Twilight zone

I’m not sure that everything wrong with the world can be blamed on Twilight — but most of it can. Ever since those oh-so-dreamy vampire stories first set hearts a-fluttering and cash registers a-ringing, Hollywood has been looking out for other fantasy yarns to strip down and hawk to 13-year-old girls. And now it has alighted on fairy tales. Last year we had a film of Red Riding Hood (from the director of Twilight). This year we have Snow White and the Huntsman (with one of the stars of Twilight). And there are also adaptations of Beauty and the Beast and Sleeping Beauty on the way (and if they don’t overlap with Twilight somehow, what’s the point?).

Then there is this: Mirror Mirror, another version of the Snow White tale. ‘The Snow White legend comes alive’ is how the posters describe it, by which they mean added jokes, extra sword fights and a hundred other embellishments to pad out the running time to 106 minutes.