Fairy Tale Friday--Blancanieves (Maribel Verdú, 2012)

Hello and welcome to Fairy Tale Friday. Are you sitting comfortably? Good. Then I’ll begin.

This week we look at a cracking Spanish version made in 2012 that is the most original take on Snow White I have ever seen. It is set in 1920s Seville and centred on a female bullfighter. Did I also mention it is a silent black and white film? As a vegan, I was a bit worried about the bullfighting bit. I will admit, the film made it look more noble than it really is, but some of that is the time this was set in. It is a period piece after all. But it is clear from the filming and confirmed by the helpful “Making Of” extra that many of the scenes of bullfighting were filmed with Blancanieves and the bull acting separately and then the footage of the bull was overlaid on her as we view close ups of her face and the spiders on her eyes I mean long eyelashes and her swishy cape.

 The film was written and directed by Pablo Berger and was truly mesmerising to watch. According to trivia on IMDB, it was shot on colour film stock and desaturated to black & white in post-production.

The acting is superb. Both young Snow White and older Snow White are very good. Especially the younger version played by Sofía Oria. This was her first acting role and she had no prior experience. Her acting is natural and spontaneous. The older version played by Macarena García mostly just had to look wide-eyed/doe-eyed with moist slightly tearful eyes. The star of the film however is the great Maribel Verdú (you may recall her spectacular turn in Pan’s Labyrinth). Her face is so mean and her acting so good at conveying villainous feelings through the medium of silent film as she glares smoulderingly from beneath a black lace veil. The other star of the show is Gallo Pepe the rooster who wears a jaunty little spotted neckerchief and is young Carmencita’s only childhood friend and meets a sticky end from her evil stepmother Encarna. Which is a great name as it includes the word carna which refers to meat.

I could not find a cohesive summary and so I have combined two different summaries which I will insert comments into. The first is a review by ROGER EBERT  and the second is a blog by SPANISH CINEPHILIA    .

The story opens with a famous matador, Antonio Villalta, who is filled with swaggering ego. All goes wrong for him. He is paralyzed in the ring, and his beloved wife dies in childbirth. Their daughter, Carmen, is raised by her grandmother until her death. Antonio unwisely marries the heartless Encarna, his former nurse, who wants only his money and ignores him as he sits in a wheelchair in his room. Note: There is so much to unpack here. Antonio is very pious. He spends ages praying at the feet of a statue of the Virgin Mary before he goes out to kill a bull. We see his manager/friend roll his eyes at the amount of time he takes to pray. A local paparazzi with his enormous camera with a magnesium flash like the one below tries to get a photo but is rebuffed.

Antonio waves to his very pregnant wife in the crowd and shouts, “This one is for you and our unborn child!” Later, at the end of all the cape swishing when it is time for the bull to die, the relentless paparazzi sneaks over and manages to get a photo just as the bull is about to be slaughtered, but being a magnesium flash it goes BANG which distracts the matador long enough for the bull to gore him and him make him a paraplegic. Then his wife goes into early labour and after a very bloody birth (thankfully…I can’t abide scenes of birth where there is no blood) she dies and he cannot bear to look upon his daughter who is named Carmencita after her mother Carmen who had been a very dramatic flamenco dancer before her untimely demise. You meet Encarna here who is his nurse, and you can see the greed and long range planning on her face as she sees him paralysed and hears that his wife has just died. You see her making up her mind and then butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth as she nurses him back to health. We see her feeding him like a baby bird and him becoming more and more dependant on her. We also meet Carmencita (little Carmen) with her grandmother and her best friend Gallo Pepe the rooster. There is a scene of her being fitted for a communion dress and her effervescence shines through as she cannot help but dance around with joy. All she wants is her absent father to come to her big day at church, but he does not come. She feels unloved, but she does not know he is sat alone in his wheelchair completely neglected.

Her maternal grandmother teaches her to dance flamenco.  When her grandmother passes away, Carmen is sent to live with Encarna. Note: At the party after her first communion, when the child is hiding under a table because she is so sad that her father did not come to her big day, her grandmother entices her out and they do a raucous flamenco dance with lots of hand clapping and then suddenly the grandmother falls dead of a heart attack which is a terrible thing to happen, but especially on the day of your first communion. There follows a great scene where Carmencita’s white communion dress is slowly lowered into a tin washtub and when removed is dyed black for mourning clothes.

