Christmas Eve Viewing

[poliphilo]

I watched a bit of Prince Caspian. It was frightfully violent. The fairytale people were fighting the Spanish conquistadors. There was a cute mouse that killed grown men with a rapier. I was quite enjoying all this until a dead-eyed CGI lion turned up and everyone curtsied and bowed to it while it said pompous things. The lion had super-powers and conjured up a river god who killed the chief conquistador and then everything was fine again. The lion had been living in retirement in the forest- and the reason it hadn't intervened before and saved a whole lot of killing was a deep mystery we were advised not to question. 

Seriously, does anyone find Aslan an attractive character? I think he's ghastly. 

I cleansed my palate with Whistle and I'll Come to You- a reworking of an original idea by M.R. James- starring John Hurt as an old man grieving for the wife who has been taken away from him by Altzheimers.  The new material didn't quite fit the framework of the original- the whistle the old man finds on the beach had become a ring- thus making a nonsense of the title- but the slow pacing and murky atmospherics were just right. Forty years ago Jonathan Miller made a more faithful version with Michael Hordern in the lead that has become a classic- and this matched up to it well and was- if anything- even scarier. 

Comments

[halfmoon-mollie.livejournal.com]

the ONLY thing I find attractive about Aslan is his voice. I watched a bit of that the other night, and yes...frightfully violent is an accurate description. But I have little use for either those books OR those movies.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I never read the books. I thought I'd give the film a whirl, because it looked pretty, but by the end I hated it.

[halfmoon-mollie.livejournal.com]

I TRIED to read the books. I dislike being beaten over the head with a cudgel, and that's what they felt like to me. The movies were - like the LOTR movies - GORGEOUSLY shot, but still.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Prince Caspian seduced me with its visuals, but what it was saying was just horrid.

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

I tried to read Lewis. I failed and why others have succeeded is utterly beyond me. The experience, though mercifully brief, was enough to keep me far from any film adaptation of his work.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

He's entertaining, and he writes with admirable clarity and simplicity. I don't like what he has to say, but he says it well.

[ideealisme.livejournal.com]

I'm no fan of Islam, but I found "The Horse and his Boy" something close on incitement to hatred.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I wonder if they'll film it.