Sunday 14 December 2008

The Big Bad

Once again, the underlying themes of illicit sex and murder present in the classic fairytale are exploded, this time in The Big Bad, a short film from amateur film-maker "LimeAftertasteLLC," who gives the story a sapphic twist. If I'm being frank though, some of the acting on display is questionable at best.

(warning: mature content)




All Roads Lead From Home


It may not be strictly a LRRH game, but there's definitely some familiar themes going on in old favourite auntie pixelante's game All Roads Lead From Home. Just remember: it's dangerous to stray from the path, young child!

Fesign's Little Red Riding Hood



More Flickr now, this time with fesign's take on Little Red Riding Hood (warning: some more mature-themed photography in this photographer's stream).

Denise Alba's Fairytale Flickr


Denise Alba has a great fairytale-themed set up on Flickr, including images of LRRH as well as other fairytale-inspired creations, all of which have the same wonderful aesthetic on display.

Sunday 30 November 2008

A pair of The Company of Wolves fan videos

I've nothing really substantial to post right now, but the fact that I caught both Time Bandits and Legend on TV this weekend has really put me in the mood for some '80s fantasy films. In lieu of a more substantial post on the subject, here's a nice little erotic vignette featuring clips from The Company of Wolves and music from Meat Loaf.



...And yet another fan-made music video, using clips from same:



Thursday 27 November 2008

The Path


Far and away one of the most interesting LRRH-themed games I've heard about is Tale of Tales' The Path, due for release next year. From the official website:

The Path is a short horror game with a unique form of gameplay, designed to immerse you deeply into the dark themes of its story. Every interaction in the game expresses an aspect of the narrative.

There is one rule in the game. And it needs to be broken.
There is one goal. And when you attain it, you die.

Obviously I can't speak on the quality of the finished product, but based on the concept alone this seems like a fascinating game: a perfect example of form mirroring content. As the title illustrates, the game focuses primarily on what path you take through the forest and what choices you, as Little Red Riding Hood(s) make whilst inside. Video games have a complicated relationship with free will and determinism: the player has the illusion of choice, but is really very constricted by both the limiting path mapped out by the game and by the limited grammar of the game's construction, preventing one from truly doing whatever one wants.

The Path exploits this idea, relating it back to the way in which fairy tales such as Little Red Riding Hood operate. The game not only reflects events within the classic tale - Red's choice of the path of needles or the path of pins, the way her mother advised or the way the wolf dares her to travel - but also highlights the meta-narrative of the tale, the fact that the Little Red Riding Hood story itself is one that can go through countless differing iterations (multiple paths) but ultimately must follow the same basic structure and come to the same (in the game, fatal) conclusion.

The game further illustrates this theme of the similar-yet-different stories through the multiple takes on Little Red Riding Hood herself. The game does not limit itself by having one protagonist - just as there is not one Little Red Riding Hood - but instead features multiple lead characters who seem to be reflections on one another and also representative of the various different ways of presenting individual versions of the tale, from Robin, the kid-friendly one, to Ruby, the more American McGee-influenced one, to the adult Scarlet, no doubt representing versions of the tale that seem to explore a more adult sensibility.

Even the structure of the game seems based around the notion of retelling; a key feature of any notable fairy tale. The same story is told over and over again and yet never told twice.

What's also interesting is of course the way that this game focuses on the importance of audience interaction. Video games are naturally a medium entirely based around the concept of the player becoming an active participant in a story crafted by someone else, but the same can also be said of the way fairytales are told, either with young children becoming active participants in the storytelling (chiming along with repitions of "what big eyes you have," etc.) or with the fact that tale-hearers ultimately become tale-tellers, and interact with and construct variations on the story themselves. In the game, the player not only constructs their own version of the story (again, within set limits), but their actions also manipulate such things as the ambient music, "mixed in real time through in-game activity."

