Post Posting Blues

Yes, I am still alive.
Yes, I am still working on the same projects.
So why have I been absent?
Truthfully?
It became rather a downer to post.  It seems that all I'd been doing is ranting about something or other and why it does or does not bother me.  I don't see the need to berate online anymore, I suppose.  And even when I praised, it would seem to lose luster or turn against me.  For instance, I'd had a post about the MTV series Teen Wolf.  I honestly thought that, as a re-imagining of the 1985 movie (which I saw in the theater at original release, for the record) had been clever, fun and engaging.  It captured the original in many direct as well as subtle ways.  A grand homage while still being a fresh take on it.  Anyway, the second season of it, my friend Buttercup and I quickly frowned.  It veered so far from the elements that made it compelling so as to be intolerable.  We stopped tuning in, and it left me nigh embarrassed to even have posted praise in the first place.  The post no longer exists.  It must somewhere in the Internet, sure. 

Yes, I know rants are a large part of the reason for blogging.  But the point is, that for good or ill, the bitching or showering of accolades doesn't have the same appeal.  Especially when it backfires, for lack of a better term.  Does it mean I'll never review anything ever again?  Well, "never" only works for Peter Pan.  Does it negate the merits of the first season (in the case of Teen Wolf for example) so as to not warrant the review?  No, of course not.  I just have a particular fondness for werewolves and the 1985 film. (I'd been in high school, okay?)  Had a moment of werewolf-like slashing there.

And as for Peter Pan?  Sure, there's been plenty that's come to the window.  But again, given my good-intentioned (or wildly obsessive, take your pick) purist nature regarding the eternal boy of Barrie... well, all it ever winds up is as another rant on the contradictive elements.  Which most times are immediately evident.  So do I draw attention to the works that, in my opinion [and some others I know], ignore the sanctity of literature?  At the very least it's disrespect of a fellow artist, not to mention a renowned one.   Not sure if I should or not.

What I do know is it always makes me sad.  And it reads as nothing but hateful.

So, to sum up, I tend to always have to remind myself of a quote from one of my favorite films L.A.Story:
I don't think you realize how unattractive hate is. - Harris K. Telemacher

Yes, I will still write posts.  Things are bound to come up that are worth mentioning. Personally I like finding obscurities, sharing new perspectives or analyzing Barrie's boy the best.  When such gems come my way, I'll post.


Oh - if you're wondering:  No, I do not watch Once Upon a Time in Wonderland.  Honestly?  Simply?  It didn't seem my cup of tea for Alice adventures.  And yes, yes I did watch the past season of Once Upon a Time which took place nearly entirely in the Neverland.  Did I like it?  I bet you can guess.  The answer is 'yes & no.'  Again, it's a re-working of it, so it took liberties.  Given that freedom to reinvent, it had good form and bad form.  All in all, it worked well.  I intend to write more.  Maybe I'll post a rant.

Twice Upon a Barrie-Land

There's more to report about how the TV series Once Upon a Time is handling the most famous work of Sir J.M. Barrie.  This post has spoilers, so be warned.  The first post is here.

This episode is a direct extension of the previous.  Its title completes the "directions to the Neverland."  I have that in quotes for two reasons: 1) they're using Disney's addition of the word "star" 2) they're not really the correct directions anyway.  At any rate, Second Star to the Right led into And Straight in 'Til Morning.  [There should be a "then" in there, without the apostrophed "till" but who's counting? ;) ]

Here's what we discover:
We do see the island, sort of, for we finally reach its shore.   In fact, as you can see, it's also the fantasy element shown this time amid the woods in the opening.  Okay, remember the character I'd mentioned who went in place of a Darling boy and fell into the ocean when struggling with the Shadow/Pan?  And I'd thought he'd be a pirate, then?  Well, he won't be.  You see, the boy pieces together that Hook is responsible for taking his mother away back in the land he came from and therefore wants nothing to do with the captain.  A little more on this kid in a bit.

We also see "The Lost Ones."  They've dropped the word "boys" for "ones."  I like it, for it makes it more intimidating.  And that's definitely the vibe they're going for here.  Besides that, they've got them in their early teens, if not teenagers.  So they're not exactly mere boys.  Oh - at least for now they do not fly.  They approach by ship.  The Lost Ones have a reputation in this world.  You don't want them to show up, they're feared.  They pester Hook because they think he's harboring the boy that fell into the ocean.  At the time he is, but hides the boy from them.  Smee (introduced into the show before Hook, for the record) expresses his concern about having any dealings with the kid.  He says, "What if the boy belongs to him?"  And the way he says it invokes a capital H.  "He'll be looking for us.  He knows this land better than we do."  Interesting, no?  Who could he be talking about?  I knew right away.  I bet you do, too.

