Good morning, all! I believe my decrepit kitchen stove, not the basement boiler after all, is the source of the carbon monoxide, since I spent most of yesterday feeling very flu-ish. I had been boiling water all day to steam up the apartment and I couldn't figure out why I had felt so good in Ohio and so puny in Manhattan. I'll report it on Monday to my landlord and see if they can get someone in to check out/replace the stove.
The holiday work continues.
!!!!!! SPOILERS !!!!!!!
While I don't want to get into the ENCHANTED debate, it seems that there's no way out of over-analyzing a charming notion: the piece is full of ironies: Manhattan is the place "where there are no happy endings" is a funny premise and a fallacy, Idina Menzell's character was waiting for the wrong prince; if you consider her the Nurse Jane-dreaded JAP, then she's more royalty in Manhattan than a fairy tale character living in the woods can ever be to marry a bona fide prince in this world or the next. Doesn't the Cinderella moment of Giselle's glass slipper ends fitting Idina Menzell's foot pass the title on?
What I loved about the film, beyond the references to classic Disney animation, is the notion of turning fairy-tales on their heads or reworking familiar themes:
Clueless Patrick Dempsey is the Sleeping Beauty; he may have to wake Giselle from the ever-present Snow White situation but she's the sword-weilding rescuer, and this story has several fairy-tale elements
1. King Kong/Beauty and the Beast
2. La Belle au Bois Dormant in Perrault's version with even the wicked queen showing up
3. St George and the Dragon
There'as a bit of Persephone and the Underworld; if the myth is about six months of winter, then Giselle's descent to hell (Manhattan) brings spring to Dempsey's young daughter and wakes her from her frozen state, another version of the Snow White andSleeping Beauty stories.
Aren't the Central Park celebrants - and all their celebrations and customs (several myths there) - a reflection on the happy folk of Oz in a 1939 film based on an American fairy tale based on the folk hero's quest?
Also, I love the premise - from the early 19th Century tales of Hoffmann to HP Lovecraft and on - that other worlds co-exist with our concept of reality and that they often merge to happiness, or madness and beyond.
I don't believe this is a folktheme, but it's certainly a common theme in the media: the social event - in this case a ball - where the masks are dropped and everyone seen with their true face.
I'm still pondering this; there's more and I may need a second or third viewing.