Endicott Redux

The Power of a Great Idea: With Thanks to Colleen Mondor

Just wanted to give another round of thank yous to Colleen Mondor, who set up last week's fabulous Summer Blog Blast Tour of 50 Authors. The whole project was incredibly informative, insightful, and inspirational, opening the door to a new and dynamic way to meet authors and read about their works.

Here's a bit from Colleen's recent blog post about the experience:
"I began organizing the Summer Blog Blast Tour a couple of months ago, for reasons I explained earlier. I had hopes that it would introduce readers to authors they have not been aware of and give them some insight into how some of their favorite books were written. I envisioned lots of jumping from site to site as readers followed the daily link lists and became more and more interested in what the SBBT was trying to accomplish. I thought I might hear from some authors or publishers who found our work to be worthwhile. I thought we might connect with a few people - I hoped we would.

"But really-- I had no idea we would hit this one so incredibly freaking far out of the litblogosphere ballpark...."

The Last Knit: Rapunzel with knitting needles.

I know this little CGI film has made the circuit, especially of knitters' blogs, but after posting recently on Disney's new Rapunzel Unbraided, I was completely entranced with this bizarre and wonderful film by Finnish filmmaker Laura Neuvonen. In addition to being screened all over the net (and viewed by some accounts around 900,000 times) it also has appeared in over 40 film festivals and won the 2005 award for Best Film for Adults at the International Festival for Animation in Riga.

Since I have been posting about the move away from traditional styles of animation (all those hand drawn cells) I thought you might get a kick out of this hilarious spoof from Cal Arts Animation School -- which recently moved to an all "motion capture" style of animating. Glen Keane (of Rapunzel Unbraided fame) is briefly interviewed. The film is a riot.

Summer Blog Blast of interviews with authors of Young Adult fiction

Just a reminder that the week is speeding by and there are quite a few great interviews out there in the blogosphere. For instance, don't miss Gwenda Bond's interviews with Ysabeau Wilce, Cecil Castelluci, and Holly Black over at Shaken & Stirred.

You can see the full schedule of interviews at the organizing host's website: Colleen Mondor's Chasing Ray. It's been a great week!

20 years ago, when Endicott began....

We're continuing to add pictures to the Endicott Circle: Then and Now page, and we put a few new ones up this week. Can you guess who the writer above is? Scroll through the page and you'll find the new pictures inserted here and there....

Frida Kahlo Centennial: 1907-2007

To celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of one of Mexico's best-known painters, Mexico City is hosting the largest exhibition of Frida Kahlo's work even seen in one place. About 350 paintings will go one display (quite a few of them which are on loan from private collectors) along with 50 of her personal letters and about 100 previously unseen photographs. The exhibition held in Mexico City's Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes y Literatura will run from June 13 to August 13, 2007. Check here for more information on the show.

Additionally, there will be a fabulous exhibition at the Blue House (Frida and Diego's home in Coyoacan,  Mexico) of both Frida and Diego Rivera's letters and work entitled "Treasures of the Blue House." Here's a description of the exhibition (which opens July 6th): "The museum of Mexican artists Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera will exhibit never-before-seen drawings and personal items. To commemorate 100 years since her birth, Frida Kahlo's Mexico City family home-turned-museum will display clothing, drawings, photographs and tidbits of the eccentric artist's daily life. The items were found inside trunks and in an unused bathroom three years ago and have never before been shown publicly.

"The collection includes corsets that Kahlo used to support her back, which was fractured in a bus accident when she was a young girl. It reflects snippets of her daily life, including a trolley car ticket with a scribbled note by Kahlo and a napkin marked with a lipstick kiss, along with letters from European artists and 102 never-before-seen drawings by Kahlo. 'It's an archive that is full of life . . . from the kisses shown in the photos to the notes scribbled on the back of them,' curator Pablo Ortiz said. 'It exudes her.' "

Check "Frida Kahlo & Contemporary Thoughts" for more information on this and other commemorative exhibitions around the United States. This site also has a number of interesting essays and links to other notable Kahlo sites.