Moving on, from what we have to gather, the infamous immortal boy of the island is not in fact just that truly scary Shadow from the other episode.  The Lost Ones tell Hook that He will rip your shadow from you as a punishment and it is reportedly very painful.  So it would seem the Shadow goes and fetches for a real boy, the leader of the Lost Ones.  But where is the real evidence?

Right around the bend.  Okay, the boy from the other world escapes Hook and is found washed ashore by the Lost Ones.  They examine him, but apparently He is looking for a particular boy.  It turns out he's not the boy they need.  One asks if they will ever find him.  Another replies, "Of course we will.  It make take time, but Peter Pan never fails."  Ah!  He does exist by that name!  And he's looking for none other than the main boy character from the series, of course.

To add more spice to this spooky spin, on their way to the Neverland via a portal (which they could only open with Hook's help!), Rumpelstiltskin says they (the other characters) have no idea who they're dealing with...and when is asked "Who's that?" the response is "Someone we all should fear."  Think about that for a second.  This is the Dark One saying to fear!  Granted, Rumplestiltskin has mellowed out a bit given his time as Mr. Gold in Storybrooke, and his literal (pun noted) relation to the other characters by blood and escapades - but he is still to be feared in his own right.  And yet, he's warning them.  Truth is the previous paragraph's events take place after this one's.  Know what that means?  He's talking about Peter Pan!

And so it seems that Peter Pan, in a new and twisted incarnation, will be the "Big Bad" for at least part of the next season.  For this had been the finale, and we are left hanging with the characters on their way to rescue the main character boy from his clutches.  I, for one, am very curious how they'll handle and depict Pan.  I bet it will be delightful.  Too bad we'll have to wait until the Fall!

Once Upon a Barrie-Land

This post contains spoilers about the TV show Once Upon a Time.  Proceed at your own risk.

I’ve made it known before that I enjoy ABC’s Once Upon a Time.  It’s a clever and fresh take on fairy tales.  Well, once upon a time, they expanded the definition by including the Lewis Carroll Alice tales.  A little later on, Dr. Frankenstein came into the mix.  Yet it still remained as fantastic as the stories from which it borrowed.  In a nutshell, “The Mad Hatter” explains to the skeptic character that all stories are histories.  They’re just told differently.  Our ‘actual’ history, in other words, probably lost something of pure truth in the writing of it.  Speaking sort of metaphorically, all worlds can be peeked into, or semblances of them.  In this way, we can allow for the spins on characters and events that we thought we knew.  The creators of tales heard whispers and tried to get it right.  Maybe they did, maybe they didn’t.  Of course, this only works within such a construct.  Separate Peter and Wendy and it becomes law until itself.  It can’t be told differently or contradicted or re-imagined… not unto its own telling as told by the author.   But the show does allow for deviations and it’s in this way that Once Upon a Time finally fully approached the Neverland.

With some rather unexpected results!

Hook has been on the show for quite a long time now.  However, we get to know him completely away from the Neverland.  Although we do know (and saw him chart a course for) the infamous isle.  [Once Upon a Time utilizes flashbacks to fully tell and realize their story.]  Their Hook is meant to make us swoon.  He’s much younger with good looks.  And his personality is sort of Jack Sparrow mellowed out with a touch of Barrie’s evil man.  The hook is on the incorrect hand, but then, it’s correct for Disney’s version and this is a production under their jurisdiction.  An interesting variation and major change is that Peter Pan did not cut off the captain’s hand.  Nope, not here.  Rather it had been the crocodile.  Except the crocodile isn’t an animal.  It’s a man with scaly skin, none other than the show’s Dark One himself, Rumpelstiltskin, who’d been thwarted by the pirate earlier in life before obtaining his magical power. The way I figure it, Peter would convince himself he cropped off the hand and bragged as such, thus the tale came to be.  For a whole season or so we’ve been wondering about the Neverland and Peter Pan.  Lemonie and I, and probably a slew of others, suspected a character as being Pan.  He even recognized and disliked seeing Hook.   But, we were wrong.

