“Only until midnight...” This is
what the fairy tells Ella in the classical tale.
This year, Universal is having 'its
people' work on a screenplay development of 'Cinderella,' and Ann
Peacock, screenwriter of Narnia fame, has the job of
're-imagining' – as they say about these kinds of things – the
story for whoever Universal's marketing consigliere has deemed
today's audience is, or is going to be.
Modern Cinderella's coach |
I will be going to watch the eventual
movie whenever it finally comes out, but mainly for the work of who
in my own opinion is today's greatest living cinematographer –
Bruno Aveillan.
Aveillan has 'only' ever in the past
worked on commercial shorts for huge global brands: Lanvin, Louis
Vuitton, Swarovski, Guerlain, among a long long list of film adverts
credited to him. Aveillan is from Toulouse and mainly works in
France, although his professional reputation extends all over the
world. He has not previously made a full length movie, much less a
mainstream worldwide release feature film.
Bruno Aveillan |
What the 're-imagining' of Cinderella
is going to mean I have no idea but if I were a writer, the very last
thing I would want to do, not for any amount of money on offer, is
have to submit my mind to the drivel which appears to be the main
entertainment fare of today's mass audience. Creating, imagining,
fantasizing, do not seem naturally fit to the task of
conservatism, mediocritization, and propaganda designed to keep the
masses as idiotic as they are, and relieve them of any desire to
improve themselves or their lot in life. It's a wonder Universal
don't just get some radical Mohammedan preacher to work on the
screenplay, hand out the full body-and-face covering black gowns to
ugly unknowns they won't have to pay as the female leads and
otherwise will be able to treat as animals or at minimum second class
humans, and stick the premier on in Benghazi as a repentance for past
'offenses.'
“Only until midnight,” says the
fairy.
“But why only until then?” Asks
Cinders.
I could end with a typical a la mode
stock jocular if not, even slightly offensive retort to that
question. You know the kind of remark: 'because you're a
crossdressing gay boy' or something along those lines.
There is a real answer; a one true,
real answer.
“That childhood fantasy endures only
until midnight, because soon afterwards you will have grown up. That
is the necessary overall effect of a Balenciaga gown and a new Rolls
Royce and a bottle of G. H. Mumm. And a very different scene plays
out with that lot after the main lights go out!”
Ann Peacock, let me assure you, will
not be writing this kind of
thing. It will all be very grandly filmed of course however, a real
spectacle no doubt. And none will be the wiser about what really
transpires with princes and glass-slippered dames beyond any
fashionably blackly glittery midnight.