tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7529903.post4904797181615472291..comments2024-03-07T11:39:09.758+11:00Comments on Will Type For Food: Dufflepuds and jiggery pokery: review of Voyage of the Dawn TreaderTimThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10333303180015967125noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7529903.post-56779639928132855722013-11-10T15:45:46.214+11:002013-11-10T15:45:46.214+11:00A small mark of how lovely Lewis could be: when Do...A small mark of how lovely Lewis could be: when Douglas Gresham converted to Judaism as a child Lewis 'had to find him kosher food'. No proselytising there. Okay, I'll stop now cos I've got to go shopping. TimThttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10333303180015967125noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7529903.post-43597651618508338822013-11-10T15:39:51.084+11:002013-11-10T15:39:51.084+11:00Just got this review via Rotten Tomatoes and it se...Just got <a href="http://imagejournal.org/page/blog/dawn-treader-off-course-and-adrift" rel="nofollow">this review</a> via Rotten Tomatoes and it seems to be pretty much spot on: <br /><br /><i>While her friends sleep, Lucy is kidnapped by invisible “Dufflepuds.” They lead her to The Book of Incantations and ask her to read a spell that will break their invisibility curse. They’re illiterate, you see.<br /><br />Can you hear the high-fiving at Walden Media? They’ve never produced a scene that better illustrates their primary mission: to make movies that inspire young people to read great books.</i><br /><br />I laughed. He's right! But <br /><br /><i>Critic Steven Greydanus points out that the filmmakers even overlook the significance of the title: They never once show Caspian’s ship fulfilling its purpose and sailing eastward toward the dawn— toward Aslan’s country.<br /><br />Watching Dawn Treader’s storytellers lose their “golden compass,” I was startled to see that they preserved the story’s most blatantly “evangelical” moment: Aslan tells Lucy that she can seek him in her own world by another name.<br /><br />That scene set Seattle film critics to groaning. I heard one lament that the movie would have been better without “all of that religious stuff.”<br /><br />And although I’m risking the wrath of all Narnians, I gotta say—I agree.<br /><br />For me, Aslan’s words to Lucy remain one of the most frustrating moments in the Narnia Chronicles. Profound as they might be, they violate the “Show, Don’t Tell” principle so fundamental to great storytelling. When Aslan starts pointing out direct correlations with Christ, his story is reduced to a Sunday School lesson.</i><br /><br />Dunno about this - Aslan's line about Lucy seeking him in her world by another name has never bothered me; I agree the great virtue of the stories is in the way they 'show' (and the film lost most of that) but Lewis is good at the 'tell' bit too, and I don't think 'show, not tell' should be followed all of the time anyway. But maybe this was due to the Lewis estate - doesn't the evangelical Douglas Gresham still have final say in what goes on in the films? TimThttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10333303180015967125noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7529903.post-35122841369006104112013-11-10T15:22:40.021+11:002013-11-10T15:22:40.021+11:00The only major interferences with the plot are the...The only major interferences with the plot are the killer fog, the introduction of some new characters on the boat (the annoying kid and her brother), the twaddle about the fog coming from the Dark Island, and the seven swords mumbo jumbo. The team does seem to have a liberal approach to film adaptations that served well in Prince Caspian (and, actually, pretty well in some scenes of Dawn Treader), and maybe credit goes to them for preserving most of the important plot points of Dawn Treader and making sure the production/studios didn't interfere anymore in the film to make it accessible and sellable. <br /><br />A friend told me on facebook that they're ditching plans to make Magicians Nephew and are instead going ahead with Silver Chair. So we'll see what that's like in a year or two! TimThttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10333303180015967125noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7529903.post-6173687653606594582013-11-09T23:18:21.862+11:002013-11-09T23:18:21.862+11:00Yes, the film somehow ended up less than the sum o...Yes, the film somehow ended up less than the sum of its parts, quite a few of which were pretty good, as you note. I felt particularly disappointed given that I had been to see the ship set when it was at Cleveland. (I did a post about that at the time.)<br /><br />I hadn't read the book for decades before I saw the movie, so I wasn't quite sure sometimes as to which bits were from Lewis and which weren't. The swords was clearly new, though, and really didn't work that well.<br /><br />I also didn't really like the way the sea serpent was sort of grotesqued up, so to speak. But I always felt you could say that about the Lord of the Rings movies too - they contained imagery which I thought was much darker than one really got from reading the novels. (I think - given that I never got more than 100 pages into the first book.)<br /><br />But back to Dawn Treader: I really think the direction was dull, whereas I thought the first two films were really well directed by Adamson. But yes, the key problem probably does come down to the story extras.Stevehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04108945551064939734noreply@blogger.com