Austin Chronicle. Guillermo Del Toro.

Marc Savlov has a good long talk with Guillermo Del Toro about Pan's Labyrinth for the Austin Chronicle's cover package, which includes this: "[T]he imagery and mythology that Pan's Labyrinth draws upon have been traced to their origins and broken down into an octet of character types by Russian folklorist-cum-formalist Vladimir Yakolevich Propp, who codified the elements of the fairy tales (or 'wonder stories') in his native Russia." Linkage follows. And a tip: Browse that Web site.

Updated through 1/17.

But wait, there's more. From editor Louis Black: "Almost anyone who has spent time with del Toro can't help but love him. Knowing any number of gifted filmmakers, I long ago got over confusing my assessment of a film with my affections for its creators. Still, with del Toro's films in particular, I've always felt a certain affinity that has to do with such deep-down feelings that they may well be more biological than learned."

Also in this week's issue: Josh Rosenblatt talks with Nick Cassavetes about Alpha Dog. So, by the way, does Ray Pride for the Reeler. More on the film itself from Robert Wilonsky in the Voice.

Anne S Lewis has a quick chat with Sam Wainwright Douglas, one of the directors (with Paul Lovelace) of The Holy Modal Rounders: Bound to Lose, and Marc Savlov reviews the Criterion's package, Monsters and Madmen, a "four-disc slice of 1950s B-movie heaven."

Related: Paul Bond at the WSWS on Labyrinth: "It is a film of great hope and optimism, of defending the imagination under difficult circumstances... This is no small thing."

"The primary sense of wonder the whole thing arouses in me is the wonder that so many grown-up critics have found it so enthralling," writes Duncan Shepherd in the San Diego Reader. "I found it fairly alienating, if not totally off-putting."

"To understand the difference between Hollywood's notion of fairy tales and Guillermo del Toro's," writes Peter Keough in the Boston Phoenix, "compare the faun in The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe with the one in Pan's Labyrinth. The Narnia faun - well-spoken, with his muffler and his cozy drawing room - could pass for a goatish version of CS Lewis himself. Del Toro's version - well, it looks like something he thinks he saw as a little kid.... Del Toro was in fact asked to direct Narnia, but he had objections to the story. 'I said, "Look, I'm not the guy because in my version I don't think the lion would resurrect." I try to be sincere with the material I accept.'"

The Philadelphia City Paper's Cindy Fuchs also talks with Del Toro and recommends the film.

Updates, 1/12: Cynthia Fuchs talks with GDT for PopMatters.

Annie Wagner in the Stranger: "Pan's Labyrinth picks up scraps and notions from scattered fairy tales—fear of sexual maturity, thirst for rules and the righteous urge to subvert them, doubtful reconciliation with death—and weaves them into an original fantasy of furious power. After suffering through the many 'fractured' adaptations that neuter their source material in the guise of updating it, I was beginning to worry that the primeval richness of fairy tales would have to be reserved for theater. Pan's Labyrinth chalked out an alternate route, and proved me wrong."

Updates, 1/13: J Robert Parks finds Pan's Labyrinth "isn't quite as strong as Devil's Backbone, however, in part because the fantastic and historical modes never quite mesh. The fairy tale aspect doesn't have the payoff that you'd expect (not like the ghost story of Devil's Backbone). The finale of the three tasks is somewhat anti-climactic, and, unlike many fairy tales, the story isn't an allegory for the real world."

Dan Eisenberg prefers Tideland.

The Austin American-Statesman's Chris Garcia calls PL "hands down, no contest, the most overrated movie of 2006. Funny how the gushiest reviews are coming from Austin or from former Austinites: The film's creator Guillermo Del Toro once lived here. What a spectacle."

Update, 1/17: At the AV Club, Noel Murray talks with Del Toro.

Posted by dwhudson at January 11, 2007 9:13 AM