Ebert defends Indy's Standing-O; C.S. Lewis on Mysticism
Indy's standing-o
Indiana Jones IV got a standing ovation at Cannes. And Ebert thinks it was genuine.
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What did C.S. Lewis have to say about mysticism?
Listen to this intriguing podcast at The Kindlings Muse...
William Butler Yeats once said, "The mystical life is the center of all that I do and all that I think and all that I write. . ." This same thing could not be said of CS Lewis, whose faith was grounded in reason. In this episode of The Kindlings Muse @ the CS Lewis Center we explore the role of the mystical in the life and thought of CS Lewis. We originate from the campus of Seattle Pacific University as host Dick Staub interviews Rev. Earl Palmer, senior pastor of University Presbyterian Church and long time explorer of CS Lewis, Kim Gilnett leader of the team that restored Lewis home, the Kilns through the CS Lewis Foundation and Dr. Mike MacDonald professor of European studies, and coeditor of CS Lewis and GK Chesterton's The Riddle of Joy.
An Honor for Over the Rhine
Over the Rhine gets to be the first act at Cincinnati's new 4,100-seat National City Pavilion at Riverbend Music Center on Saturday.
And what will they do? Play all of the songs from their sensational double album Ohio!
McSweeney's Publishes a Letter to Aslan
McSweeney's Mari Ness submits A Letter to His Imperial Majesty, Aslan:
Keith Green, Age 11
My friend Mark Moring just sent this in:
At the age of 11, Keith Green appeared on the TV show I've Got a Secret, hosted by Steve Allen, in 1965. This is before his conversion to Christ, but in the song he plays near the end of the segment, his style is already evident. Pretty cool stuff:
How "Prince Caspian" Botches the Meaning of the Book
Want to know if Andrew Adamson's Prince Caspian is fun and entertaining? Check out the reviews archived at Rotten Tomatoes.
But if you're a fan of C.S. Lewis's Prince Caspian, which is something quite different, and if you hope to see Lewis's ideas come to life on the big screen in Adamson's film, well... what follows is a collection of reviews that address that question.
This collection will be updated as I find further interesting reviews on the subject. Feel free to submit more reviews, or even your own, in the comments below.
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Caspian's PG and David Dark's Next
Did Prince Caspian get the right rating?
Cinematical's Eric Snider thinks the "PG" is misleading.
... watch The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian and marvel at how such a violent movie magically got the kid-friendly PG rating.
I didn't know the rating before I watched it, and I didn't remember, off the top of my head, whether the first Chronicles of Narnia was PG. (It was.) As Prince Caspian unfolded, I noted that there was an awful lot of stabbing, throat-slitting, and other killing, though I also noted that it was almost entirely bloodless. I figured it was the lack of gore that had prevented the film from being rated R, and that it was instead a moderately violent PG-13.
So I was flabbergasted to discover afterward that it was rated PG.
Dark's next
Stephen Lamb is blogging about hearing David Dark read a sneak preview of his upcoming book The Sacredness of Questioning Everything.
One point [Dark] kept returning to is "who's really evangelical?" As I've mentioned before, I stay away from that label because of the negative connotations. But I'm hearing more and more people, like David, trying to reclaim the label. (Donald Miller is even identifying himself now as a Fundamentalist, trying to take back that label.) David said that too often, the vibe we get from the church is "I'm Christian, because I'm offended." But we are called to something different, "we are called to better imagining," not for ways to be offended and cry foul.
In David's upcoming book, each chapter will be devoted to questioning a different thing. He mentioned questioning The Future, Being Offended, Religion, Government, and the Media; I think he said there will be ten or eleven chapters in all. He read an excerpt to us from one chapter on what he learned while watching Michael Scott on an episode of NBC's The Office. He mentioned that, "what we call comedy is the space where everything can be talked about."
A quote that has meant a lot to him recently is from John Howard Yoder - "Jesus has the power to unendingly meet new worlds." And because of that, if we believe it is true, we don't have to be afraid of things changing, of post-modernism or other shifts in our culture and in our lives...
DecentFilms on Prince Caspian: Lewis's Themes and Ideas are "Largely Lost."
When it comes to The Chronicles of Narnia films, well... I want them to be great. I want them to be entertaining, yes. But more than anything, I hope that the filmmakers finds ways to preserve the ideas at the core of the story. In The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, they did a decent job, but some of their decisions suggested that they failed to understand some of Lewis's ideas. And in stripping Aslan of some of his authority, they weakened the character and the core of the story.
Steven D. Greydanus's review of Prince Caspian includes high praise for Prince Caspian as a piece of big-screen entertainment. He even goes so far as to say...Read more