Really though, I could go on about this game for ages. At first glance you may just brush it off as some kind of Fable clone, but that would be doing this game a great disservice. The Path doesn't just feature differing paths towards the same end, but uses those paths and the nature of the game's own construction to make a point about the very essence of fairy tales and oral folk tales (and video games) and the way the same stories can repeat over and over again, throughout various stages in our lives (represented by the differing ages of the Red Riding Hood characters) without ever becoming truly tired or repetitive. And wow, do I love it when form is married together with content.

I will very much be anticipating this game's release, set for Spring 2009 for Windows. Look forward to an update some time after that.

Wednesday 26 November 2008

Wizard of Oz: Kele-6

More Wizard of Oz stuff now, and yet another rap music video, too:

The rappers in question are Israeli group Kele-6.

The Oz purist in me is mildly annoyed that this video changes the order in which 'Dorothy' meets her three companions (it took me the longest time to realise that the second guy she meets was not just a really poor rendition of the Tin Man, so deeply was the idea of the narrative order ingrained in me). Also, is the Tin Man wearing a necklace made of spoons?

Saturday 22 November 2008

Voyager LRRH


Janeway is Red Riding Hood and Chakotay is the Wolf in yet another wonderfully geeky fan-made music video for that song.

Monday 17 November 2008

Red Riding Hood Papercut

A rather impressive example of LRRH-themed papercraft from Elsita (via flickr).

Red Riding Hood (2003)

Your own tolerance for low-budget European horror may vary from my own, but if you do happen to like that sort of thing, you can do a lot worse than Giacomo Cimini's 2003 gory horror that actually features a great deal of tongue-in-cheek humour, as well as a curious performance from the young girl playing the protagonist.

Here's the trailer for the film at imdb, although bizarrely, the trailer is attached to another, Bulgarian film.

Wednesday 12 November 2008

Pokemon Lil' Red Version

Some total (and somewhat asinine) silliness now from some Pokemon-loving youtubers:



Personally though, my favourite Pokemon vid is still the Smosh one. I haven't even seen There Will Be Blood and yet I still think this is hilarious.

Plazma


The fact that so many popular fairy tales feature imagery that can traverse cultures and languages can be a boon to those in advertising, who are often trying to reach as broad an audience as possible in order to best hawk their wares. Still, I'd be lying if I said that I can actually understand the actual text of these adverts, or even what Plazma is, other than some generic-looking type of snack food/biscuit-ty thing.

To be honest, I'm not even sure that this is such a good commercial. I mean, what is it saying, exactly? Eating Plazma will attract wolves? It'll make you sexy and therefore attractive to figurative wolves? It'll make you feel like you're a little kid who's lost in the woods? A certain Luc Besson commerical this ain't.

Oz Squad


Now, I haven't actually read Steve Ahlquist's Oz Squad, so I can't claim to give a fair appraisal of it, but from what I have read about it, I certainly seem to agree with Dave Campbell's comment that it seems "gratuitously irreverent," and I imagine that if I ever read it, I might come down on the side of critic and Oz fan Steve Teller, who called it "The most repellent published work with the name Oz in the title I have ever seen." From what I can tell, it seems to take the "add in some sex, death and swearing and that'll make it more 'mature'" attitude that ultimately of course only serves to make things far more puerile. But then again, it all seems to be done with a great deal of tongue-in-cheek humour, so at this stage, who am I to judge?

Still, if you're interested in learning more, Dave's post on the subject and this site about the comic might provide some decent starting points.

Oooh

Borrowing imagery from the 1939 film version of The Wizard of Oz and also likely the '70s urban reimagining The Wiz, here's the music video for De La Soul & Redman's "Oooh":


RIZ-ZOAWD


It's all in Japanese, so it may be of limited use for those of us who don't speak the language, but check out the official website for RIZ-ZOAWD, a new videogame for the Nintendo DS set in the world of Oz. As far as I can ascertain from the website, the game features lots of running around using an ersatz trackball. The character designs are much more interesting than the gameplay, methinks.

