Tale as old as time: Beauty and the Beast

You have probably already seen the teaser for the live-action adaptation of Beauty and the Beast, but be my guest, here's the 90-second clip for your eyes to feast.

Terrific teaser. However, despite everything, Disney's recent live-action remakes have all fallen short of great.

Oh dear, what an awkward situation?

This year, Disney crossed the billion dollar mark at the US Box Office in just 128 days, smashing the previous record set by Universal Pictures. Disney is a mega corporation. Disney makes money.

Certain as the sun

Rising in the East

Turning a classic

Tale as old as time

Song as old as rhyme

Beauty into Beast

Just as the studio has nothing new to say in these new old tales, I have nothing more to say about them. Except... 

Works every time...

Let us part ways here. I shall re-watch Beauty and the Beast, and then return to blab about its beauty.

Will be back before the last petal falls.

Adele's New Video Is Making Me Dizzy AF

Now I'ma let you finish, but that was not one of the best videos of all times. Or maybe it was.

Adele's video for Send My Love (To Your New Lover), Rolling in the Deep's little cousin, is trippy.

At least, it's tripping me.

Starting static, the viewing becomes disorienting 30 seconds in, when a floral-draped Adele starts shaking off her ghosts. Bit of an artsy, classy Shake It Off so to speak.

Love that she's shaking it up, but coupled with the music, it really is a dizzying experience.

Nah na na...
I've been drinking,
I've been drinking.

When I listened to the song on 25, I imagined her Adeling to guitar accompaniment in the dark with similarly ethereal lighting. Just one of her. 

Perhaps it's time I start drinking. 

One of those films: The Ice Storm (1997)

Little Red Riding Hood... Oh that's sick, he's her father! This is Ang Lee, not Park Chan-wook.

Verdict

I couldn't recommend it with fervour, but Ang Lee's The Ice Storm is definitely worth watching. It’s borderline bland and boring, yet so resonant and still timely. Winter is here.

For people who like reading... 

In this '90s film about the '70s, Lee boards us on a train from New York, departing for depression - a dreary, barren woodside New Canaan on the verge of a wintry storm. 

A nuclear winter. The environment perfectly mimics its inhabiting nuclear units.

I’ve never seen a film deal with adolescent sexual exploration so naturally. Everything’s grey, people are pushing boundaries just to feel something. Sound familiar?

The social revolution unfolds with such undertones, numbing the viewer. At one point, I pondered if the death of a character would have any impact. Could this winter get any colder? At least then, I would feel something. 

It did and I did.

*Cue Whitney: Didn't we almost have it all...?

Roll the credits

In addition to Sigourney Weaver, Kevin Kline, Joan Allen and Allison Janney, already known at the time, we also get too see younger incarnations of:

Tobey Maguire

When he started getting "webby" hands, but for an entirely different reason.

Katie Holmes

B.C. Need I say more?

Elijah Wood

When he should have been more precious.

Christina Ricci

Before she started an affair with a serial killer à la Charlize Theron. 

Sweet dreams...