The Chronicles of Narnia - The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe: Aslan, king of the whose?

Watching The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was an odd experience for me. I read the book back when I was in elementary school or, if I recall correctly, my father read it to my sister and I (but I read the rest of the series all by myself!) and I didn't remember much about it. In fact, near the end of the film, I began wondering if the White Witch would be defeated at the end of this movie and, if so, who was the antagonist for the rest of the books? It wasn't until this film was in production that I was introduced to the idea that Aslan=Jesus. Funny, how things that seem so obvious now can go completely over an eight-year-old's head.

This brings me to another thing that I had absolutely no memory of: Santa Claus. Really? The Narnianinians (or whatever you call them) celebrate Christmas? Christmas? The Mass that celebrates Christ's birth? That only works if Aslan totally and completely is Jesus. As in Aslan, lion-god of Narnia, is the word of God, Elohim, made flesh and sent to Second Temple era Jerusalem to be crucified for man's sins. Based on the fact that the Narnianites refer to the humans as "sons of Adam" and "daughters of eve" I think that's what C. S. Lewis is getting at. Well, that and my foggy recollections of the big reveal at the end of "The Last Battle". I guess I should really just read the series again.

As for the film itself, it's a serviceable adaptation but it never really astonishes. The CGI effects are well-done but not excellent, the actors are good to pretty-good but not exceptional, and the big battle scene is impressive but not epic. I couldn't really point out anything that's wrong with it, it's just that there wasn't anything that the filmmakers really nailed either. The real problem with this adaptation is that it makes Lewis's magnum opus look like a second-rate Lord of the Rings.


Are you a good witch or a, uh . . . nevermind.

Underworld - Evolution: Things happen

I saw the first half of Underworld: Evolution while I was half-drunk, then Ringo paused the movie for over an hour while he attempted to bake cookies and I ended up watching the second half with a headache as I caught up on reading Slate articles. Also, I never saw the original. So, this wasn't really an ideal viewing situation. This movie seemed pretty stingy with the vampire on werewolf action and heavy on complicated mythology and back stories that nobody cares about . . . really heavy.


Kate Beckinsale is hot. Kate Beckinsale in a skin-tight black leather outfit should be a lot hotter than it is.

Pirates of the Caribbean - At World's End: With all of that violence it should have been rated . . .

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End continues in the tradition of it's predecessors by being way better than Jerry Bruckheimer presents A Theme Park Attraction: Part 3 has any right to be. The more I think about it the more I just can't get past the fact that I really like these movies. This movie has a nearly three-hour runtime, more characters than it knows what to do with, the most complicated, convoluted plot I can imagine when you combine that with Disney's tradition of craptastic live-action fare, the fact that Bruckheimer might be a demon sent from hell to destroy the art of cinema and that this whole disaster-on-paper is based on a glorified carnival ride it's inconceivable that it could still be this much fun the third time around.

Johnny Depp has recieved plenty of (well-earned) praise for his role as Captain Jack Sparrow but he can't just turn a mess into an awesome movie all by himself. I'm going to have to give some credit to Gore Verbinski. I suspect that the man behind the wicked American re-make of The Ring is the unsung hero of this trilogy. I mean, Johnny Depp might be cooler than Jebus but at the end of the day he's one of many balls that needs to be kept in the air to prevent this franchise from turning into a Hindenburg.


Anyone know when Cameron Crowe is going to finish his Elizabethtown trilogy? Orlando Bloom's gotta work, you know.

Film Festival: Day 12

Ghosts Of Cité Soleil

This fascinating documentary is about the slums of Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti. The film primarily follows one of the five gang leaders who covertly works for the President to intimidate his political opponents. The gangster goes by the name '2Pac' and one of the members of his crew is named 50 cent. Things get a little confusing when the Haitian 2Pac calls up his friend the Haitian Wyclef Jean who is, like, the real Wyclef Jean. It's a great look at a complex political, social and personal situation where there are no real good guys. Only people doing what they can to survive in a terrible situation.