My Little Elphaba

There's a lot of fanart/fancraft out there relating not just to the Wizard of Oz, but more specifically, to the novel/play Wicked and its protagonist Elphaba Thropp, aka the Wicked Witch of the West. The below image represents what happens when Wicked meets the world of custom My Little Pony (and even features a custom Galinda/Glinda, too):

Many thanks to midnightflurry for the creations.

Inaugural Oz post, plus: BadEggs-x

One of the things that I intend for the future of this blog is to expand its scope so that it becomes about not just Little Red Riding Hood media but media related to some of the other popular fairy tales that I am interested in as well. This should increase productivity around here and also allow me an outlet for my various other obsessions. So this post here is my very first post about something not at all LRRH-related: the Wizard of Oz.

Yes, I know that one could easily argue that the Wizard of Oz is not a fairy tale at all, but it certainly seems to be a peculiar kind of modern fairy tale, along with lots of other, similar texts that originated in the late nineteenth, early twentieth century, such as Peter Pan or Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking Glass (and yes, I do intend to do a post about Lost Girls - a modern and very "mature" updating of all three of the above - someday). The Wizard of Oz has certainly nestled its way into the imagination of countless modern writers, artists, song writers and game designers (and of course, bloggers), and I certainly intend on writing about that here.

So, to kick off, here's a link to a particularly useful index of Oz-related books (Personally, I highly rate Geoff Ryman's Was and Gregory Maguire's Wicked). As well as some photography by (and often starring) the wonderful BadEggs-x:


I recommend checking out BaddEgg-x's deviantart page, in particular her Once Upon a Time series, which of course also features none other than - who else? - Ms Little Red Riding Hood:
 

And incidentally, yes, I do realise that I could always just create a separate blog for things related to other fairy tales, but I'd rather keep a cap on just how many blogs I can feasibly neglect at one time, if that's ok (*still feeling slightly shameful after having left this one alone for so long*).

MtG: LRRH

A Little Red Riding Hood Magic the Gathering card, from a set of other cards based on this tale that are also part of a larger set of cards based upon fairy tales. Please check out the blog "Mazo de Muchas Cosas" for more.

A brief word from the (very bad) blogmaster

Ok, apologies. I haven't updated this blog in a while. Or rather, in a couple of months. That's rather pathetic seeing as how I used to update this thing daily (and in fact started this thing partly as an excercise to see whether I could keep to a regular blogging schedule at all!). Still, I'm back and feeling newly motivated, so expect new content soon.

Friday 5 September 2008

The Mico's Little Red Riding Hood

Little Red Riding Hood by The Mico.

Red and black seem to be commonly recurring colours in this artist's work. No wonder he got around to Little Red eventually.

Please check out The Mico's art blog for more.

Honey Nut Cheerios Commercial



A 1998 advert for Honey Nut Cheerios featuring Little Red Riding Hood.

Red Riding Hood and other fairytales appear to crop up a lot in advertising. I suppose because it's easy to hint at a narrative that people are already largely familiar with, rather than try to create an original one within 30 seconds.

Also: this is a rather strange advert really, isn't it? I mean, what's the tagline supposed to be "Cheerios: they taste marginally better than little girls"?

Wednesday 3 September 2008

Buffy the Vampire Slayer as Little Red Riding Hood


Buffy is Little Red Riding Hood and the vampire Spike is the Big Bad Wolf in this fan-made music video by "hollowtear" which makes good use of a certain Halloween-themed episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Embedding has been disabled for this particular video, so please click on the above image in order to see it.

P.S. I sincerely doubt that this will be the last time the song featured in this video will appear on this blog.

Monday 1 September 2008

Sarah Kane's Little Red Riding Hood

I heartily encourage you to check out photographer Sarah Kane's portfolio, which includes a series featuring this rather haunting Red Riding Hood.

Personally, I just love her take on Snow White too. That blood-red stream is what really sells it.

Jerry's Red Riding Hood


Red Riding Hood
by "Jerry (Grandfaloon)" is a rather interesting animated take on the tale. Jerry's version simultaneously re-introduces elements from classical versions of the story ("the way of the needles/pins," the warning animals, the cannibalism, etc.) whilst at the same time being mired in the very modern, both stylistically with the anime-inspired character designs and fight sequences, and also in the very technology behind the animation itself.

