I just noticed there's an 1894 film for download of Annie Oakley in her Wikipedia entry.

I feel like this was an unproductive night. I spent a lot of time playing Baldur's Gate. Yes, the writing irritates me, but it is still Dungeons and Dragons. If only I lived near Stephen Colbert, who, as I've learned from this recent Onion interview, played it as a lad. He was lucky. I wish I knew people nearby who played Dungeons and Dragons.

Well, then, maybe I don't. After all that Baldur's Gate, I feel really dirty. The best way I could justify it to myself was by saying, "It's Sunday. Sundays are made for slacking off."

I was playing it a few nights ago as well, when I looked to my left and noticed that my Citizen Kane DVD happened to be sitting at the top of a DVD pile. And I asked myself, "What would I really rather be doing? Playing this insipid game, or watching Citizen Kane yet again?" And I'm happy to say Kane won that particular vote.

Afterward, I was looking at the movie's IMDB entry and noticed one of the user comments, though ostensibly a positive review, described the movie as "slow" and, though obviously important and influential, also "not pure entertainment."

Bullocks. Someone needs strangling. I'm not even putting this one down to a short attention span. This is abject stupidity. Slow? There's not a merest fraction of an atom of fat in that movie. Though I guess I can see how a teenager might not like the subject matter, and even get greater thrill, as the quoted reviewer does, from The Matrix. But it sure does make me hate young people.

Anyway. I better put myself to bed now before I start dragging white trash out of their homes and into cold asphalt hell, as I lecture them in the early morning chill about the difference between squares and rectangles. Gods, all my crotchetiness seems to come out at 7am . . .

The original Harry Potter?

It's the jolliest Boschen and Nesuko yet! I think it's also an early anti-Valentine's Day chapter.

Boschen and Nesuko's now past 300 pages, so . . . mazel tov to me, I guess.

Yesterday was a strange eating day. I went to Starbucks thinking I wasn't going to have much time for breakfast, wanting to get a zucchini walnut muffin. When they didn't have any, I settled for a cheese danish, which had a strange, insubstantial weight in my stomach. I couldn't tell if it'd filled me up or not. So when it turned out I'd have more time yesterday than earlier thought, I went back to Starbucks and used up a gift-card on an egg salad sandwich and a five-shot grande latte. I was unmistakably full after that. So I went home and got to work on Boschen and Nesuko, and after an hour of decent headway, I got a call from my mother asking if I'd like to drop by for some tofu salad.

My operating system, by default, will not refuse free food. Then there're several programmes running that add qualifiers like, "Does it have meat?", "Am I even really hungry?", and "Is it sweet (if yes, then no)?" But the operating system's running the "accept any food" algorithm the whole time, and sometimes I run out of virtual memory, and then that directive is all I've got to go on.

Anyway, I figured, the tofu salad might simply spackle the couple empty spots.

However, I'd probably misheard my mother, because the meal ended up being the salad, two kinds of paddy looking things, soup, and chips with guacamole. The bitch of it all was that it was good stuff, but I could barely choke down half of it.

I was sorrier at 3am, though, when this stupid body reminded me that us organisms have to eat at intervals No Matter What. And I had to settle for two miniature microwave burritos.

I was playing Baldur's Gate at the time. I've been itching for a game with an interesting plot with well written characters and dialogue since Fallout 2. So I borrowed Baldur's Gate from Tim, figuring since both it and Fallout 2 were from Black Isle, they'd share some writing quality. No such luck.

Either the writers are different, or the Fallout 2 writers' skills were neutralised by the Forgotten Realms environment. The dialogue is so awful as to be awesome. It deserves an award for "Most Gratuitous Misuse of a Thesaurus" with lines like, "There are a plethora of people going through the woods," and, "It's a mistake to think I'd trust your benevolence!"

And I think the Lord of the Rings movies have ruined at least one thing for the AD&D worlds--it doesn't wash to hear American voices speaking in faux Middle English. No longer may Ed from the corner drugstore play Sir Gawain.

