Our Coven: The Wicked Queen

Team Experience is assembling our own coven of preferred witches for Halloween. Here's Deborah with the true star of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)

Why choose between the sexy vamp witch and the classic hag? With the Wicked Queen, you get two, two, two witches in one! Honestly, I don't know why anyone roots for Snow White in this movie. The Queen has the wardrobe, the jewelry, the sexy butch henchmen, and a castle. Snow White has wooden shoes, dwarfs, and a lot of housework.

I always wanted to be the Wicked Queen when I grew up. And who does her makeup? Those lips! Those eyes!

Broom: If only. Disney villains die in falls from cliffs (it's a rule). If she had a broom, she could have survived.

Favored Spell: Poisoned apple.

Pointy hat: Ha! Jeweled crown, darlings. Jeweled everything. She's fabulous.

Familiar: Magic Mirror.

"Only Bad Witches Are Ugly": Wrong, Glinda. This one's both hag AND femme fatale

related posts: Snow White

Stage Door: Snow White's Final Humiliation in "WS"

I'm not sure that "stage door", our live theater series, is the right place for a video installation but since it's only "live" in NYC, here goes... 

If Snow White were a real Princess rather than a fictional one, you'd have to consider her corpse thoroughly exhumed by now. From the 75th anniversary of Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) which we celebrated right here through the release of three new filmed incarnations of the princess (Snow White and the Huntsman, Mirror Mirror and, the best of them, Spain's silent feature Blancanieves) and even a Broadway show Vanya and Sonia and Sasha and Spike which uses her costume (on Sigourney Weaver) as plot device and laugh generator, Snow White just isn't getting any sleep these days. She must be exhausted. But sleep deprivation might just be preferrable to the nightmare she's experiencing on Park Avenue right about now...

Elyse Poppers as "White, Snow" and Paul McCarthy as "Walt Paul" in WS

Read on if you can handle NSFW riffs on fairy tales...

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Posterized: Disney/Pixar

My review of Monsters University will be up tomorrow but for now, let's revive our supposedly weekly (ahem) series Posterized to look back at all 13 Pixar Features and discuss their chronology and, the fun part, their hierarchy. AND... I just keep gilding this CGI lily,  how they compare to the first 13 DISNEY Animated Features. Yep, throwing a little curveball into the frequent "ranking Pixar" conversations, I am.

Toy Story (1995) 3 Oscar nominations. Won an Honorary Oscar. Basically changed the (showbiz) world forever. [my ten favorite moments from this classic]
A Bugs Life (1998) 1 Oscar nomination (Score, Musical or Comedy)
Toy Story 2 (1999)  1 Oscar nomination (Song). It was right about here that people started arguing for an Animated Feature Oscar category (Tarzan and The Iron Giant were also released this year) but that wouldn't happen for another couple of years. 

And then...

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Stage Door: Sigourney Weaver in "Vanya & Sonia & Masha & Spike"

On Mondays, Broadway's dark night, let's talk theater! I have reason to talk tonight, shout even. The highlight of my weekend was an unexpected one. I agreed to see Vanya & Sonia & Masha & Spike with friends knowing virtually nothing about it aside from the safe-guess that it was somehow riffing on Chekhov and that Sigourney Weaver was in it. Sigweavie was draw enough. 

This semi-blind purchase happily delivered far more than just starpower.

The play takes place in a single weekend at the childhood home of the very famous Masha (Sigourney Weaver), an Oscar-less aging movie star who made her name on a violent genre franchise. Heh. That sounds so familiar! Is playwright Christopher Durang having a winking laugh at his close actress friend? more

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7 Days 'til Oscar: Costume Design

Each year at the Oscar ceremony I hope against hope that they'll ditch one of the numerous superfluous montages celebrating something or other throughout history and just do a runway show of the year's best costumes. On rare occasions we've seen a living tableau before the winner was announced and at least once, a Whoopi ceremony, the host actually incorporated costume design into the gig.

Imagine Seth MacFarlane coming out as Fantine in a shredded Les Miz gown or Queen Ravenna's raven collar dress. Sorry, no! I apologize deeply for putting those images in your head. Let's just say that I feel reasonably certain there will at least be a stovepipe hat during the ceremony in honor of Lincoln.

OSCAR NOMINEES
• Jacqueline Durran, Anna Karenina
• Joanna Johnston, Lincoln
• Eiko Ishioka, Mirror Mirror
• Paco Delgado, Les Misérables
• Colleen Atwood, Snow White and the Hunstman

will win: Anna Karenina, it's not quite traditional "royalty porn", their favorite thing in this category, but the Russian aristocracy is close enough.
should win: Anna Karenina, Durran continues to just amaze in film after film.
weird trivia: The Oscars love Colleen Atwood but she only ever wins when she's pitted against their other all-time favorite Sandy Powell
possible spoiler: if Oscar voters are feeling daring and/or sentimental you could see a posthumous win for the great Ishioka whose costumes always function as their own setpieces they're such scene stealers

OSCAR VISUAL CHARTS
My Own Ballot & Semi-Finalists with shout-outs to all the Oscar nominees (great lineup. well done AMPAS) as well as Sharen Davis, Kasia Walicka-Maimone, Caroline Eselin, Julie Weiss, Mark Bridges, and Manon Rasmussen

I think this begs a reader poll...

poll by twiigs.com