MetaFilter posts tagged with Cinderella

Kindness killed, just as surely as the huntsman's knife

The Whelk — Thu, 27 Dec 2012 22:37:39 -0800

Seven For A Secret - an anonymous fanfic author creates seven unhappy ( or at least, unconventional ) endings for Disney Princesses by placing them in proper historical, mythological, or thematic context.

RIP, Lucille Bliss: Voice of Smurfette and Crusader Rabbit

zarq — Thu, 15 Nov 2012 14:47:12 -0800

'TV historians will tell you that “Felix the Cat” was one of the first images ever broadcast on television (when RCA broadcast a Felix doll in 1928 on experimental station W2XBS) — but it wasn’t until the late ’40s that the first animated character was created expressly for TV. Crusader Rabbit appeared for the very first time on KNBH (Los Angeles) on August 1, 1950, and featured a Don Quixote-like title character aided by his friend Ragland T. “Rags” Tiger as they pursued adventures in serial (i.e. cliffhanger) installments.' On November 8th, the voice of Crusader Rabbit, Lucille Bliss, passed away at the age of 96. Ms. Bliss may be more familiar to younger fans as the voice of Smurfette, from The Smurfs, or as Ms. Bitters on Invader ZIM. "Actors from her generation who came up in live radio, you'd do one or two takes with Lucille and she'd just nail it," said David Scheve, who owns TDA Animation and worked with Bliss. "She could do three or four characters in one [scene] and you'd never know they were all her. She was terrific." "[After Crusader Rabbit,] Bliss went on to hundreds of voiceover jobs in both feature film and TV animation, with some of her best-known roles being the ugly stepsister Anastasia in Disney’s Cinderella.... She also had roles in Disney’s Alice in Wonderland and 101 Dalmatians; Hanna-Barbera’s The Flintstones and Space Kidettes; Don Bluth’s The Secret of NIMH; MGM’s “Robin Hoodwinked” and “Droopy Leprechaun”; and Fox/Blue Sky’s Robots.
Ms. Bliss spoke about being Smurfette back in 2006 to the Archive of American Television. The Crusader Rabbit show was broken into 10 "Crusades", each made up of a different number of serialized episodes that were about four minutes long. From 1949 - 1951, ten crusades totaling 195 episodes were produced. But unless you're in your 40's or older, there's a good chance you've never heard of the show. The first 34 Crusader Rabbit episodes (two full "Crusades") can be seen in a YouTube playlist.

You too can be a professional princess

MartinWisse — Fri, 31 Aug 2012 04:55:17 -0800

"Little girls are AWED by a princess. A woman in a big, sparkly, puffy dress is a thing of power and glory to them. They will stand and stare, or scream themselves hoarse in excitement, or become paralyzed in wonder by A Princess. Some little girls start hyperventilating. Some just sit down on the floor, their knees giving out from under them. They run up to touch your dress with the same crazed look of a Twilight fan trying to touch that Edward Cullen guy at a movie premiere. It's so different from seeing a face character at Disney World because to them, Disney World is a far-off fantasy place full of strangeness and unreal scenes. But this is A Princess, in the real world, in their own home." On the SomethingAwful forums, AssassinPrincess tells all about how she became a Disney princess for hire, with illustrations. Surprisingly polite for Something Awful.

Fantasyland delenda est

prize bull octorok — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 11:51:25 -0800

Optimal siege tactics for taking Cinderella Castle (via)

Superbummed

Artw — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 11:27:32 -0800

"iZombie will be the last time I’ll ever write for DC... I decided quite some time ago, but waited until after the cancellation of my book was announced to discuss it. The short version is, I don’t agree with the way they treat other creators and their general business practices." writer Chris Roberson ends his relationship with DC Comics, pointing at a post by David Brothers as a summation of his ethical concerns. Roberson's work at DC has included turning around Superman after J. Michael Straczynski left mid-story, iZombie and a spin-offs from Vertigo's Fables featuring Cinderella as a super spy. He is currently working on the creator owned Memorial, published by IDW.

