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undyingkingHope you're having a good one wherever you are old chum!
I've been in Cambridge most of the day, meeting up with old housemate Geoffrey whom I hadn't seen for a few years. Catching up on his exciting life -- he's based in Ottawa normally but is just off for six months in Munich writing commentary on the translation a sixth-century Syriac manuscript about church history. It doesn't get much more hopping than that! We had a rather disappointing lunch in a Slug and Lettuce, but apart from that everything was good and he seems very fit and well. On the way back to the station, I nipped into Galloway & Porter and snaffled a copy of Richard E Grant's memoir With Nails, as mentioned recently by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
the_elyan -- good fun so far!
Went to see The Lion etc on Sunday. It was pretty much what I expected, ie. sort of meh. Lots of good Tilda Swintonage of course -- but the real White Witch has black hair, why change that?? Also, Wot no Lamb?? -- Lewis must be turning in his grave, as surely he would say that was very much a large part of the whole point of the book. It reminded me though that I don't really think all that much of Narnia as a fantasy land, partly for the same pedantic reasons that Tolkien ddn't -- it doesn't make sense or hang together, it's just a grab-bag of cool motifs from whatever Lewis happened to have been reading at the time. I was moved again to wonder, with all the woodland animals etc being friends, what does Aslan eat? -- not to mention the various cheetahs etc who also serve alongside? And how come the children are hunting stags? I seem to remember this was "rationalized" in later books along the lines of talking animals = good, ordinary animals = fair game for munchies, but even to a kid that seems desperately unsatisfactory. And where is Mr Tumnus getting his sardines from? But the kids I thought did a pretty good job, especially the Lucy -- who together with Ms Swinton made it worth watching.
On another note, was 2005 a golden year for TV comedy? There were three new series -- Green Wing (OK, that was 2004 really), Help and The Thick of It -- which I watched religiously. Plus Extras, which definitely had some good bits. More than makes up for the unholy prominence of the dread likes of Little Britain and Catherine Tate!
I've been in Cambridge most of the day, meeting up with old housemate Geoffrey whom I hadn't seen for a few years. Catching up on his exciting life -- he's based in Ottawa normally but is just off for six months in Munich writing commentary on the translation a sixth-century Syriac manuscript about church history. It doesn't get much more hopping than that! We had a rather disappointing lunch in a Slug and Lettuce, but apart from that everything was good and he seems very fit and well. On the way back to the station, I nipped into Galloway & Porter and snaffled a copy of Richard E Grant's memoir With Nails, as mentioned recently by
the_elyan -- good fun so far!Went to see The Lion etc on Sunday. It was pretty much what I expected, ie. sort of meh. Lots of good Tilda Swintonage of course -- but the real White Witch has black hair, why change that?? Also, Wot no Lamb?? -- Lewis must be turning in his grave, as surely he would say that was very much a large part of the whole point of the book. It reminded me though that I don't really think all that much of Narnia as a fantasy land, partly for the same pedantic reasons that Tolkien ddn't -- it doesn't make sense or hang together, it's just a grab-bag of cool motifs from whatever Lewis happened to have been reading at the time. I was moved again to wonder, with all the woodland animals etc being friends, what does Aslan eat? -- not to mention the various cheetahs etc who also serve alongside? And how come the children are hunting stags? I seem to remember this was "rationalized" in later books along the lines of talking animals = good, ordinary animals = fair game for munchies, but even to a kid that seems desperately unsatisfactory. And where is Mr Tumnus getting his sardines from? But the kids I thought did a pretty good job, especially the Lucy -- who together with Ms Swinton made it worth watching.
On another note, was 2005 a golden year for TV comedy? There were three new series -- Green Wing (OK, that was 2004 really), Help and The Thick of It -- which I watched religiously. Plus Extras, which definitely had some good bits. More than makes up for the unholy prominence of the dread likes of Little Britain and Catherine Tate!
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Narnia
Date: 2006-01-03 10:00 pm (UTC)It's a grab bag of cool paganism (greekism, that is) wrapped in a fluffy blanket of furry christianity; what's not to love? Roll on Prince Caspian, where we should get lots more tree spirits, and Silenus and Bacchus and his crewe to boot, if they're going to be true to the original.
I loved it; I thought the early scenes leading up to the wardrobe moment were spot-on to create a feeling of reality - necesary because we're about to..., and the wardrobe-moment itself brought a tear to my eye. Maybe the white witch wasn't 7 feet tall with black hair, but she was Tilda Swinton, so what are you complaining about? Maybe the battle was a bit 'let's show off our CGI creatures and echo LOTR', but what the heck. The scriptwriter added a lot of humour, especially in the beavers (or brought out what was already there more explicitly, if we're being charitable).
It did sag in the middle, somehow. But the the lesson clearly is, be true to your sources. The middle was where they went off from the Text and made up some stuff.
Re: Narnia
Date: 2006-01-04 09:53 am (UTC)Ah, it's a while since I've read it. Must have conflated the two incidents.
Not sure how Father Christmas fits in with Greekism or Christianity -- or the White Witch and her wolves, which seem straight out of Andersen. Not to mention the talking beavers, which I can only relate to Native American mythos...
Re: Narnia
Date: 2006-01-04 06:46 pm (UTC)Oh all right, it's a hotch-potch, but there's an MA waiting to be written about how all the disparate pagan elements could be reconciled and/or why he wanted to include them in Narnia under a banner of Christianity.
Re: Narnia
Date: 2006-01-05 09:22 am (UTC)I suspect Lewis's reasons for flinging in all this stuff could be boiled down to a shrugged "to better efect my secret agenda", which I'm not sure would make it a very edifying subject for detailed study...