There's a free episode of South Park online (it's Quicktime). I guess it's kind of a "fuck you" to Tom Cruise, who's prevented broadcasting of the episode in Britain. The episode makes fun of Scientology and makes an oblique, but lengthy crack at the man's supposed closeted homosexuality.

Personally, I've never really found the idea that Tom Cruise might be secretly gay to be particularly funny. Mostly it just reminds me of the guys passing him on the street in Eyes Wide Shut calling him a faggot--it just seems kind of immature, and provoked by the fact that he's handsome, but not as particularly macho as other pretty leading men of his generation.

But I do think it's stupid how angry he gets over the jokes, which may also be the real point of the South Park episode. And I do agree with Stan's assessment of his acting ability--I don't think Cruise is a bad actor, but John Heder probably is a little better.

As for the Scientology stuff, Matt and Trey really seemed to be just phoning it in. It's not as funny as the Hubologists from Fallout 2--the South Park episode basically relies on actual facts of Scientology to be funny by themselves. Matt and Trey used to be more inventive. I wish they'd retire, before the show shares The Simpsons' fate.

I love Firefly.

A little over a year ago, long before I'd seen any Firefly, I talked to a guy at school who I knew was a fan.

I said to him, "From what I've heard, it sounds a bit like . . . Cowboy Bebop?"

And his face subtly fell. I could tell he was used to telling people how innovative this series was, and suddenly he realised he couldn't think of significant differences between it and Cowboy Bebop. But what he said to me was, "No . . . Firefly's pretty much a drama."

I let it go at that, even though I knew Cowboy Bebop was not a comedy series. But I thought about it as I finally got around to watching Firefly a few weeks ago. And yes, it's a lot like Cowboy Bebop. As I continued to watch the series, I couldn't help but check off similarities, and places where one was better than the other;

They're both combinations of Space Operas and Westerns. In both, characters usually speak one language, but can slip into another on occasion (in Firefly, it's English and Chinese, and in Cowboy Bebop, it's Japanese and English). The respective central space ships, Bebop and Serenity, even look a little alike.

A Firefly episode is roughly twice the length of a Cowboy Bebop episode, so you get a more intimate feel for the characters. The characters are also a lot more affectionate with each other, which is kind of sweet, and there're more of them.

But Cowboy Bebop easily defeats Firefly in terms of visuals. Mars on Bebop, which combines jumbled Tokyo-like modern city with familiar empty red Mars landscape, monorails, and very vital, complicated crowds, easily overshadows Firefly's big cities, such as the one seen in "Ariel", which are neat, but grey, and seem populated by twelve to twenty television extras. But partly to blame for that must be the budget limitations of a live-action television series.

I also have to admit I got tired of how similar most of the planets on Firefly looked. I know it's in keeping with the western theme, and maybe it makes sense if all the planets are terraformed by the same technology, but it all looks a lot like empty fields a few miles from here. I guess the fact that I live in southern California biases me on that score.

It highlights an advantage Farscape had in being produced in Australia, with its wider variety of locations in a small area.

I loved the characters and writing on Firefly. Inara felt kind of stiff most of the time, but in instances where she didn't have to play formal, unconvincing Lady of Elegance, and just be a girl, she was good. I was able to remember why I liked Morena Baccarin as Black Canary on Justice League.

Kaylee was adorable, and the actress playing her continually found interesting ways of making her lines effective. Nathan Fillian as Mal was good, except his jaw line always seemed a little too soft to me. But that really didn't bother me a whole lot. I never did really warm to Simon, as I thought I might, but the actor doesn't do a bad job. It's not his fault if I think his face is weirdly lumpy.

Summer Glau was good as River, and is probably a big part of why her character worked, which is the sort of character I think is a lot more difficult to make credible than a person planning a series might assume. It's hard to make crazy talk without sounding very contrived, and actually, they didn't always succeed with River. Especially when she was under the pen of writers who Joss Whedon probably purposefully left in the dark regarding River's true nature.

