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What’s coming to TheFirstGates in 2014?
Courtesy Emma Paperclip, Creative Commons Thanks to everyone who visited this year, old friends and new. Here are a few year end musings on where this blog may be going in 2014. These are not...
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Help wanted, heroes and heroines: must be civil and adroit
This unusual job description comes from the opening lines of a Grimm’s fairy tale I recently read for the first time. Fairy tale characters never get more than a word or two of description, and most...
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‘On the Supposed Unsuitability of Fairytales for Children” Guest Post by J....
Morgan Mussell:This is, in essence, a double reblog, in which you will meet two interesting writers in the field of folklore. The first is Benton Dickieson of Prince Edward Island, Canada, who blogs at...
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The Dark Crystal: a movie review
“Another world, another time. In the age of wonder.” So begins The Dark Crystal (1982), a movie that pushed the limits of what was possible in animation when it was released 32 years ago. That was the...
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Thoughts on Maleficent and retelling folktales
Maleficent opens in a world of beauty, threatened by a greedy human king. The visual contrast between human actors and fantasy animation was great enough to take a few minutes for suspension of...
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Notes from 2017 – Time to save Big Bird again!
Last week, the New York Times reported on administration plans to cut popular domestic programs, including funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The move would save $500 million a year,...
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Must We Remain A Nation of Small Ideas?
Ursula K. Le Guin, 1929-2018 Ursula Le Guin died on January 23, at the age of 88. I first encountered her writing in the seventies. After multiple readings of The Lord of the Rings, I was hungry for...
View ArticleMovie Review: This Beautiful Fantastic
This 2016 movie, available on Amazon Prime, is described as a “modern fairytale,” and is one of the most enjoyable movies I’ve recently watched. Bella Brown, the quirky heroine, had an appropriately...
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