Movies Move Me

[trinityofone]

Interesting article about the upcoming Narnia movie: Keep Your Foul Paws Off Aslan. Basically sums up my nervous anticipation/apprehension. Except for this line:

...the big Hollywood movie adaptation of the first chapter (well, technically the second) of the "Chronicles of Narnia"...

::grumbles about revised book order and spits bile everywhere::

Saw War of the Worlds yesterday. Very intense, cool beginning...after which it sort of fell apart. Still, it's worth seeing...just don't take your younger siblings or anything. There was a long line of summer camp kids waiting to go in as we left, and I could just see the tear-and-snot filled extravaganza that was going to be. This is definitely not a movie for kids.

Now that I'm in L.A., I officially need to see at least one movie a week. I think Dark Water'll be my next one. I can't believe it's directed by Walter Salles, a.k.a., I Directed The Motorcycle Diaries and Now I'm Doing a Ring Knock-Off Why? But I'm easy. I'll see it.

I'm also looking forward to...

Wedding Crashers - The Owen. The Vince. The Christopher. I'm there.

The Bad News Bears - Bad Santa made me think Billy Bob Thornton might be kinda hot. Shut up, I'm weird.

The Island - I didn't just say that. You can't prove anything.

The 40-Year-Old Virgin - Steve Carell!

The Skeleton Key - This will suck. But it has Peter Sarsgaard in it, so who cares.

I am so, so shallow.

What are y'all looking forward to?

Comments

[darcydodo]

well, technically the second

Pah, I say. Pah.

[deema.livejournal.com]

I think Narnia trailer looked great and I am very much looking forward to it!
I will watch "The Island" while intoxicated and will enjoy it.
What does the phrase "Han shot first", or in this case your icon, refer to? I don't recall him having a western style shoot-me-first competition. :)

[deema.livejournal.com]

Just read the article. You know, he does have an occasional point there, but I think he is overall too critical. When he dissed Finding Nemo and both Shreks - what was that about? Surely, most of the children book adaptations look like shit, but I have hopes enough that this one will come out good (although the evil witch does look rather cheezy in the trailer). We can only wait, right? Five months till christmas - fingers crossed.

Mark Morford for President!

[ilgattopardo.livejournal.com]

Thanks for linking that typically fabulous Morfordian rant. God, it would be a travesty if they murdered the Narnia books. The thing is, they really are tacky Christian allegories (even as a nine year-old I noticed, and re-reading them as an adult I was amazed that I overlooked it so much), so it's not unreasonable to maintain that in the movie -- provided they stay true to the book and don't give it the Disney/Passion of the Christ makeover. Morford makes a great point about the reason for the original magic of the books, which I'd never really thought about clearly. Like Milton, Lewis (who incidentally, I might add, was not only an Oxford man, but born in Belfast) was far too good a writer to allow his purpose of "justify[ing] the ways of God to Man" to get in the way of good storytelling/poetry -- and, as with Satan in Paradise Lost, the really memorable stuff in Narnia is all the (basically pagan) magic and wonder.

But why the bile? Ok, it depends on what the meaning of "technically" is, but The Lion, the Witch... is "technically the second" chapter (as Star Wars -- giving it Lucas' new name would be to endorse the kind of pointless and eviscerating revisions you allude to so wittily in your fabulous icon -- is "technically the fourth" chapter of its series).

I've never heard of any of these films you're looking forward to. A great part of being out of America is avoiding all the marketing hype! I'm looking forward to: Howl's Moving Castle (not released in Europe yet. I suspect it could be exception to the rule that great children's books get slaughtered on screen -- a rule which it kind of proves by being Japanese). I have modest hopes for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: even though Tim Burton's been off-form for about a decade, the trailer looked interesting, and I'm encouraged by the apparent return to the book, rather than the old film (of which, by the way, I was never a fan). I'm curious to see War of the Worlds, actually, but I'm even more intrigued by
this (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/01/movies/01spie.html?8hpib).