Queens

When it comes to trying to describe Noonat's game Queens, I really can't do it more justice than auntie pixelante does in her description:

in most difficult contemporary jumping games, it’s taken for granted that the player will die and try again many times, most likely taking many incarnations to reach the end of the game. in queens, these lives are characters and the repeating cycle of their deaths and replacement is the narrative, suggesting the expendability of women (who are neither faceless nor nameless) to a henry viii-style patriarch.

Dina Goldstein's "Fallen Princesses"

Photographer Dina Goldstein has an excellent series of photos available to view at JPG Magazine. Her Fallen Princesses series juxtaposes Disneyfied fairytales with modern, real-world issues facing women, such as war, disease and body issues.

Eva Soulu's "Fairytale"

Eva Soula has got a very interesting take on the Little Red Riding Hood story that is partly available - along with some illustrations like the one above - at the website for her art group, 'LAMP'.

Dark Princesses: Snow White

Doing a little more research into Alabaster, I came across the work of artist ClaireBeauchamp, via the blog of Alabaster co-creator Emily Short. Claire has done a fair few fairytale/Disney-related pieces, but the one that most stands out to me, especially in the wake of Alabaster, is her Dark Snow White, featured above. I'd also recommend checking out other works by Short, too.

Alabaster

Now to revisit a genre I don't see often enough on here: interactive fiction. Alabaster is a wonderful piece of IF that places you in the position of the hunter in the tale of Snow White. Like certain other narrative-driven fairytale games before it, Alabaster exploits that fact that there are many different paths that one could take from a story's simple starting point, and there are many endings to discover. Additionally, Alabaster also brings in influences from a wide range of myths and folklore that extend beyond Snow White, including tales of witchcraft, vampires and even apocryphal Judeo-Christian myth (a little hint of Gregory Maguire's Mirror Mirror there, perhaps).

Have fun discovering some weird and wonderful secrets in this really very creepy take on an already rather unsettling tale.

Target Women: Story Time/StilletoREVOLT

I adore Sarah Haskins, and wouldn't you know it, she's gone and done a fairytale-related piece for her regular piece on stupid advertising aimed at women, "Target Women".

Also, allow me to point out this awesome post on fairy tale images in advertising over at StilettoREVOLT. Here's a little preview of the kind of stuff they cover (note, as they rightly point out on the site, how exactly the reality of the Britney/Kevin relationship went).

Randal Kleiser's Red Riding Hood

Randal Kleiser's 2006 film Red Riding Hood is one of those films that I've never seen, but keep hearing positive about all over the internet. However, it appears all of these positive things must surely be being put about solely by people directly involved in the movie's production in some way, as whenever I hop over to something like the imdb to gauge the public opinion, the unanimous impression seems to be that this film really sucks. Still, here's a clip to help you make up your own minds.

The Path update

The Path has now been released. I would download it immediately and tell you what I think, but I'm currently using my old laptop which apparently doesn't even meet the basic system requirements (grr).

The Wizard of Oz word-image

I discovered this over at award-winning comic book artist Derek Kirk Kim's blog. I'm not too sure about the original source, though. You probably can't tell unless you click on it and see it blown up much larger, but it's a picture made up of the text from the first eleven chapters of Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. I love things that play around with the ambiguous space where text/images overlap, and this, something that literally uses the words to paint a picture, creates such a great visual pun.

Update: I try to be curteous and host my own images rather than hotlink, but Blogger only allows images of a certain size. Clicking on the above image will not blow it up large enough to see the text that makes it up. Please head on over to DKK's blog instead to see the image in full.

Little Pigs

More "Three Little Pigs"-themed metal now, but this time a slightly more energetic (that's certainly one phrase for it) track from Mucky Pup.

There really isn't a lot of substance to this video/song, so not much to say, but I decided I pretty much had to put this up after posting the Green Jelly vid; it was only fair.

Once Upon a Crime

It already came up in the comments section of a previous post, but I really ought to give another mention to Once Upon a Crime, an old-school point-and-click adventure by Bjorn "Ghost" Ludwig (and thanks again to SSH for pointing this game out to me). In OUaC you play as newly-licenced Private Investigator Little Red Riding Hood who is called upon to solve the recent murder of the Big Bad Wolf (although surely she'd be considered an obvious suspect, no?).

The game is reasonably short (a couple of hours of gameplay, maybe) but has some colourful and charming character designs and a lot of humour, as well as (although I don't want to give too much away) a pretty neat post-modern twist towards the end, which I enjoyed immensely.

OUaC is free to download. Personally, I found a couple of the puzzles a little frustrating, but luckily, there is a guide available.

Incidentally, and this is in no way a slight against OUaC, the fairytale-character-turned-private-investigator subgenre sure is popular, no?

Three Little Pigs

Sometimes, it seems I just need to post a silly metal video.

As far as I'm aware I don't tend to get any children visiting this blog, but just in case, I'd better warn that the following video for "Three Little Pigs" by metal band Green Jello (a.k.a. Green Jelly)* does include some mild drug use and sex references. Still, in the spirit of Celebrity Deathmatch, "it's only clay!"**

The below video is actually slightly redacted. The full (embedding disabled) video is here.



*One day I'll learn how to put heavy metal umlauts in a blog post
**Or, in keeping with the appendix to the ful-length video, only a "stupid puppet show".

Emerald City Confidential

When it comes to finding a way to describe the overall mise-on-scene of point-and-click-adventure game Emerald City Confidential, I really can't do better than the game's own creator, Dave Gilbert, who calls it "Raymond Chandler meets L. Frank Baum." Emerald City Confidential is a gem of a game that puts a film noir spin on the wonderful world of Oz, coming up with something that's a little Sam Spade, a little Gregory Maguire and with just a hint of Sam & Max (I was right, I really couldn't do better than the game's creator).

ECC is a thoroughly engaging game that's sure to be an especial treat for Oz geeks. For more on this game and its genesis, check out the video below which features an interview with the game's creator (from which I snagged the above quotation).

Hansel and Gretel

I haven't seen it, so I can't make any claims as to its quality, but I'd be lying if I said that I didn't think this South Korean film based on Hansel and Gretel didn't look really interesting (warning: some minor violent imagery in the below video).



An American remake is supposedly set for a 2011 release.