Well, they finally showed us how both the boy and the island manifestation in this version of fantasy on the episode “Second Star to the Right.”  Naturally they used Disney insertions into the tale of Peter Pan.  The second star to the right is one of two.  However, despite the title, it is never spoken.   We see a “second star” flash when Wendy is taken away.  And yes, I phrased it that way on purpose. For the living shadow is the other Disney touch.  Yet another unexpected twist.  It’s just the shadow!  There’s no boy.  He’s never referred to as Peter nor Pan.  Only the magic shadow.  Yet we can see that he’s dressed in leaves. Though Wendy wants to go (and it’s just her, by the way, not her brothers, too) the shadow forcibly drags her away.  She had been warned by a boy she’d been harboring in the house unbeknownst to her parents. (I didn’t know the nursery had a hidden compartment either, but it’s quite Barrie-like!) And oh – this boy happens to be from another world.  (This character fell into ours through a portal too many moons ago in the overall story.)  He fears magic, but away Wendy goes.  She comes back, though.  And mentions the mermaids and fairies…and the darkness at night.  She then describes the cries of children wanting to go home.  But the shadow won’t let them leave!  She escaped because it wanted a boy (imagine that!) and she said it could take one of her brothers.  The boy from the Enchanted Forest (the main place the storybook characters in the show came from) tries to defend them but ultimately goes instead to save the Darling Family.  (The boy lost both his parents, so it’s important to him.)  He fights the rapidly and dangerously flying shadow along the way, though, and plunges into the sea.  He’s picked up by Captain Hook.

As for the Neverland itself, we don’t get to see it other than glooming in the distance.  I’m not disappointed in that.  For their version needed to have it mysterious and foreboding.  Overall, I rather liked this take on it.  A recurring theme and line of the show all throughout has been “Magic comes with a price” so I enjoyed making the Neverland and its child thief as dark as can be.

Lastly, I’d like to say the portrayal of the Darlings is wonderful.  They certainly “looked” like them.  And how wonderful to weave in more of Barrie by having Mrs. Darling all too welcoming and ready to have another little one join the family.  Of course, Mr. Darling had two shillings to say about it.  But in the end, Mrs. Darling won out.  Any doubt? 

Once Upon a Time, thanks for bringing this to the dark.

MORE Upon a Time

Don’t you love it when a story gets better and better as it goes along? Yeah, me too.

That’s the case with Once Upon a Time.  It's gotten stronger.  I've since discovered that Lemonie is also a big fan.  She's just invested as me.  It's often shocking and always crafty.

I have to applaud this past episode. Not only did it deal with my favorite character in the show, it taught me a thing or two without me realizing it.

Rumpelstiltskin.

Before I go on, let me ask... how much do YOU know about this fairy tale entity? Probably, like me, just the basics: Little guy who spins straw into gold who gets paid dearly for his efforts, a la a first born child and only guessing his name will negate such a grisly contract.

But is that it? Surely there’s more to this character. What’s HIS story? (The familiar one with him in it is really about the girl who’s forced to produce gold from straw.) How is he even able to create a precious metal from dried grass? Where did he come from? WHO IS Rumpelstiltskin?

That’s precisely what the recent episode of the fairy tale based TV show is about: his past. Obviously not knowing much about Rumpelstiltskin, I let them present whatever they wished to about him. After all, a fairy tale is not set in stone by anyone one single author, so there’s plenty of room for creativity. And since what they provided not only gripped me like his hand on his walking stick but it fits more than properly into the world of “Fairy Tale.” It makes use of essential elements of the genre but doesn’t come across as cliché.

It’s pretty darn great when one winds up sitting and digesting for a moment or nine after the episode is over. So charmed had I been with their interpretation and backstory, I went right to the computer to look him up [after I’d “digested.”]  I’d been very pleased to discover actual lore about the character had been incorporated. Once Upon a Time has built upon a basic fact of him - why he is called Rumpelstiltskin (which is the same as what his name means.) From Wikipedia:

The name Rumpelstilzchen in German means literally "little rattle stilt". (A stilt is a post or pole which provides support for a structure.) A rumpelstilt or rumpelstilz was the name of a type of goblin, also called a pophart or poppart that makes noises by rattling posts and rapping on planks. The meaning is similar to rumpelgeist ("rattle ghost") or poltergeist, a mischievous spirit that clatters and moves household objects. The ending -chen is a German diminutive and designates something as 'little' or 'dear,' depending on context.

