out hissing and skitters away. The crew go after it, chase it into the air ducts, where it (full grown) attacks Captain Dallas leaving Ripley in charge, and… Well, let’s just say Ripley’s lucky to make it out alive.

Still a fabulous series even after (yikes!) 33 years, and Ripley still kicks. One of the best SF movie heroes ever, and one of my favorite movies.

my favorite movies a-z

Trying to write about something interesting every once in a while? I thought, well, what do I do …I read, I love movies. I write. So… my favorite movies.

Aviator. Ah, now here’s an interesting one. Leonardo DiCaprio stars in the life story of Howard Hughes. The young Howard inherits his father’s tool company and fortune and wants to use his riches to make movies. But he also has a passion for tinkering with things. So he starts building airplanes (with the help of some loyal, talented friends). He makes a couple of really bizarre movies, sleeps with almost every starlet of the 1940s (like Katherine Hepburn and Ava Gardner) and builds an aviation empire called TWA. He keeps experimenting with planes and makes several innovations, and gets a lucrative government contract. Unfortunately he builds this massive plane that , by the time it’s done, the government can’t use so he became a sort of joke. He was also what we’d now call obsessive-compulsive. Everyone thinks of Hughes as a madman, but this…this is interesting!  If you haven’t seen this one, it’s one of those, “how creativity can drive you mad” movies, and it’s very, very good. If you haven’t seen it, do. DiCaprio does a fine job here.

Illusions of Intimacy: Magical Monday: Christmas Dolls for the Fantasy Lover to Make

Just because…

Illusions of Intimacy: Magical Monday: Christmas Dolls for the Fantasy Lover to Make.

brief history of the paranormal

Romance Girls Gone Goblin Hop

What’s Your ParaNormal?

by J.D. Revezzo

Interest in the paranormal goes back centuries, the Egyptians had “words of power” to keep away the restless, vengeful spirits of the dead, and cure the sicknesses they might cause; Greek poets and playwrights included shades from Hades’ various regions in their works.  Hamlet’s father in Shakespeare’s 16th century masterpiece Hamlet came to entreat his son to revenge. The rise of Spiritualism in the 19th century with the Fox Sisters, continued man’s long search for a way to keep in contact with both sides of the veil.

Though the Age of Enlightenment tried to squelch such interest, one needs only to look at the paranormal lilt of the stories and poetry of writers such as M.R. James, Edgar Allan Poe, and Christina Rossetti, to see the attempt proved unsuccessful. Interest in the paranormal didn’t limit itself to stories; no.  European and American spiritualist mediums summoned the spirits of the dead to popular séances attended by hundreds of curious onlookers and believers. Tarot reading, crystal balls, table tipping, automatic writing, and ghostly voices speaking through mediums, all these became a familiar event in parlors the world over. Ghost photography, as well, became a fervent pastime in the 1860s.

Even famed entertainer and magician Harry Houdini (who, *cue spooky music* died On October 31, 1926) thought there might be something to the events. He’s said to have made a pact with his wife to contact her through a medium, should something happen to him.

In the 1970s and ‘80s, these things gained interest again, with spiritualist temples, and psychic mediums expounding on the veil, taking up space on bookstore shelves along with the Bible and UFO abduction accounts. Even Ghostbusters became famous.

And then, there’s the pyramids—you know, the Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb and so forth? *shivers*

Today, the interest flows again. One can see it in the continued popular of the Paranormal Activity franchise, and in shows like Ghost Hunters, Ghost Adventures, and the semi-fictional(?) Ghost Whisperer. The massive success of the Urban Fantasy, Paranormal YA like Kelly Armstrong‘s Darkest Powers series,  and Paranormal Romance genres prove there’s a curiosity to be filled. In terms of Paranormal romance, well, I don’t have to tell our female guests this, but werewolves, vampires and vampire hunters can be *ahem* deadly sexy.

From a spiritual standpoint, on Samhain, some modern Wiccans lay “dumb suppers”, extra places set at the dinner table for their beloved dead, just like the Celts who paid homage to the spirits of their dear departed at this time of year.

What do you think about all this? I know what I think of it, and somehow it always seems to tie into my works. Not two but several of my recent manuscripts, and a work in progress have something paranormal involved, ghosts at least. My forthcoming stories “What Sekhmet Keeps”  and “Bicycle Requiem”(June 2012) also involve various paranormal elements, a current WIP even includes a form of automatic writing.

So, in the spirit of Samhain—or Halloween—I have a question for you, what’s your favorite flavor of the paranormal?

Leave a meaningful comment or question (Spammers, you will be toasted by our resident Firedrakes and dragons—not chosen ) and around the 31st, I’ll pick one of you for a treat: My friends at Wytch of the North have this lovely little essential oil Momento Mori, perfect for remembering our loved ones who’ve passed on, and I shall have them send it to the chosen winner.

Meanwhile, don’t forget to visit the other ladies involved in the Romance Girls Gone Goblin hop by going to the main site here–and have a great Halloween!

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Sources:

Ghosts in Ancient Egyptian Culture

Egyptian Magic

The Encyclopedia of Greek Mythology

Harry Houdini, His Life and His Art

History of Spirit Photography

History of Ghost Photography
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(Legalese silliness: My apologies to my Canadian friends but contests only open to US residents, and void where prohibited by law.

No extra entries necessary other than, of course, to leave a comment on the appropriate contest entry for that time period.

Full site giveaway disclaimers here)
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Ghost Poser in picture above by Posers ©by Angi