Ever After

I want to share one of my favorite movies.

It's not your average Cinderella story.

Ever After is set up to be the "real" story behind the fairy tale, set in medieval France.

There's no usual magic, like fairies, pumpkins into carriages, or talking animals.
There is magic of a different sort.

A strong, feisty heroine.
A handsome, confused prince.

You'll never find another fairy tale like this one.

It has the usual beginning, 8 yr old Danielle's dad remarries, then died, leaving the awful stepmother and stepsisters to be cruel to her.

Ten years later, the grown up Danielle is smart, but treated like a servant...until...

One morning Danielle (Cinderella) has a chance meeting with Henry, the Prince of France, in the apple orchard when he steals her father's horse while running away.

She knocks him off the horse with apples and, after he is revealed as the Crown Prince, he bribes Danielle for her silence, and rides off with the horse.

Not very far, Prince Henry comes upon Leonardo da Vinci,
whose painting, (the Mona Lisa), has been stolen by Gypsies.
Upon returning the painting, Prince Henry is captured by his father, the king's, guards.

Prince enry was running away from an arranged marriage with a princess of Spain.

Dnaielle borrows a courtier's gown and poses as a comtesse to visit the castle and free a servant her evil stepmother sold to pay some taxes.
That's when Prince Henry has a second chance meeting with Danielle where she is arguing for the servant's release, unaware that she is the same person he met earlier in the day.

Danielle quotes Thomas Moore's Utopia when she confronts the prince:

"If you suffer your people to be ill-educated and their manners corrupted from infancy, and then punish them for those crimes to which their first education disposed them, what else is to be concluded, sire, but that you first make thieves and then punish them?""

Angelica Houston is the evil Stepmother, and she is awesomely cruel.

The gowns and costumes are so beautiful in this film, as is the scenery and visual effects.
A majority of the filming takes place in France.

Cinderella's gown at the ball is magnificent.

I think what impressed me the most about this movie is
the interplay between Danielle and the Prince.

She inspires him to become a better person.
To question what is and to want more.

I want to inspire like that.

If you haven't seen this movie, watch it.

If you have seen it, re-watch it.

It's amazing.
A fairly tale with the magic of wit, humor and heart.

It gets me EVERY time.

Rambling Saturday

It's Saturday and it's the beginning of Spring Break! That means my boys will be home for the next ten days, making messes, complaining about being bored and constantly wanting to eat! No, really, I love holidays when they're home. We're not going anywhere this vacation, because my husband needs to work, but we may have some out of town guests coming to stay. One of my sisters and her three girls are hopefully coming up for a few days. We can't wait! Being such a male-focused household, it will be fun to have some major female action around.

I woke up this morning with two boys and a dog in my bed. The dog is at least 80lbs, so she isn't a toy poodle or anything. She takes up a lot of space and sprawls out like she thinks the bed's all hers. (thank goodness it's a king-sized bed!) I don't know where my husband was. lol He likes to watch TV to go to sleep at night, whereas I don't, and this often has him falling asleep on the couch.

Today we're going to focus on cleaning up the house. Things can get rushed during the week, with school, my working part time, baseball practices and open house night at school, etc. The house suffers. But, that's what the weekend's for, right?

The weather is gorgeous here in North Texas, and we should be outside enjoying it. We will be. I have to admit, curling up in bed with a good book this morning, not having to be anywhere immediately this morning, and being super lazy was really, really nice. I just got Kim Harrison's newest book, The Outlaw Demon Wails, and I can't wait to start it. I love her Rachel Morgan series. I'm really into dark/urban fantasy novels with strong female heroins. I also really like Laurell K. Hamilton, or at least her first ten or so Anita Blake novels. The rest of her books have gotten a little too erotica for me, way overboard. Her earlier stuff is great. I love Charlaine Harris' Sookie novels and Harper series. Kelley Armstrong has an awesome Otherworld Women series, and one of my newest finds is Vicki Petterson. These are all awesome authors in this genre.

So, today's blog is just random ramblings, no real theme or purpose. I just rented Stardust to watch, never seen it before, but it looks good.

Oh, I saw this flying saucer house for sale on Kim's blog, and while I think it's pretty cool, in a wacky sort of way, I wouldn't actually want to live in it because it is so dark and clausterphobic feeling inside. However, think about how much fun you could have with it, kidnapping drunk people, taking them back to it...making them think they'd been abducted by aliens. hehehe

Hope everyone's having a great weekend!