  Encarna forbids the child from ascending the stairs to the first floor – where her wheelchair-bound father lives.  Carmen is forced to sleep in a squalid outbuilding, and to work relentlessly on the estate. Note:  We see Encarna cut off Carmen’s black curls giving her a haircut like a boy to try to humiliate the girl. There is a really good montage of her working and you see the struggles of a real life nine year old as she attempts to do the tasks.

 One day, she decides to defy her stepmother and venture upstairs because Gallo Pepe has escaped. The child observes Encarna dominating the household's chauffeur in classic boot-and-whip style.  Note: Yes, we see the fabulous Maribel Verdú doing quite a bit of dominatrix stuff. There is a later scene where she is being painting in her hunting clothes with her dog and she insists that the chauffeur strip down to his underwear and wear the collar and lead of the dog as the painter shrugs his shoulders as if to say, “Rich people. What are they like?” While searching for Gallo Pepe, Carmen finds her father stuck in his wheelchair.

 Carmen and her father develop a close bond: he teaches her the art of bullfighting; and she dances flamenco for him.  Encarna discovers this betrayal and slays Carmen’s pet chicken Pepe. Note: This is a horrific scene where Encarna invites Carmen to dine with her for the first time and says “Would you like some PEPEry chicken?” and then plays it off like she meant the spice not the bird, but then she lifts the domed lid off the platter and you see poor dead Gallo Pepe complete with his neckerchief. This puts little Carmen off chicken for life. We then have a transition which is beautifully filmed where young Carmen is pegging out the wash and pretending the laundry is a  swishy cape and then she becomes older Carmen who looks remarkably like Marcella Detroit from the band Shakespears Sister.

 Fed up with caring for her invalid husband, Encarna hastens his demise by pushing his wheelchair down the stairs. Note: There is a scene after his death where they dress his dead body up in his bullfighting costume and they take comedy photos with his dead body.  She then arranges for her lover the chauffeur to attack the now teenage Carmen in the woods. In a brutal attack he strangles her, tries to rape her then drowns her. Left for dead in a nearby river, Carmen is discovered by a troupe of dwarves, Los Enanitos Toreros. They are bullfighters who travel between cities and look like characters out of a Tod Browning film. As she has no memory of who she is they name her Blancanieves, como la del cuento’ (‘Snow White, like her from the fairy tale’). Note: Here the dwarves are more like rodeo clowns. They have a comedy act where they bullfight a calf. They also have some distinct characteristics—there is the cross dressing one, the eye patch one, the kind handsome one (who becomes a sort of sweetheart to her) and the angry, sullen one with the pencil moustache who resents her plus two more who didn’t seem to have a distinguishing characteristic. They take her on the circuit with them.

When Pencil Moustache dwarf  is wounded, she leaps into the ring and distracts the bull, using the matador skills she learned from her father which makes him resent her even more. Eventually she, too, becomes a famed matador. An unscrupulous agent named Don Carlos gets her to sign a contract that says: "Blancanieves gives exclusive lifetime rights to Don Carlos for all properties, present and future." This will be her undoing. Through them, she rediscovers her knowledge of bullfighting.  She begins performing with them, becoming famous in the process. But she still doesn’t know who she is. As the story unfolds, Encarna becomes aware of the true identity of ‘Blancanieves’, and attempts to poison her with an apple following a victorious performance in the Plaza de Toros in Seville Note: There is a terrific montage of Encarna posing for the 1920’s Spanish equivalent of Hello! Magazine where they take pictures of her in her show-home in a variety of extravagant costumes with outrageous hats. She is told that she will be the cover article with her fancy clothes in her fancy house, but instead Blancanieves makes the cover and is their headlining feature while Encarna and her house are relegated to the back pages and the photo they chose doesn’t even feature her face. In her rage, she clouts her lover over the head with a statuette and then pushes his body in the pool. It is here she vows to kill Carmen at the arena in Seville where she receives top billing. At the arena an old friend of her father speaks to Carmen and says how proud her father would be and as she is on her way out to fight the bull, her memory comes flooding back and she knows who she is. Her stepmother is in the audience and watches her beneath a black lace veil. Pencil Moustache dwarf, who is still mistrustful of her, in a fit of anger switches the signs for the bulls so instead of a calf, the meanest bull is sent out to meet her. With the memory of who she is and her heritage now restored, Carmen swishes her cape and fights the bull and then at the end the audience waves their white hankies—the sign that the bull should be spared, so no blood will be shed that day. The audience are throwing coins and flowers and hats into the arena. Like a snake, Encarna slithers down with the apple and bumps into Pencil Moustache dwarf. She haughtily dismisses him calling him Tom Thumb as she picks up the apple she dropped. She offers up the apple to her stepdaughter, hiding her face behind the veil. We see Carmen take it—there are heart stopping moments where she puts it to her mouth, but then stops to wave to the cheering crowd. Then she bites and falls down dead. Suddenly Pencil Moustache dwarf knows exactly who did this shouts the Spanish version of “J’accuse!!” and they are after her. They chase Encarna into the shed with the meanest bull who gores her to death. Here is where you want a happy ending—the stepmother is dead, surely Carmen will wake up and marry Kind Handsome dwarf? But alas, not so. The unscrupulous Don Carlo owns her body due to the contract she signed, even in sleeping death. Here she becomes like Sleeping Beauty. A side show freak, lovingly tended by Kind Handsome dwarf.