Cinderella, Cinderella, Night and Day it's Cinderella

kittenmarlowe — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 21:09:30 -0800

You probably know the Perrault version. And chances are, you haven’t been able to escape the Disney version. Maybe you know the slightly-darker Grimm version, or even the original story of Yeh-Shen. Maybe you’re a fan of musicals, and love Roger and Hammerstein’s Cinderella or Sondheim’s Into the Woods. But chances are, there’s a bit about this classic story you don’t know yet… Cinderella is Aarn-Thompson type 510A (previously), which is:

510 -Cinderella and Cap o' Rushes. The Persecuted Heroine. a) The heroine is abused by her stepmother and stepsisters and (a1) stays on the hearth or in the ashes and (a2) is dressed in rough clothing b) flees in disguise from her father who wants to marry her, or (c) is cast out by him because she has said that she loved him like salt or (d) is to be killed by a servant. Magic Help. While she is acting as servant she is advised, provided for, and fed (a) by her dead mother, (b) by a tree on the mother's grave, or (c) by a supernatural being or (d) by birds, or (e) by a goat, sheep or cow. (f) When the animal is killed, there springs up from her remains a magic tree. Meeting the Prince. a) She dances in beautiful clothing several times with a prince who seeks in vain to keep her, or she is seen by him in church. (b) She gives hints of the abuse she has endured as servant girl, or (c) she is seen in her beautiful clothing in her room or in the church. Proof of Identity. (a) She is discovered through the slipper-test or (b) through a ring which she throws in to the prince's drink or bakes in his bread. (c) She alone is able to pluck the gold apple desired by the knight. Marriage with the Prince. Value of Salt. Her father is served unsalted food and thus learns the meaning of her earlier answer. 510A - Cinderella The two stepsisters.The stepdaughter at the grave of her mother, who helps her.Three-fold visit to church (dance).Slipper test. 510B - The Dress of Gold, of Silver, and of Stars. (Cap o' Rushes). Present of the father who wants to marry his own daughter. The maiden as servant of the prince, who throws various objects at her.The three-fold visit to the church and the forgotten shoe. Marriage. Or here for even more in-depth.