Warning: some violent scenes and themes.

Sunday 31 August 2008

Fables: The Last Castle


Because everyone needs to be exposed to some James Jean every now and again, here's his cover to the Fables one-shot: The Last Castle. That's Red at the top (note: she's actually riding for once) and Boy Blue (with his horn, 'natch) at the bottom.

Jean actually recently announced that he's going to be leaving Fables soon, and I for one will be sad to see him go, as his work on the series has been phenomenal all the way through and even helped earned him six of his impressive seven Eisner awards.

Incidentally, Fables itself has picked up many more Eisners since the point that the above comic was published* and now has many more, including three (so far) in the "Best Serialised Story" category. I really cannot recommend it highly enough to anyone with an interest in either fairytales or just astonishingly well told serialised stories.

*Note to self: upload a decent text-less version of the above image when I find one.

Saturday 30 August 2008

Exploitica Rides Again!

And now, as both a follow-up to the previous post and for my own sordid amusement, here's Exploitica's take on K. Gordon Murray's Little Red Riding Hood.

WARNING: Adult humour


Friday 29 August 2008

Little Red Riding Hood and the Monsters

"King of the Kiddie Matinee" K. Gordon Murray was responsible for bringing a number of rather bizarre Spanish-language films over to the United States. Amongst these were a trilogy of films starring Little Red Riding Hood, as well as one or two films starring Tom Thumb, who seems to have worked his way into at least one of the Red Riding Hood sequels.

Just to give you a taste of what these films were like (and don't worry, I imagine I'll be posting more about them in the future), here's the trailer for Little Red Riding Hood and the Monsters.

Thursday 28 August 2008

Pins & Needles



Moving away from advertising, but still sticking with non-stop Youtube-ing for the moment, here's a little something that I thought was too awesome not to share. It's a trailer for the independent short film Pins & Needles, a "gothic martial arts fantasy retelling of Red Riding Hood." Really, what more could I possibly add to that.

One additional note though, for people wondering about the title. As far as I'm aware, it relates to the two alternate paths Red Riding Hood can choose to take in some early forms of the tale: the "path of needles" or the "path of pins". I expect we'll be seeing some more references to those later on in the week.

Wednesday 27 August 2008

Chanel no. 5



Probably the most famous use of LRRH in television advertising is this commercial for Chanel no. 5 starring model Estella Warren and directed by Luc Besson (of
La Femme Nikita and The Fifth Element fame) and with music by Danny Elfman. As a treat, a somewhat more obscure variation on the ad is included below, also.



Critic Catherine Orenstein writes extensively about this and other examples of the inherent sexuality of the Little Red Riding Hood story being exploited by modern media in her wonderful book Little Red Riding Hood Uncloaked, which comes highly recommended by this blogger.

Tuesday 26 August 2008

Optimum commercial(s)




Sticking with the theme of adverts for the moment, here's an ad (in both Spanish and English language editions) for digital TV/DSL/phone providers Optimum, which actually makes quite clever use of the common Little Red Riding Hood trope of "Oh grandma, what big x you have..." to highlight their various services.

Monday 25 August 2008

Japanese commercial



And now, some random silliness from youtube. If anyone can offer any information on what this LRRH-themed ad is actually about, I'd be much obliged.

Sunday 24 August 2008

Little Red Riding Hood by Nuno Plati

Nuno Plati's blog is a great place to check out lots fantastic works from this wonderfully talented artist. Largely, his stuff focuses on American superheroes, and I have to say that I adore his takes on certain popular characters.
He's also one of the artists who has worked on Marvel's line of fairy tale-inspired books, a line that has done a great job of spotlighting various usually-obscure but always very talented artists within the industry, but I'll likely post more on those at a later date (because yes, there is a LRRH issue that I wish to highlight).
And of course, in case you couldn't tell, he's also the artist behind the above piece. Enjoy, and make sure to check out his blog for more of his stuff. Especially his superhero stuff; I for one simply cannot get enough of his bright, dynamic figures.