But she was really good in the last episode, versus the bounty hunter who was apparently an homage to Boba Fett, complete with his own Slave 1. I knew he was a bounty hunter from the moment I saw the shape of his ship. However, his character was obviously more complex than Boba Fett, and genuinely threatening when it came to Kaylee. Which was why it was a shame he lost a bit of his gravity in his dialogue with Simon.

Overall, it's a lovely series.

I wish I had some gloves. Mittens, even. Or thick gloves with the fingers cut off--I'd feel very Blade Runner, then.

Now, I know that compared to where most of you lot are now, this temperature around me is practically the surface of the sun. But I think it's rather cold, and I seem to be one of the only ones around here who seriously thinks so.

I've got layers of clothes piled on me, but my bare hands have become floppy frozen hamburger paddies.

I ate breakfast at Einstein bagels again this morning. No one knows how to act in there anymore--the counter spreads pretty symmetrically across a corner of the shop, and they've removed the "Order Here" sign. So I might be blissfully daydreaming in the queue, free to ignore the corporeal world, when I notice a fierce redheaded businesswoman giving me bristly indignant glances as she shuffles from the opposite direction.

But I have the old knowledge. I know where the order sign used to be. And I see that ordering and paying still goes generally in the same order. But do the employees correct anyone? No, they just take 'em as they come, from whatever direction they come, and my somnolent routine is disrupted.

The queue is strange as a social venue. There's an unspoken protocol, and a narrow avenue for unspoken confrontation.

At the bank, I usually read a book while waiting, and to-day I had Caitlin R. Kiernan's The Five of Cups. Next to me, an athletic girl in a short, bright blue nylon skirt and an oversized white t-shirt seemed unsatisfied that I could monitor the progress of the queue and read at the same time. Subtle body language conveyed this--from the rhythm with which she edged closer to me, to her rigid trajectory.

But do not get me started on they who can't actually stay in queue, but think they are when they're standing well off to your right, left, two people ahead of where they're supposed to be, and leaning on the counter. An old woman dressed in black behind me, upon noticing such antics displayed by someone in front of me, remarked that such a thing never happened in New York.

I think the secret to San Diego's social malaise is its artificial easy attitude. People like to think they're laid back, but they're really just trying to cut in line. That's what I says, and I'm an anti-social recluse. So there, yeah.

I learned of the draw Batgirl meme through Robyn's journal.

Here's my version;



She'll fuck you up, man.

I looked at a bunch of pictures of bats, thinking about how I was going to do this thing. It terms of colours, I think I based it on a lot of the more harmless bats. So it's the girl half that's dangerous, naturally.

Truthiness to power.

See how you feel about the new Boschen and Nesuko chapter.

I'm dedicating this chapter to Jessica Rabbit, for reasons less obvious than you might think.

Ai, ai, ai. Just watched Dead Ringers for the first time in a long time. Gods, I love Cronenberg. Sure, the idea of twin gynaecologists going mad and one of them creating some evil looking "instruments for mutant women" is a bit disturbing in itself. But there's something subtler about Cronenberg's style that gets under my skin so nicely. Something that has purely to with angles and editing--the bare bones, to which the subject matter is almost secondary.

I got the Criterion edition of Dead Ringers, which has been out of print for a while, so I had to order it used from Amazon. But it's worth it, knowing I have the Cronenberg commentary that's not on the newer edition.

Cronenberg does a good commentary. He's articulate, intelligent, and doesn't merely point out obvious things. Some commentaries are critics who seem to assume I've decided my first ever viewing of the film would be with their commentary, so they give me the play by play; "Here's Jimmy Stewart . . . He's playing the lead in the movie . . . Now watch what happens here . . . Neat, huh?"

Then there's the other end of the spectrum, like Marian Keane's commentary for Notorious, which really tells you more about Marian Keane than it does Notorious. I'm sorry, Marian, but a transitional shot that happens to feature a grandfather clock is probably not meant to be a penis.

