Whether you plan to take on the night or hang at home with some horrifyingly good reads, here are 13 magically inspired quotes to put you in the best of spirits for this wicked holiday.
A well-composed book is a magic carpet on which we are wafted to a world that we cannot enter in any other way.
― Caroline Gordon, American Novelist and Literary Critic
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Words! Mere words! How terrible they were! How clear, and vivid, and cruel! One could not escape from them. And yet what a subtle magic there was in them! They seemed to be able to give a plastic form to formless things, and to have a music of their own as sweet as that of viol or of lute. Mere words! Was there anything so real as words?
Oh the places you’ll go! There is fun to be done! There are points to be scored. There are games to be won. And the magical things you can do with that ball will make you the winning-est winner of all.
Magic exists. Who can doubt it, when there are rainbows and wildflowers, the music of the wind and the silence of the stars? Anyone who has loved has been touched by magic. It is such a simple and such an extraordinary part of the lives we live.
― Nora Roberts, American Romance Author
I address you all tonight for who you truly are: wizards, mermaids, travelers, adventurers, and magicians. You are the true dreamers.
And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.
We’ve all craved a magical food that doesn’t actually exist, or we’ve read about a real food that didn’t live up to the hype of our childhood imaginations. Here are some of the foods (in no particular order) that still seem to appear in my dreams.
There are what feels like hundreds of candies within the walls of Willy Wonka’s factory, all of which sound absolutely mouthwatering. However, everlasting gobstoppers stick out to me because they actually exist. You can go down to your local corner store and buy a box right now if you really wanted to.
But you don’t want to. Because the real everlasting gobstoppers are flavorless little balls of cement. And the fictional ones are, well, fictional.
The tree formed when a toffee candy was planted in the ground in the moment of Narnia’s creation, and it grew at an incredible rate because the song that brought Narnia to life was still clinging to the world.
Must taste pretty good, with an epic backstory like that.
There are a couple of bad side effects when you snack on these magical cookies. In Alice in Wonderland, Alice takes a bite of one these and grows to be about the height of a one-story house.
Yet somehow, that just makes them more tempting. What’s life without a little risk of becoming gargantuan?
Pasta puttanesca is a very real dish, and something you can order at most Italian restaurants. However, sometimes the way something tastes in reality just can’t compare to the way it tastes in your imagination.
In A Series of Unfortunate Events, the pasta puttanesca serves as a small amount of comfort in the bleak world that the Baudelaire children have found themselves in after the death of their parents. Something about the warm, homey feeling that it provides makes it an absolutely crave worthy dish.
Sam-I-Am was pretty insistent about this dish. If someone follows you from a house, to a box, to a tree, to a train, to the dark, to the rain, to a boat just to get you to try a bite of their food then they’re probably insane.
But they probably also have some pretty good eats.
Coraline isn’t particularly excited by this dish, choosing instead to stick with her frozen mini-pizzas. However, considering the themes of family and parental love in this novel, this soup dish gives off a cozy and homey sort of vibe.
And if someone hands you a warm pot of homemade soup, that someone must love you an awful lot! Certainly more than your eyeless, soul stealing, puppet mom.
Studio Ghibli, the Japanese animation studio, has a knack for animating foods in the most delicious looking way possible. This particular gif is from My Neighbor Totoro, as the saffron tea from Kiki’s Delivery Service didn’t make it’s way out of the book.
In the book the tea serves as a reminder of Kiki’s home while her travels become too much to handle. The smell and the warmth remind Kiki of her mother, and the memory helps keep her spirits high while she’s speeding around on her broom.
This one is a bit macabre, but there’s something undeniably intriguing about the unicorn blood in the Harry Potter.
The golden trio (plus Draco) are serving detention in the Forbidden Forest with Hagrid, when they stumble upon a pool of shiny silver goo. When they see a shadowy figure knelt over the body of the unicorn, the kids all run away screaming, except for Harry who stumbles over a tree root.
He’s saved by a centaur, the story moves on, and no one even asks for a sip of that shiny, magic goop.
Bruce Bogtrotter is one of literature’s bravest heroes. He’s punished for his humanity (what child wouldn’t try to sneak a piece of cake?) and still emerges triumphant despite all odds.
While this scene can be a bit nauseating, there’s always something enticing about the thought of having a triple layered chocolate cake plopped down directly in front of you.
Plus, you get to dive straight into that sucker fork first.
Did you know that Roald Dahl was not just an author, but a medical inventor, chocolate historian, fighter pilot, and a spy? Hard to believe, as his stories are rich with innocent, joyous, and delicate characters. His stories such as Charlie and the Chocolate Factoryand Matildadidn’t just instantly come to him, however. They were the product of a bizarre, gruesome, yet impactful childhood. You can read all about it in his book Boy: Tales of Childhood.
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Boy: Tales of Childhood is an autobiographical book depicting Dahl’s life, from the time of his birth up until he had left school. It portrays his incredibly detailed life experiences, a lot of which led him to a career of writing, some of which are incredibly tragic. Yet, the book is highly comical, and Dahl incorporates his skills of comedic writing smoothly in this autobiographical piece. From this book, you can see where all the characters in Dahl’s pieces get their vivid personalities. If you are familiar with his books, reading this will help you make sense of a lot the interactions between his characters.
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It is fascinating to see the development of one the most prolific children’s book authors of all time. As an homage to one of the great story tellers of the 20th century, all fans of literature should read this gem.
Sometimes famous authors try to adapt their own books to the big screen because if you want it done right, then you got to do it yourself. But film is a collaborative effort, and the shift from a one-person medium to a multi-person medium can be quite the shock, and often the creatives working on these collaborative projects don’t see eye to eye.
