Friday, December 09, 2005

Disney film renews interest in Lewis

Disney film renews interest in Lewis:
"LOS ANGELES — When 8-year-old Douglas Gresham met C.S. Lewis, the man who would be his stepfather, he was disappointed. The American boy expected the British author of The Chronicles of Narnia fantasy books “to be wearing silver armor and carrying a sword with a jeweled pommel.”

Instead, the person he encountered “was a stooped, balding, professorial-looking gentleman in shabby clothes, with long, nicotine-stained fingers,” Gresham, now 59, recalled in a phone call from his home in Ireland...."

Well, today's the day, and the PC(USA) has weighed in with a PNS news release.

A quick look at the Yahoo Movies web site reveals that the critics give it a "B" and the viewers give it a "B+".

No one in my family really wants to deal with the opening day crowds, so we will just have to wait for a day or two to form any kind of an informed opinion.

The PNS news release makes note of some of the controversies surrounding C.S. Lewis and the themes that are evident in The Chronicles of Narnia, but quotes Gresham as saying this:
“If you want to remember him,” Gresham said, “remember him as a man with all the foibles and difficulties and dark times in his life that men have ... not as some kind of plaster saint. He wasn’t like that at all. He was a man of great humor, great warmth. He was a fun bloke to be around...."

“People should not be trying to remember C.S. Lewis at all,” he said. “They should be trying to remember the Jesus Christ whom he represented and whom he preached.”

This is fantasy literature, wrtten in a way that has nearly universal appeal. I hope it doesn't get ruined by adults who forget what it was like when they were children.

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