Film Adaptation Article from thetimesonline.co.uk (10/15/05)

December 26, 2005 at 3:32 pm (Film and Myth)

The Times
October 15, 2005

Shoot to kill
By Danuta Kean
Writers, beware Hollywood producers bearing cheques. You may not recognise the film that results

EVEN BEFORE GRIFFIN MILL landed a killer punch on David Kahane, the screenwriter in Michael Tolkin’s novel The Player, readers had known that Hollywood is not kind to writers.

If you are the author of a novel adapted to film, the experience can be even more brutal, which is why John le Carré gives a robust warning: “There has never been a more difficult time for authors to deal with the film industry, because there are so many arseholes functioning in it who should not be near it.”

Not that the creator of George Smiley and The Spy Who Came In From the Cold feels bitter about his latest adaptation, The Constant Gardener, with Ralph Fiennes and Rachel Weisz, which opens The Times bfi London Film Festival on Wednesday. Far from it. “It was a very positive experience and quite unlike any other I’ve had with an adaptation,” he says.
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BBC: Pullman attacks Narnia film plans (10/16/05)

December 26, 2005 at 3:31 pm (Children's Literature and Film, Christianity, Film and Myth, Narnia, Pullman/His Dark Materials)

Pullman attacks Narnia film plans
Author Philip Pullman has attacked plans to turn The Chronicles of Narnia into a movie series, calling CS Lewis’ books “racist” and “misogynistic”.

The first film in the series – The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – is due to be released in December.

His Dark Materials author Pullman said the 1950s stories were “reactionary”.

“If the Disney corporation wants to market this film as a great Christian story, they’ll just have to tell lies about it,” he told The Observer.
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Holy war looms over Disney’s Narnia epic (10/16/05)

December 26, 2005 at 3:30 pm (Children's Literature and Film, Christianity, Film and Myth, Narnia, Pullman/His Dark Materials)

Holy war looms over Disney’s Narnia epic
As the UK prepares for a CS Lewis movie blockbuster this Christmas, a row has broken out about its Christian message
by Paul Harris
Sunday October 16, 2005
The Observer

To millions The Chronicles of Narnia are a childhood tale of wonder and triumph now made into a film that could inspire millions of children to read. To others, including the celebrated fantasy author Philip Pullman, they are stories of racism and thinly veiled religious propaganda that will corrupt children rather than inspiring them.

Either way, one thing is certain: this Christmas, and perhaps the next six, depending on sequels, everyone will be talking about Narnia. Disney is already in the middle of one of the biggest marketing campaigns in recent cinematic history. It is trying to lure both mainstream filmgoers and evangelical Christians, who will respond to CS Lewis’s parallels between his characters and the Bible. HarperCollins is set to publish 170 Lewis-related books in more than 60 countries, many of them Christian-themed works. Disney has hired Christian marketing groups to handle the film.
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Mess Market Media:A short lesson on why the existential void (and good writing) shouldn’t just be for kids

December 26, 2005 at 3:28 pm (Children's Literature and Film)

Mess Market Media:A short lesson on why the existential void (and good writing) shouldn’t just be for kids
By Hannah Strom-Martin

Pop-culture analysts and members of the PTA have long been rattling the bars, swearing that children are being talked down to, taken advantage of, and otherwise cheated by purveyors of entertainment. It’s a fair assumption–just look at the kiddie-centric, late-stage career of Ice Cube. What these same people and, indeed, the entire viewing or reading public often fail to take into account is that adults have it far worse; the entire reality TV oeuvre, for example, is aimed at people old enough to wear Jessica Simpson cosmetics.

One would assume, given the moral sewer that currently passes for television, that literary-minded adults would fare much better. Literature has always been the last refuge of complex, original ideas, right? Well, it depends on what sort of literature you’re talking about. Because frankly, my dear, when it comes to pop-lit, the adults are getting the soggy end of the stick.
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For the Love of Narnia

December 26, 2005 at 3:23 pm (Children's Literature and Film, Film and Myth, Narnia, Pullman/His Dark Materials)

Hello! I see that many people are coming to this spot to read the Michael Nelson article about Narnia that I’ve linked to below. Please feel free to look around the rest of the blog; though I began this blog only to save articles that interested me (as a form of e-newspaper clipping), I’ve begun commenting on many of the topics that the articles I cite discuss. These topics include the following: mythology, popular culture, films and books(like Tolkien’s books, Harry Potter, Narnia, Star Wars, and Philip Pullman’s books), fandom, some politics, and some religion. These are all things that I’m studying in graduate school today, so I’d love to hear your thoughts on these topics as well as your thoughts on my thoughts! Thanks for coming and enjoy the article!

