"Jack and the Beanstalk: The Real Story"

Have you ever watched a movie and you’re not sure how you felt about it, and yet you never forgot it? That’s what happened to me with 2001’s 3-hour miniseries "Jack and the Beanstalk: The Real Story", so much so that I eventually bought its DVD. I watched it last week, and I wish it’d be aired again so that others could enjoy as much as I did a story the cast of which includes Matthew Modine, Mia Sara, Vanessa Redgrave, to name a few. That being said...

Once upon a time...



There was a business man named Jack Robinson, a very wealthy man, but there were many clouds in his life. Not one man in his family had made it very far past the age of forty, and that birthday was approaching, looming large in his life, almost as large as the unseen presence that plagued his recurring nightmares, chasing him thru the forest and always ending with his violent death.




As if this wasn’t enough, a mysterious young woman named Ondine accused him of being the knowing beneficiary of a horrible crime committed long ago by the first Jack Robinson. Nothing he'd say could convince her of his innocence and he thought her crazy - until she told him about the long-buried bones that had recently been dug out on the grounds of his family’s ancestral home.



Things got even stranger from then on. Not only did Ondine break into the castle before disappearing in a flash of lightning, but Jack discovered that his aunt Wilhelmina, who should by now have died otherwise she’d now be incredibly old, was still very much alive. She told him the story of how his then-destitute ancestor had sold his mother’s last cow for a few beans that turned out to be anything but ordinary as they took him to the clouds, up to a land that was fertile but ruled by a cruel giant. After stealing his magical goose and his golden harp, Jack killed the giant, and he and his mother lived happily ever after. Or did they? Wilhelmina thought there had to be more to the story than that, and Jack Robinson soon found himself following on the trail of his ancestor, to a land that was now desolate and where the gods would judge him for the sins of the fathers.

Highly recommended.

( More photos can be found at http://pics.livejournal.com/serge_lj/gallery/0002qrb3 )