Snow White and the Huntsman

CONTAINS SPOILERS

**

2 stars out of 5

Appropriately enough for a story about beauty, visually the film is gorgeous. If you like eye-catching gothic imagery, which I certainly do, then this film delivers. We get blood drops on snow, red roses, gnarled black forests, ravens. The dark forest where nothing is as it seems as it appears to make people there hallucinate their worst fears. When Snow White gets lost in the spooky forest in question she sees branches as snakes. But that was fairly similar to the animated Disney version. There is also an opposite forest, the forest of the fairies, which is brightly lit and full of cute woodland critters, which also is similar to the Disney animated version and frankly look just as cartoonish. The CGI and special effects are generally to a high standard to be fair, but this section stands out quite badly.

The Seven Dwarves do show up despite their appearance being somewhat underplayed in most of the promo I’ve seen. They are characterised as gold miners being forced into becoming a sort of gang of thieves because of the queen’s reign, and they provide some comic relief. I could be wrong, but it seems almost as if they are reluctant addition, almost like they are only there because people would expect them to be part of a Snow White adaptation. There is a feeling that they are a little unnecessary.  They don’t appear until quite late in the film.The title suggests the story they wanted to tell was a love story between Snow White and the huntsman hired to kill her. The problem is though, that that story isn’t presented in an engaging way here. There isn’t much there that shows that they are attracted to each other, it almost comes off as they are by default. “You’re the heroine, I’m the hero, we should get together”. Also by the end of the film, this isn’t resolved. They try and set up a love triangle with a childhood friend of Snow White, who is also a duke’s son and standing in for the Prince Charming role. The implication is that the huntsman is Snow White’s ‘true love’ as at different points in the film after she has been poisoned by the apple, they both kiss her and she only wakes from her deep sleep after the huntsman has kissed her. But by the end, it’s not explicitly said whether they get together, but they probably do… to be honest I didn’t really care.

As far as plot is concerned, the main narrative is that Snow White is leading a rebellion against the wicked queen. Making a fairytale princess into an Action Girl isn’t a new thing, Ever After  starring Drew Barrymore did that for Cinderella, but Snow White actually makes a bit more sense to try that. As Ellie Beaven’s character put it in an episode of ’90s CBBC show The Wild House, “according to the story everyone loves Snow White and everyone hates the old bag”, so why not lead a revolution and claim the throne which as the daughter of the deceased king she has a legitimate claim that it is rightfully hers anyway? The ‘Snow White: Warrior Princess’ part of this film is actually one of the things about it that works well. But the film runs out of steam long before the end, and it follows standard “going into the final battle to defeat an evil overlord” clichés. Snow White making a BIG INSPIRING SPEECH TO RALLY THE TROOPS backed by stirring music is a very cringeworthy moment it has to be said.

By far the most interesting thing about the film is Charlize Theron’s performance as the Wicked Queen, here named Ravenna. In the first half of the film it looks like she’s trying to play the character as an insane hammy villainess, which would be fine, in fact if handled correctly it can make a villain iconic, but it still needs to come off as natural and convincing. Unfortunately it comes off as her trying a little too hard. However, when we get to see the more tragic sides of Ravenna, she’s much better. They give a blink and you’ll miss it flashback to a traumatic childhood, but it’s they way Ravenna tearfully remembers it that makes it work. As in the original story the wicked queen is obsessed with her beauty, and in this version she maintains it by stealing it from other young women, causing women in the kingdom to deliberately scar themselves so she won’t take them. But what makes her as a villain more disturbing isn’t her powers, but that her fatal flaw, a desperation to stay young and beautiful, is a very human one, and Theron plays this side of the character very well.  The scene where Ravenna poisons Snow White with the apple and in the final battle is good for this. She’s angry, bitter, twisted and desperate.

The poison apple scene also follows some adaptations that make Snow White seem a little less, well, thick. In the Grimms version of the fairytale, the queen comes back as a peddlar woman 3 times and tries varations of the same trick and Snow White falls for it every single time.  In this film as with some other modern adaptations, the queen disguise herself as someone Snow White knows rather than as a random peddlar woman after she’s well aware of the queen’s magical power and the fact she wants to kill her.

This film isn’t a terrible one, it looks good, and Florence + The Machine’s ‘Breath Of Life’ is an ace film theme,most of the characters are presented well enough, and it does a better job of making them more relatable and fully rounded to modern audiences than some adaptations of fairy tales can be, but overall it’s a little uninspiring really. If you want a film with a dark take on the Snow White story I’d recommend Snow White: A Tale Of Terror starring Sigourney Weaver as the wicked queen.

Eurovision 2012

Yet again the UK entry, ‘Love Will Set You Free’ by Engelbert Humperdink, performed poorly, finishing 25th out of 26 songs. But people shouldn’t have been surprised. Long before the contest many people in the UK were saying the song wasn’t very good, it was boring, dated and that they didn’t like it. It was similar to when we sent in the utterly crap song that was ‘That Sounds Good To Me’ in 2010. Really, if even we didn’t like why should we expect other European countries to? Performing first wouldn’t have helped, but the song failed to make a mark or stand out among all the others. The thing is, the last couple of times we made an effort with the song that we sent in, we did alright. Last year Blue managed 11th place, and in 2009 Jade Ewen got to 5th place. The last song we sent in that I really liked was ‘Come Back’ by Jessica Garlick, which I always seem to mention every time Eurovision comes round again, but as it is now ten years since we sent it in in 2002 I suppose now is a good time to discuss it.

