Little Red Riding Hood

13 April 2011 - Along with the usual sequels and spin-offs, Hollywood is about to bombard cinemas with new takes on old fairy-tales - starting with Red Riding Hood. If Red Riding Hood, with its pale teenage heroine torn between two admirers, looks a bit like Twilight, it's because it is. The live action fairy-tale is directed by Catherine Hardwicke, who launched the Twilight film franchise in 2008. Red Riding Hood sees Hardwicke plunder the earliest versions of the story - before it was re-told by the Brothers Grimm - and make the hairy antagonist a werewolf. Her film is also a "whodunnit" aimed squarely at the teen market. It is set in a medieval village called Daggerhorn, where even the poorest woodcutter wears hair gel and Freudian symbolism lurks behind every tree. "The red cape can represent many things," says Hardwicke, whose other films include a big-screen re-telling of The Nativity Story in 2006.  "Power, sexuality, sensuality, loss of virginity - artists over the last four centuries have been inspired by it. "Japanese anime artists show it in tatters, with Red Riding Hood holding an axe with blood dripping down it."