But, then, it could be anyway. I saw an interview with Hitchcock's daughter where she talked about taking a film class where her father's movies were being similarly overanalysed. She went home asking her father if he really meant to put all that in his movies. He told her, of course not, but people are allowed to see whatever they like in the movies, and it pleases him.

Anyway, Cronenberg's commentaries are generally good. I liked an anecdote he related on the Videodrome commentary about an exchange he overheard between Deborah Harry and James Woods--Woods had to wear an uncomfortable, large prosthetic over his stomach of a vertical lesion in his pseudo-flesh. It was so uncomfortable that he griped to Harry one day, "I've ceased to be an actor and have become the bearer of the slit." To which Harry replied, "Now you know how it feels."

It's been a good Christmas for movies, a lot of which, actually, have commentaries I'm looking forward to listening to; Brazil, Star Trek II, The Circus, the Star Wars trilogy, the 1950 King Solomon's Mines, Jean Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast, and Akira Kurosawa's Ran. I haven't had time to watch any yet except Beauty and the Beast, which I intend to watch again, both because the movie wants to be watched again, and because I've been borrowing Jean Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast production diary from Marty for over a year now, and it strikes me that this would be an excellent time to read it, especially as I've just finished the previous book I was reading.

I also reread King Lear in preparation for Ran (which is based on the play). This is the Criterion edition I've just gotten, and I'm looking forward to seeing it on the 42 inch screen. I have an older DVD edition of the film that isn't formatted for widescreen televisions, and since it's a movie in which Kurosawa consciously avoided close-ups, I think as large a viewing as possible would improve the film substantially.

I also went on a small CD binge, getting Charlie Parker's With Strings album, Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures, and two Oingo Boingo CDs. I'd been wanting more of the Boingo since Trisa played a collection of theirs on our trip back from San José, but, unfortunately, I'd only been able to find collections for the longest time. I don't like collections--they lack the structure of proper albums, and buying them usually means you end up buying most of the songs multiple times. But I found Only a Lad and Nothing to Fear for rather good prices, and I am pleased with them.

Damn. I forgot about Broken Flowers and Howl's Moving Castle. Years are too damn long.

Okay, the revised list;

1. Munich
2. A History of Violence
3. Broken Flowers
4. Serenity
5. Sin City
6. Brokeback Mountain
7. Grizzly Man
8. Revenge of the Sith
9. Howl's Moving Castle
10. Batman Begins

So now it's an even ten. Okay.

At last, a day stretching before me with almost nothing I need to do. I've been itching to post about movies I've seen lately, but Christmas put me quite behind on Boschen and Nesuko, so I've been drawing like mad all week. I'm nonetheless basically happy with the chapter as it stands, even though I changed it significantly as the week progressed. Sometimes I wonder if I oughta settle down on Boschen and Nesuko and simply write it as one of the sorts of stories it seems to be in certain chapters, but I get a certain glee from watching it hop genres.

Anyway, Caitlin posted a list of her favourite movies of 2005. Here's mine, of what I've seen--though it ought to be noted that I still have not seen King Kong;

1. Munich
2. A History of Violence
3. Serenity
4. Sin City
5. Brokeback Mountain
6. Grizzly Man
7. Revenge of the Sith
8. Batman Begins

Munich

Rarely have I left a movie theatre feeling more pleased. This is the most unsentimental Spielberg movie I've seen and I love it.

It's also the second best spy movie I've ever seen (Notorious is still #1). Mainly because it never falls into the two big spy movie traps--it never gets the dry bird's eye view of the political world and it's games (like a Tom Clancy movie), and it never treats itself like it's fake (like a James Bond movie).

