“That Tax Avery Wolf great intuition!”

In an interview Coleen Atwood describes the creation of  The Lascivious Wolf for Into and Woods and that Johnny’s idea…

 

 

It’s a special day for Into the Woods because the movie today is released on DVD/Blu-Ray.

A special interview I found on the net and precisely on Beliefnet, a website with great content, please check out, involves Coleen Atwood one of the most-known costume desinger in Hollywood.
Born in the State of Washington, Yakima, one of the works she loves to remember are The Silence of the Lambs, Big Fish and Edward Scissorhands.

Coleen Atwood has been for a long time a great collaborator and costume designer of a lot of Tim Burton’s movies/productions with Johnny Depp including Alice in Wonderland and the new one: Alice in Wonderland – Through the Looking Glass – coming soon in theaters.

She says of costumes that “They’re the first impression that you have of the character before they open their mouth. It really does establish who they are“.

Three Oscars won with Chicago by Rob Marshall the director of Into the Woods, , Memoirs of a Geisha and Alice in Wonderland, Atwood joined a wonderful team of creatives. The movie wanted by Disney Studios, directed by Rob Marshall , music and words by legendary Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine the same creators of Broadway’s musical
Great cast with Meryl Streep as The Witch , Johnny Depp in the role of the Lascivious Wolf, Chris Pine as the Prince,  Lilla Crawford as Little Red Riding Hood just for naming someone.
Talking of the Lascivious Wolf portrayed by Johnny Depp, Atwood listened Johnny Depp’s suggestion.

Coleen Atwood told to the reporter she wouldn’t never have loved a wolf completely covered by fur.

Johnny at the same time suggested a “Tex Avery Wolf”.

It was a success.

 

Tax Avery was a cartoonist of great success. Born Frederick Bean “Tax Avery” in Taylor Feb 26th 1908,  died in Burbank,  Aug 26th, in 1980. He invented The Wolf, Droopy, The Screwy Squirrel. Still imitated, thanks to Johnny and Coleen Atwood another tribute to a great creative.

 

 

Anna Maria Polidori

Let’s go all together from this tuesday… Into the Woods!

Into the Woods debut on DVD this next Tuesday

Eventually Into the Woods will debut on DVD this Tuesday.            (thanks to Lory Depp Girl for pictures)

I admit I love this fractured fairy-tales so badly. Created by legendary god of Broadway Stephen Sondheim with James Lapine in 1987,

 

Into the Woods became  immediately one of the most successful musical of Broadway and one of the three most favorite shows to put on stage every year from schools and theaters all around the USA.

A success because of the problematic involved in the fairy-tale and because there are many characters in this story.

A baker and his wife can’t have children because cursed by a Witch -Meryl Streep – (this first fairy tale has been invented by Sondheim and Lapine) and so they decide to going Into the Woods. In this kind of spiritual trip they will meet along their way a lot of characters taken directly from the most beloved Brothers Grimm’s fairy-tales.
Cinderella Anna Kendrick , Little Red Riding Hood Lilla Crawford, the Lascivious Wolf Johnny Depp and many others.

The movie musical has been wanted so badly by Rob Marshall while watching on tv President Obama for the tenth anniversary of the terroristic attack at the Twin Towers.
The actual historic moment is much more complicated than the past one. New generations need to cope with enemies more undefined respect to the ones of the past where enemies were clearer. Terrorism, because this movie wants to be an answer to the post Terroristic attack at the Twin Towers, is a phantom. No one can see and it and can be everywhere, that’s why it is so scaring and unexpected.

Characters created by Sondheim and Lapine are stunningly adults and intense.
Cinderella is not anymore a poor girl bullied by her family, but a pretty sly girl.
Little Red Riding Hood not so innocent. So in general all the characters become like for magic profoundly adults.

Happiness is just apparent considering what happens in their lives.

Children will listen one of the most intense song of the entire musical.

Great performance of Johnny Depp in a role the one of the Lascivious Wolf loved by critics and public.

