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Author
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Comment
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Lotti
Unregistered User
(5/22/02 10:38:44 am)
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okay, okay, grumbel...
Jane,
you definitely have a point there - for which ever house :O) Yes, I think in the movie that comes across really bad. And I agree, it doesn't support my idea of the children breaking the rules - it is an adult who does it. In the book, though, the whole point-awarding-business is a bit fishy, as teachers hand out extra points and deduct points more or less at will. But okay, okay...
:O)
Best regards, Lotti
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chrisrsmorriss
Unregistered User
(5/23/02 12:49:18 am)
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Film adaptation.
Yes, but the film did keep to the book in this regard. The book plot can be criticised, but I'm glad the film adaptation did try to keep as true as possible to the book. (even though perhaps the whole dragon episode could have been deleted, and replaced with Hermione's coloured potions logic test).
Chris.
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melissa2s
Unregistered User
(5/23/02 1:40:57 pm)
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do you guys know of heaps and heaps of jim henson the story
hi do you know of heaps and heaps of fansites decited to jim henson's the story teller?
from melissa
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swood
Unregistered User
(5/29/02 12:59:31 pm)
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Picnic at Hanging Rock
I saw Picnic at Hanging Rock, a very creepy Peter Weir film, for the first time this weekend. It has only recently (within the past year or two) been made available on VHS after 20 years of being "out-of-print."
The film is based on a book with the same title by Joan Lindsay about a group of Australian Victorian school girls who go on a picnic to a geological formation. Several members of their party unexplicably vanish. There is an enormous industry and mythology that has grown out of the book/film, especially as everyone wants to know "what really happened."
The most fascinating aspect of the film is that the entire story is almost certainly fabricated. No one has been able to track down news clippings or corroborative evidence that the incident actually occurred; but it seems so real that people insist it happened.
Commentary links the film to both Swan Lake and Leda & the Swan, because of some limited swan imagery. I find the whole thing fascinating, and the film is exquisite.
Has anyone seen this film? Any thoughts?
Sarah
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Charles Vess
Unregistered User
(5/29/02 4:58:43 pm)
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I love that film...
I saw PICNIC... when it came out and feel in love with the imagery and the subtle telling of a might-have-been ghost story, consequently I bought it when it first came out on video all those years ago and have treasured my copy ever since. Yes indeed, Mirandi IS a Bottecelli angel...
Years later I found and read the book, which interestingly enough was written by the daughter of the very well known (in Australia at least) erotic fantasy artist Norman Lindsay.
In both movie and book (but more so in the book) the ripple effect that this ghostly, unseen event causes, is quite amazing as it spreads across so many lives and so much time.
There could be a pretty amazing DVD version filled with all sorts of documentary evidence. Come to think on it PICNIC is an infinitely more subtle take on THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT type of film...
Have you seen Peter Weir's other Australian "fantasy" film, THE LAST WAVE starring Richard Chamberlin as a lawyer who becomes involved with Aboriginal shamanistic magic? It too is very good.
These two films as well as THE INNOCENTS, (a 1960's British film version of THE TURN OF THE SCREW starring Deborah Kerr) and THE HAUNTING (the original filming NOT the modern fiasco) are among my favorite filmed ghost stories.
Charles
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chrisrsmorriss
Unregistered User
(5/29/02 11:37:27 pm)
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Picnic at hanging rock.
My favourite film, and it's not even available in a European region DVD!
Given its near-cult status, I find that very strange.
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Jane Yolen
Unregistered User
(5/30/02 2:47:54 am)
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Picnic
Saw the movie years ago and was both fascinated and repelled. The imagery, photography, sensuality, implied mythos were marvelous. But I wanted an ending, damn it! Not necessarily an explanation, but some sense of closure. Very frustrating.
Jane
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Richard
Parks
Registered User
(5/30/02 7:47:10 am)
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Re: I love that film...
Speaking of ghost stories, has anyone been following the series of Japanese dark/horror movies that the Sundance Channel has been showing late night? The only one I've been able to catch so far was "Don't Look Up" (AKA Ghost Actress). Extremely suspenseful, though as a western viewer I kept looking for 'whys' that just may not have been there. Still, extremely interesting. Japanese traditional ghosts are fascinating to me.
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swood
Unregistered User
(5/30/02 7:55:47 am)
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Picnic, etc.
Charles,
Thank you for that interesting information. I had no idea of the relation between the author of Picnic at Hanging Rock and Norman Lindsay, who I am familiar with, if only because of the children's book, THE MAGIC PUDDING, (which mystified me) and the film SIRENS, which I enjoyed, though many pooh-pooh it.
I am trying to get a hold of her book, which is only available in a library binding.
