Fairy Tale

Re the review of "Beauty and the Beast" ("It Sounds Like a 'Beauty,' " April 14), I realize that Times theater critic Laurie Winer had to cover all aspects of the production, but I take exception to her criticism of the set. As a primary-school teacher and mother of six, I have seen/read many fairy-tale books, and, from the "curtain up," I felt I was being drawn into the pages of a beautiful fairy-tale book. Wasn't that the intent of the designer? KATHARINE FORRESTER Anaheim

MARLOES SANDS, Wales - Nearly a hundred soldiers on horseback sprinted across the beach here last fall, dodging arrows and catapulted fire balls. Despite many casualties, the charging "Snow White and the Huntsman" army was determined to storm the castle of the evil Queen Ravenna, who not only can suck the beauty out of young women but also transmogrify into a murder of crows. Assessing the battle from an all-terrain vehicle was Rupert Sanders, a commercial director making his first feature film.

He sat behind the glass partition in the county jail, his years on the run finished. Craig Pritchert leaned forward in his black-and-white striped uniform and rubbed his eyes. They were weary and damp with tears, the eyes of a man who could see the end. The end of a good life, although a life based on a fake identity. Worse, this could be the end of a love. Not one built on lies and lawlessness, as police assert, but on sincere affection, he said.

The Hero's Guide to Saving Your Kingdom A Novel Christopher Healy HarperCollins: 432 pp., $16.99, ages 8 and up Whether it's Cinderella or Snow White, Rapunzel or Sleeping Beauty, princes play a key role in the happily ever afters of fairy tales. But what happens once these dashing young lads have swooped in to save their distressed damsels? What if, as Christopher Healy theorizes with his cheeky middle-grade debut, these princes turned out to be insufferable losers?

All grown up, Hansel and Gretel return to the forest to exact revenge on their childhood tormentors. Snow White escapes the Evil Queen and takes up with a group of Shaolin monks. And after leaving Kansas, carnival barker Oscar Diggs remakes himself as a wizard in the Emerald City. Childhood classics as seen through a fun-house mirror? Well, yes. But for the film business, it's also something far more consequential: its future. Movie studios are taking timeless stories from authors such as the Brothers Grimm and L. Frank Baum and reimagining them with a modern, playful sensibility.

The beautiful young socialite slipped the businessman a note scrawled in eyeliner on a crumpled napkin. "Help me," it pleaded. She was a teenage Indonesian model who had married a Malaysian prince, but Manohara Odelia Pinot says her life with him was no fairy tale. Press accounts of her allegations of abuse and tales of her escape from an unhappy marriage have captivated this country, and further divided two nations that have long been Southeast Asian rivals. Known across Indonesia by her first name, which means "thief of hearts" in Sanskrit, Manohara is viewed here as a tragic heroine mistreated by an obsessed suitor who became outraged when she would not yield to his demands.

Although it shares industrial DNA with "Entourage" -- some executive producers, a network -- and concerns young men who go to parties and clubs, "How to Make It in America," premiering Sunday on HBO, is a different kettle of testosterone. There is more estrogen in the mix, for one thing. As the title suggests, success is something that will come to its characters after a time. Vincent Chase and his Hollywood pals might be high-fiving or fist-bumping or whatever it is the kids do now over the luxurious goods and services that adorn their celebrity, but it only takes a couple of cafes con leche to make Cam (Victor Rasuk)

For my daughter, Sophie, it was like finding the goose that laid the golden egg. "Today was a Fairytale," Taylor Swift was singing from the stage at Staples Center, and Sophie, age 11, was singing every word along with her, waving a colored light stick back and forth above her head. Her grin was electric, her attention sharply focused; she wasn't missing anything. For the last year or so, Sophie has been a Taylor Swift obsessive ("I am Taylor's No. 1 fan!" read the sign she brought to the concert with us)

Once upon a time - and by that we mean just a few months ago - it was the old-school horror genre that was being dusted off and repurposed into 21st century popular culture replete with wizards, werewolves, zombies and the hollow-cheeked vampires of the vanities. Today it's not horror stories but fairy tales seizing the collective imagination. For evidence, one need look no further than the fall TV schedule, where NBC rolled out "Grimm" (recasting fairy tales as crime procedurals)

Strange but true: The British public is simply not that excited about the royal wedding. According to the Economist, only a third of the population is definitely going to watch the nuptials on TV, while close to half are actively uninterested. My own secret source on the English streets (OK, it's my mum, who lives in a small town called Tring) reports that "people seem much less bothered" about Will and Kate than about Charles and Di in 1981. FOR THE RECORD: Americans on Britain: A commentary in the April 25 Calendar section about Americans' fairy-tale impression of Britain said that PBS is largely responsible for "maintaining the illusion that Britain is a country where everybody takes afternoon tea. " However, the headline erroneously referred to "high tea," which is a different meal.