 

 

Anna Maria Polidori

Into the Woods Blu-Ray available soon

1-Disc Blu-Ray + Digital HD

 

 

Are you a big fan of Into the Woods? Have you seen the Broadway show and you have been an addicted one of the movie version as well? Very good. For you there is a wonderful news: very soon this next march 24th the movie Into the Woods, announced Disney, will be launched in Blu-Ray . This stunning movie received three nominations at the Academy Awards and it is the adaptation of the Broadway musical created by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine in 1987. Rob Marshall the director said to the press he decided to realize this movie for talking better to the families and kids of today, considering the Twin Towers Attacks and well, being so visionary, also the actual situation in the entire world, I guess. Families and kids and people in general are living a different reality respect to the ones of the past generations, unfortunately. Complexities are growing. Into the Woods wants maybe not to give an answer to all these problems but to trying to add a new light at this different world. I would invite everyone to buying this DVD. Actors performed here: Meryl Streep in the role of the Witch; Johnny Depp in the one of the Lascivious Wolf, Anna Kendrick, Emily Blunt, Chris Pine, James Corden. In the Blu-Ray pack will be possible to find: the original song written by Sondheim and not included in the movie: “She’ll be back” sang by Meryl Streep. This song reveals more about her relationship with Rapunzel. In the DVD  a special section regarding the creation of Into the Woods. Interview with Marshall and all the incredible creative people he was surrounded by. You will find other wagons of extras and informations and so: go for it. Take the hand of these creative people and accept the invite of all of them for going all together Into the Woods.

 

Anna Maria Polidori

Johnny talking with a japanese tv of Into the Woods

The role of the Lascivious Wolf remembered by Depp during the promotion of Mortdecai in an interview of last jan 28th

 

Johnny Depp while spent some days in Japan because of his promotion for the movie Mortdecai remembered his role as the Lascivious Wolf in Into the Woods, the movie based on the Broadway musical by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine and produced by Disney.

The movie a big success.

Johnny’s role received positive critics from public and journalists.

Here the interview

 

 

 

Anna Maria Polidori

Johnny Depp will participate at the Oscar 2015

Johnny at the Academy Awards this febr. 22

 

Johnny Depp will attend the most important night of the American cinema this februrary 22.

Surely he is there for supporting Into the Woods. Three nominations, break a leg, Into the Woods!

Johnny Depp portrayed according critics and public a stunning and spectacular Lascivious Wolf in the movie adaptation created by Disney, directed by Rob Marshall of the wonderful Broadway success by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapin: Into the Woods.

If you want to follow every instant of Johnny’s arrival on the red carpet at the Academy Awards you can install on your iPhone (not yet for google player and Android?) the appl *newzcard.

 

Anna Maria Polidori

Congratulations Into the Woods and… Lady Oscar!

Three nominations at the Academy Awards for Into the Woods

Break a leg, Into the Woods! for another mythical event.

Yesterday the official nominations at the Oscars revealed Into the Woods is running in three categories:

Best Supporting Actress with Meryl Streep .

This one is for her the 19th nomination for the golden little and precious statue symbol of great talent. Three Oscars won, congratulations! What a myth this talented actress of Hollywood, able to portraying always diversified and different women and personalities. Lady Oscar!

Best Production Design and Best Costume Design the other two categories.

February 22 the Academy Awards event.

Directed by Rob Marshall , musics by Stephen Sondheim, written by James Lapine, Into the Woods is the movie version of the Broadway Musical Into the Woods.

The story: the one of the Baker and His Wife, still childless because cursed by the terrible witch. The two will go Into the Woods, meeting along their road a lot of important characters of the Brothers Grimm’s Fairy-tales, like Little Red Riding Hood, the Lascivious Wolf     , a stunning role of our Johnny Depp   , and many other fairy-tales characters.

 

Rob Marshall dedicated this movie to children and families of today. The complexities of the world where families and children are living in now are more strong than not the ones of the past generations unfortunately and so it’s necessary to re-read our reality pretty constantly.

