It turns out I wasn't the only one who was excited to learn that the 1997 version of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella was coming to Disney+ last week. Everyone involved in the making of this classic film from over 20 years ago got together for interviews, a live watch party on Twitter, and more. The biggest surprise of this celebration was a brand new music video from Disney aficionado Todrick Hall featuring the leading lady herself, Brandy Norwood. It starts out as a fun little singing session between Brandy and Todrick as they serenade each other with songs from the classic musical. Then, something magical happens as Brandy is transformed into a slightly updated version of her princess look from the 1997 film and returns to the ball with Todrick as her prince. The video comes to a "happily ever after" with socially distanced cameos from several of the other cast members in the film.
Todrick Hall is no stranger to producing professional-quality Disney fan videos. I was particularly impressed by his "Spell Block Tango" mash-up video of Disney villains with the musical Chicago back in the day. It's evident that his "Cinderella" video was a labor of love by all the wonderful little touches in the background of his studio. There are countless Broadway posters lining the walls, a classic storybook from Disney's animated 1950 version of the story, and dolls of both Brandy and Whitney Houston in their iconic gowns from the 1997 movie. The costume that Brandy wears when she transforms into Cinderella at the ball is slightly different from the in the original film. It is a darker shade of blue and made of more shimmery material, adding to the magic of the music video. Her crown is also larger, implying that she has evolved from a princess into a full-blown queen. The choreography during this scene is on point and every bit as magical as it was in the original film.
What I enjoyed the most about this video was the look of sheer delight on Brandy and Todrick's faces as they performed these classic songs. You could tell that the video was made as a result of love and enjoyment for the original and not as a forced promotion for Disney (even though Whoopi Goldberg throws one in at the end). It's adorable how amazed Todrick Hall looks when Brandy walks into the room. She also seems to be having the time of her life adding her own soulful spin on iconic songs like "In My Own Little Corner" and "Impossible." The rest of the cast, including Bernadette Peters, Jason Alexander, and Paolo Montalban, who dressed up for his cameo, show their appreciation for the movie by appearing in the "Cinderella" storybook at the end. It was delightful to see that all of these performers still remember their roles in this gorgeous movie.
Todrick Hall isn't the only one who blessed us with new "Cinderella" music last week. On the same day that Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella launched on Disney+, Andrew Lloyd Webber released another song from his Cinderella musical called "I Know I Have a Heart." This song is thematically similar to "Far Too Late." It expands upon Cinderella's regrets toward not telling Prince Sebastian about her feelings for him and running away from the ball. The song emphasizes her heartbreak after he picks a different woman to be his bride with the line "I know I have a heart because you broke it" and deconstructs today's feminist princess trope that encourages girls to suppress their femininity and hide their emotions. This version of Cinderella embodies the modern princess trope of being rebellious and independent and denying her feelings for the prince. "I Know I Have a Heart" enunciates the dangers of this attitude by showing us that no matter how tough a woman may act on the outside, she is just susceptible to pain and heartbreak on the inside.
"Cinderella" is a story that was once considered outdated. With these two musical revivals, it seems to be back in fashion. It makes sense that all of the people falling on hard times due to the current state of the world would want to embrace the fantasy of having their problems magically disappear. Personally, I've never grown tired of this story and am happy to see it make a comeback in any form. I think that the currently airing Disney+ series, WandaVision, is another example of a modern deconstruction of the "Cinderella" trope, but I will expand on that after the season ends.
Today is a major accomplishment for me. I started this blog 100 days ago, and I've managed to write a new post in it every day since then. Some of the topics were easier to come up with than others. I also had to go back and edit some after the fact due to poor proofreading. Speaking of which, I'm really sorry about the disastrous short story from my first Story Saturday post . The whole thing was written on my phone on the way to a Mermaid Art Show event in San Diego, so I was a little distracted. I promise to put more effort into future Story Saturdays, which should be easier now that I will no longer be writing new posts every day. Don't worry, though. I will still keep everyone informed of the latest princess news and review all the new princess movies and specials. Without further ado, in celebration of my 100th post, here is a list of 100 princesses with all of the posts I've made about them (in no particular order). Thank you so much for reading my blog. 1-11:
To celebrate 500 posts in The Princess Blog , I'm participating in the Book Owl Word Search (BOWS) along with many other talented writers. Each author has a secret word hidden somewhere in their blog. If you can find and collect all the secret words, you get a chance to win a prize! I'm on the orange team. You can learn more about the challenge on the Snowy Wings Publishing website . For my entry, I decided to release the bonus chapter from my book, The Stolen Slipper , which had only been published in the Kindle box set for The Stolen Trilogy until now. This chapter is from the perspective of James, the "Prince Charming" character from my reimagining of "Cinderella," who is also Lily's brother from The Stolen Queen , the second book in the trilogy . After you read the chapter, you will find a link to the next blog in this challenge. I hope you have fun learning about these talented authors and searching for their hidden words.