Trapped Ashes

The premise of this film is that six people get trapped in a haunted house while taking a tour of a rundown movie studio that is lead by Henry Gibson. (Excellent premise!) The gang realizes that they are being forced to reenact an old movie and everyone is forced to tell their own personal real-life horror stories. Each tale is told in flashback and is directed by a different person with Joe Dante directing the wrap-around segments at the studio. As with any of these things the individual segments are sort of hot or miss and unfortunately the best parts are at the beginning. The first one involves a woman who gets breast implants that come from real breast tissue recovered from cadavers (clearly, this will not end well). The woman's newly enhanced bust takes on a life of it's own and begins sucking the blood of any would-be suitors. It's sort of reminiscent of Rabid, the David Cronenberg film with legendary porn-star Marilyn Chambers. So, if you start off your omnibus with vampire tits, where can you go from there? Demon sex. That's what the second segment is about. Both of those are pretty great but what comes after that is a little bit of a let-down.

End of the Line

This is a good (but politically muddled) horror flick about a group of Christians who get the word that the Day of Reckoning is upon us and start killing everyone to save their souls. It is unclear how killing someone before Satan's army arises from the dead will lead to everlasting life. This was made on a shoestring budget but it does offer a few jumps and a lot of suspense.

Wicked Flowers

This Japanese horror film is sort of like Cube meets The Game with Michael Douglas, only a lot stranger. It's kind of slow but I have to give it props for being weird as all get-out.

Film Festival: Day 11

Dante's Inferno

This is an all puppet retelling of the classic with Dermot Mulroney as Dante and James Cromwell as Virgil, his guide through the underworld. It's pretty funny.

Judy Toll:
The Funniest Woman You've Never Heard Of

This is a labor of love by the brother of a comedienne who recently died of cancer. It's funny, it's got a lot of heart and it would seem cruel to criticize it.

The Living And The Dead

This is an interesting mix of a family drama and a horror film with the horror aspect being a combination of a well-meaning, mentally ill caretaker and his cancer stricken mother. It's not always easy to tell fantasy from reality and that only adds to the suspense.

American Fork

This movie is billed as being "From the makers of Napoleon Dynamite" but a more accurate description would be "from the editor, casting director and sound department of Napoleon Dynamite." I went in thinking this was going to be Napoleon Dynamite II and I was surprised to find a slower, more poignant film. It's got some really eccentric characters that are good for a few laughs, for instance it has a pompous actor played by a Baldwin brother (not the famous one or the crazy Christian, one of the other two) but it's more of a drama than a comedy.

Unholy Women

This is three short Japanese horror films rolled into one. The first and last section are both solid but it's the middle one that's a real gem. It's a funny, terrifying, and just plain bizarre tale about a boy who gets set up on a blind date with a girl who's got nice legs but is completely encased in a burlap sack from the waist up. She never speaks but does make inhuman, almost insect-like, screeches and her sack is lumpy and bulbous. Clearly, there is more than just a girl underneath. It ends with an act that I can only describe as (spoiler alert) a reverse-birth/consumption sex act. It's weird and wonderful.

Film Festival: Day 8

Kurt Cobain: About A Son

This is an inventive documentary (although, not quite as inventive as Zoo) that uses a series of recorded interviews with Kurt Cobain combined with footage of the towns where he lived and the people who live there now to tell his life story. However, it notably does not use any of Nirvana's music and the only images of Cobain himself are saved to the very end. It can seem a bit tedious at times but if you're interested in the man or how fame affects people, it'll be worth the wait.

The Unseeable

This is my first ghost movie of the festival and it's from Thailand where, apparently, young women shower while wearing towels (no fun). It's got a ton of ghosts (which, by the way, are all quite seeable) and they all have their own back story. This film is loaded down with more sub-plots than it knows what to do with. It's definitely got it's creepy moments but it's mostly a big mess.

War In Peace (Shorts Program)

This program consists of two shorts, the first of which is City Harvest. It offers an interesting look at how a prison gardening program provides seedlings to community gardens, which use them to grow produce to donate to local food banks, which distribute the vegetables to needy families, usually in the same communities where the prisoners came from.