Dramatically true…Marshall has been visionary…

 

 

 

Anna Maria Polidori

 

 

 

 

 

 

Into the Woods… Big success domestically and in the world

Results of the box office of the last week-end

 

Prognostics were right. Into the Woods  grossed domestically 105 million of dollars and, counting international box office 120 millions of dollars this past week-end.

Launched the Christmas Day, Into the Woods is the movie version of one of the most beloved Broadway Musical: Into the Woods, lyrics and music by Stephen Sondheim, written by James Lapine.

Starting from an original fairy-tale invented by the couple of Sondheim-Lapine, the one of the Baker and His Wife, still childless because cursed by a Witch, the insertion in the story of a patchwork fairy-tales by Brothers Grimm when the couple decides to going Into the Woods…Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, the Lascivious Wolf (Johnny Depp) and so on.

It was a success Into the Woods once launched in Broadway and it is one of the three most beloved musicals of all the times.

The movie had to be perfect, and Rob Marshall truly passionate for musicals since he was little and also thanks to a past as a dancer and choreographer, before to choose the career of director, knew it perfectly.

He asked so to James Lapine and Stephen Sondheim of writing the movie as they did it for their Broadway’s musical.

The launch of the movie this past week-end involved the Uk, Australia, Croatia, Slovenian and New Zealand.

 

 

Anna Maria Polidori

Fairy-tales for children and adult

Little analysis of the importance of story-telling

 

Into the Woods  the movie musical created by Rob Marshall for Disney is a real success and at the second place at the box office.  ,     

 

Stephen Sondheim   and James Lapine had written the Broadway musical Into the Woods and put it on stage in 1987. It was a big explosion of success of critics and enthusiastic viewers. Since there…Generations of people grew up, are growing up and will grow up performing on stage in their schools or local theaters, Into the Woods, thanks to the possibility of a great variety of characters and thanks mainly to a winning, stunning story.

Sondheim and Lapine wrote the movie version of Into the Woods as well.

Main inspiration for Sondheim and Lapine the Brothers Grimm’s fairy-tales. They inserted in fact in the most important fairy-tale they had invented, the one of The Baker and His Wife, a patchwork of most beloved Brothers Grimm’s fairy-tales.

 

Brothers Grimm’s fairy-tales  are the strongest most important and powerful fairy-tales existing in this world.

 

Fairy-tales born and collected by the Brothers partially in Germany where the two lived and in the entire Europe. Fairy-tales of course told and re-told and known orally from centuries in some cases.

Why a fairy-tale is important? Because it is able to tell to a youngster unconsciously what it could theoretically happen in this world, putting the plot in a distant invented world. That distant and invented world can become our world.

Fairy-tales are cathartic messengers of peace because they are able to give good and powerful instruments to the once adult kid for de-codifying and reading the reality in a healthy and constructive way.

I was thinking these days at the ideal peace Christmas and feasts bring with them, apart the chaos and of course stress and “Good Lord my routine is gone” because of….Christmas. Once the stress is over, once luncheons are ready, family reunited, Christmas is ‘s a reunion with family and friends, sharing gifts, and watching on tv and to the cinema very good movies. The world with its asperities is like suspended, as if the bad stories would be for a while banned from a Universe in stand-by.

Later the world will re-start its crazy run in the…unknown in a timeless dance without end.

Fantastic. This one is the moment of the year I adore the most.

We are back to the normality and at time it’s a normality of blood.

Blood and murders are frequent components of many fairy-tales.

Let’s take under the exam the fairy tale of Hansel and Gretel. The terrible old witch would have cooked, graciously cooked, poor Hansel and Gretel if not saved.

Little Red Riding Hood risked this world and the other into the Woods with the dangerous and lascivious         wolf.

And what about poor Sleeping Beauty, cursed by a witch upset because not invited at the feast for the arrival of the baby? What an exaggeration.

