Tag Archives: Fairy tale

Tale as Old as Time: Why ‘Beauty and the Beast’ is a Favorite Fairy Tale

Ask me what my favorite Disney movie is, and I’ll tell you it’s Beauty and the Beast. Because it’s simply the best. “Beauty and the Beast,” “Belle,” and “Be Our Guest” are among my favorite Disney songs. Belle is my third-favorite Disney Princess after Aurora and Mira Nova, and Belle set the Disney trend for strong female heroines. Plus her golden ball gown is gorgeous. The movie has some of the most quotable lines (“You should learn to control your temper” and “if it’s not Baroque, don’t fix it”) . There’s a million little things I like about Beauty and the Beast.

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10 Ways a ‘Maleficent’ Sequel Could Be Awesome

Quick rant here: I really wish Disney’s live action team had some better ideas than to keep remaking classics as live-action films. They’re doing a good job with some of them—I loved Cinderella, remember?—but the previews for Pete’s Dragon and The Jungle Book actually turned me off. And the lineup for their future films isn’t very promising—with the notable exception, of course, of next year’s Beauty and the Beast directed by Bill Condon and starring Emma Watson as Belle.

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Of Villains and Victims

“It is our choices, Harry, that make us who we truly are, far more than our abilities.”  Over the last few years, I have come to realize that there is a lot of truth to this statement. Choices are what decide whether we’re good or bad, not what we’re capable of doing.  Choices also determine our character more than the bad things we put up with in life. There was a banner on the wall of my high school gym: attitude is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react. That is the difference between a villain and a victim.

WARNING: Skip the next two paragraphs if you don’t want spoilers for Supergirl

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How the Stepmother in the New Cinderella Worked

The world we live in isn’t perfect.  There are two ways to deal with it. One, either you take what you want by force and be angry about everything that’s not going your way.  Two, you can accept that you can’t change everything, and you can still treat others the way you want to be treated.

The two leading ladies of the recent Cinderella remake fell on different ends of the spectrum. I admit, because of the complete reversal of character roles in Maleficent I was curious what direction Disney would take with this new live-action fairy tale.  I wondered about the evil stepmother especially.  Would we see Lady Tremaine’s motivations for abusing her stepdaughter?  Would she be given a sympathetic angle? As it turned out, my questions were answered, but only very subtly–blink and you’ll miss it.  I have only figured out Lady Tremaine after almost a year of reflecting on the film and of course rewatching it multiple times.  Cinderella and Lady Tremaine aren’t much different from their counterparts in the classic animated film on the surface, but on closer inspection they are very well-rounded characters.

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