The second short is Recovering Satellites and it's about three Vietnam veterans who got short changed on a New Jersey memorial. It covers the story from two angels by telling the personal story of one of the men and it also gives the bigger picture of how we failed to support our troops during Vietnam. Can I just say that I'm a little sick of people who try to make me feel guilty for not giving the troops a proper welcome when they came back from Vietnam? I mean, I wasn't even around back then. But I guess people are still really upset about that. Hey, how about we make a deal? Bring the troops home from Iraq and I'll show up for the parade. Oh, and I promise I won't spit on anyone. Deal?

Cashback

This is a really great film that was adapted from an Oscar-nominated short. In fact, the entire 18-minute short is contained in the feature film. I'm tempted to describe it as Clerks meets Amelie meets my sexual fantasies but that doesn't really do it justice. It starts out as sort of a mid-twenties-life-crisis/slacker comedy but it evolves into something magical. It's full of wonder and surprises. You should all see it.

Film Festival: Day 6

Life Can Be So Wonderful

This is the kind of movie that Corey would dismiss as pretentious but I really liked it. It's cinematic poetry.

Taxidermia

In my first festival post I joked about how long it would be before I saw a penis. Well, the answer was day six and that penis shot about three feet of flame, as you can see. I really don't know what to say about Taxidermia. It tells the story of three generations of men who each have an obsession: sex, food and, uh, taxidermy? Maybe that last one's supposed to be death, that probably works better thematically. This Hungarian film has things that I guarantee you've never seen before and they're things that you might be better off not seeing. It's definitely not for the squeamish and it has some vomit scenes that put Stand By Me to shame. Needles to say, I loved it.

On a side note, György Pálfi, the director, is also responsible for Hukkle (Hiccup) a film that shows life in a small town in Hungary without any dialog, other than a song. It is beautiful and this couldn't be more different.

Mr. Pilipenko And His Submarine

This is a documentary about a Ukrainian man who builds a submarine in his garage and has dreams of taking it to the Black Sea. When he takes his sub to a local pond for a test drive you become absolutely terrified that this clearly deranged man is going to die before your very eyes.

Cruel Winter Blues

This is not what you would expect from a gangster film. It's about two men who are waiting for a hit and kill time by, well, living. It's a character study and I think it does for gangster films what Pat Garret & Billy the Kid did for westerns (or maybe it's what McCabe & Mrs. Miller did for westerns, but I digress). It's just full of life, all the good things as well as the bad.

Film Festival: Day 4

Now that I'm done with the first quarter of the Film Festival, I'd like to take a moment to reflect. I feel like all the movies that I've seen so far have been solid to really good. Nothing has really blown me away or been just crap. I hope the first thing will change but I fear it's more likely that second will.

I feel better prepared to deal with the fest this year due to a couple new acquisitions. The iPod that Corey, Ringo, and Leslie gave me has been a handy thing to have on the longer walks and when I have an hour or so to kill between screenings. Also, the cargoish pants that Colleen picked out for me have been very useful. I've got a pocket that can hold a day's worth of granola bars on each leg!

One thing that troubles me is that I have a tendency to forget what I want to put in this blog by the time it comes to actually write it. For instance, in my review of White Palms I wanted to inform you all that, apparently, in Hungry "stiff as a whore" is an expression. Incredibly, I also failed to note that Hell's Ground features a zombie dwarf.

Also, my left knee is really starting to hurt.

On A Tightrope

This was documentary heavy day for me. The first one is about Chinese-Muslim children who train to become tightrope walkers. It offers a really interesting look at how China indoctrinates it's youth while insulating them from religion. Additionally, it features children in peril as they don't use nets. But don't worry, none of the children fall very far.

Disney Cartoon Rarities

Somehow the curators were given access to the Disney Vault to produce this series. I think the most illuminating were the Alice shorts which featured real girl in a cartoon world. They were introduced by Leonard Maltin and Roy Disney (the one that's still alive) and they talked about how Disney/ABC gained control of the Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoons that Walt directed by trading Al Michaels to General Electric/NBC/Universal.