AH, so that’s why Once Upon a Time had the character use a walking stick in this episode... and why his counterpart in “our world” of Storybrook, Mr. Gold, has a cane.

As for the rest of their version, well, they took some liberties.  Then again, it is in fact true that there's not much to go on about this mysterious little guy.  And what did they weave?  Well, they spun gold.  I’m not going to delineate (and hence spoil) the marvelous backstory as provided by the series, but suffice to say it has some excellent twists. It gives a “very fairy tale” explanation of how/why he has his supernatural powers, and again, in a not cliché manner. I also like that it left at a cliff hanger of sorts. We now know that he’s going to lose his child somehow (which helps explain why he desires another’s first born) but as of yet it hasn’t happened. But we know it will... and the tension left at the ending scene is still creeping me out.

Meanwhile, the “parallel story” in Storybrook proved just as compelling and just as delightfully inter-connected as has become par for the show. 

I didn’t think it possible to make me love the uber-icky and twistedly awesome Rumpelstiltskin/Mr. Gold more than I already did. But the writers here certainly know how to manipulate my emotions - just like the character himself.

BRAVO!

Watch Once More Than Once...

Once upon a time...

creators Adam Horowitz and Edward Kitsis came up with a simple but elegant premise for a new TV show, Once Upon a Time.

I had hopes for this show.  Not necessarily high ones, but lofty enough that I wondered if it would be able to reach them.  As with most things, I waited patiently for it to arrive.

After viewing the pilot, I decided it to be worthy of another gander.  It didn’t blow me away, no.  But it didn’t smack of utterly lousy either.   In other words, it had potential.  So I gave it the chance it deserved.

Now many episodes in, I’m glad that I did.  It’s shaped up quite nicely.   I had wondered if such a simple plot could be sustained to a satisfactory level without being just a gimmick, and it turns out it can be.  Quite well.  What is this seemingly gimmick plot?

All the fairy tales are real (but of course) and the Evil Queen  has decided to take away all the happy endings.  She puts the most evil of curses on the land and the people - sending them to a horrible place: our world.  The characters are all now renamed and have forgotten their true identities and lives, living in a little town called Storybrook.  Just before the curse ‘hit’ however, Snow White and her Prince Charming sent their infant daughter Emma away via a magic portal.  Yep, Emma wound up here...ahead of everyone else.  Turns out she grew up and gave a child up for adoption.  Well, this child, a little boy named Henry, seeks her out as she is the only one who can restore the stories in his “magical” book of fairy tales.

It’s rather clever in its writing.  The counterparts (such as Queen/Mayor) work very nicely.  And the names are terrific.  Miss Blanchard, the schoolteacher... she’s Snow White.  Blanca/White.  A recent episode featured a maid named Ashley (sp?) and it’s learned she has two stepsisters and a stepmother.  Ah!  Cinderella.  Cinder/Ash.  Well played.  There are plenty of other allusions as such and it’s a joy to hear/see them come to light.

Since it’s on Disney-owned ABC, they’ve been using the Disney names.  Maleficent is mentioned, for instance, and the dwarves have the monikers made familiar by the animated feature Snow White.

It has enough questions that arise - such as who each character “is” or the mysteries surrounding the great tome of stories that the boy Henry carries around.  Where did HE get it?   Who would he be in the fairy tale land/s?  Would he be anyone since he’d been born outside of them?  What needs to be done for Emma to restore the fairy tales?

It's also interesting to see well-known characters behave differently.  Not just as their real-world counterparts but, for instance, Snow White as an outlaw thief (in the fairy tale land.)  For you see, part of what makes this show work is it doesn't singularize the focus.  We're treated to backstory in the fairy tale realm... which can also directly parallel events in the 'real' world.  Such as Rumpelstiltskin demanding a child for his services... but now he would have to go through adoption proceedings.  It's fun to see how the two worlds mirror (ha!) or collide with each other, as well as the welcome oddity of seeing White with a sword.  Thus, in both realms we're given new ways of looking at old stories.  And the "look" of the storybook lands is "just right."  

Maybe I’m just a sucker for fairy tales... no, that’s not it.  For it’s very easy to rework them poorly.  But this one seems to be doing something right.  A goodly amount of magic has been peppered into this show.  It doesn’t exactly sparkle with it, but it shines through nevertheless.