Photographing Fairies (1997)

Photographing Fairies is a sci fi/ fantasy film set in the early 1900's exploring the idea behind the Cottingly fairy hoax. The story is about a young photographer named Charles Castle who looses his wife soon after they are married, and of course he is lost in his grief. He goes off to war and is employed as a photographer in the trenches, and after the war he is still consumed with death as we see him cut and paste photos of dead soldiers into new photos of their loved ones for a living. One day he finds himself at a supernatural convention of sorts and comes upon a lecture of a man telling people of the Cottingly photographs and supporting the existence of faeries because of them. Charles then proceeds to interrupt the man, telling him that there is no way the photos can be real, both from a photographers perspectives and as one who has lost faith with all things the eye cannot see. The character of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle makes an appearance in the film, as he was a supporter of the photos, even though he wasn't so supportive of them in the film. So, after attending the lecture, a woman comes to his studio and shows him some photographs that were supposedly of a real faerie standing on her daughter's outstretched hand. Of course Charles doesn't believe this any more than he believed the Cottingly story, but after closer inspection he finds that there is something not quite right about the photo and goes off to find the woman and ask her about it. The woman lives in the countryside with her husband, a pastor, their two daughters, and the governess for the girls. He finds the woman and tells her that he may believe her story, but she just smiles at him and tells him that the photograph doesn't matter anymore because she has seen them. The details after this point I will not go into because that is where the real mystery lies.

Charles struggles throughout the movie with his wife's death and cannot seem to get beyond the hold it has on him. Maybe because of this he has lost all faith in an after world or possibilities of another world within ours, until of course he goes in search of the faeries. When he does find a way to see them (whether or not he's hallucinating is debatable) he clings to this connection ferociously and uses this to try to get in touch with his wife. At the end he is somewhat set free of this, and embarks on an adventure of sorts.

This is not a film for children, or if a child does see it, it should be monitored by a parent. There is both nudity and death in the film, and though neither appear in excess, I would say this is a 14 and up movie.

Elfabet by Jane Yolen

Elfabet is a cute little fairy alphabet book. Each letter has a page dedicated to it and only has things on that page that begin with that letter and has a short rhyme. For example. the letter A has a picture of an acorn, an apple, and ant and an apple blossom and a little sprite. And in the border of the picture there is an aardvark, an alligator, and alpine asters. The rhyme describes the elf's action and for A is as follows, A is for Acorn Elf always acrobatic. Fun for all ages.

Fairy Wings by Lauren MIlls

Fairy Wings is a story about a fairy named Fia who was born without wings, and because she isn’t flying around with the other fairies and instead plays with frogs and rats and crows, she is ridiculed and outcast. One day while she’s playing along the river, a boy fairy finds her and asks her to play. He tore one of his wings and is grounded for the time being. Fia tells him that she can fix his wing and they play together for a while. when Fia returns home that evening her family tells her that the royal family has come and is throwing a ball. Her sisters don’t want Fia to come because of her winglessness but her father says that she could attend. The night of the ball her friends frog and rat bring her a chair floating on a lily pad with wings on it and pull her to the centre of the ball. as it turns out the her friend who happens to be the prince sent over the chair to her (and her friends added the wings). He lifts her out of the chair and dances with her, but when he lifted her everyone sees that she doesn’t have wings, especially the king and queen and they are outraged and they send her away. Right after this happens however, a troll comes by and captures all of the fairies at the ball in a net and walks off. Fia scrambles around to find help and comes across some woodkins. Normally woodkins don’t like fairies because fairies are mean to them, but they like Fia because she doesn’t bully them. They do not go with her because they feel that it’s bad luck to help a fairy, but one of them tells her a riddle about trolls that will help her. And the riddle goes like this, the old troll’s home is a rat like place. his greed is a frog like thing. but when crow wakes, troll hides his face, or gather moss not wing. Fia then goes to save the fairies with only her friends rat, frog, and crow and solves the riddle, turning the troll into stone. Then all the fairies fawn over her and the royal family want her to marry their son.

This story is somewhat predictable and almost feels a bit overplayed because of the every popular Cinderella story line, but I do like this story because unlike many stories these days, Fia doesn’t gain wings at the end of the story. The fairies just accept her as she is, she doesn’t have to change her form to become acceptable, which is where the story deviates from the Cinderella idea. The prince takes time to notice her and like her when she is playing in the mud and being herself, and the rest of the fairies only accept her after she saves them even thought they’ve treated her so poorly, but no ugly duckling transformation takes place. This is really rare in children’s books, and adult books too, and is really discouraging to people with disabilities or differences. There are very few stories saying that you don’t need to change your physical state of being to be accepted. She still ends the story getting married, not so great, but it’s still really refreshing that she remains wingless.

Castle in the Sky (1986)

Pazu is an orphan who works for the owner of a mine and one night after everyone has left he sees something falling from the sky. He runs up to a platform and sees that it's a young girl floating down from the heavens. Just as he tentatively reaches out to catch her, almost as if she weren't real, she stops floating and falls heavily into his arms, almost knocking him off the platform himself. The girl's name is Sheeta and she is on the run from the leader of an organization who wants to get his hands on a crystal Sheeta got from her grandmother and keeps on a necklace. Pazu decides that he'll help Sheeta escape both the man and an unruly gang of pirates who are also after the crystal. This back and forth chase leads everyone to a mythical castle in the sky. Pazu's father got lost in a storm surrounding the island and Pazu has been preparing to go find the floating castle that his father was searching for. The crystal has great power that can be deadly, and has a connection with this mystical castle in the sky. Will the bad guys get their hands on this potentially deadly power? And if they do, is there anything Pazu and Sheeta can do to prevent a most certain disaster?!

This is a wonderful film. There is action, adventure, romance, and suspense. It's both whimsical and grounded at the same time. The movie is about a dream of a floating castle, but that fantasy and whimsy is brought down to earth by greed and power. The characters are wonderful and I enjoyed the dynamic between Sheeta and Pazu. A wonderful film for all ages.

      

The Biggest Little Ticket (1994)

This is a cheesy little movie from the 90's that is both a coming of age story and a concert on film. The story is about this young girl who gets a bike for her birthday, but when she gets it she realizes that she can't ride it. She doesn't want her friends to know that she can't ride a bike because they might laugh at her and falls into a bout of self-pity. At this point a 'troll' appears in a tree and tells her that she can give the girl the secret to riding a bicycle, but first she must do a favour. The troll gives her a ticket that lets her go into a tree to this underground world, which is a theater. The troll gets her to be a backstage assistant and then tells her that the production was for a birthday party and the birthday boy was missing, so the girl has to go find him. During this time she meets various people and then these people perform on stage in front of a audience also dressed up as 'trolls', which just means they have some feathers and glitter on, but it looks like a live filming of a concert. Some of the performers are Robert Munsch, Fred Penner, Rockapella, etc. So the girl follows a trail of broken candles and ends up finding the birthday boy, who is a dragon. Unfortunately, the dragon doesn't want to go on stage to blow out the candles because he can't blow fire, which he must do on this birthday. The girl then motivates the dragon to just keep trying and to believe in himself and not to give up, and then he ends up breathing fire and lighting his birthday cake. The troll sends the girl back to her own world but before she can tell her how to ride a bike the girl says that she already knows what she has to do and then just keeps practicing until she can ride.

I really liked this movie when I was a kid, cheesiness and all. I liked watching the performances and I liked the story too. Definitely not the best of the 90's but fun none the less.