In a lot of cases animals are eaten with extreme appetite. The wolf will eat the six little goats, and just the arrival of the mom and the terrorized tale of the latest kid survived to all of that horror will permit to the mom of saving all of little kids ripping without hesitation, again what a word for this courageous mom, the belly of the sleeping wolf, setting her children free and replacing them in the belly of the wolf with heavy stones.

Same is for Little Red Riding Hood and the granny.

Ate by the wolf and saved later by a hunter in one of the versions of the fairy-tale.

With the time fairy-tales knew a season of peace, in which the good prince would have saved the princess, and they would have surely enjoyed the happily every after, because it was the idea it couldn’t be the opposite.

Sometimes it’s the opposite. The beautiful fairy-tale become a nightmare and it’s a mess, and the tale can become a little horror.

But for a long season where maybe the world was a best place where to think of living with tranquillity for a long part of the life and where the life had a scheme more than known,  happy end was highly appreciated.

Brothers Grimm de facto cleaned a lot the various fairy-tales they discovered all around Europe for giving to them a best romantic idea although they are still incredibly strong.

The original fairy-tales they found much more strong than the strongest horror book.

Fairy-tales so can be for adults?

Yes, of course.

After all a dark fairy-tale can’t be also a news of an incredible fact? We are surrounded by a world able to tell to us everyday  continuously new, sometimes dark, very dark fairy-tales from a common source: the life and its most profound mysteries and passions and drives.

Fairy-tales are for all that people interested to stay in contact with the most profound messages fairy-tales wants to teach us.

Brothers Grimm for example didn’t collect their fairy-tales for children . Their work was profound and that books dedicated mainly to adults  because sometimes fairy-tales can contain strong adult content. It’s normal, in a fairy-tale because the life is taken in consideration  under all aspects. Murder, sex, crime, hate, joy, happiness, devastation, desperation, happy end, sad end.

It was with Brothers Grimm and their collection of fairy-tales that always more parents loved to starting to buy their books for their beloved children.

In the past families loved to tell folkloristic histories orally and it was felt like a necessity for passing the time when tv and other technological objects weren’t still around. Telling fantastic stories to other friends who stopped by for spending the evening with the family, a good idea or to the children for keeping them safe and conscious that “outside” the world could be a dangerous world.

In the countryside, but in cities as well, it was common to sharing with little and adults scary stories of witches and weird facts.

So when we think at a fairy-tale we mustn’t never think that it’s a story just dedicated to children and for children. All the family should be involved in reading and mainly telling fairy-tales.

Sharing fairy-tales and telling fairy-tales and reading them to children indispensable and a priority because it’s a moment of dream in their existence. Life is still a great discovery and fairy-tales will remain into themselves for all their life and will help them to keep dreaming in their adult life. Life won’t be at all simple and there will be sometimes difficult moments. That  “dreaming whispers from the past”  a good company in crucial  and fundamental moments of the existence and for giving answers to the complexity of the daily life.

 

 

Anna Maria Polidori

The Box Office in Love with Into the Woods

Variety reports the first box office success of this past January first

 

Into the Woods    as I guessed, was able to do much better than Unbroken with the New Year with 72 millions of dollars in comparison with the 69 millions of dollars of Unbroken.
At the same time, The Hobbit is first with 198 millions of dollars.

Considering that Into the Woods is at the box office just from eight days 72 millions of dollars in comparison with the 198 of The Hobbit is a very good and satisfying amount of money and it appears more than clear that the movie is a great success of critic, public, families who love to enjoying to go to the cinema all together for seeing Into the Woods.

Interesting this box office, with fairy-tales and great classics (culture, what a joy!) on the big screen.

 

Legendary Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine are back with Into the Woods movie version.

A wonderful movie version directed by Rob Marshall with Meryl Streep, Johnny Depp, Anna Kendrick, Chris Pine and many many other talented and impressively good actors and actresses.
The reign of fantasy is waiting for you. For bringing you Into the Woods for searching for some answers to your most profound questions, for living a spectacular gothic and unique adventure.

