Stay Tuned #4: The Ever After Event

As you try to say the title of this post three times fast, celebrations are in order because we've just crossed the 6,000 pageview mark with the last issue of Ticket Stubs, wherein I poked fun at a massive typo featuring Cinderella and Chimpanzee that I found in my local grocery store's movie rental guide. Today, it's time to get serious about our fairy tales with a Stay Tuned/Just the Ticket crossover event.

First, if you're the network airing Once Upon A Time (now in season 2, Sundays at 8pm on ABC), it pays big to own Disney. Since bounty hunter-turned-fairy tale savior Emma Swan (House's Jennifer Morrison) broke the queen's curse at the end of Season 1 and Rumplestiltskin (Robert Carlyle, 28 Days Later) tried to impress Lost love Belle (Emilie de Ravin) by bringing magic to the characters' prison town of Storybrooke, Maine, the door has been opened to mash up even more Disneyfied fairy tales (stretched to serial-supporting size by the occasional unhappy interlude and realm-hopping flasharound), including Sleeping Beauty (the Season 1 finale also found Emma battling and killing the film's baddie, Queen Malificent, in her dragon form), Mulan (seriously, we're not going to see Eddie Murphy show up dressed as Moo Shoo, are we?), and Lancelot (isn't The Sword In the Stone kind of a stretch?), with an origin story planned for Captain Hook in this season's fourth episode.
The acting may be geared more towards a younger generation (read: the phrasing can smell of an entire wheel of Broadway cheese, and the characters--Prince Charming in particular--rush to the foreground to deliver a dramatic line as if they are about to break into song), but the creativity and effort that goes into developing Storybrooke and stitching together an entire Everafterverse out of almost half a century of fractured fairy tales on a weekly basis is a marvel in itself.
What really keeps me watching the show, though, are the developing relationships between key characters that bring new dimension to their previously Disneyfied black-and-white archetypes (case in point: evil Queen Regina gets brought face-to-face with her mommy issues this season, and consequently appears to show a softer side when it comes to Henry, the son she adopted from nemesis Emma pre-series) and the twist endings that carry the show from week to week, courtesy of Lost writers Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz; two men who know a thing or three about writing good cliffhangers. Hopefully their respective Jimminy Crickets will keep the show's royalty on the righteous path between the engaging and the ludicrous.
B+

It's plain to see that Once Upon A Time has some competition in the likes of Grimm. Also in its second season (airing Fridays at 9pm on NBC) and sporting some familiar successful talents behind the camera (David Greenwalt and Jim Kouf of Buffy and Angel), Grimm takes the police procedural approach to fairy tales, having Detective Nick Burkhardt, a descendant of monster hunters The Brothers Grimm (just when you hoped you had forgotten all about that Matt Damon/Heath Ledger disaster, here I am to remind you of what you wish you had missed), stumble upon a new Wessen (pronounced "vessin", they are human/animal hybrids--wolves like fan favorite Silas Weir Mitchell's Monroe character, or pigs, beavers, sabre-toothed tigers, coyotes, cobras, lions, or more mythical creatures like dragons or ogres) each week who he must either protect or kill. The first season's larger mythology dealt with Nick (regular TV cameo David Giuntoli, in his first leading role) learning his heritage and uncovering the truth behind his family's assassination, and culminated with the return of his presumed dead mother (whose motives and credibility have come into question this season) and the poisoning of Nick's girlfriend, Juliette (The Artist's Bitsie Tulloch), who has since awakened from a coma without her memory after being kissed by Nick's boss, a half-Wessen royal played by Caprica star Sasha Roiz (yes, that's Sleeping Beauty you're recognizing).
The Buffy influences are evident and well used in Grimm, especially regarding the Wessen, who undergo a vampire-like morph that brings out their animalistic natures when emotional or angry. Of course, there's the monster-fighting part, too.
I don't care much for the new, elongated intro, but each episode still features an opening quote from one of Grimm's Fairy Tales, which you can look up here if you're feeling curious or nostalgic like me: Season 1, Season 2
Both shows are engaging for different reasons, and I will continue to follow each in turn, but as a smaller show--both in production value and casting--with better acting and a more noob-friendly format, Grimm comes out on top.
A

Unfortunately, as we will see in today's Critical Quickies, cinema hasn't been as kind to fairy tales as its small-screen counterpart:

Mirror, Mirror--Nathan Lane, Julia Roberts, Lily Collins. Welcome to the worst film adaptation of classic literature ever made. We have Phil Collins' daughter with a unibrow, Nathan Lane getting turned into a cockroach, dwarves on stilts, and a castle that looks like a giant middle finger at sunset. Director Tarsem Singh (The Cell, Immortals), what have you done? The color scheme is Bollywood bold, showing the bright, high contrast, campy taste of the man in charge, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. The movie itself, however, is a poisoned apple; fairy tale blasphemy at its most ridiculous. I can't believe I ate the whole thing.
D+

Snow White & the Huntsman--Charlize Theron, Kristen Stewart, Chris Hemsworth. This more Grimm-faithful Snow White adaptation is almost saved by Theron as the scene-stealing queen Ravenna, and sidelining Prince Charming as a love interest in favor of Stewart and Hemsworth's relationship as the title pair was a smart choice (Stewart's attempt to hook up with her married director while dating the most popular vampire/elephant trainer/pilot in the world...not so much--and not that I care). But the imposing, epic dreariness of the green-screened landscape, coupled with a monotonous, battle-heavy third act, drag the film into oblivion as quickly as any overproduced, two-hour fantasy yawn yarn is capable of.
C-

Before I head back to Ticket Stubs and the land of sub-par scarefests, I'd like to close the show with a Quote That Fits from comedian Tom Cotter: "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs--remember this one? One hot chick and seven middle-aged midgets. That's an adult film, ladies and gentlemen!"
Good night.