DENVER - Andrew Bynum is driving me crazy, driving his teammates crazy, driving his coach crazy, driving an entire organization into an early spring ditch. He's doing it again. He's acting like a 24-year-old toddler. One day after failing to show up in the first half of a playoff game in which the Lakers were waxed by the Denver Nuggets, he stood sleepily in front of reporters Saturday and admitted something Lakers fans haven't heard since Dennis Rodman forgot his shoes. Bynum said he wasn't ready to play.

"Once Upon a Time in Anatolia," the exquisite sixth feature by Nuri Bilge Ceylan, is a police procedural as existential inquiry, set in a remote dreamscape of mystery and foreboding. In the search for a murder victim's body, a caravan of cars makes its fitful way over the rolling Turkish steppes, carrying men of law and science and the confessed killer. The journey begins in darkness and moves into the clear light of day, by which point many things are revealed and nothing is as it seems.

Encased in a coffin, waiting to be brought back to life: That's how Snow White spends a good portion of the folk story that bears her name. There's no such downtime for the princess in the snappy retelling "Mirror Mirror," a fractured fairy tale that occupies the divide between Disney and Grimm. A booster shot of testosterone lends kinetic kick to director Tarsem Singh's visually inventive interpretation, without shortchanging the requisite froufrou or sugarcoating the story's dark Oedipal heart.

Moviegoers are expected to return to the multiplex this weekend for second helpings of "The Hunger Games," pushing the teen epic to No. 1 at the box office again. After debuting with a record-breaking $152.5 million last weekend, the adaptation of Suzanne Collins' bestselling young adult novel has continued to rake in massive ticket sales this week. Since Monday, the movie has grossed $29.2 million, and it could collect more than $60 million in its second weekend, according to those who have seen pre-release audience surveys.

Snow White was driving hastily through West Hollywood, swerving her SUV out of a lane of cars jammed in traffic. Opportunities to make U-turns on Santa Monica Boulevard don't come frequently, so Lily Collins - who plays the classic fairy-tale princess in Friday's"Mirror Mirror" - pulled a quick illegal maneuver to minimize her time in the car. "It would have taken forever otherwise," the actress said in the parking lot of the French...

It would be easy to see the U.S. premiere of Ballet Preljocaj's avant-garde production of "Snow White" ("Blanche Neige"), with music by Mahler, costumes by fashion legend Jean Paul Gaultier and a Thierry Leproust-designed set, as an attempt to capitalize on the current fascination with the darker take on traditional fairy tales that have been cropping up on TV sets and hitting theaters. The American premiere is this weekend at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, but the scheduling is a coincidence, says the artistic director and choreographer of the edgy French ballet company, Angelin Preljocaj.

Glass footwear has long been synonymous with a romance between a fairy-godmother-assisted girl and a handsome prince but far too fragile and fantastical to ever exist in real life. Until now. Pasquale Fabrizio, owner of Pasquale Shoe Repair in Los Angeles, has doctored the shoes of celebrities, costume designers and fashion industry insiders for the last 17 years. Combining his expertise in reconstructing designer footwear and his passion for Murano glass pieces, Fabrizio has created a line of glass-adorned shoes ornate enough for a princess and with a royal price tag to match.

I believe! Any GP in the same predicament would tell you the same thing. I took a few days this week to visit the grandkids in Arizona, finding the daughter upset when I arrived. She had just taken the 7-Eleven Kid and the twins to see the movie "We Bought a Zoo. " I remember as a parent how upset I was when I had to sit through dumb kid movies just because I was a father. But she was angry because Matt Damon , the father in the movie, was saying he had a 7-year-old daughter who still thinks the Easter Bunny exists.

"Brave," its filmmakers at Pixar Animation Studios would like you to know, is not your mother's fairy tale, beginning with its unruly heroine, Merida. Deft with a bow and arrow and crowned with a massive mane of curly red hair, Merida (voiced by Scottish actress Kelly Macdonald), defies her parents King Fergus (Billy Connolly) and Queen Elinor (Emma Thompson) and disregards an ancient custom, inadvertently setting off calamity in the lush, fog-shrouded Scottish highlands where she lives.