This post was inspired by a reader of my blog who informed me of an upcoming new Cinderella musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber . Modernizing the story of "Cinderella" is more complicated than rebooting a franchise like The Princess Diaries because Cinderella has already been reinvented countless times. Some of these reimaginings are better than others . The most obvious problem with creating a stage musical of "Cinderella" is that the Rodgers and Hammerstein version has evolved into a timeless classic since it was first performed by Julie Andrews on live TV in 1957. The most recent revival of the production added a modern twist by making Cinderella a revolutionary who takes advantage of her close relationship with the prince to help the peasants overcome a housing crisis in their kingdom. Was this element a necessary addition to the story? Not really. Yet, it offered something new to take away from a tale we've already heard hundreds of times. If Andrew Lloyd
My favorite smartphone game allowed a bit more of a break to prepare for the next visual novel, which allowed me to complete it within a week's time. Tang Dynasty Hunter is another Asian-inspired story set in China this time instead of Japan. The little I know about Chinese mythology comes from my binge-watch of Netflix's Ashes of Love , a gorgeous fantasy drama about gods, goddesses, and mystical realms. This story had a few minor similarities in that immortal beings are spirits of inanimate objects or elements that take on human form. The Tang Dynasty is a period of Chinese history that lasted from 618 to 906 A.D. and is considered a golden age of Chinese arts and culture. The dress-up elements of this story had some creative and exciting new hairstyles and stunning artwork. Tang Dynasty Hunter is about a demon hunter named Pei Jin, who is on a quest to help her master that got poisoned by a demon. In order to do this, Jin must find a series of magical memories from variou
Today is the day! Disney's new streaming service, Disney+ , is now available on smart devices everywhere. The highly anticipated launch did not go as smoothly as planned with the servers crashing earlier this morning, probably due to everyone wanting to be the first to access its content. That snag got fixed in a timely manner, but I can't say the same for the password issue. It seems like I need to reset my password almost every time I log on from a new device. Putting all of that aside, the app works exactly as advertised but with somewhat less content than expected. Initially, Disney claimed that they would be releasing their full library of movies, televisions shows, and specials, but it looks like we're going to have to settle for a decent-sized chunk of them instead. There were a few movies and shows added since the preview that launched in the Netherlands a couple months ago, but not quite as much as I was hoping for. I don't consider myself a Disney expert by
There have been many recent updates in the Dress Up! Time Princess app with the most notable being that they changed their name to simply Time Princess, which is how I will be referring to it from this point on. Another major update from this week was the second half of the latest visual novel, Shadows of London, a Victorian vampire story. This is the first visual novel in Time Princess that was released in two separate halves since I started playing it. I thought the wait time would be frustrating, but I found that it gave me ample time to craft the items I needed to access the new story levels so I wouldn't get stuck when the rest of the game was released. This is the easiest story I've played so far in Time Princess, but that might be because I've been playing it for so long. I was able to get through all the story levels from each of the two releases within a single evening. The main character in Shadows of London is Caroline Rayes, a young lady with a tragic past who
Saga of Viera is the latest visual novel that the Time Princess app released as part of their massive one-year anniversary update. The story takes place in a high fantasy RPG world of elves, curses, and gods. It is about as short as their Swan Lake visual novel and contains a number of unsatisfying "good" endings like Helen of Sparta and Shadows of London . Though I enjoyed the story in Saga of Viera more than Helen or Shadows, I was disappointed to see it end abruptly with no resolution for the downtrodden protagonist. I've always been a fan of fantasy video games and even wrote a book inspired by them , so the elven kingdom setting and aesthetics were very appealing to me. It was also nice to have another original story , so I didn't feel like I was missing something by not being familiar with the original work like with Little Women . In Saga of Viera, you play as a fortune-teller named Zoya whose bloodline is cursed. Due to magical reasons beyond her knowledg
After almost a year of playing Time Princess for fantasy and historical visual novels, I was a little disappointed that the newest one times place in modern times. It was probably long overdue considering how many different eras and cultures the game encompasses. Si-woo's Sight is a ghost story that takes place in Korea and focuses on the trials and tribulations of becoming a pop idol, a type of celebrity that is specific to Asian cultures. Depending on their contract, American pop stars typically have more freedom than idols in the respect that they don't have to follow strict rules about who they can spend time with in their private and professional lives and how many years they can perform for. This story opened my eyes to some of the problematic elements of Asia's restrictive celebrity culture. However, the supernatural elements revolving around ghosts and exorcists felt a little too similar to the game's last visual novel, Tang Dynasty Hunter . You play Si-woo'
In 2008, the Philippines released a mermaid princess telenovela that was based on a popular graphic novel by Mars Ravelo in 1952. Dyesebel is loosely based on the story of "The Little Mermaid" with a few distinct differences. It was Dyesebel's mother, Queen Lucia, who first fell in love with a human and left the underwater world of Sirenea to be with him, sacrificing her memories of her life as a mermaid in the process. Dyesebel was born on land, but because of her tail, her mother returned her to the sea, entrusting her to her best friend, Banak, to raise her. Her human father, Tino, was murdered by humans who believed that mermaids were bad luck. Unaware of the circumstances of her birth, Dyesebel grew up curious about the human world until one day, she fell in love with a human and was doomed to follow in her mother's footsteps. The 2008 adaptation of Dyesebel is performed in the native Filipino language, Tagalog, but I was able to watch it with English subtit
The Time Princess app has been releasing an endless stream of new visual novels with no sign of slowing down. I've been impressed with the amount of well-known stories the game developers have adapted lately that aren't based on popular fairy tales. The latest one is no exception. Phantom of the Opera is a beloved story among princess fans due to its similarities to "Beauty and the Beast" as well as the beautifully haunting melodies of the famous Andrew Lloyd Webber musical . The innocent protagonist who performs various onstage arias in glittering costumes, best friend side character, and classic love triangle make it a prime choice for this game's traditional visual novel story dynamics. That is probably why it is one of the only stories in the game that is presented exactly as it is without any sort of modern twist such as gender-bending the characters like they did for several other adaptations . In this dress-up visual novel, players take on the role of
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