I would also like to re-recommend a gorgeous book that came out last year: The Diary of Frida Kahlo: An Intimate Self Portrait. The diary, printed on heavy, glossy paper, reproduces Frida's private journals -- a gorgeous mixture of art and text. There is a brilliant introduction by Mexican author Carlos Fuentes and the Spanish entries have been translated with commentaries by Sarah M. Lowe.

If you can't make it to Mexico over the summer, stop by Olga's Gallery to have a look at one of the best collections of Kahlo's paintings online. The photograph above of Frida at the Blue House is from the Florence Arquin Papers in the Archives of American Art.

Rapunzel Unbraided

I have been following with interest the long struggle by Disney Studios to bring an animated version of Rapunzel to the big screen. This film was slated to come out sometime in 2007, but after multiple set backs, different scripts, different directors, and a change in animation style, it appears the film is finally back in production and scheduled for 2009.

Almost as interesting as the prospect of the film has been the struggle to bring it about. Glen Keane, Disney big-gun animator, was the original director of the film. His early concepts were to keep the story close to the Grimms' version (and without the more contemporary slapstick treatment of say Shrek) and the art was to have a hand-drawn richness and painterly style as opposed to computer generated (CG) figures. Keane looked to artists like Rococo painter Jean-Honore Fragonard ("The Swing") for visual inspiration.

Along the way Disney purchased control of Pixar, Disney's CEO changed hands, and John A. Lasseter, newly in charge of Disney's projects, made a number of changes  -- including requiring the film be produced in CGI and adding a new co-director, Dean Wellins. Keane relented on his stand for traditional animation style when he saw the test films done to reproduce in CGI the visual lushness he was looking for in his original concept of the film. (It has also helped that technology has finally caught up in CGI to make it look...well, retro again!)

The story apparently is still getting some work...and not all the actors have been cast. (I keep reading conflicting rumors that Reese Witherspoon was originally signed on to the project, left after she thought it was turning into a different film, but maybe has returned? as she is listed in the 2009 update.) For more updates on the film, I recommend checking into either Jim Hill Media (which hosts a wide range of guest bloggers) or Tag Blog (thoughts from The Animators' Guild) for more information on this film and all things Disney. Also, check here to see more of Glen Keane's art concepts for the film.

It should be interesting to see what Disney and Keane come up with as Rapunzel has so many edgy little moments in it that ought to make it hard to translate it into a charming musical fairy tale. On the other hand, violence, imprisonment, and cruel parents have never stopped Disney before.

But before you go, do have a look at Terri's recent article on the history of Rapunzel -- it's fascinating.

(All the images in this post are copyright 2005 Disney Enterprises Inc.)

Charles Vess: Stardust Rising

For those of you traveling through Virginia this summer and fall, consider making a side-trip to Abingdon Virginia to the William King Regional Arts Center which is hosting a huge exhibition (and lots of fun events) of Charles Vess' Stardust Art. The exhibition "Stardust Rising" features 35 Stardust paintings -- some of them on loan from current owners in the States and abroad and not seen in public for the last ten years. What a great opportunity to see all of this fabulous work in one place. Check here to see the planned events over the summer: including costume parties, movies, workshops, and a gala showing of the film, and a Stardust Festival in September.

And it wouldn't be a Charles Vess exhibition if it didn't have "visual spice," including a replica of Charles' own studio (a heavenly place, by the way, filled with visual treasures everywhere the eye looks!) and a huge sculptural tree that echoes the tree in his "Fairy Market" painting. Check out the photos of the exhibition on Charles' blog -- and stay tuned as Charles promises to update the blog with photos of the costumes.

