Fairy

Sydney White presses a lot of ingratiating buttons. It's a good-hearted fish-out-of-water comedy about a girl who refuses to simply go along with the popular flow, it stars an appealing and talented young actress in Amanda Bynes, it gives the usual targets of Hollywood's mean-spirited humor the chance to display a little dignity, and it champions a definition of nonconformity that stretches from cross-dressers to ROTC candidates. The result is a charmer that boldly marches where lesser movies - at least since the heyday of John Hughes - fear to tread.

They may be few and far between, but little stone cottages buried in the woods, surrounded by blooming flowers, stone pathways, fancy gates, trellises, and outdoor tables set for tea really do exist. Karen and Todd Morrill own such a place - a getaway in northern Baltimore County. Think of a Thomas Kinkade painting or an illustration from a child's book of fairy tales. That is the enchanted place called Holly Hillside. "We could also call it Bliss House," Karen Morrill said, sipping her tea, and gazing from the front porch onto a garden as colorful as a box of crayons.

Venturing into the woods at Whitemarsh Park leads to Bowie Playhouse, where 2nd Star Productions is offering a magical version of Into the Woods. Nothing is quite what it seems in this surprisingly current 20-year-old musical, in which familiar fairy tale characters assume adult dimensions to deal with a threatening environment they have helped to create. In playwright James Lapine's woods, we find characters that seem funnier, scarier and sexier than remembered, with Red Riding Hood and the wolf, a prince for Cinderella and another for Rapunzel, Jack of the beanstalk story and his mother, and a witch - all interacting with the childless baker and his wife.

At Linton Springs Elementary School, students rolled out the red carpet for a bunch of storybook characters. Snow White and Cinderella, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Little Red Riding Hood and, of course, her grandmother, made appearances, smiling and camera-ready. The fairy-tale legends arrived at the 2007 Granny Awards - named for the Little Red Riding Hood character impersonated by the infamous Wolf - to sing, dance, and, of course, take home one of those coveted gold statues. The ceremony, presented by the South Carroll school's fourth- and fifth-grade chorus Wednesday, served as their spring music program.

Today, Shrek The Third, another in a series of popular animation films, opens in theaters. What's your favorite fairy-tale movie and why? Please send your thoughts in a brief note with your name, city and daytime phone number (and Such a Critic in the memo field) to arts@baltsun.com. We will publish the best answers we receive.

Once in a Promised Land Laila Halaby Beacon / 338 pages / $23.95 Dislocation is something few Americans know anything about, but it might well be the very thing that will define our lives for decades to come. Dislocation is a variation on disenfranchisement. Disenfranchisement is alleged to be the main reason people become terrorists. Fear of terrorism in a post-Sept. 11 world has led to a presumption that all Arabs are potential terrorists, potential killers - dangerous and untrustworthy.

Pan's Labyrinth trips the dark fantastic. It marks Guillermo del Toro as a moviemaking fabulist with imagination, emotion and the ability to reflect life in a haunted-funhouse mirror. Set in 1944, five years after Generalissimo Francisco Franco won the Spanish Civil War, it tells two simple, parallel stories.

Skylight Confessions Alice Hoffman Little, Brown & Co. / 262 pages / $24.95 Magic and superstition are mainstays in the lives of most of us, even if we are reluctant to admit it. We believe in fate, in luck, in worlds beyond our own, in the power of love to alter our lives. We absent-mindedly toss the spilled salt over our shoulder, avoid the open ladder, step away from the black cat, take care with the number 13. We have talismans we hope will protect us or bring us good fortune. We wish on stars and pluck the petals of daisies and pray for true love to find us and lead us to happiness.

While detangling her granddaughter's hair, the cookbook author began the transformation to writer of fairy tales. Bobbie Hinman of Bel Air has had seven cookbooks published in the past 23 years. But the former schoolteacher, who is a grandmother of 10, has moved from writing books with titles such as Lean and Luscious and The Meatless Gourmet to one called The Knot Fairy. After reading the fairy tale at preschools and book signings, Hinman has decided, "This really is much more fun to read than a cookbook.

Fairfax, Va. -- Will Thomas lunged into a passing lane, inches late. None of his teammates rotated, but after his man made a wide-open three, Thomas did manage to steal a glance toward his bench. After all that Thomas has accomplished for George Mason, is the junior forward out of Mount St. Joseph still so insecure that he needs to see if his mistakes are forgiven? "No," Patriots coach Jim Larranaga said. "Will was probably saying to me, `I made a great effort. Somebody has to help me.'" Ten months after Thomas and George Mason captivated the college basketball world with maybe the most improbable run ever to the Final Four, the Patriots arrive at the Towson Center tonight (7 p.m., ESPNU)