 Slipping into a coma, the girl continues to function as a spectacle.  Patrons pay a small fee to be able to kiss her on the lips, in the hope that she will awake.  The film ends with Kind Handsome dwarf kissing Carmen on the lips: the camera closes in on the corner of her eye, detailing a tear brimming at its edge. Note:  This ending had me in floods. As you see the dwarf who truly loves her have to watch her violated over and over for the price of a coin it breaks your heart. Her hair has grown out quite long to show the passage of time. He is still devoted to her, but how his heart must ache. At the end when the tear comes out—is this an autonomic response or is she aware of everything that happens and cannot move to do anything about it?

This film affected me greatly. The style and cinematography was brilliant and the story fresh and original. You can watch the whole film below, but the title cards will be in Spanish (though you can follow it well enough without them.) But if you don’t have time or the inclination to watch a full length silent film just watch the ending which you can see here:  

The ending. *SOB*

 

The whole film:

That’s all for this week. Stay tuned next week for a horror film version starring Marcia Brady.

 

 

Fairy Tale Friday--Snow White The Fairest of Them All (Miranda Richardson, 2001)

Hello and welcome to Fairy Tale Friday. Are you sitting comfortably? Good. Then I’ll begin.

Last week we looked at a spectacular period piece starring Sigourney Weaver that showed deep emotions and a true look at what grief does to you. I had really high hopes for this one as it stars Miranda Richardson as the stepmother, but I was ultimately disappointed.

Snow White: The Fairest of Them All is a 2001 fantasy adventure film that was produced by Hallmark Entertainment and it shows. The film had a theatrical release in Europe but the following year it aired in the United States on ABC as part of their series on The Wonderful World of Disney which also is not surprising.

What is surprising is that it was co-written and directed by Caroline Thompson who wrote the screenplays for three of my favourite films—Edward Scissorhands, The Nightmare Before Christmas and the Corpse Bride. What happened here, I know not but the dialogue is flatter than a pancake that has been run over by a lorry and the costumes are that generic “ye olde tymes” period of vague clothes that are just suggestive of some general unspecific past.

As I said Miranda Richardson plays the stepmother and a few times you can hear a bit of Queenie from Blackadder slip into her inflection. Snow White herself is Kristin Kreuk whom you might remember from Smallville and her father is played by Tom Irwin who was the dad in My So-Called Life! Three of the seven dwarves are well known actors—Warwick Davies (Willow among other things), Vincent Schiavelli as the not so dwarfish one and Michael J Anderson whom you probably know as the dwarf who spoke backwards in Twin Peaks but whom I think of as staring in Julie Taymor’s stunning reimagining of Edgar Allan Poe’s Hop Frog entitled Fools Fire. The actors do their best, bless ‘em, but the dialogue is rather clunky.

But it is not all bad news. There are some interesting effects. The magic mirror is  a small piece of broken mirror set in a spiderweb shaped wooden frame which acts as a mirror, a flying weapon and a magic wand. There are a series of wall mirrors that reflect like a fun house of images that can either enforce your narcissism or taunt you into insanity.

The special effects are a mixed bag. There is some great prosthetic makeup, but it is like they ran out of spirit gum as all the prosthetics seem to gape away from the actor’s face as they speak.

Reviews were mixed which was no surprise. Here is a summary courtesy of Wikipedia that I will inert comments into.