This one is an exclusive wonderful, excellent, unique team of creators starting from Stephen Sondheim the Legend of Broadway , winner of so many Tony Awards and of course various Oscars, James Lapine, Rob Marshall , creator of Chicago  a great Oscar Winning movie-musical, Johnny   Depp, back in a production based on a Sondheim’s musical after the Oscar Winning movie directed by Tim Burton Sweeney Todd based on the Sondheim musical Sweeney Todd the Demon Barber of Fleet Street,  where Johnny played the role of Sweeney Todd the Demon Barber of Fleet Street.

 

Meryl Streep, the most versatile Hollywood’s actress. Mamma mia! The devil wears Prada, Out of Africa.

 

 

Anna Maria Polidori

The Brothers Grimm and their revolutionary and intellectually honest life

Fruit the last prophetic word analyzed by Jacob Grimm before to dying.

Who were the Brothers Grimm     mainly inspirers of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine creators of Into the Woods?

We all know that Stephen Sondheim   and Lapine inserted a fairy-tale, the one invented by them (and truly beauty) of The Baker and His Wife with other very beloved Brothers Grimm fairy-tales in  Into the Woods .

Yes but….Who were the Brothers Grimm?

Of course we all know their reputation. Our relatives and parents when we were children read us aloud the fairy-tales they wrote explaining to us the profound meaning they have, and at time, terrorizing us.

An imaginary world plenty of meanings and significance for the rest of our existence.

Am I exaggerated? I strongly don’t think so.

I always love to repeat that we could avoid to tell to our children beautiful fairy-tales without strong enemies but we can’t avoid to read the Brothers Grimm’s fairy-tales to our children because they’re the base of what it will be their life once grown up and although it can appear pretty weird, these fairy-tales slowly will prepare their soul for fighting once adults against demons, worries and life’s worries more solidly.

Wikipedia pics

, creator

Soul, mind will be more prepared at giving to the life a different meaning, reading the reality under various, constantly diversified aspects, answers, winning moment of discomforts, because distantly there are the fairy-tales someone had read us many years and decades ago and that later we continued to read alone. They will whisper to our soul, helping us tp find good solutions to the problems.

 

Reading a fairy-tale in adult age doesn’t have the same power because the personality of the grown-up kid, is forged and so they won’t never “talk” to the adults as they are able to do in tender age with a plastic, absorbing mind.

So,cartoons, fairy-tales told and re-told will create more genuine and well structured little people and good human being once adults.

Hoping that each of you tonight will read a Brothers Grimm’s fairy-tale to your children, niece, nephews, let’s see who the Brothers Grimm were and why they have been so special to the world.

Life for example hasn’t been so simple to them although their existence started like the most beautiful fairy-tale when Jacob born in 1785 followed by his brother Wilhelm 13 months later at Hanau, in Germany.

Their dad Philip Wilhelm Grimm was a jurist, and their mom Dorothea Grimm daughter of a city council.

The exact birth day of both the brothers is this one: Jacob 4 January 1785, Carl Grimm, 24 February 1786.

The first years of their life was spent at Hanau but in 1791 the family moved close to Steinau, in the countryside.

Brother Grimm’s father at that time worked as district magistrate.

Of course the family became incredibly important for the local society thanks to the good work of Philip Grimm. The house of the Brothers Grimm was beautiful and surrounded by wonderful green fields and a great panorama.

More than a fairy-tale, the children appreciated so badly their rural life.

At first they attended school privately. They studied at home followed by private tutors appreciating the Calvinist religion.

Later they joined the other children in the local schools.

In 1796 Brothers Grimm’s dad died because of pneumonia and Dorothea, the wife of Philip was constricted to change her life-style and the one of the numerous children she had had.

Dorothea asked support to his dad and sister, an important lady.

The two brothers Grimm were forced to growing up fastly.

In the while very good news for the Brothers, who in the while would have attended the prestigious Friedrichsgymnasium in Kassel. The aunt had paid for them. The two Brothers Grimm started to become because of their hard times, always more close.

