Oh, Narnia

For starters, there may be spoilers. Beware!

I liked Prince Caspian quite a bit. It was definitely darker than both the book and the first movie, and there were some fairly significant plot changes. While I am not entirely happy about the plot changes, I understood where they came from and why they were made. As with the first movie, I thought the attention to character development - especially in the character of Peter - was a clear improvement over the book. (Lewis, while an inventive writer, left his characters a bit flat, I always thought. More interested in the development of the country than the people. Maybe a bid to keep his characters always the innocent young people they were in the first book? Perhaps that's why Susan eventually becomes the scapegoat by the end of the series, the symbol of someone moving irrevocably forward into the kind of adulthood Lewis most disrespected.) Edmund notably had less to do than the others, although I look forward to seeing what Skandar Keynes can do with the next movie. Additionally, I find three of the four actors playing the Pevensies remarkably talented and am looking forward to watching their careers. (I find Anna Popplewell perfectly good, but not that interesting.)

I found Prince Caspian very intense and as brilliantly imagined as the first movie. It is a remarkable translation of the novel - brings it forward into adulthood in many ways. There were moments I wasn't thrilled with (chief among which: Reepicheep the mouse is supposed to be black! The descriptions of him are very clear and vivid, as this beautiful, glossy black mouse. I was disappointed by the nondescript brownish-reddish look he had in the movie. I certainly didn't feel any need to pick him up and hug him, the way Lucy is described as always wanting to do in the books), but I understood the reasons behind the moments and respect the filmmakers' choices.

The big disappointment? For months now, my boys and I have been looking forward to going to see this movie together. Big Narnia-philes, lovers of the first movie ... but there are several scenes in the film that are really intense. I, knowing the book in depth and being fairly well up on the changes in the script, was on the edge of my seat, moved to tears, tense with apprehension. I'm very conflicted about how my boys will do in the environment of the theater - they want very much to go, but I'm not sure how they would handle it. The safest course would be to wait for the DVD and all watch it together here at home. I just don't know.

Bottom line, though, I felt about the movie about the way I expected to feel: it was very good, an excellent adaptation, but not quite as good as the first. Of course, the first movie is my favorite movie of all time, so it's as high a standard as possible!

Books off my desk:

I reread Lifeblood, the second book in the Jack Fleming, noir vampire detective, series by P.N. Elrod. Elrod's other series didn't thrill me, but the Fleming ones manage to be light and entertaining, with good attention to character development.

I read Louis L'Amour's The Shadow Riders. A good addition to the L'Amour canon ... but it started off a lot better than it ended. The opening was gripping, but from the middle on it got a bit rushed. I think it would have held up as the book it started off to be if it had been a little bit longer.

Finally, Laura Simon's Dear Mr. Jefferson: Letters from a Nantucket Gardener. A fascinating conception, the book chronicles a year in the life of a (20th-century) woman's beloved garden, as narrated through her letters to Thomas Jefferson. Fascinating reading, both from a gardening and a historical perspective. Well worth keeping!