John and Josephine deeply wish to have a child and when she is born with skin as white as snow, lips as red as blood and hair as black as ebony, they name her Snow White. However, Josephine dies in childbirth, leaving John alone with their child. Note: I loved the opening as it was on a bed of white apple blossoms that had fallen off a nearby tree like snow instead of actual snow that the mother bleeds on to make her wish, but that is all the blood we see as she gives birth in a spotless bed and then dies without bleeding out after having a traumatic birth so we were back to the unreality of white sheets and no placenta that so many of these tales seem to have.

 In the winter, John struggles to find food for his daughter, eventually collapsing and shedding a tear over a frozen lake, which frees a creature known as the Green-Eyed One. Note: The guy who plays the Green-Eyed one is the voice of Mr Krabs on SpongeBob SquarePants. His prosthetics are quite good but they have a tendency to gap.

 As thanks for freeing him, the Green-Eyed One asks John what he needs. John requests milk for his daughter, and the Green-Eyed One grants his wish. John then asks to have his wife back, calling Josephine his Queen, but the Green-Eyed One cannot resurrect the dead. However, he says he can give John a Queen, and John suddenly finds himself a king with his own kingdom. Note: In a sort of “this is not my beautiful kingdom” take on the Talking Heads, ministers suggest perhaps he just had a bump on the head and forgot he was king of this little country. So did the Green-Eyed One conjure up a country out of thin air and then enchant all the ministers to gaslight the new king until he believes it or did he bump off a ruler of an existing kingdom and threaten the ministers if they ever revealed to the new king that he didn’t use to be the king?

Since the Green-Eyed One is obligated to fulfil John's wishes, he pays a visit to Elspeth, his hideous spellcasting sister. He transforms her into a beautiful young woman who can now marry John and become his queen and Snow White's stepmother. The creature also provides Elspeth with a magical mirror that allows her to see others unseen and to deceive John. Note: she is truly ugly with large warty lesions all over her face and she hates looking in the mirror and feels like the Green-Eyed one is taunting her when he tries to make her look at herself. So her vanity issues are less about aging and being the fairest in the land and more to do with she is so excited to finally not be hideous that she gets obsessed with her looks. He forces her to shatter the mirror that showed her reflection as beautiful and glass rains down from the sky and a piece of the mirror falls in Snow White’s father’s eye which makes him see her as beautiful and overlook her less than appealing personality.  She also has a yard full of garden gnomes which will be important later. Watch that scene here:

 As years pass, Elspeth forms a good relationship with her new husband and stepdaughter, now a beautiful sixteen-year-old princess. However, Elspeth is vain and keeps a room full of magical mirrors which assure her each day that she is the fairest of them all whenever she asks. Note: This was an interesting scene and gave Miranda a bit of range in that she had to say “Mirror, mirror on the wall who is the fairest of them all?” in about a dozen different ways. She also has the small hand-held mirror cum magic wand and killer flying object I mentioned above where only her face comes out of the front of the mirror and the back stays flat and wooden. The wall of mirrors each with her reflection all coming out in 3-D must have blown their special effects budget. There is also a scene where her husband who is perpetually rubbing his eye has the little piece of glass fall out after 16 years of it poking his cornea and begins to see her clearly for the first time and realise how he has neglected his daughter as he only had eyes for his wife. What triggered the glass to fall out is seeing his beautiful wife reflected in all the mirrors gave him a bit of *schwing* in the old codpiece and he tries to initiate sexy times but she is repulsed and shoves him away quite hard and the glass falls out and he sees clearly for the first time in ages. Watch that scene here:

When Prince Alfred arrives in the kingdom and falls in love with Snow White, Elspeth is furious to discover that images of Snow White are appearing in her mirrors, which means that her stepdaughter is the fairest of them all. Note: Snow White has a great speech to Prince Alfred about how she doesn’t want to be loved for just being beautiful—that looks are not as important as being kind. Miranda Richardson SHAMELESSLY flirts with Alfred going as far as saying how much older and more boring her husband is. All the while the husband (now sans mirror in his eye) is giving that “Um…I am right here” sort of look to the camera. She takes the sliver of mirror and tries to spike Prince Alfred’s drink so it could get imbedded in his heart and he would love her not her stepdaughter, but he clumsily drops the cup of punch while rubbernecking to see Snow White. The sliver of glass pops out and lands in the eye of Hector one of the servants. He in turn falls head over heels in love with her and agrees to do whatever she wants in exchange for a snog.