Their characters? If you think that the two brothers had a lot of similarities you are wrong.

Jacob was shy and preferred not to give too much confidence. Wilhelm was the one more social.Wilhelm was frequently sick.

They were united, strong and seriously ethic in their studies.

Each brother the best one of the classroom once graduated.

Later the university of Marburg.
Small one, just 200 students, other discriminations.
Richest students received money. Obviously it wasn’t their case. They were excluded from everything, social life, other activities of the university.
They could only study and it was what they did with great joy.

It was their law professor Friedrich Von Savigny who inspired in them the genuine interest for history and philology.

The Brothers Grimm returned to study German Literature with pleasure. The Brothers Grimm thanks to their professor were introduced to the ideas of  Gottfried Herder. This man thought that German literature had to return to a simpler form of literature. Johann Gottfried Herder loved to call it natural poetry.

Someone believed in them and in their brilliant future.

 

Jacob in 1805 once back home was forced of leaving his studies for working and helping financially his family. Food started to be absent in their house where in the past they had known a lot of abundance.

Wilhelm once wrote to his aunt: “We eat only three portions and only once a day”.

He became librarian in Kassel.

The departure of his mom meant for Jacob a complete responsibility on his youngest siblings. Jacob paid for the studies at the art school of Ludwig. Wilhelm in the while needed treatments for his respiratory and heart’s problems.

Wilhelm after a period of illness would have joined the brother as librarian in Kassel.

It’s in this phase that the Brothers started to collecting fairy-tales although his biographer Jack Zipes adds: “The Grimms were unable to devote all their energies to their research and did not have a clear idea about the significance of collecting folk tales in this initial phase”.

They started to publish several books and in particular in 1812  they published their first volume of 86 fairy-tales. It is called in german: Kinder- und Hausmärchen without neglecting german legends books and a book of german early literature.

They decided of dividing their job: a part of their research would have involved and absorbed Danish and Irish Folk Tales and the mythology of the North. Another great part of their mental energy would have been spent editing the german folk tales collection.

With the time Brothers Grimm started to receive great rewards for their work appreciated by several and important universities in Germany: Berlin,Marburg and Breslau.

Wilhelm married in 1825 Henriette Dorothea Wild, called Dortchen. They knew her because part of a group helped them with stories and folklore. Jacob spent their existence with Wilhelm and Dorothea, without marrying any woman.

At the beginning of 1830 they started their work Jacob as professor and head librarian and Wilhelm as professor at the Göttingen University.

In 1835 Jacob published German Mythology.

They lost their work in 1837 because of a protest against the system. A new movement was borning and it was called: Young Germany. The movement asked for democratic reforms.
King Ernest Augustus would have seen with good eyes everyone who would have helped him at supporting his own ideas, but the Brothers Grimm and other five professors said: “No thanks our ideas are different”. They were fired immediately.

Without money they started to write in 1838 one of their greatest ambitious: the first volume of the German Dictionary.

The Brothers Grimm were again in the position of their childhood: asking for some help to their friends and relatives.

In 1840 the two obtained a place at the University of Berlin. Jacob researched for german legal traditions and history of german language. Wilhelm directed his studies researching medieval literature.

There was a revolution in Germany in 1848 and the two Brothers Grimm obtained a place in  Parliament.

As all the people intellectually honest and idealists, the Brothers Grimm thought policy would have been in grade to sort out the problems.

Jacob resigned in late 1840s from university. Wilhelm the first years of 1850s.

The Brothers both pensioners continued to work actively at the first German Dictionary.

Wilhelm was the first one to dying for an infection.

Jacob incredibly upset and sad for the departure of this brother with which lived symbiotically the entire existence, became a recluse.

Zipes writes in his biography that symbolically the latest word Jacob worked at before to dying in 1863 was frucht, in english fruit.

 

 

Anna Maria Polidori

 

 

Info: Wikipedia