I will have to see THE LAST WAVE and THE INNOCENTS, I am a big fan of Turn of the Screw. I also enjoyed THE HAUNTING, though it made me feel icky for weeks. If you have not yet seen THE OTHERS, I highly recommend it.
Something about summer makes me love ghost stories. I can handle them in a season of outdoors and long days,
Sarah
P.S. I heard that the directors cut has 7 minutes cut out of the film. I wonder which version I saw?
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shadowmann
Unregistered User
(6/24/02 5:55:40 am)
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movie fairy tales
I know a good one that no one has thought of. Groundhog Day, it is an updated version of Beauty and the Beast.
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shadowmann
Unregistered User
(6/24/02 6:25:25 am)
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top 10 fairy tales as movies
I have a good one. How about Groundhog Day? I saw it as a modern retelling of Beauty and the Beast.
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Gregor9
Registered User
(6/24/02 7:12:11 am)
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Favorites
Charles,
I'm not surprised that we like similar films, too.
"Picnic at Hanging Rock" has been a long-time favorite, as have most of Peter Weir's films.
And "The Haunting" with Julie Harris and Claire Bloom (I think I was in love with her for years after I saw this) remains my favorite of all ghost stories on film. Those responsible for the execrable remake should be beheaded.
I'm scratching my head over the "Groundhog Day" as B&B interpretation. I'll have to go watch it again.
Greg
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Jess
Unregistered User
(6/24/02 7:18:14 am)
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ground hog day
I have enjoyed all the movies that I have managed to see from this
list - and there are so many I hadn't seen, especially the Japanese
ones.
I see ground hog day as a variation of Pygmalion.
Jess
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shadowmann
Unregistered User
(6/24/02 8:30:14 am)
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movies as fairy tales
James Bonnet author of Stealing Fire From the Gods mentioned Groundhog Day as a Beauty and the Beast adaption. He said Bill Murray was the beast who had to improve himself (by learning to play the piano and becoming a better person) before he could capture beauty's heart.
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Victoria
Elisabeth
Registered User
(7/1/02 10:12:13 pm)
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Another good ghost movie
The best movie I've seen in recent months is _The Devil's Backbone_ by Guillermo del Toro. It's a ghost film that takes place in a an orphanage during the Spanish Civil War. The film is complex, dramatic, and has creepy atmosphere to spare. I hate to describe it any further-- just go rent it. Go rent it now.
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hellor
Unregistered User
(8/17/02 11:07:17 pm)
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russian
teriterals
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Mark
Unregistered User
(8/29/02 6:01:06 pm)
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let's see here...
...there have been so many great fairy tale films that I can only think of two recent ones, Lord of the Rings and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Both have been discussed here extensively so I won't go into detail, other than to say they get my vote for two of the best.
Australian films, or, films made in Australia; The Last Wave is a good film, but Walkabout (who features David Gumpilil, the same Aboriginal actor in The Last Wave) is one of the best ever made. There is so much interwoven into this seemingly simple movie about two children lost in the Outback that you can only glean it all by watching it several times. When I first saw it in 1971 as a 14-year-old, people walked out of the theater in stunned silence, as they did a couple of years ago at a recent screening at the Nuart theater, thirty years later.
Harry Potter; great book, good movie. I agree about the ending - it made me shake my head as well. I don't recall if this happened in the novel or not - I'll have to go back and check sometime, when I'm motivated.
I thought A.I. was one of the best science fiction films I've seen since Blade Runner. Why? Because it didn't involve a killer creature or android running around a ship or planet killing off the main characters (all here tired of that plot raise their hands!), or wasn't another sequel to something that should have ended with the first film, and their was no huge marketing wave for it at Toys R Us. It was also an actual story for a change, something many SF films aren't these days. In spite of some of the criticism of Spielberg making a "Kubrick light" film, I think that if Kubrick had made it NO ONE would have liked it, not because it was necessarily a bad film, but it would have been so depressingly dark and dreary and hopeless that mass audiences would have defected to the latest Austin Powers movie en masse. And if Eyes Wide Shut is any indication of Kubrick's swan song ability, I'm glad he didn't make it! I checked out the thread on which fairy tale themes were used in A.I. and I was suprised to see no mention of the most obvious, outside of Pinnochio; The Wizard of Oz. David's journey from the Swinton home (no place like) where he meets Gigilo Joe (the tin man), the (cowardly) lion head statues in drowned New York spewing out water, William Hurt's "Prof. Allen Hobby" (The Wiz), and there were other symbols I can't bring to mind that hit me while watching it. A terrific, underrated film. The so-called "aliens" at the end of the film were indeed evolved mechanoids, as is explained in the film itself. The ending was perfect, as it was wasn't happy or sad, but bittersweet.
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