As a result, despite being involved in the production, there are many instances of authors detesting the adaptation of their work. Here are four top examples:
4. Roald Dahl, WIlly Wonka & the Chocolate Factory
The beloved film Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, starring Gene Wilder, is based on the novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factoryby Roald Dahl. In the credits for the film, Roald Dahl is credited as a screenwriter along with David Seltzer. At first glance you might think that Roald Dahl gave his seal of approval to this beloved children’s classic, however actually, Dahl entirely disowned the film.
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According to Yahoo Movies, Dahl “signed a poor deal which gave almost total control over the property to Warner Bros in perpetuity,” which allowed Warner Bros, the production company financing the film, to make whatever changes they pleased. As a result, Dahl’s script was partially rewritten by David Seltzer, who gave the film a ‘villain’ in the form of Slugworth (a minor character only briefly mentioned in the film’s book counterpart) and broke Dahl’s golden rule: he gave songs to characters other than the Oompa Loompas. These songs were “The Candy Man,” sung in the opening by the cherry candy salesmen to the children while poor Charlie watches outside, and “Pure Imagination” sung by Willy Wonka when he and the children enter the chocolate factory.
Donald Sturrock, a friend of Dahl’s and the author of Storyteller: The Life of Roald Dahl, revealed that the now iconic “Pure Imagination” was, to Dahl, “…too sappy and sentimental.”
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Ironically, the creative genius behind the beloved children’s film hated the film itself.
3. Paul Rudnick, Sister Act
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Sister Act stars Whoopi Goldberg as a lounge singer on the run from a mobster who finds solace and safety with in a convent. The film was released in 1992, but was originally pitched in 1987 by Paul Rudnick. Between jobs as a playwright and novelist, Paul Rudnick, writer of the 1986 novel Social Disease, decided to try his hand at screenwriting. According to a 2009 article from The New Yorker, Paul Rudnick pitched Sister Act with Better Midler in mind for the lead role. In a stroke of luck, his script was bought by mega company Disney.
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Unfortunately Better Midler turned down the role and the script was rewritten over and over. Credited as “Joseph Howard”, Paul Rudnick said that the 1993 movie is “no longer my work” and “I can’t vouch for the original film, for one reason. Sister Act may very well be just fine, but I’ve never been able to watch it.”
2. Bret Easton Ellis, The Informers
Bret Easton Ellis of American Psycho fame famously dismissed the famous adaptation starring Christian Bale, telling Indiewire that he doesn’t believe the book “really works as a film”. He moved on, writing a collection of short stories entitled The Informers.
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Soon afterwards, Ellis was approached by young screenwriter Nicholas Jarecki to adapt The Informers into a film. This time Ellis was a co-screenwriter and the team spent three years prepping the movie, eventually accumulating a star-studded cast. Reuters describes the film as “seven stories taking course during a week in the life of movie executives, rock stars, a vampire and other morally challenged characters,” and was reported to include Brandon Routh, of Superman Returns, as a vampire.
However, Brandon Routh isn’t in the finished film. Neither is the character of the vampire. Despite Nicholas Jarecki being set to direct, he was replaced and the film was reworked. According to Fox News, Jarecki and Ellis’s script was cut from 150 to ninety-four pages and, as a result, Brandon Routh’s scenes were cut completely.
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The cast famously did not do publicity for the film, a telltale sign they had little faith in what would become a critical and financial flop. Ellis concluded: “There were things I recognized, and a lot that I missed. But it’s the director’s version of the script, and that’s just how it is.”
Ouch.
1. Gore Vidal, Caligula
Image Via The New York Times
Published in 1948, Gore Vidal’s City and the Pillar follows a young man coming to terms with his sexuality in what has been called an early champion of sexual liberation. In 1959 he enjoyed early success with an adaptation of Tennessee Williams’ Suddenly, Last Summer, but was largely unrecognized.
Then in 1979 his adaptation of Caligula was released. The film had major production problems, however. For instance the film’s producer, Bob Guccione, was unhappy with the homosexual content and demanded rewrites for wider audience appeal, according to a New York Times article. The screenplay, originally titled Gore Vidal’s Caligua, was renamed and put into production.
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After its release, Roger Ebert infamously gave the film zero stars, calling it “sickening, utterly worthless, shameful trash” in a scathing review. Gore Vidal has since distanced himself from the film, calling the film’s director, Tinto Brass, a “megalomaniac.”
After a spate of Batman films in the 90s dogged audiences far and wide, Warner Bros. hired Christopher Nolan to revamp the character with Batman Begins. Now it looks like the studio is doing the same with Willy Wonka.
The Hollywood ReporterreportsPaddington director Paul King is in talks to helm a new movie about Roald Dahl’s classic character. Memorably portrayed by Gene Wilder in 1971, and again portrayed by Johnny Depp in Tim Burton’s 2005 film, King’s movie would see a young Wonka pre-Charlie Bucket.
Based on a script by Simon Rich (Man Seeking Woman, The Secret Life of Pets, and, memorably, this treasure from The New Yorker) , it’s unclear what period of Wonka’s life the movie will follow. Might it recount his first encounter with the Oompa-Loompas? Or maybe we’ll see his early days as a chocolate-seller? He’s known as a paradoxically cruel-yet-saccharine purveyor of sweets, who lives essentially alone in a massive industrial complex. How he got that way is a worthy topic of exploration.
Between Rich’s script, which is probably good, and King’s direction, which will certainly be good (have you seen Paddington?) this movie is one to keep an eye on. I know, cynicism is tempting in this case, but the stars seem to be aligning. Might as well be optimistic. After all, if you want to view paradise, simply look around and view it.
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