WallCandy® Arts Celebrity Rescue Series: A Few Fairies Wall Decals Would Sweeten Natalie Portman’s Wicked Swan Dreams
Jan.31
If Black Swan paints an accurate picture of what it’s like to be a professional ballerina, the number of worried ballet mothers and sleepless company members must be growing with every passing box office day. If you haven’t seen the five-time-Oscar-nominated film, don’t worry – there are no spoilers here. Just know that you may need to cover your eyes a few times, take up jazz dancing instead, and re-classify a complex relationship with your mother as healthier than you thought.
All of the relationships in Black Swan are disturbing, but one of the most troubling is between Natalie Portman’s character, Nina, and her mother, a failed ballerina played by Barbara Hershey. Their worrysome interactions are mostly limited to their shared Manhattan apartment and Nina’s heavily mirrored childhood bedroom, where the young starlet is tormented by an unclear handheld-camera monster. If Nina’s psyche is a stage, this nebulous ghoul is an aggressive tap dancer with a wide range of motions.
In fact, the film opens with a teaser sequence that turns out to be a selection from what I imagine is Nina’s constant parade of ballet-inspired night terrors. The worst part about having a horrible dream is how it can follow the dreamer around all morning, ruining those first few sips of coffee and causing mismatched trouser socks, until its hold is severed by something human and silly, like catching the baby eating out of the dog food bowl. Unfortunately, Nina doesn’t have a baby, a dog, or a sense of humor developed enough to help her escape the night.
During one television interview, Natalie Portman said she needed some time to recover both physically and mentally from her performance in Black Swan. Only she knows how her dreams were affected, but if she’s seen the film and shares any qualities with at least one member of her audience, she had more than a few awful nightmares about compulsive scratching and red-eyed swans with anger management problems.
Black Swan‘s contribution to the art and film world aside, moviegoers, Natalie Portman, Nina, and her frantic mother could all could use a bit of decorative relief from sleep tainted with evil swans. Enter the Sweet Dreams Fairies wall decals, a twinkly-toed trio whose nightmare-fighting arsenal includes magic dust sprinkled with candy hearts, macaroons, cupcakes, stars, jellybeans, and ice cream pops. It’s a little-known fact that the Confection Protection these lovely ladies spread is like kryptonite to a nightmare’s lead dancers, including big-headed trolls, boogeymen, wicked birds, and underbed critters.
I couldn’t help but notice that the wall above poor Nina’s bed was blank – no poster of Baryshnikov, no bronzed baby ballet slippers, and no sweet respite from her nightmares, even though WallCandy’s fairies wall decals would’ve fit in fabulously with her preexisting bedroom motif. The film’s outcome might have been totally different had she been able to get a better night’s sleep and wake up in time for ballet practice without any swans to shake. ♥
Next week, WallCandy’s Celebrity Rescue Series puts a foolproof plan together for Facebook creator and young zillionaire Mark Zuckerberg.
Pixie Dust Countdown: The Top 9 Fairies of All-Time!
Jun.13
Let Entertainment Weekly worry about the “Top 100 Movie Characters” and let Rolling Stone worry about the “Top 100 Rock Album Covers.”
In honor of our new “Sweet Dreams Fairies,” we’ve researched America’s most fascinating fairies and are eager to present our latest rankings to you….
NUMBER 9: DWAYNE “THE ROCK” JOHNSON
Most of us have fond memories of scoring a few bucks everytime our gums bled as a kid, but how many of us had our teeth knocked out by mean-spirited professional hockey players? In this 2010 destined-to-be-a-classic movie, wrestler-actor Dwayne Johnson plays an NHL star with an affinity for punching out smiles. He’s sadistically nicknamed the “Tooth Fairy” on the ice, but he goes too far when he tells his girlfriend’s daughter that there is no such thing as the tooth fairy. “Oh yeah?” says head Tooth Fairy Julie Andrews, “Now we’re going to punish you by forcing you to work on our staff!”
Yes, Julie Andrews has such power. Only in the movies.
NUMBER 8: GRAFFITI ARTIST SHEPARD FAIREY
It’s not so much that we admire the urban graffiti artist best known for defacing buildings with Andre the Giant stencils (another pro-wrestler fairy connection!) and later, creating those famous Warholian red-white-and-blue Obama prints that tout HOPE and CHANGE. Shepard earns his spot on the list for courageously forging on with his Fairey surname despite the years of playground and locker room torment he must have endured.
NUMBER 7: FAIRY PENGUINS
The smallest members of the penguin family, the 16-inch Fairies are usually found frolicking off the coast of Antarctica, Souther Australia, Tasmania and New Zealand. They snack on anchovies, kril, plankton, crab larvae and sea horses. They don’t bother chewing anything and swallow their food whole. Their feathers often have a blue tinge, which makes them absolutely the cutest members of the penguin family, too.
NUMBER 6: PIXIE THE TATTOO ARTIST
She’s a tough cookie on TLC’s reality series, “L.A. Ink,” but she’s got a family-friendly side. Some of her body art includes cupcakes and the Care Bears!
NUMBER 5: PIXIE OF THE X-MEN
Brandishing translucent dragonfly wings, Pixie is able to distract her friends and enemies with her magic hallucination-inducing Pixie Dust. The dust seems to have different effects on different characters. Sometimes it causes people to see unicorns or teddy bears. Other times, brightly colored bubbles. Pixie is able to teleport herself and large groups to far-away destinations. Her magic skills are so widely respected that she’s even begun to give Doctor Strange formal training.
NUMBER 4 : CINDERELLA’S FAIRY GODMOTHER
Years before electric hybrid cars and Volkswagens refitted to run on discarded French fry oil, the Fairy Godmother in Cinderella transformed an ordinary pumpkin into a royal chariot. Wish she would do something about the BP oil spill.
NUMBER 3: GLINDA, THE GOOD WITCH OF THE NORTH
Our sources tell us that not only was Dorothy’s savior in the Wizard of Oz a “good witch,” but she was also a good fairy. And it is gorgeous Glinda who is the first Oz character to stand up to injustice whenever and wherever she sees it.
NUMBER 2: TINKERBELL
Forget about Peter Pan. If you want true street cred with Boys Who Never Grow Up, you have to reinvent yourself as a video game!
NUMBER 1: SWEET DREAMS FAIRIES
Hey, you didn’t think we were going to rank the SDF girls any lower, did you?
What I love about the Sweet Dreams Fairies, besides their ability to drown out nightmares with “Confection Protection,” is the retro ice cream man feel to the graphics. It’s Candy Land. It’s Sammy Davis Jr.’s “Candy Man.”
At a time when cupcakes are BANNED at elementary school birthday parties, I admire fairies willing to take a stand and celebrate who they are. When you are in the fantasy world, lollipops and jelly beans are so much more fun and colorful than broccoli and asparagus.
Although the parent in me compels me to add that in the real world, your girls should eat their greens first and then dive into the cupcakes (in moderation).
It should be noted that Sweet Dreams Fairies, like all our stylish removable wall decals, contain absolutely no calories!