There are over 345 folk tales that fall under this classification. Various versions include Cenerentola (Italian), The Maiden and the Fish (Portuguese), The Hearth Cat (also Portuguese), the Bulgarian Cinderella, Pepelyouga(Serbian), Papalluga; or, The Golden Slipper (also Serbian),The Wicked Stepmother (Kashmir), The Story of the Black Cow (Himalayan), Sodewa Bai (Southern India), The Little Gold Shoe (North Smâland), Conkiajgharuna, the Little Rag Girl (Georgian) , The Wonderful Birch (Russian),The Story of Tam and Cam(Vietnam), Katie Woodencloak (Norwegian) Fair, Brown, and Trembling (Irish), The Sharp Grey Sheep (Gaelic), RushenCoatie (English), Rashin-Coatie (Scottish),The Girl Clad in Mouse-Skin (Danish),The Green Knight (also Danish),or the Micmacor indigenous Canadian version. Some people see King Lear as a Cinderella variant. And then there’s the modern retellings.There have been plenty of stories retelling the Cinderella myth. Louisa May Alcott (of Little Women fame) had A Modern Cinderella:or, The Little Old Shoe: How it was Lost. Anne Isabella Thackeray Ritchie wrote the creatively-named “Cinderella.” Or how about Tanith Lee’s evil Cinderella (she also did an epistolary short story entitled “The Reason For Not Going To The Ball (A Letter To Cinderella From Her Stepmother)”) Gail Carson Levine’s Ella Enchanted (brief discussion of her inspiration) was popular enough to spawn a movie version (trailer).Mercedes Lackey has done a couple of versions (excerpts available at links). Or Jim Hines’ The Stepsister Scheme (preview).Gregory Maguire of Wicked fame did his own take, with book and movie; Phillip Pullman had hisown book and television series, whimsically entitled I Was a Rat!Chick-lit is an obvious direction to take the Cinderella story, such as Jane Heller’s Princess Charming. Napoli’s Boundis a bit more serious take on the Chinese version of the tale. If poetry is more your thing, there’s: Anne Sexton’s poem “Cinderella” , Jane Yolen’s “Fat is not a Fairy Tale,” Barbara Hamby’s “"Achtung My Princess, Good Night"Estha Weiner’s "Transfiguration Begins at Home", Ingrid Wendt’s "Cinderella Dream at Ten", Russell Edson’s "Cinderella's Life at the Castle" (scroll down), Margarita Engle’s “A Cuban Cinderella”, Enid Dame’s “Cinderella," (mildly nsfw), Olga Broumas' "Cinderella," Emma Bull’s “The Stepsister’s Story,” Denise Duhamel’s "The Ugly Stepsister" (also has a clip of the author reading), Guy Wetmore Carryl’s “How Fair Cinderella Disposed of Her Shoe,” Barbara Crooker’s “Masquerade” with, for some reason, piano and soprano, Caroline Hazard’s “Cinderella,” Henry Lawson’s “Cinderella,” Vachel Lindsay's “Parvenu,” Sarah Morgan Bryan Piatt's “Questions of the Hour,” Sarah Helen Whitman’s “Cinderella,” the always popular children’s poets Roald Dahl and Shel Silverstein had “Cinderella” and “In Search of Cinderella” respectively, Miroslav Holub’s “Cinderella,” Randall Jarrell’s “Cinderella” Yusef Komunyakaa’s "Cinderella at Big Sur" (google books), Ellen Kushner’s “Sonata: For Two Friends in Different Times of the Same Trouble,” Stephen Mitchell’s “Cinderella,” Sylvia Plath’s “Cinderella,” Tennessee Reed’s “Disney’s Cinderella” (google books), Elizabeth Maddox Robert’s “Cinderella’s Song” and Judith Viorst’s “And Then the Prince Knelt Down and Tried to Put the Glass Slipper on Cinderella's Foot.” Of course, the version most people are familiar with wasn't written down—it was animated. But it’s hardly the only animated take on old Cindy. There's the old Betty Boop cartoon or maybe a Popeye short. Tex Avery’s “Swing Shift Cinderella” (video) You can get hooked on phonics with Cinderelephant. Or, for those of a more Christian bent, Adventures in the Book of Virtues. Rocky and Bullwinkle did a fractured fairy tale version in Episode 15 of Season 1, though unfortunately no link. Technically not animated, but there's the lesser known muppet classic Hey Cinderella! If live action movies are more your métier, there's plenty to choose from there as well. The earliest I could find was the 1899 “Cinderella” by Georges Melies. Or perhaps the 1912 Cendrillon ou la Pantoufle merveilleuse , based on the 1879 play by Henry Monnier (Wikipedia). Then there was Cinder-Elfred in 1914 (for which there is almost zero information), followed in 1917 by The Cigarette Girl (not to be confused with the 2009 Cigarette Girl, which has nothing whatsoever to do with Cinderella.) Then there's Lotte Reiniger’s silhouette film Aschenputtel (UK only film here) (more about the amazing Lotte Reiniger and some of her other films here); 1937, Pierre Caron¹. The 1952 April in Paris (trailer) starring Doris Day has its Cinderella moments². The Bogart/Gardner The Barefoot Contessa continues the foot-fetish-fun with a meta kind of twist (clip) (the Food Network star took her name from the movie, but her show has nothing to do with Cinderella). The 1983 Bristlelip is a bit of a reverse-Cinderella based on the Grimms’ King Thrushbeard, and the 1984 Bearskin by the same director combines elements of Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, and the lesser known Donkeyskin by Perrault. Ever After, with Da Vinci as an unconventional fairy god-father, remains popular, as does the television miniseries The 10th Kingdom (trailer). Hillary Duff and Chad Michael Murray do the teen movie version.For a more Appalachian bent, try Ashpet. Or maybe you prefer a New Zealand bush setting. Or perhaps a Celtic Dance (part B, C, and D)? Then there’s the Russian Zulushka, directed by Nadezhda Kosheverova, and Mikhail Shapiro (clip), or the Czech Three Nuts for Cinderella. Or maybe you’re a huge fan of 50s “educational” videos, in which case “Cindy Goes to a Party” might scratch that highly-specific itch. Some Cinderella stories are harder to spot, especially when they decide to make everything go wrong. Some people (google books) see Stephen King’s Carrie as a dark version of Cinderella: “With the exception of the glass slipper, King has retained the essential elements of the classic fairy tale in his version of ‘Cinderella’: familial discord, peer pressure, and sexuality with its bloody connotations.” Or how about Opera? Michael William Balfe’s The Bohemian Girl ( libretto; photos) is loosely based on the Cinderella story. It has gone through many incarnations, including a Laurel and Hardy film in 1936 (TCM Article; NYTimes Review). The most famous song from The Bohemian Girl is “I Dreamt That I Dwelt in Marble Halls,” which, to go down the literary rabbit hole even further, was used by James Joyce in “Eveline” and “Maria” in Dubliners. Or there's the Italian Opera by Rossini, La Cenerentola (Italian libretto; story and audio clip; video preview). There’s also a film version of the opera. Cenerentola ’80, despite the name, is not based on the opera, but does have some interesting music of its own. If you prefer your musical theater without singing, you could always go for the ballet Cinderella or a clip of the Moscow Festival Ballet. And then there’s advertisements. The Disney Princesses, of course, but there have been some other, shall we say, less obvious uses of the Cinderella story to sell people stuff. Chevrolet, for example, had the 1936 advertising classic “A Coach for Cinderella.” Shoes are an obvious choice, for all that the shoes in question aren’t actually in the ad. I suppose pantyhose is also a somewhat logical choice for this 1980’s ad (youtube). Or hair products (though Rapunzel was even more logical). Or maybe what every princess wants to eat. A bizzare Cinderella themed advert for paint (youtube). Cinderella advertises for advertising. Fancy cappuccino, for when one princess isn’t enough. If not cappuccino, Cinderella is just a little naughty for fat free chocolate drink. Or then there's whatever they’re trying to sell here. Or hey, just go the NSFW route to sell… jewelry, I guess? Of course, not everyone loves the prominence of the Cinderella story in our collective psyches. There have been plenty (video) of feminist critiques (pdf) (and more (doc) and more (pdf) here (pdf) and here (also previously)) some with a particular slant, such as Laura Miller’s analysis of how Cinderella affects the Japanese beauty industry. Or, if you prefer the scholarly “critical” as opposed to the “I don’t like this” critical, there's a wealth of analysis. Fransisco Vaz de Silva analyzes the similarity between the Cinderella story and Irish folktales of dragon slaying (pdf) and also elaborates on “symbolic themes in the European Cinderella cycle”. Wayne Schelp explores the Cinderella motif in Tibetian folklore (pdf). If that isn't enough for you, have an obligatory tvtropes link, or Russell Peck's exhaustively in-depth Cinderella Biography To finish up, enjoy some clips of small children enjoying Cinderella. 1. His next film was entitled The Buttock. 2. Not entirely relatedly, the title April in Paris is itself an homage to the classic Jazz song “April in Paris” which has had renditions done by such luminaries as Ella Fitzgerald, Coleman Hawkins, Mel Torme, Ahmad Jamal, Stan Kenton, Artie Shaw, Bill Evans, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Coleman Hawkins, Frank Sinatra, Mary Kaye Trio, Billie Holiday, Benny Goodman, Dinah Shore, Glenn Miller, Doris Day, Alex Chilton, Tommy Dorsey, Blossom Dearie, Wynton Marsalis, Sal Viviano, and Dawn Upshaw. and Erroll Garner.

