4 posts tagged “fairytale”

I won't bore you with my own personal analysis of the movie, you can find those all over the internet.  What I want to say here is that the movie was really good and well worth the watch.

This isn't some huge special efects spectacular, but something a little more subtle, which make it feel a little more real to me.  The graphics were done by a small town California company, Cafe FX.  This is the first feature length film that they have done all the effects for.  Good job guys!  You can read about them in the SLO New Times here.  Of course, you can look at the movie site here.  The movie was visually stunning, even the gritty parts.

The story is a throwback to the origins of the fairytale - it's not for children.  It's gritty, bloody, muddy and violent.  There is no hero and the ending is not happy.  I really enjoyed the background read on the movie's website.  Thank you to Guillermo del Toro and crew for creating and bringing to life such a well imagined tale.

and the world falls down...

I love this scene from Labyrinth.  No, not because it's mushy and maybe the monster loves the princess.  I love the decadence, detail, costumes and particularly the masks!

I can't get VOX to find the version of this that I really want, so I'll have to link here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ByGsFuCuRU

Listening to: This Mortal Coil, Songs for a Siren

I just found this and can't wait to see the movie!  I've always loved a good fairytale, particularly one that can mesh the fantasy with reality and doesn't shy away from the often brutal origins of the tales.  http://www.panslabyrinth.com/

Today is day 5 of NaNoWriMo and I have 5,603 words up until this moment (of course it is only 10:30 am and I've just sat down to the computer...).  I should have more like 8,500 by the end of the day today to keep on target.  But do I have enough coherent story?

So far I have one good main character, one good supporting character and another that I didn't even realize would actually be a person, but whom I think better be a character, but maybe not until a certain, life altering event happens to the main character.  All my characters need new names.  I need to settle on whose POV I'm writing from.  I think there will be two in the end.

Place is pretty important in this story.  The setting is just a forrest until you look deeper, then the forrest is almost a character too.  Or at least that is my intent, now.  I think there is going to be a character who personifies the forest, the ages and everything around it, but I don't know if that individual will have good or ill intent.  Likely, she will simply have her own agenda.

The people in my story don't live in the forest of course, this is no Robin Hood.  They live in a small village, based on such deserted medieval villages as Wharram Percy, though I have rethought and repositioned it.  On one level this story could be about the "real" reasons that medieval villages disappeared.  On another level it is about a young woman who sees beyond the ordinary and has a life changing adventure...  I'm not entirely sure what the story is about yet.

What I can tell you is that there is a changling, a shapeshifter, a witch, a deadly fever, a wedding, a child, an old woman and a pervasive mist - but some of those things have very little to do with each other (like the wedding and the child).  Several someones are going to end up dead, the village may disappear, and the poor shapeshifter may never figure out what happened to him... I have no idea how it all ends.

I'm off now to figure out why in the world the shape shifter IS a shapeshifter, why that is important to the story and what the heck his backstory is.