Now it’s nothing groundbreaking as songs go, it’s just a nice ballad performed very well, but it finished 3rd. For all the talk that performing first caused this year’s entry to fail, this song was performed second in the competition, which is even more of a ‘cursed’ position to perform in. But even in this case, as was the case for Jade Ewen and Blue, each time the response from the press and the British public wasn’t that they did well, it was how they failed to win. The problem with the UK and Eurovision is that there is a sense that its beneath us and we can (and often do) send any old crap in… but we still put a lot of money into it, and always expect to win. It’s not enough to do alright in the competition, we have to win the whole thing. Fair enough, we all know it’s all a bit of silly camp fun, and everyone who’s seen even one contest can predict that come the voting time neighbouring countries will reward their highest points to each other, but that still doesn’t mean we can send in just anything AND expect to come out the winners. Further to this, the winner of this year’s contest, ‘Euphoria’ by Loreen for Sweden, is doing well on the UK iTunes chart and is a possible contender to be a number one single on our official chart, which is more than can be said for ‘Love Will Set You Free’. So it looks like we too like the winning song better than the one we sent in. Maybe if we want to win this contest we should, I don’t know, make an effort to.

As for this year’s competition itself, it wasn’t exactly the most exciting year. I certainly think that ‘Euphoria’ is a worthy winner, as it is catchy as hell and it’s a good summer pop-dance track. I’m pleased it stopped the Russian entry, the performance of which amounted to a bunch of old biddies sinisterly hanging around an oven like the witch from Hansel and Gretel. Why on earth did that terrible SCREECHING from the Albanian entry do so well? Then there was the one entry we did beat this year, from Norway. While I have to feel sorry for their singer for being unlucky enough to come last representing his country on an international competition on his birthday, selfishly I’m glad it came last, not just because it meant we didn’t, but because it was awful. It was one of those dance tracks that sounds like a million mobile phone ringtones and a few car alarms all going off at once. Jedward were back representing Ireland, and hey, at least they seemed to he having fun. I have forgotten most of them. I don’t remember how the Romanian entry went, but I do remember it included an Elvis impersonator playing bagpipes.

I often love Iceland’s entries. Some of my favourites songs from past years have included Euroband – ‘This Is My Life’ in 2008, Yohanna – ‘Is It True?’ in 2009, and going way back Selma – ‘All Out Of Luck’ in 1999. I also liked this years entry, Gréta Salóme & Jónsi – ‘Never Forget’, for the vampirish vibe and the violins. My favourite from this years competition though was Italy’s entry, Nina Zilli who looked very fierce performing her Amy Winehouse-ish song ‘L’amore è femmina (Out of Love)’.

Inside Nature’s Giants

I love this series. Animal autopsy might not be something which a lot of viewers find comfortable to watch, but this series is informative and interesting, even to a natural history documentary junkie like me. Presented very ably by Mark Evans and now in its fourth series, I have by now got to really like the regular contributors. The most well known of them is probably Richard Dawkins who always pops up to talk about an animal’s evolutionary history. There is also biologist Simon Watt who is usually travels to other locations, such as an animal’s natural habitat for example, while the dissecting is done by a team with anatomist Joy Reidenberg. She’s probably my favourite, I love her enthusiasm.

The fourth series opened with dissecting a hippo.

One fact they said was that hippos kill more humans than lions, elephants and crocodiles combined despite looking “deceptively docile”, although I wonder if it’s partly because of that. Just like there are more people killed by dogs than by wolves, perhaps the fact we are less wary of some creatures might account for errors in judgement people might make. I never knew before that at night is when hippos graze, for good reason as during the day it is far too hot. The popular image of hippos is them lazing in water in the hot sun like holiday makers in a swimming pool, but that’s just how it appears on the surface. Underwater, hippos are much busier, as it is where they raise their young. While the underwater footage wasn’t groundbreaking, it is always amazing how graceful hippos are underwater, not like the ballerina hippos in Fantasia either. Similar to penguins, they seem much more at home underwater than the comparatively clumsy way they appear on land.

They also revealed that a hippo’s closest living relative is the whale. That in itself wasn’t a huge shock, as if you saw the whale episode of Inside Nature’s Giants it revealed that it has a layered stomach, similar to a cow and indeed a hippo, which is a left over from when it evolved from a land mammal. Also, while they are obviously very different animals, you can see some resemblance, especially when they are underwater. The big surprise they revealed was recording some of their communication underwater, and they even click like whales!

It does seem to have got to the stage where they are having to experiment with the formula a bit. The ‘giant’ of the last episode was the Jungle, which is a bit of a cheat in a way, and not only that they had began going in the opposite direction from dissecting giant creatures to dissecting insects. It makes me wonder if they may give this show a new title one day. However, whichever form the series takes I hope to see it continue for a while.