Word: tales
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Cinderella. Walt Disney's beguiling retelling of the fairy tale (TIME...
...laureate's publishers have mercifully excluded their author's dutiful little odes to George VI, Franklin Roosevelt, Princess Elizabeth and young Prince Charles of Edinburgh. The 24 poems that make up the volume are echoes of a sturdier Masefield who can still spin a tale of a country prizefight, drop a tear for the rifled tomb of an old king and enjoy the sense of friendly ghosts in Hilcote Manor. They are only echoes of the Masefield of Reynard the Fox, Enslaved and Dauber, but if they are unlikely to win the poet new admirers, they will still...
...rich but delicately tinted Technicolor, Cinderella is unalloyed make-believe, without the disenchanting sight of a single photographed human face. It embellishes the outline of the classic tale with half a dozen simple, hummable tunes and the abounding whimsies of eight Disney writers. The fairy godmother becomes a dithery homebody who has some trouble remembering the magic words; the king is a wildly irascible sentimentalist, and a whole Disney menagerie cavorts on all sides...
...droll characterization of Lucifer, a sort of feline Charles Laughton. By remembering that his tale takes place "once upon a time in a faraway land," Disney avoids the temptation of gagging it up with anachronisms or excessive cartoon acrobatics. With just the right wizard's brew of fancy and fun, sugar and spice, he makes an old, old story seem as innocently fresh as it must to the youngest moppet hearing it for the first time...
...ancient, almost universal legend, the tale pops up in 16th Century German literature, was popularized by Charles Perrault's 17th Century French version, which Disney credits as the movie's source...