The Thinklings report that there’s a deal to film C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce. The people who made “The Stoning of Soraya M.” are part of the project. The links are a rabbit hunt, so I’ll just link to their post.
I have a hard time thinking of a more naturally un-cinematic novel than The Great Divorce.
But they have my good wishes.
Jeffrey Overstreet writes, “I finally saw The Secret of Kells. Wow. I haven’t been so hypnotized and enthralled by animation in a very long time. It’s remarkable how, in this era of increasingly lifelike digital animation and 3D, something that seems handmade can still work the most powerful magic.”
He interviews critic Steven D. Greydanus, because he’s troubled by the film. “Had I just watched a film about The Book of Kells that never once acknowledged what is written on the book’s pages?”
Here are five things that we think should never change in journalism.
A brief guide to totalitarianism with illustrations, republished by General Motors, originally authored by Friedrich A. Hayek (via Andrew Napolitano/Twitter)
For the record, I received a copy of Thomas M. Sipos’ comic horror novel Hollywood Witches by way of S. T. Karnick of the American Culture, for review purposes.
I love a good Hollywood story. The town’s like an old trollop with a million tales to tell, proud of her very corruption. Not for nothing is the Hollywood fable a traditional setting for morality tales (a triumph of hypocrisy in itself).
Thomas M. Sipos’ novel shows considerable promise and delivers a number of laughs, but gets weighed down by its lack of narrative discipline.
The chief eponymous witch of the story is Diana Däagen, a figure of satire, gargantuan in her vices and terrifying in her lack of self-awareness. A failed actress, she now works as “development executive” in a movie studio. She believes herself intensely spiritual and full of love for all humankind, but that doesn’t prevent her from treating her underlings like dirt, using black magic to thwart or kill her enemies, and planning to murder thousands of people at once—all for enlightened, politically correct purposes, of course.
There is no subtlety in Diana’s character. If you like characters in novels, even bad characters, to have sympathetic sides, you won’t find one here. Diana is pure black-hat witch, evil all through.
But of course she’s a Hollywood production executive, so that doesn’t strain credibility much. Continue reading Book Review: Hollywood Witches, by Thomas M. Sipos
Time has a list of 10 saddest kids’ movies, in light of the minor-key note played by Toy Story 3. If you start with Bambi, you can click through the list to see trailers, clips, and explanations.
We watched Toy Story 3 over the weekend and loved it. It gets intense at the end, and two of my girls didn’t like that part, but overall it was a great story. All three Toy Story movies are good and funny. The latest edition is great tale of loyalty and purpose, and it’s moving because I’m sure viewers want to have real friends who are faithful like the toys are.
Over at Townhall Magazine, Prof. Mike Adams tears into Don Miller, author of Blue Like Jazz:
The only problem with this story is that it isn’t true. Oddly, Don came back to visit that Christian camp just a few years ago. When he did, he was confronted with his very public and untruthful account his time at Summit Ministries.
In response, Don just said it wasn’t a big deal. He fabricated the story just to make a point. He was confronted privately but was unrepentant, which was not too surprising. Remember that Don thinks Christianity is not about rules. It’s about a relationship with God.
Our friend Dale Nelson has sent me the text of an article he wrote for the Tolkien ‘zine, Beyond Bree. I know of no way for you to get it without subscribing, but I can quote a bit here (I hope), and point you to his source material, the book Austerity Britain, by David Kynaston.
Everybody knows that hobbits love to eat good food. Tolkien’s attention to butter, bread, strawberries, potatoes, and other good things has bothered some readers. It isn’t just that hobbits display a childish greediness, but that the author seems mostly to approve of their passion for food. Moreover, some readers may feel that Tolkien makes too much of other creature comforts, such as hot baths, tobacco, and comfortable beds….
Kynaston’s book, drawing on diaries, letters, Mass Observation interviews, and other documents, superbly evokes the dismal condition of postwar Britain (1945-1951). This is the period in which Tolkien was finishing the writing of The Lord of the Rings…. The postwar austerity period became so grim that, in spring 1948, “as many as 42 percent of people wanted to emigrate, compared with 19 percent immediately after the war” (p. 249). I don’t suggest that this is the reason that departure (from the Shire; from Middle-earth itself) is such an important theme of LOTR, but I do think the theme would have a poignancy for Tolkien and his fellow citizens that readers today, especially Americans, would not suspect….
Reading Austerity Britain may prompt Tolkien’s readers to reconsider before criticizing or mocking his celebration of the creature comforts that were in such short supply while The Lord of the Rings was being written. And although the Shire is restored by the book’s end, I now see that LOTR is a book about emigration—think of the Elves’ departure, but especially of Frodo’s, at the Grey Havens. I will always think of The Lord of the Rings, hereafter, as an “austerity” book.
Algis Valiunas at Commentary writes on the legacy of Norman Mailer.
Capote showed Mailer the way by sympathetically detailing the character of one of the murderers, who like Gilmore seemed fated to suffer and inflict hell on earth; but Capote also did what Mailer did not, which was to portray the victims in their appealing humanity, to render the full horror of their final moments, and to emphasize what was lost by their deaths. With the rapt intensity of a man staring into a cobra’s eyes, Mailer gazes into and cannot look away from human malignancy, which seems the most riveting subject a writer can have and which he congratulates himself for searching so boldly again and again. If only he did not love it so.
I just wish Valiunas would stop holding back, and tell us what he really thinks of Mailer.
Caution for disturbing subject matter.
Tip: The Paragraph Farmer.
The IPCC consensus on climate change was phoney, says IPCC insider. By trying to establish consensus, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has set itself up for critical slams. Criticism has been ignored; uncertainty marginalized.
Here’s a critique of a rebuttal of the post linked above from the IPCC insider with egg on his face.