Site of the week: Grimm tales

Terry Gilliam's long awaited new film The Brothers Grimm is out next week and follows the legendary fairytale scribes as they fight an epic battle between fantasy and reality. Many of their most famous stories, including Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood and Hansel and Gretel are woven into the story - but will they really be as dark as the originals? Get up to speed with the Grimms' true grimness at this no-frills site, www.ucs.mun.ca/~wbarker/fairies/grimm/, which features the text of over 200 stories using the original 1844 text of Margaret Hunt, the last revised edition of the tales. For more glitz with your frogs, spinning wheels and gingerbread houses, try the neat nationalgeographic.com site which has 12 of the tales, "unvarnished" but with a fun format for choosing your story. But remember, as the site says, if you're looking for a sweet, soothing tale to waft you towards dreamland then look somewhere else.