Spielberg shows that the biggest influence on him as a filmmaker is probably Alfred Hitchcock, whether he likes it or not, because the main reason this movie works so well is that we see everything from Avner(Eric Bana)'s point of view. The stuff about Israelis and Palestinians is interesting, and always played intelligently without Spielberg giving a heavy hand to either argument, but instead allowing things to sit out in the light; cold, bloody, and tragic. But the presence of those details is important mostly because they enhance Avner's story;

Munich is about rationally deciding to kill for something you love, and then continuing to kill because it continues to seem like the most rational course action, and then waking up one day and realising you're a creature whose entire life is wrapped around killing others and avoiding getting killed yourself. The movie shows the strange deletion of beautiful, seemingly integral parts of the human perception. There are some critics saying this movie has a lot of fat to be trimmed, but I wouldn't remove a single thing. The reviewer at CHUD claims there's too much of the business of killing in the middle, but what I saw was a movie seamlessly moving through amazing action sequences to create the feeling of Avner's mind realigning to the new conception of life. Not just becoming good at killing but learning how vulnerable everyone is to a bomb under the bed, or in the telephone.

Here's a movie that says we've lost innocence and goodness, we're probably never gonna get 'em back, and no-one knows any solutions.

A History of Violence

I thought of this movie a couple times while watching Munich. They're both brilliant movies about the function of violence on our world, the effects it has on our lives, and whether or not it's worth those effects.

I talked about the movie in this post.

Serenity

I talked about it here.

I've since watched the first five episodes of Firefly and, while I love the Joss Whedon written episodes, the others are only good. There was a ballroom scene in the episode called Shindig where Inara really didn't come off but Kaylee was adorable and it was somehow fun seeing everyone playing with what was essentially a standard ball from a 1930s or 40s Western.

Sin City

I talked about it here.

I've since gotten the extended edition, which is really nice, since it isolates the stories as their own short films. Now I can skip That Yellow Bastard with a clear conscience. I'm finding The Big Fat Kill has grown on me quite a bit, especially since I've read A Dame to Kill For. Really looking forward to the next movie.

Brokeback Mountain

Gorgeously shot, with Crouching Tiger-ish views of vast, mist shrouded mountains. Well acted with an endearingly subtle, grumpy performance from Ledger, and a charmingly Marlboro-ish Jake Gyllenhaal.

The premise of a love that everyone in the world forbids, yet persists anyway, is obviously the makings of a great tragic romance. Or a cheesy one. It's to Ang Lee's credit more than anyone else's that it is definitely the former.

The characters are real and complex and the movie, though it looks beautiful, never goes for the decadent and operatic, choosing instead to seemingly allow the real feelings speak for themselves.

Of his motivation to make movies of wildly different subject matter, Lee often says that he's mainly attracted to stories of people trying to adjust to a world changing around them while not accepting them. And that was one of two things about Brokeback Mountain that reminded me of John Huston's The Misfits. The other thing being that The Misfits took place in relatively the same period in relatively the same society. It's not hard at all to imagine Gyllenhaal's Jack Twist competing with Montgomery Clift's Perce Howland at the rodeo.

And while The Misfits is about free spirited cowboys being broken by capitalism, and a divorcee being broken by the impermanence of love, Brokeback Mountain is about two men being gay in the middle of what could be one of the worst possible cultures to be gay in. And that's made clear by a flashback Ledger's character has of an old man being beaten to death for just maybe being gay.

It's a good, beautiful film. And yes, damnit, it's a little sad. Why is it I feel like I'm the only person I know who likes sad movies? Anyway . . .

Grizzly Man

Talked about it here. I gots to see more Herzog movies . . .

Revenge of the Sith

I still like it, bitches. I talked about it in this post.

Batman Begins

I said things about it in this post. For some reason I don't feel much like getting the DVD. I'm not sure why. You know, I don't get a hankering to re-watch Memento very often, either.

Don't eat lasagne before, while, or after reading the new Boschen and Nesuko chapter.

Ah, and, again, I recommend signing up for Caitlin R Kiernan's Sirenia Digest. It'll knock your socks off.

"That is how we say goodbye in Austria."

Just a reminder . . .