   Driven with jealousy, Elspeth orders a hunter, Hector, to take Snow White into the forest and kill her, and then return with Snow White's heart for her to consume. In the meantime, Elspeth also transforms Alfred into a bear. Note: This is a nice touch as it mimics the fairy tale Snow White and Rose Red about a prince that is enchanted in the form of a bear. We see lots of scenes of a large bear roaming the woods and mournfully calling out trying to say “Hey, wait! It’s me Alfred!” but it just comes out like “Grrrrrr!” Then the stepmother makes him walk through the magic mirror wand and he turns really tiny and she imprisons him in a snow globe which floats down river until a racoon find it and jostles him about.

  Unable to kill Snow White, Hector presents Elspeth with the heart of a wild boar instead. When she learns the truth, Elspeth kills Hector, imprisons John in her mirrors and stifles Snow White with an enchanted ribbon. Note: Instead of being a pedlar peddling her wares and enticing Snow White with a ribbon, she just leaves in lying on a rock in the woods and Snow White thinks “Hey, here’s a lovely lavender ribbon that someone has just conveniently left lying around in this deep dark forest. I know! I will tie it round my waist like a generic costume sash!” Then it squeezes her innards and stops her breathing. Interestingly, she has not met the dwarfs yet. Every other version I know this event happens after she was living with the dwarfs. Watch this scene here:

Snow White is saved by seven dwarfs, each named after the days of the week and possessing the power to transform into a rainbow to move from one place to another (but are only capable if all seven of them are present) as well as control the weather. The eldest is Sunday, who is a victim of one of Elspeth's spells that has left half of him as a garden gnome. Note: Remember those garden gnomes in the stepmother’s garden? They were friends of the dwarfs and Sunday had gone to find out where they had disappeared to. He got caught and was transformed to a stone statue. The evil Queen had brought them with her to her new husband’s palace and Sunday in his garden gnome guise was Snow White’s only friend growing up, so he recognises her and vouches for her to the other dwarfs. When Snow White didn’t die from the strangling ribbon, he became half dwarf again and although the makeup is effective in making half his face look like it is still a statue, it gapes AWFULLY. There were times I thought I could probably fit my finger in the gap as he talked which is not good.

 The dwarfs allow Snow White to care for their home, though the dwarf Wednesday is initially suspicious. When Elspeth learns that Snow White is still alive, she prepares a poisoned apple and transforms into Snow White's deceased mother, Josephine, with the magic mirror the Green-Eyed One gave her. Aided by Monday, who is turned into a garden gnome afterward, Elspeth (disguised as Josephine) finds Snow White and convinces her to eat the enchanted and poisoned apple, which seemingly kills Snow White. Note: There are lots of tales (including this one) where one half of the apple is white and the other red. The transformation scene on the apple was a decent effect, but who in their right mind is going to eat an apple which looks like someone has covered half of it in Tippex? It is also a really good move to have her take the guise of the child’s own mother. Though she can’t recall her mother’s face being like 5 minutes old when she died, there is a *feeling* of warmth and familiarity about the woman who brings her an apple. Watch the apple transformation scene here:

With her task finished, Elspeth tries to use the mirror to become the Queen again but she instead reverts to her true form, even more loathsome than before. The Green-Eyed One appears and reveals that her evil deed has cost Elspeth her beauty. Meanwhile, the dwarfs, unable to revive Snow White, place her in a coffin of ice and leave her near Monday's statue. When she receives a kiss of true love from Prince Alfred (in his bear form) she is revived. Note: Sunday the dwarf also recognises the bear as Alfred and vouches for him too. He breaks the snow globe allowing the bear to take its full-sized form again. Then when the Alfred sees Snow White encased in ice, he painstakingly licks through the ice to give her the big wet sloppy kiss of true love.  

The spells on Alfred, Sunday and Monday are broken and Elspeth's mirrors shatter, freeing John. Elspeth is cornered and killed by the gnomes she had turned to stone, who have been released from their enchantments. Freed from Elspeth, the Green-Eyed One is able to go his way. Snow White and Alfred live happily ever after while the dwarfs decide to move on to find Sleeping Beauty. Watch the Queen’s demise here:

That’s all for this week. I really wanted to like it more than I did. However, if you are interested, you can watch the whole film here:

But stay tuned for a version next week that is a modern black and white silent film from Spain.

