May 22, 2007

The Nutcracker

Moppet Elle Fanning (Dakota's sis) will play Clara to John Turturro's Rat King in a forthcoming retelling of The Nutcracker, reports Variety. Nathan Lane also stars as Drosselmeyer in the film, which is based on the fairy tale that inspired Tchaikovsky's famous ballet. (That said, I don't know how much serious ballet will be involved in the movie. Probably not much.) Lyricist Tim Rice ("Jesus Christ Superstar," "The Lion King") is penning words to accompany eight new songs using Tchaikovsky's scores, and of course, there's lots of CGI planned. I dunno. As someone who enjoyed seeing real people with giant mouse heads flinging themselves around a stage, I'm not entirely on board with an update, for much the same reason they shouldn't have turned "The Grinch" into a live action movie. But I'll let my co-blogger (the definitive authority on X-mas time Nutcracker viewing) weigh in.

1 comment:

  1. Amy is alluding to the fact that my family (well, except for my Dad who usually falls asleep in his Lazy Boy during the opening credits) watches my beloved Baryshnikov and his one-time lover Gelsey Kirkland in the 1977 performance of "The Nutcracker" every Christmas. My mom taped it off PBS sometime in the late '70s or early '80s so it's scratchy and dark. Coming from a traditionalist, needless to say, this Dakota Fanning thing sounds awful. But remember in the movie 1982 movie "Six Weeks" when the girl who's dying of a leukemia gets to play Clara in The Nutcracker as her dying wish? I loved that movie.

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