Saturday, December 11, 2010

Christmas prep and Narnia

Today we decorated the Christmas tree for ourselves and we are sweeping and putting things away. Yesterday we took a young friend to go see the movie Voyage Of The Dawn Treader. I loved the intro and the ship and the sailors and how they handled the slave market. The green smoke monster that made people disapperate made me say "What?" I knew things had to be compressed for the movie, so why did they add something? And then they added the stowaway. The goldwater and dragon hoard were done well. Why they had Lucy take off the dragon's armband, I don't know. I shall need to wait several months before I can buy the movie and watch it captioned. They changed the spell that Aslan needed to talk to Lucy about because they made it a movie about the temptations of the main characters. OK. And then the adventurers needed to collect all seven swords to defeat the evil green smoke monster island, and I groaned inside: video game. A great deal more was made of the sea monster than Lewis made of it and it was a truly scary monster. Some good fight scenes. And then Hollywood Cliche like Secret of NIMH and countless countless other animated movies, the seven swords were joined and a column of light shot upward and Edmond's sword glowed and when he hit the monster crackly lightning killed it. Oh gag. And then the green smoke monster island releases all the people it stole including the stowaway's mother so we can watch the tearful reunion. OK. I got it. Hollywood movie endings must circle around to the beginning and tie up all loose ends to be satisfying. Watching Reepicheep sail off to Aslan's land was cool. Oh, and so was the Wizard and the, the, not Puddlelumps, but you know what I mean. Dufflepods? I'm sorry there could not be a lamb on the beach preparing a meal or indeed a great many things I would have included, but movie adaptations cannot be as complicated as books, I know. Plus there is no way for Hollywood people to understand the layers of meanings in Lewis's books.
Then we went with my sister's family to watch the Asante Children's Choir. Wow. It was wonderful to watch those children singing in English and dancing some Rwandan dances and then new dances to worship songs. Yes, I remember when those kids had not seen a toilet and did not know what to do with it, and sinks, and bathtubs, and managed to break all of them before they learned. I do hope they have learned how to turn pages on books by now. LOL. I remember watching them run screaming from the choir house when I showed them a rubber snake when I was going to teach them prepositions.

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