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Category Archives: Uncategorized
Other Great Episodes of Faerie Tale Theatre
Last week, I wrote about the second season of Shelley Duvall’s Faerie Tale Theatre when the episodes were most consistently great in my estimation. But that doesn’t mean I don’t consider any episodes from other seasons to be great. In … Continue reading
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Tagged Aladdin, Cinderella, Faerie Tale Theatre, fairy tales, The Tale of a Youth Who Set Forth to Learn What Fear Was
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My Favorite Season of Faerie Tale Theatre
As some of you may know, probably more of you than knew about Jim Henson’s The Storyteller, Shelley Duvall’s Faerie Tale Theatre was an anthology show that ran from 1982 to 1987. Each episode was a retelling of a classic … Continue reading
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Tagged Faerie Tale Theatre, fairy tales, Jack and the Beanstalk, Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel, Sleeping Beauty
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How Into the Woods (2014) is Messy but Worthwhile and Why That’s Weirdly Appropriate
Many eyebrows were raised when it was first announced that Disney would be doing a movie adaptation of the 1987 stage musical Into the Woods. Dark, cynical, adult deconstructions of fairy tales are kind of the opposite of what we … Continue reading
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Tagged Cinderella, fairy tales, Jack and the Beanstalk, Little Red Riding Hood, musicals, Rapunzel
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The Real Problem with Emma (2020)
Back in 2022, I did a blog post about the three movie adaptations of Emma by Jane Austen. I had a middling reaction to the one from 2020. I admired what a good job Eleanor Catton’s screenplay did of compressing … Continue reading
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Tagged 18th century novels, Emma, Jane Austen
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You’re On the Big Screen, Charlie Brown! Part 3
Show the World What You Can Do: The Peanuts Movie (2015) When the news that Blue Sky Studios would be making a computer animated movie based on the Peanuts characters was announced, it was met with some skepticism. Blue Sky’s … Continue reading
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Tagged Peanuts
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You’re on the Big Screen, Charlie Brown! Part 2
Free as Running Water, Fresh as Morning Dew: Race For Your Life, Charlie Brown (1977) The first line of this movie’s opening song is “it’s a new day,” and that’s appropriate since the third Peanuts film represents a lot of … Continue reading
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Tagged Peanuts
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You’re On the Big Screen, Charlie Brown! Part 1
In the past, I’ve lamented on this blog that of all the Peanuts specials, only A Charlie Brown Christmas and It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown are beloved when there are so many others just as great or greater to … Continue reading
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Tagged musicals, Peanuts
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Adaptations as Introductions vs Adaptations as Commentary
This post is going to be a bit different from my usual. I’m going to be discussing a certain kind of adaptation, which I’ll call “the adaptation as commentary,” its advantages and disadvantages. As examples, I’ll be using two movies … Continue reading
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Tagged 19th century novels, Little Women, Peter Pan
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Animation Station: The Amazing Balancing Act That Is Phineas and Ferb
For a brief interval, (theater) enables us to become gods. Stripped of all nonessentials, that, I think, is the ultimate nature of the theatrical passion, and that is why in one form or another, practically everything that goes on in … Continue reading
Digging Up Dickens With Wishbone
I don’t think I could do a more entertaining job of explaining the premise of the old PBS Kids show, Wishbone, than this imagined version of the pitch meeting for it. VISIONARY: So there’s this dog.PBS SUITS: We’re listening.VISIONARY: And … Continue reading
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Tagged 19th century novels, Charles Dickens, Great Expectations, Wishbone
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