Yes, No, Maybe So: Veronica Mars

I have a confession to make. I, Dancin' Dan, am one of the crazy Veronica Mars superfans who donated to the record-breaking Kickstarter campaign to fund the Veronica Mars movie. And I have followed the making of said movie very eagerly. So when the official theatrical trailer was released yesterday, I was quite excited to see both what it would look like and what the reaction from non-fans would be. So while my answer to our eternal trailer query may be obvious, I'm very curious to know what people with little to no knowledge of the TV show think. Marshmallows, come gush with me!

Y|N|MS breakdown is after the jump...

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Snow Queens who have gone before us

It’s Tim, with a little bit of animation history for y’all. Not that you’d be able to tell from the details dribbled out so far (estranged sisters, talking snowmen, reindeer acting like dogs), but the impending Disney film Frozen began its development as a dramatic musical adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Snow Queen”, a story first published in 1845. By this point, Frozen has drifted far enough from Andersen’s fairy tale that it’s probably more of an honorary adaptation than anything else, but that’s not all that unusual for Disney animated features. In the meanwhile, anyone looking to get their fix with a more authentic, faithful version of the story can look to a lengthy tradition of Snow Queen animated films, stretching back more than half a century.

From Russia to London with Sigourney-Love after the jump...

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Monologue: "Sense and Sensibility"

Andrew here with your weekly monologue.

Of the half dozen, or so actresses, who ruled the awards’ races in the nineties Emma Thompson’s reign of the decade is my favourite, especially for how it subverts the notions of what kind of performances awards bodies like to honor. Usually, dissenters of award competitions cry out that they're intrinsically terrible always mistaking the Biggest for the Best but the love affair with Emma in the 90s is proof as good as any that quiet excellence can be appreciated, too. Emma’s exceptionally worthy Oscar win for Margaret Schlegel in Howards End (1992) is one of the most low-key turns to have earned the statue. Yet more muted is her Elinor Dashwood three years later in Sense and Sensibility (1995), the deliverer of this week's monologue. 

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Our Coven: Anjelica Huston IS The Grand High Witch

I was all about to complete "Our Coven" -- our series of holiday witch posts -- in the traditional way when I realized that this requested review of The Witches that I'd written years ago had been lost from the internet! So we must repost with a couple minor updates. I hope you'll enjoy this look back at a key film from 1990.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!
Celebrate with The Witches 

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Stage Door: Romeo and Juliet x 3

In the Stage Door series we look at current theatrical productions with our cinematic eye. Here's Jose on Romeo & Juliet

Some time within the last 14 days, I subjected myself to three versions of William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet playing in NYC. "Subjected?" you ask, well dear reader, each of them was perhaps more horrifying than the previous, leading me to ask if I wasn't an unwitting participant in some Shakespeare-meets-Halloween project. However in the name of scientific research I've come back with some results.

The versions in question are...

1) a Broadway update (the first in over four decades) starring Condola Rashad and Orlando Bloom as the infamous lovers from Verona.
2) a new film (written by Julian Fellowes) starring Oscar nominee Hailee Steinfeld as Juliet and Damian Lewis as her dad
3) an off-Broadway version with Elizabeth Olsen and newcomer Julian Cihi as the title characters.

Both theater versions feature anachronisms and are set in unspecified times, the film version inversely has a time-appropriate setting yet somehow it doesn't feel like the most old fashioned of them.

The Best and Worst of each pair after the jump...

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