The Fairy Tale Struggles To Live Happily Ever After by Linton Weeks

  

NPR decided to jump into the discussion of fairy tale films, especially those from Disney and the announcement that Disney isn't making fairy tale films (for now). Here a link and an excerpt from The Fairy Tale Struggles To Live Happily Ever After by Linton Weeks:

Tangled, Disney's latest fairy tale movie, was shut out at the Golden Globe Awards last weekend. Nominated for two — Best Animated Feature Film and Best Original Song ("I See the Light") — the retooled Rapunzel story won neither.

The critical shunning could be construed as a key indicator: Fairy tale movies have fallen on hard times. In fact, around Thanksgiving, the Walt Disney Co. revealed it has no plans to make another animated fairy tale.

It's hard to imagine a world without Disney's fairy tales. What do we tell the children? Kissed frogs don't turn into princes, wicked stepsisters win out, glass slippers just won't fit. And what colorful icons will we silkscreen all over kids' pillows and lunchboxes?

"Films and genres do run a course," said Ed Catmull, president of Walt Disney Animation Studios and Disney subsidiary Pixar Animation Studios, in a late-November Los Angeles Times story. "They may come back later because someone has a fresh take on it ... but we don't have any other musicals or fairy tales lined up."

It goes on quite a bit from that introduction, focusing on Disney's abandonment of the fairy tale storylines. (Again, I say, for now.)

And, to throw in one of my thoughts which is worth the pixels I've written it with, I think Tangled would have swept many animation awards almost any year but it lost to Toy Story 3 which just hit so many hearts and ended the franchise on a high note that Tangled didn't have a chance. They are both excellent movies, comparing apples and oranges like most movie awards do. But Toy Story 3 made people feel sentimental and cry more than once. There's no beating that when it comes to trophies. I thought almost all the movies in the best animated category at the Golden Globes deserved nomination for the best movies of the year. I am cheering for King's Speech, of course, but Tangled, Toy Story 3 and How to Train Your Dragon made my personal top five movies of 2010 list.