The Wonderful World of Babel

Rhaomi — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 14:42:14 -0800

Unlike many cinematic exports, the Disney canon of films distinguishes itself with an impressive dedication to dubbing. Through an in-house service called Disney Character Voices International, not just dialogue but songs, too, are skillfully re-recorded, echoing the voice acting, rhythm, and rhyme scheme of the original work to an uncanny degree (while still leaving plenty of room for lyrical reinvention). The breadth of the effort is surprising, as well -- everything from Arabic to Icelandic to Zulu gets its own dub, and their latest project, The Princess and the Frog, debuted in more than forty tongues. Luckily for polyglots everywhere, the exhaustiveness of Disney's translations is thoroughly documented online in multilanguage mixes and one-line comparisons, linguistic kaleidoscopes that cast new light on old standards. Highlights: "One Jump Ahead," "Prince Ali," and "A Whole New World" (Aladdin) - "Circle of Life," "Hakuna Matata," and "Luau!" (The Lion King) - "Under the Sea" and "Poor Unfortunate Souls" (The Little Mermaid) - "Belle" and "Be Our Guest" (Beauty and the Beast) - "Just Around the Riverbend" (Pocahontas) - "One Song" and "Heigh-Ho" (Snow White) - "Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo" (Cinderella) - Medley (Pinocchio) - "When She Loved Me" (Toy Story 2) - Intro (Monsters, Inc.)

My prince has come - and gone

divabat — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 04:18:56 -0800

Fallen Princesses : Dina Goldstein explores what life might have been like for Rapunzel, Snow White, and others after happily-ever-after. (via)

By George! and other puns

kyleg — Sun, 26 Mar 2006 16:28:45 -0800

March Madness: 11th seeded George Mason upset UConn in the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament this afternoon, continuing their unexpected streak of upsets. Their wins validate not only their inclusion in the tournament, but the rising status of mid-major conferences. The most prominent critic of the inclusion of these smaller schools has been CBS analyst Billy Packer, who verbally assaulted the head of the selection committee on live TV just two weeks ago, and has yet to apologize for his obvious error.

iconomy — Tue, 29 Oct 2002 06:42:30 -0800

Rumplestiltskin gets torn in half, Cinderella's stepsisters get their eyes pecked out, and Snow White's stepmother dances in red hot iron shoes until she dies from exhaustion. These are the original endings to the non-sweetened, and sometimes unsavory, fairy tales collected or written by by reclusive librarians Jacob and Wilhelm, better know as The Brothers Grimm. Their first book, Kinder- und Hausmärchen (Childrens' and Household Tales) was published in 1812. Several more books, mostly of folk tales collected from willing relatives and friends, followed, some containing bizarre and disturbing stories with less than happy endings. As the National Geographic Grimm site puts it, "Looking for a sweet, soothing tale to waft you toward dreamland? Look somewhere else. The stories collected by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm in the early 1800s serve up life as generations of central Europeans knew it—capricious and often cruel." Check out the strange 1960 Mp3s and RealAudio files of some Grimm tales.