I feel like someone's scrubbed behind my eyes with a dirty little mop. Because Christmas day is all about frantic, tight schedules wherein many are angered if I fall out of step, I've taken the sleep upset Thursday and used it to quickly alter my sleeping schedule--I went to bed at 8am or so on Thursday, as usual, and then got up three hours later for the maids, as usual. Only this time I didn't go back to sleep when the maids were gone. Thus enabling me to go to sleep at around 8:30pm Thursday, and awaken to-day at around . . . 3:30am. Well, it was the best I could do. It just feels so strange sleeping at night; however sleep deprived I was, every time I woke up, I felt like I ought to leap out of bed and do something.

So I wasn't good for much that was very complicated yesterday. The two pages of Boschen and Nesuko script I wrote only demonstrated to me how boring I am when I'm sleepy. So I have a lot to do to-day, particularly since I wanna get ahead a bit.

Anyway, Merry Cephalopodmas.

The latest reason why it's legally irrefutable that Bush belongs in prison.

Wouldn't it be nice if something came of it for once?

I've seen The Chronicles of Narnia: the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. And there's a very simple way to tell you why this movie doesn't work:

To-day's audiences are too jaded and emotionally atrophied for the real The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. It's my belief that everything that's wrong with the movie--say, 81.7% of it--can be traced back to that problem. This was not the time for The Chronicles of Narnia to be made major motion pictures.

It's really too bad, too, because, at one time, Disney would've been the perfect studio to make The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Imagine if the folks that made Snow White had done this? That might have been beautiful.

I will say I liked this movie a lot more than I thought I was going to. I mostly liked the actors, and I was particularly surprised by how much I liked Lucy, who is very good, except when she cries, but I won't moan about that as it's probably hard to get convincing crying out of child actors, even generally good ones. I liked Edmund and his perpetual frown that reminded me of Melanie Lynskey in Heavenly Creatures. I liked the beavers--they were fun and engaging, almost exactly like they were in the book. I adored Tilda Swinton as the witch--she was threatening, beautiful, and cunning. I bet a lot of people left the theatre wishing she'd won (I know I did). I loved the design of the armour and costumes. Richard Taylor's team prove once again that they are brilliant at crafting these things. The colour schemes are very different from the Lord of the Rings costumes, with silvery armour and bright red, blue, and green tunics. It reminded me a lot of the Technicolor Robin Hood starring Errol Flynn, which, to my mind, is the absolutely perfect note to strike with this material.

But my absolute favourite part of the movie was when Lucy came across the lamp post and met Tumnus. It was the only time in the movie where I actually sort of felt like I was looking at Narnia.

And the interaction between Tumnus and Lucy is, I suspect, one of the few pieces of the story that Andrew Adamson was able to connect with enough to actually put some heart into. It's also why the beavers worked--these were both Shrek-like bits; animals and mythical creatures talking absurdly like familiar humans, to humorous effect.

As for what I didn't like, I'll start at the beginning;

I'd heard a long time ago about Adamson deciding to make the opening scene be the bombing of London by Nazi Germany during World War II, even though this is not in the book, nor does the book begin on even remotely the same foot. When I first heard about it, I thought perhaps Adamson was trying to suggest that Narnia was in fact a means through which the children are coping with their experience of real war, with real death. I don't know if I'd necessarily mind such a story, but such a story is not The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. The book's a fantasy, yes, but such a manoeuvre with the movie would be to make a fantasy within a fantasy--essentially, it would be assuming the audience is too jaded and emotionally atrophied to take fantasy at face value. They'd need it justified with a reality check, a VH1's behind the scenes this-is-what-we're-literally-saying device, nothing so eloquent as actual art, thank you.

Now, having seen the movie, I'm not sure Adamson's intent was anything so complicated. What the opening scene actually felt like was a sucker punch. Like Adamson felt the movie needed a big opening, and he needed to throw in the trauma of the childrens' separation from their mother, which we get in the following scene where they part at the train station. It felt like a cheap trick to get us emotionally involved, but it didn't work at all because we don't know the characters yet, and the shots of the bombing are terrifically dull. For one thing, it begins in the air with the German planes, then cuts to the interior of one of their cockpits. Since the shots aren't particularly interesting, and look fake, and the pilot is pretty anonymous in his mask, we don't really have a point of view yet, so the effect is somewhat inferior to what stock footage of actual WWII planes might have been.

