Word: fairyland
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...view? It looked to me like the clouds were thousands of feet below. The moon was shining directly on the fluffy clouds. It was like the most clichéd fairyland you've ever seen. The place was full of stars, four times the number you'd see in the Mojave Desert. And some very big mountains looked like little pimples coming through the clouds...
...operetta, the fairy Iolanthe (Bridget Haile ’11) has been banished from fairyland for the awful crime of marrying the Lord Chancellor, a mortal. Her half-fairy son, Strephon (Aseem A. Shukla ’11), falls in love with the beautiful Phyllis (Anna Ward), the ward of the Lord Chancellor (Matthew C. Stone ’11). But the Lord Chancellor will not consent to their marriage because he, as well as many in the House of Peers—a satirical portrayal of British Parliament—are in love with Phyllis. After the fairy queen...
...Princess Knight) for parents who'd rather their daughters dream of soccer balls than royal balls. As for the boys? Jocks have a rough time of it (a handsome prince is the villain of Shrek the Third and the buffoon in N'Ever After), supplanted by gangly emo types--fairyland Adam Brodys. "Charming" is redefined rather than repealed--Justin Timberlake voices Third's cute-boy hero Arthur--but at least that's some progress...
...becoming a cliché itself. The pattern--set up, then puncture, set up, then puncture--is so relentless that it inoculates the audience against being spellbound, training them to wait for the other shoe to drop whenever they see a moment of sentiment or magic. Every detail argues against seeing fairyland as something special, like the constant disposable-culture gags in Shrek, in which characters shop in chain stores like Versarchery and Ye Olde Foot Locker...
...beauty of some things prevails even in an age of overexposure. Châteaux of the Loire (Vendome; 152 pages; $45) is a splendid case in point. Photographer Daniel Philippe has looked again at 19 of these fairyland fortresses, both from the sky and the ground, in snow and in bloom. There is formidable Chambord, which may have been planned by Leonardo da Vinci, and delicate Azay-le-Rideau, the creation of a banker who went too far when he mixed state money with his own. The aerial exposures suggest that some of the châteaux were designed for the eyes...