 

Fairy Tale Friday--Snow White: A Tale of Terror (Sigourney Weaver, 1997)

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

What We Ate Wednesday--A Sort of Pizza Bowl

Hello lovelies! This meal came to me in a dream (as so many meals do.)

What? You don’t dream of food? Just me then?

I was craving pizza, but we were out of flour to make a crust. I thought about the things I would have liked on a pizza (tangy red sauce, sausage flavoured mushrooms and onions, kale on the side, cheesy sauce) and thought about what I had which was an onion, mushrooms, potatoes and kale. I had cheese powder for a sauce. I had everything to make an amazing meal.

So I cooked onion and mushrooms with sausage spices based on a tempeh recipe from the PPK (Post Punk Kitchen) and added sautéed kale. I boiled potatoes on the side and then coated them with a tangy red sauce. Then I made up a batch of cheese sauce and drizzled it on. Hoorah! Pizza flavours!

You can find the original recipe from the PPK HERE. Tempeh is way more expensive than button mushrooms and this tastes just as nice.

This was really delicious and easy to do, but it did require 3 pots so a bit more washing up—but totally worth it.

A Sort of Pizza Bowl

Sausage Mushrooms

1 onion, sliced into rainbows

Lots of garlic, crushed

300g button mushrooms

Sausage spice mix (see below)

Juice of half a lemon

2 TB tamari or soy sauce

100 g (several handfuls) kale

 Sausage Spice mix

1 TB fennel seeds

1 tsp dried basil

1 tsp dried oregano

1 tsp red pepper flakes

1 tsp mixed herbs (mine has thyme, sage and marjoram)

 

Pizza Potatoes

400g potatoes, cubed and boiled until easily pierced by a knife

Red sauce—a few cloves finely chopped garlic, ¼ cup tomato puree, ½ tsp basil, ½ tsp oregano, 1 tsp balsamic vinegar, a TB water to thin it out

 Cheese Sauce

1/3 cup powdered cheese sauce FIND RECIPE HERE

1 cup unsweetened non dairy milk

1TB lemon juice

1 tsp wholegrain mustard (optional)

1. Cover your potatoes with cold water and bring to the boil. Cook until they can easily be pierced by a knife, then drain and set aside. Meanwhile, in a large pot sauté the onion in a splash of water or vegetable stock until softened. Add the garlic and mushrooms and cook down a bit and starting to brown.

2. Whisk all the ingredients for the cheese sauce into a small pot and heat on low heat. When the potatoes are done crank up the heat to medium and heat until sauce is bubbling and thick, stirring every few minutes. Remove from heat when thickened.

3. When the potatoes are done and you have turned up the cheese sauce, add the spice mix to coat the mushrooms and the kale and the lemon juice and tamari/soy sauce. Cook the kale and keep stirring until the kale wilts and turns bright green.

4. Add the drained potatoes back to their pan and add the tangy tomato sauce and heat on low until warmed.

5. Serve the kale and sausage mix next to the pizza potatoes and drizzle with cheese.

6. Take a photo and then smother with more cheese.

 That’s it. It was easy…but you do have to be watching three pots simultaneously. If you can’t cope with that then cook the sausage mushroom and kale and the potatoes, then heat the cheese sauce after.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fairy Tale Friday--Snow White (1987, starring Diana Rigg)

Hello and welcome to Fairy Tale Friday. Are you sitting comfortably? Good. Then I’ll begin.

For the next seven weeks we will be looking at film versions of Snow White that star a great actress as the wicked stepmother. This week we look an American musical/fantasy film from 1987 that was released as part of the Cannon Movie Tales series. It was released straight to video and stars the incredible Diana Rigg. Sadly, it will become obvious *why* it was straight to video.

The cast is quite good—Dame Diana Rigg as the stepmother, Sarah Patterson (Rosaleen from The Company of Wolves) as the older Snow White (with generic Sylvia Young School of Acting girl as the younger version.) Your dwarfs include one of my favourite actors Billy Barty as well as Mike Edmonds and Malcolm Dixon who appeared in Time Bandits. Mike Edmonds also appeared in Men Without Hats iconic video The Safety Dance. But the film is let down, not by the acting, but by the script.  It was written, directed and the lyrics and music written by one man—Michael Berz. To give him credit, there are some beautifully shot scenes with interesting camera angles (lots of shots reflected in mirrors of a furious Diana Rigg singing about being jealous of Snow White and one of her filmed though a large keyhole) and the props like the magic mirror are really, really interesting. But it should never have been a musical. The songs are generic and unmemorable and sort of tuneless. They have no range at all as if they were written to be sung by people who aren’t technically singers—and perhaps they were.