And beginning the movie with emotional trauma is just a bad idea, as I think Lewis could have pointed out. He didn't begin the book that way, and with good reason--kids are resilient and not usually accustomed to grief and horrific stress. You really have to take them through it; you can't just drop them right in, particularly when your uncommunicative filmmaking style isn't helping.

The professor's house is introduced decently enough, and at this point in the movie, I was making a concerted effort to not be bothered, since I wasn't sure yet whether my chafing from the opening wasn't due to preconceptions. I was really watching Lucy because I remembered not much liking the look of her in the trailer. What's interesting is I don't feel like I actually got a look at her until after she went through the wardrobe. The scenes of the children in the mansion involve some sub-par dialogue and some very quick cuts, which reminded me of a quote I'd heard of Sergio Leone saying about the movies he saw in his youth never giving you time to actually look at the stars' faces. Leone, of course, was known for his long close up shots, so maybe his perspective was peculiar, but it's movies like this that give me an idea of how he must have felt.

The introduction of the White Witch was good--as I said, Swinton was a goddess on screen. But her dwarf henchman, described as hideous in the book, was far too cute, and made the audience giggle far too much.

It was nice seeing the kids deliver Lewis dialogue at Tumnus's house, where Edmund argues that Tumnus was a criminal, and we know why he would say that, and it's subtle character stuff. But those spots dissolve far too quickly into dumbed-down one liners.

One of the movie's biggest problems is that Aslan aggressively doesn't work. He looks very cartoonish, is introduced rather off-handedly, and we never sense the grandeur of Aslan as we do in the book, mostly because I don't think Adamson even began to know how to pull it off. I feel bad for the lion during the stone table scene, but only because I wouldn't want to see that happen to anyone, and absent is the shock of seeing the mighty Aslan so dressed-down. It made me a little uncomfortable, as though I was sitting through the funeral of a complete stranger.

The battle sequence at the end fails miserably, as Adamson attempts weakly to find a middle ground between modern, action war epics, and the unabashedly fairy tale quality of the story. It could have worked, but what it needed was a new vision, one that could interpret the fairy tale battle to moving pictures, instead of imitating Braveheart and The Lord of the Rings. There are several shots that are almost replicas of ones from Lord of the Rings, such as a minotaur standing on a rock, waving his hordes forward. Or the first clash of the armies, which looks identical to the warg battle in The Two Towers.

Again and again, I was impressed by the fact that Adamson wasn't up to this. There were too many obvious day-for-night shots, which Peter Jackson doggedly avoided, going so far as to do a month of night shoots for Helm's Deep. It's particularly bad in the stone table scene, where the table is obviously on a sound stage, with complete darkness outside the ring of torches, while Susan and Lucy are clearly looking on from a completely different, outdoor location, which glows blue with the lens filter. When the girls are finally at Aslan's side, on the table set, green screen is used to put the location shot in the background.

I was astonished by how many obviously artificial backgrounds there were in this movie, where there very clearly didn't need to be. One shot had Peter artificially placed in front of his tent. I mean, just a canvas wall, for gods' sakes! Adamson, if you can't plan ahead properly, then at least have the mivonks to do proper pick-ups once in a while.

Anyway, it was, after all, Adamson's first live-action movie, and only his third movie of any kind. All he'd done before were the Shrek movies, the success of which, of course, brought him this project.

I've only seen the first Shrek, and I liked it. But what made that movie good? Sly, post modernist humour. The sort that connects with--yes--a jaded and emotionally atrophied audience. I'm not suggesting it's bad. Not at all. Merely that it's almost the polar opposite of the unabashed, earnest fantasy of the Narnia books. Which also makes Narnia the polar opposite of what audiences these days are open to.

So. Maybe we can try again in twenty or thirty years . . .

Oh, yeah, and now guys can see if they measure up to Heath, penis-wise. This'll be the last genitalia related post for a while, I promise.