The Macabre Fairy Tale Behind the Movie “The Red Shoes”

This celluloid all-timer was inspired by a fairy tale with a creepy plot twist.

by Rich Watson 

This post is part of the Rule Britannia Blogathon, a blog event celebrating British film. At the end I’ll tell you where to find more posts like this.

British filmmakers Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger created their 1948 movie The Red Shoes inspired by a story by Hans Christian Andersen. Like most of their films, it’s magnificently photographed in Technicolor. It has dazzling costumes and makeup. The performance by Moira Shearer showcases her balletic skills. The production is overstuffed with beauty.

Which is ironic, since the story on which it’s based is pretty gruesome.

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#HudsonValley: In Nyack, Toni Morrison Preserved African-American History With a Bench

An ex-slave turned businesswoman and abolitionist is remembered in Nyack thanks to the author of Beloved.

by Rich Watson 

Toni Morrison was one of the most critically acclaimed authors of the twentieth century. In addition to winning the 1993 Nobel Prize for Literature, she received the Pulitzer, the American Book Award, seven honorary doctorates and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Her 1987 novel Beloved was the impetus for a project that commemorated the lives of African slaves. She used benches to mark their memories, in places across America—including her adopted hometown of Nyack.

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#HudsonValley: “Death at Olana” by Glenda Ruby Imagines a Murder at the Landscape Painting Site

The century-and-a-half home of a Hudson Valley painter is the setting for a contemporary mystery novel.

by Rich Watson 

In the mid-nineteenth century, a group of landscape artists based in the Hudson Valley formed a movement that brought the region, and other parts of America, to life in a variety of paintings. 

One of them, Frederick Edwin Church, designed and lived in a mansion, Olana, that grew to personify the Hudson River School. Today it’s a museum that draws visitors from around the region and beyond.

In 2013, it was the subject of a mystery novel that drew upon the place’s history, called Death at Olana.

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