The Curse Of William Penn

This is a pretty good documentary about Philadelphia being unable to win a championship since Liberty One rose above the statue of William Penn.

Crazy Love

It's a simple story of boy meets girl, boy gets girl, girl finds out boy is married, girl leaves boy, boy hires two black men to assault girl, girl opens door to receive a face-full of acid, girl goes blind, boy goes to jail, boy gets out of jail, boy gets girl back, boy marries girl, girl finds out boy has a mistress, boy threatens to throw acid on mistress, boy goes to court (again), girl stands by boy. This doc really has to be seen to be believed.

Best quotes: From the boy's friend, "Even Hitler had friends" and from the girl "I thought marrying him would be the best revenge".

Zoo

Okay, I saw the horse-fucking movie.

First of all, I'd like to say that this is a very inventive film in terms of it's form. It really pushes the boundaries of what a documentary can be at a time when so many in the field are just talking heads. I think the only movie I can really compare it to is American Splendor in the way that it combines interviews with those involved with artistic re-enactments featuring many people playing themselves. I feel like the line between feature films and documentaries can be drawn between these movies with American Splendor just barely being a feature and Zoo just barely a doc.

As for it's content, Zoo really makes you consider the issue of bestiality (or zoophilia). It forces you to confront the humanity of the people involve and I think that's what the best documentaries do.

Film Festival: Day 3

638 Ways To Kill Castro

This is a wacky look at history as well as an indictment of the Bush administration for harboring anti-Castro terrorists. If those two things don't sound like they'd go together well it's because they don't. It's an interesting documentary about the (many) plots to kill Fidel Castro but the tone is inconsistent.

Paprika

I think that picture sums up the film nicely: It's crazy, confusing, weird, wonderful and most of all, fascinating.

The Silent Films Of Our Gang Presented By Leonard Maltin

Shorts weren't really designed to be watched five-in-a-row and although the presentation got to be a bit tiring, the films themselves hold up remarkably well. Before the screening Maltin informed the audience that the idea for Our Gang was born when, one day, producer Hal Roach looked out his office window and saw some kids playing in an abandoned lot. Roach sat transfixed for over half an hour before realizing that the simple pleasure of watching children play could be put on film (and make him a tidy profit). It's that simple charm that makes these shorts classics.

Exiled

I didn't always understand what was going on in this Hong Kong action flick but it was still pretty awesome.

Sisters

A solid remake of an early Brian DePalma film that explores slightly different themes. I think they changed the ending and made it better (I know it's only been about two weeks since I saw the original but I'm can't remember exactly how it ended). Either way, watch out for conjoined twins. Them bitches are crazy! Oh, and so are psychiatrists. Don't go messin' around with them either. You basically want to avoid all doctors and patients. In fact, I'd recommend giving the entire health care industry a pass.

Film Festival: Day 2

White Palms

This is a solid movie about how a boy copes with the physical abuse of his gymnastics coach (the guy holding the sword above), joins the circus, learns how to become a coach without hitting anyone, competes internationally against his student (but no hard feelings) and then joins a better circus. The film covers two decades and plays around with time in an interesting manner by crosscutting between two climactic events in the main character's life, one that occurred in his early teens and the other in his early thirties. It also features a darkly comedic scene where the a coach who runs a Canadian gymnastics program has to explain to the Hungarian-raised lead that it is not okay to hit children. Ah, different cultures.

Change of Address

The two people pictured above don't know that they're in love. Can you believe that?

An old romantic comedy cliche is stretched to the breaking point in this thoroughly enjoyable (but weightless) French film about two people who are so blind to the fact that they are obviously perfect for each other and completely in love that they can't figure out what's going on even after they sleep together. Their blindness and general obliviousness makes for what is essentially one-joke film, but that joke is executed so delightfully that I can't complain.

Fantasia

I absolutely love this movie, always have. I'll just take a quick moment to point out a couple of things I noticed this time around.

I think it was very gutsy of them to open with "Toccata and Fugue in D Minor", the most abstract section. It would have been so much safer to open with Micky in "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" and then ease the audience into the more challenging fair. But I guess Disney wanted people to accept the movie on his term. Good for him.