Wikipedia offers us a summary which I will insert some notes into.

The film opens with a handsome young prince traveling through the forest in winter with his men. In a forest glen, the prince finds Snow White lying in a glass coffin. The seven dwarfs arrive and tell the Prince of Snow White's story through flashback. Note: This is a really interesting way to start it. I had high hopes for it when it began this way but then the prince warbled a sort of tuneless love song and my hopes were dashed.

A courageous King and his fair Queen rule their kingdom well. One winter's day while sewing with her maids, the Queen accidentally pricks her finger with her needle, and a single drop of blood falls on the snow outside her windowsill. The King declares they will have a child with hair as black as ebony, cheeks as red as blood, and skin as white as snow. The Good Queen eventually gives birth to a daughter, whom she names Snow White, but dies shortly after her child is born. Note: Sewing and singing. The mother seems a bit on the sappy side but she and all her handmaidens enjoy singing in a Stepford Wife cheerful kind of way with her. When she dies and Diana Rigg comes on the scene there is no more group singing of sappy songs about snow. When she dies after childbirth, she is in bed with full makeup and covered in crisp white sheets. I suppose it is possible they changed the bloody bedding before her husband was called in to see her, but really if she was dying who would take the time to do that??

Some years later, the king marries again. However, the new queen  is evil and vain and jealous of Snow White .

Watch a clip here where Diana Rigg does her best singing a song and chewing scenery about Snow White being more beautiful then her.

When her magic mirror tells her that Snow White is now the fairest in the land, the Evil Queen orders a huntsman  to take Snow White into the forest and kill her, and to bring back her liver as proof of her death. During a hunting trip, the huntsman succeeds in taking Snow White away from her father, but Snow White, realizing her stepmother's plan to destroy her, manages to escape into the forest where she finds a cottage belonging to seven kindly dwarfs - Iddy, Biddy, Kiddy, Diddy, Fiddy, Giddy and Liddy - who allow her to stay with them. Note: Yes, I rolled my eyes here too. There is a generic song sung by young Snow White where she can’t keep any of their names straight. Also, it should be noted that they all have  completely different beds. Like a rock hard one, and a squishy soft one, a dusty one, a skinny balance beam sort of one and she has a weird singing montage about which bed is right like she is Goldilocks and not Snow White. She ends up sleeping –no surprise—in the only normal bed there is. Interestingly, the film says that the one whose bed it is, slept an hour with each other dwarf so that she could have the bed. This is texturally accurate as it appears in some of the very early literary versions but here is just an excuse for a comic montage of a dwarf falling out of several unsuitable beds. The King is heartbroken when he is told that Snow White had been eaten by wild animals, and later he is killed in battle.

Years later, Snow White grows into a beautiful young maiden. Note: An interesting thing I never considered is that she will grow to a normal height and eventually be too tall for their dwarf sized cottage with its low ceiling. So that was an interesting point I had never considered. Here you can hear them all taking turns to sing about their day. She sings of her domestic chores and her growing too tall (which reminded me of Alice in Wonderland) and they wear large hats shaped like giant mushrooms with a candle on each one (which is *definitely* a fire hazard) down in the mines.

 When the Evil Queen asks the magic mirror "who is the fairest one of all", she learns that Snow White is still alive. The Evil Queen attempts to kill Snow White three times. First, she disguises herself as a gypsy woman and laces up Snow White in a tight bodice, only for the dwarfs to cut the lace with scissors. The second time, she disguises herself as an Asian comb seller and gives Snow White a poisoned comb, only for the dwarfs to remove the comb from her hair. Finally, the Evil Queen disguises herself as an old peddler woman and offers Snow White a poisoned apple. Snow White resists at first, but relents when the Evil Queen cuts the apple in half so they may share it. Snow White eats the poisoned half of the apple and collapses. The dwarfs are unable to revive her, and place her inside a glass coffin. Note: Okay, even the great Diana Rigg cannot save this. Her attempts at costumes are so weird and her accents even weirder. Her gypsy woman looks *exactly* like the stepmother but with different hair and clothes (her face is the same) but with some strange hybrid accent that is part Romany and part American South. Then it gets even weirder. She appears as a Geisha with that “my feet have been bound and my kimono is too tight and so I have to take baby steps” walk as well as a verging on racist (or should that be lacist) accent. Who would believe that a Geisha would be walking around the woods in the 1800s????  Then she finally disguises herself in a way where she doesn’t look like Diana Rigg and uses an “Oo-arr oo-arr” West Country accent for her peasant woman. The lead up to the poison apple was fantastic though. She goes behind her magic mirror to her secret dusty laboratory where she concocts a Frankenstein’s monster sort of apple (complete with the lightning and “It’s alive!” sort of contraption). Does her husband not know she has a secret evil lab in their bedroom? Did she say “Honey, I know I’ve just moved in but I would like to have some construction work done but don’t ask the contractor as I want it to be a surprise??” Who knows.

