Snow White

Mirror Mirror: the novel, was written by Gregory Maguire, who is the author of Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West and Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister (a retold story of Cinderella).

I must say that he has some perverted jokes and sexual contents in the novels, but he is still a good writer with a plethora of creative juice to be able to retell famous fables from the perspectives of characters that are almost always perceived to be the evil ones in the story.

I started reading his novels with when I first found out about the Wicked, the musical. I fell in love with the story so much I that when I actually read the book, I was overwhelmed by its dark and perverted nature and to be honest, I didn't like it very much. The slow pace of the story telling didn't really help alleviate either. that would explain why I didn't go on to read the sequels of the story.

But, I still liked the idea of finding out what the other characters (especially the villains) of stories we're so familiar with, such as Cinderella and Snow White, might have experienced while the glorified story of the main characters were being told. No one ever doubts when reading the Wizard of Oz that the "evil witch" is actually evil and that she has no specific agenda than to simply terrorize people. No one ever doubts that the ugly stepsisters of Cinderella were jealous and hateful of Cinderella's beauty and felt satisfaction to see her dressed and treated as a mere servant girl.

by Mike Maihack, from Cow Shell graphics

But what if that's not the whole story? what if the other characters were allowed to tell their OWN story?

and so that's what Maguire tried to imagine, I suppose, and I would have to admit that he is brilliant at it. Yes, perhaps a bit disturbed in terms of his ideas of sexuality (as there are plenty of incest, gross description of odd sex relationships, etc. in his books), but nonetheless brilliant.

So I came to read Mirror Mirror: the novel. It had been a really long time since I saw/read the Snow White story but I was excited (and also scared that he would introduce some perverted incest relationship for snow white). Anyhow, there wasn't any incest relationship between Snow White and her father (thank God!) and the story was, I thought, almost pleasant to read. It was definitely captivating, as the story was now placed in a renaissance period with the famous Cesare and Lucrezia Borgia as the evil ones, and Snow White's father going off in search of the Sacred fruit -- from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil --.

At the end of the day, I really liked it! much better than the Wicked and the Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister I thought-- ironically enough, since I own both of the novels but not Mirror Mirror.

well and then I started searching for Snow White movies and what not....
and guess what I found!

Snow White: The fairest of them all (2002)

featuring Kristen Kreuk as Snow White! Yes, that's your Smallville's Lana Lang as your PRINCESS!

I really wanted to watch it, so I looked it up on youtube: here's a fan-made montage of pictures from the movie.





and then found it at the local blockbusters! they were having some promotion, so I was able to rent it out for a buck! :) I watched it just a few days ago and awww it was quite good. I mean, it's not like I had a huge expectations for the movie. it's like one of those TV movies that play during holiday family hours. anyway, I really liked it. It was a cute movie aaaand Kristen Kreuk was just plain GORGEOUS to keep my eyes fixated on the screen :)