I think the end of the film is so powerful because they give you the lightest and most fun piece, "Dance of the Hours" (pictured above), second to last and then hit you with the one-two punch of "Night on Bald Mountain" and "Ave Maria". "Night on Bald Mountain" is such a powerful piece that it's really a change of pace and to end that nightmare with "Ave Maria" is transcendent.

Also, I thought it was interesting that neither the nude fairies from "The Nutcracker Suite" nor the topless centaurs from "The Pastoral Symphony" had nipples, yet the naked female demons from "Night on Bald Mountain" did. It's like Disney's trying to tell us that only bad girls have nipples. I'm not exactly sure what that means but I bet it doesn't represent a very healthy view of sexuality.

Hell's Ground

It's nice to know that half-way around the world in Pakistan they also have teenagers who lie to their parents so that they can go to a rock concert in their cannabis-filled van only to fiend their bloody end in the middle of a dark forest. The only difference is that American teenagers face either the walking dead or a serial killer and his crazy family . . . not both. It's pretty bizarre when the kids try to escape the zombies only to find themselves faced with the (from what I could tell) completely unrelated threat of a man who runs around in a burqa while brandishing a morning star, his brother (below), and their even crazier mother but I guess that's just how the role in the 'stan.

300: I'm not sure what made me more uncomfortable, the homophobia or the homoeroticism

Wow, 300 was one awesome mess of a movie. I still can't quite get my head around it.

I'd like to begin by covering the awesomeness because it's pretty straight forward. The movie is about King Leonidas (played by Gerard Butler who you may remember not seeing in The Phantom of the Opera) who leads his army of only eighteen hundred abs against millions of Persians. The battle scenes are great with slow motion Matrix-style shots and limbs flying everywhere. It's also got demon warriors, a giant god-king and so many decapitations that I lost count. It's total eye-candy and a lot of fun.

The problem arises when you try to think what the movie is trying to say which is pretty much inevitable when you watch a war movie that was made while we're at war and especially when the bad guys are from the country that we're at war with.

So, you've got the white Spartans starting a war with Persia basically because Leonidas doesn't want to bother with diplomatic relations (I suppose you can argue about who actually started the war but Leonidas totally kills that Persian messenger before any Persians have a chance to kill white people). Clearly this guy's got some George W. Bush overtones, I mean he talks about freedom a lot. Then that means that the Arcadians are the British and the Spartan council is the Democrats . . . and then Theron is Nancy Pelosi?

That makes the Persian leader, Xerxes, Saddam Hussein, because he's trying to take away our freedom. Actually, Xerxes is a really tall god-king so maybe if you take the religious aspect into account he's really Osama bin Laden. Then again, aren't those guys both kind of old news, maybe 300 is looking to the future which would make Xerxes Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. After all, the Persian Empire included Iraq but it was really based out of what is now Iran.

Unless I've got the whole thing backwards. The Persian Empire was the closest thing the world had to a superpower, so that would make them the U.S. Then the vastly outnumbered Spartans would be the Iraqi insurgency, the Arcadians are al-Qaeda and the Athenians are the Kurds.

Or maybe I'm just completely off the mark. Xerxes is referred to as "The King of Kings" and "The Lord of Hosts" and he's willing to accept lepers and the deformed into his tent unlike the Spartans who throw babies that are too small into a death pit. So, I guess that would make Xerxes Jesus? (By the way, I know it's a controversial issue but I feel that I have to go on record as saying that I think these "fourth trimester" or "post-birth" abortions are wrong and I'm sorry if that offends any of you).

I really have no idea what this movie is supposed to mean, but I can tell you that the bad guys look like a lot more fun than the good guys. I know we're supposed to root for the Spartans, but these guys just seem kinda lame. I feel like if you asked one of these dudes to have a beer with you he'd tell you that he should probably get home so he could get a good night's sleep because he needs to wake up before dawn to start his work-out. I bet Xerxes and his rainbow coalition of lesbians and the physically imperfect threw the kind of parties that wouldn't be seen again until Studio 54 hit it's heyday.


So, is that supposed to be Cheney?