American McGee's Grimm

American McGee, video game producer and the man behind the wonderfully gothic Alice, is currently in charge of an episodic series of games entitled American McGee's Grimm. The games' premise is a somewhat intriguing one: the player controls "Grimm", a dwarf who must spread a vile and malevolent influence throughout numerous fairytale stories, returning them to their supposedly darker roots, far from the saccharine versions that we know today. The stories range from the well-known, such as Little Red Riding Hood, to certain less famous Grimm brothers tales, such as "The Girl Without Hands".

For more info., and to actually play the games, please check out GameTap's official American McGee's Grimm site.

Friday 22 August 2008

Into the Hoods



One of my favourite new West End shows is the absolutely wonderful fairy tale-inspired dance show Into the Hoods. Naturally, the show has its own Red Riding Hood in the form of "Lil' Red" (below), who wishes to become a big name in the music business, but has to watch for the machinations of the conniving "Wolf" of "Big Teef" records. The whole thing is a great, high-energy lark, and I highly recommend that anyone with access to the West End go and see it.

Thursday 21 August 2008

Little Red Ridinghood




...And from the sublime to the ridiculous: some LRRH-themed Eurodance, courtesy of A-Moe.

Pretty When You Cry



"Pretty When You Cry" by VAST, one of my all-time favourite LRRH-themed music videos. This one is just so mesmerising and deliciously perverse.

Tuesday 19 August 2008

Zombie BBQ

I feel I'd be remiss if I didn't mention a certain upcoming game for the Nintendo DS, namely: Little Red Riding Hood's Zombie BBQ (also starring Momotarō from Japanese folklore).

I really don't know what information I can add that hasn't already been imparted by the title, really. Although I do have to say that this particular rendition of LRRH looks like she owes a debt to Darkstalkers' Bulletta.

Monday 18 August 2008

Modern Red Riding Hood


Entroid provides us with this modern take on LRRH. I particularly love how much information is imparted through the little details in this one (the "granny's" bag, for example), which actually makes one mentally conjure a quite different narrative to that of the clasic tale(s). Plus, gotta love the chucks.

Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf


For more like this, see Bagaak's photostream.

Sunday 17 August 2008

Chaperon Rouge



Tristan Michel et al have produced this wonderfully polished-looking 3D-animated take on Little Red Riding Hood. For more information on this film, please check out the film's website.

Saturday 16 August 2008

Little Red Riding Hood by Sanjai Bhana

I particularly like the way in which the wolf appears to be constructed out of the very forest itself. The eyes that line up with LRRH's own are also a nice touch.

For more artwork like this, please check out Sanjai Bhana's illustration & design blog.

Hmm...

Heh, I may have egg on my face right now, as it seems I've just discovered a blog with a very similar title/mission statement to my own: Little Red Riding Blog... (make that a practically identical title, I guess).

I can assure you that there's been no deliberate plagiarism on my part. Still, it appears that we have two slightly differing goals anyway, what with mine being to collect various LRRH-related media, and theirs being to collect various LRRH stories. So I guess, while I urge you no to get our two blos confused, why not also check out the other Little Red RIding Blog (the one with the ellipsis).

Friday 15 August 2008

Falsehood

Since it's my first day, I guess you get two LRRH-posts for the price of one.




Falsehood
is but one of many revisionist short films (though at over thirty minutes this is more of a "featurette", I guess) about LRRH, but it's certainly a goodie. Enjoy!

In the Woods


Auntie Pixelante created the fab LRRH-themed text adventure In the Woods a little while back. Why not go and give it a try.

Incidentally, I'd also recommend several of Auntie's other games, such as the wonderful Mighty Jill Off, "one of the more notable offbeat, indie, retro, lesbian-BDSM-themed jumping games of the year" say the people at Feministe, and indeed, who am I to argue.

(Also: yay, first post!)