Here you can see Diana Rigg in unfortunate Yellow Face:

The film returns to the present, where the dwarfs allow the Prince to take Snow White to a proper resting place. When Snow White is being transported, the coffin accidentally falls off the wagon due to a tree falling down by a snowstorm, causing the piece of poisoned apple to dislodge from Snow White's throat, and she awakens. The Prince is enchanted that Snow White magically revived herself and asks her to marry him, and she accepts.

Invitations to the wedding are sent throughout the land, and the Evil Queen receives one as well, leaving the magic mirror into concluding that the Prince's bride is the fairest in the land. Enraged, the Evil Queen smashes her mirror, which causes her to age rapidly. She rushes to the church in time to see that the bride is Snow White, and then disintegrates into ashes before heading back to the carriage. Snow White and the Prince are married and live happily ever after. Note: There is a great scene watching her age in the carriage on the way to halt the wedding. She arrives all hunched over and when the priest says “Speak now or forever hold your peace” she opens her mouth and a tooth falls out. She turns into a pile of dust as they look on horrified and then the priest says, “You may now kiss the bride.”

Watch the ending here:

If you really want to see the whole film, it is available on Netflix. 

That’s all for this week. Stay tuned next week as we look at Sigourney Weaver as the evil stepmother.

Mexican Polenta with Cheesy Sauce

Hello lovelies! We have had quite a bit of “something yummy over polenta” lately. Polenta is cheap and filling and warm and cooks quickly. What’s not to love?

This was a bit of a mash up of things we had in the house…black beans, salsa, frozen corn and some powdered cheese sauce. So it was Mexican Polenta drizzled with cheesy sauce. Yum!

This was also quick and easy. Made in about 20 minutes. Normally, when I make polenta, I add vegan parmesan cheese to it, but I didn’t this time as I was making cheese sauce to drizzle on top. This would take longer if you didn’t have the powdered cheese sauce made, but I always have some on hand for macaroni cheese or nachos. Find the recipe for cheese powder HERE.

Mexican Polenta

Mexican topping:

1 onion, diced

Garlic

Tin of black beans (or kidney beans), drained and rinsed

Jar salsa

1 cup frozen corn

Squeeze of lime juice (bottled is fine)

Cook the onion and garlic in a splash of oil or water and then add everything else and bubble until the corn is no longer frozen. Meanwhile start the cheese sauce.

Cheese sauce:

1/3 cup cheese powder Recipe HERE

1 cup unsweet non dairy milk (we used soya milk)

1 TB lemon juice (bottled is fine)

1 tsp wholegrain mustard (optional but nice)

Whisk all together and heat on low while you make the polenta.

Polenta:

4 cups vegetable stock

1 cup polenta

splash of non dairy milk

 Bring the stock to the boil. I like to boil 3.5 cups water in the kettle and then add some stock powder/cube to 1/2 cup that you heat in your pot whilst the kettle boils. then add the boiled kettle and it all comes to the boil much quicker than waiting for it come to boil from a cold pot. Does that make sense? 

Stream in the polenta to the boiling stock and whisk constantly until it thickens. When it starts to spit, take it off the heat and add a splash of milk. If it seems too stodgy, add another splash of milk then return to heat and make sure it is heated and then remove from heat, add a lid and let sit until the cheese sauce is hot.

Once the polenta is done, crank up the heat on the cheese sauce and stir constantly while it heats, when it boils it will thicken.

Serve the polenta with the Mexican topping and drizzle with cheese sauce. Then take a photo and drizzle on more cheese sauce.

This was quick and delicious after a long day at work. Yum!