Theodora Goss: In The Forest of Forgetting

Now out in paperback, Theodora Goss' exquisite collection of short stories, In the Forest of Forgetting, will delight and haunt readers of contemporary fairy tales. In "The Rose and Twelve Petals" Goss embroiders an elaborate tapestry of the Briar Rose tale, told from multiple perspectives (including the spindle), with an ironic and feminist ending. In the gorgeous tale  "The Wings of Meister Wilhelm" (nominated for a World Fantasy Award), a lonely girl helps her violin teacher to construct artificial wings which will enable him to escape persecution and sail upward to a floating city of music and art.  And Miss Emily Gray, a  witch who appears in three of the tales, employs her arts to help children to realize their hearts' desires -- though not always in the manner they anticipated. Like the best fairy tales, many of these stories have dark threads amid the bright strands, but the endings, whether leaning toward happily-ever-after or sorrowful and troubled, are immensely satisfying.

Goss' prose is elegant and lovely -- these are literary tales with the charm of the European salon, but the wry wit of a contemporary author. The settings move effortlessly from Eastern European cities and villages, Paris cafes, New York apartments, and  American Southern drawing rooms. "Sleeping With Bears" is certainly one of the funniest jabs on snobbery as a status-seeking Southern family permits the marriage of their daughter to a bear with money and an impressive lineage. There are also imaginary worlds: Professor Berkowitz is given the option to cross the "Threshold" into a mystical realm and to join with other rebels, artists, and poets who have transcended the bonds of ordinary life, while the girls in "Lessons with Miss Gray" make tangible the fantasy worlds of their hearts' desires.

This is a really wonderful collection -- and if you missed it last year when it first appeared in hard cover, consider giving it a look now. Visit Dora's website to read a recent interview on the collection. You can also find a few of the stories from the collection online here. 

The Summer Blog Blast Tour of Young Adult Author Interviews

Here's a huge thank you to Colleen Ward of Chasing Ray for having organized the spectacular Summer Blog Blast week long tour of over 25 authors to be interviewed on some of the most interesting YA litblogs out there. Yesterday saw the first interview of Gene Yang, author of American Born Chinese -- a brilliant YA graphic novel that combines three parallel stories, the life of the Monkey King from Chinese folklore, and two contemporary Chinese American boys working out their identities. The novel won the 2006 Cybil Award, and was the first graphic novel to be nominated for a National Book Award. The interview can be found at Finding Wonderland.

Today, Colleen Ward has posted a fabulous interview with Tom and Dorothy Hoobler, authors of The Monsters, Mary Shelley and the Curse of Frankenstein, a wonderful history of the origins of Mary Shelley's most famous story, and the tragedies that followed in the wake of its publication. (This is an especially important biography given the recent scholarship claiming Mary Shelley did not write Frankenstein. Read the Hooblers' response to John Lauritsen's work here.)

Elsewhere on the tour today one can read an interview with Justine Larbalestier (winner of the André Norton Award for Magic or Madness) at A Chair, A Fireplace & A Tea Cozy and Yseabeau Wilce (author of Flora Segunda) at Finding Wonderland. Holly Black is scheduled for an interview on Tuesday at YA YA YAs.

There are many other terrific authors and interviews, and this is a great opportunity to read up on some of the most engaging young adult literature being written today (and discover some excellent litblogs!). Check here for the full schedule for the coming week.

(The painting above, "Study for Reading Table," is by Lord Frederick Leighton.)

The Sunday Poems

Our Sunday Poems today, by Wendy Carlisle, imagine what happens after the end of familiar stories. In "Dorothy, After," the heroine of The Wizard of Oz reflects on her adult life in the mundane world she'd been so eager to return to.

In "The Fairest,"  we see Snow White's step-mother years later -- a widow now, left alone with her mirror, her faded beauty, and her memories. Both poems come from The 2River View, an excellent webzine of poetry and art, online since 1996.

Wendy Taylor Carlisle lives in east Texas. Her award-winning poetry has appeared in a wide variety of print and web journals, and she is the author of one poetry collection, Reading Berryman to the Dog (Jacarunda Press). 

The painting of Snow White's step-mother above is by the award-winning illustrator P.J. Lynch, who lives and works in Dublin, Ireland. A history of the Snow White fairy tale can be found in the current issue of the Journal of Mythic Arts.