The Chronicle of Higher Education: The Chronicle Review
12/2/2005

For the Love of Narnia
By MICHAEL NELSON

The strategy for marketing the movie The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, which will open across the country on December 9, resembles nothing so much as the strategy used to re-elect George W. Bush as president in 2004: Pursue mainstream voters, er, viewers in widely broadcast ads that stress martial valor and family values, and target Christian evangelicals with overtly religious appeals church by church, radio station by radio station.
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Pullman writing a book on Jesus?

December 26, 2005 at 3:18 pm (Christianity, Pullman/His Dark Materials)

A Post from BridgetotheStars.net

Pullman, Music and Jesus
Posted by Will on Dec 14, 2005 06:12 pm
Philip Pullman was on Radio 4′s arts programme yesterday, Front Row, to discuss Bach with the conductor Jophn Eliot Gardiner; with their musings on the relationship between music and literature goiing into a great deal of intellectual depth. Towards the end of the segment, Pullman seemed to confirm that he’s thinking of writing a book about Jesus, which you can read (slightly) more about here. Alternatively, you can skip to about 16:30 on the listen again playback to hear that particular part.
Mark Lawson (Presenter): You appear, from what I hear, to be writing a book about Jesus? Is that right?

Pullman: I’m very interested in the Jesus figure and the Jesus myth. That the man who was a sort of itinerant Rabii in the palace [?] of that time, who was executed for political reasons, and who subsequently became, something utterly different. He probably didn’t even contemplate himself. The creation of a new figure who was to be worshipped. It’s an extraordinary transformation, a very very strange thing came over the early Christians, as we now call them. It was probably John or it was probably Paul. It was probably a combination of the two of them. It was that slew of intense, passionate, strange feelings, weird little cults, springing in to existence and then fading out again. Some of them lasting longer than others. It’s pure chance really that it was Christianity that survived and not Mytheryism [sp?], or something else. But it did, and we’re not living with two thousand years of the consequences.

ML: And this book would be non-fiction?

PP: (pause) …I don’t know.

ML: But you’re going to write about it in some way?

PP: I don’t know.

Thanks to Jamie for typing that up for us.

Link to the Radio Show

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New Yorker Article on Philip Pullman

December 26, 2005 at 3:02 pm (Children's Literature and Film, Christianity, Narnia, Pullman/His Dark Materials)

The New Yorker
Fact
Life and Letters
FAR FROM NARNIA
by LAURA MILLER
Philip Pullman’s secular fantasy for children.
Issue of 2005-12-26 and 2006-01-02
Posted 2005-12-19

Every year at the University of East Anglia, in Norwich, England, a guest is invited to speak on the subject of religion and education Sometimes, a prominent bishop is asked to deliver a lecture, but, as a rule, the event isn’t exactly a big draw. This year, the auditoriu was filled, and another room, with a video feed, had to be set up for those who couldn’t fit into the main hall. The speaker, Phili Pullman, is fervently admired for his sophisticated trilogy of children’s novels called, collectively, “His Dark Materials.” In Britain his books have sold millions of copies, and his often contentious essays on subjects ranging from censorship to education—“We nee to ensure that children are not forced to waste their time on barren rubbish” is a typical declaration—appear regularly in the London papers.
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‘Narnia represents everything that is most hateful about religion’

December 7, 2005 at 10:37 pm (Christianity, Narnia, Pullman/His Dark Materials)

Guardian Article
Children won’t get the Christian subtext, but unbelievers should keep a sickbag handy during Disney’s new epic, writes Polly Toynbee
Monday December 5, 2005
The Guardian

Aslan the lion shakes his mighty mane and roars out across Narnia and eternity. Christ is risen! However, not many British children these days will get the message. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe opens this week to take up the mantle left by The Lord of the Rings. CS Lewis’s seven children’s books, The Chronicles of Narnia, will be with us now and for many Christmases to come. Only Harry Potter has outsold these well-loved books’ 85 million copies.
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Liberal Blogs on Narnia

December 7, 2005 at 10:28 pm (Children's Literature and Film, Christianity, Film and Myth, Narnia, Pullman/His Dark Materials)

Washington Monthly

HUFFING OVER NARNIA….I’m not an especially militant atheist myself, but I have to admit that it’s bracing to see one in high dudgeon occasionally. Today, the Guardian’s famously acerbic Polly Toynbee, honorary associate of Britain’s National Secular Society, takes on the Christian imagery of CS Lewis’s Narnia books:

Philip Pullman — he of the marvellously secular trilogy His Dark Materials — has called Narnia “one of the most ugly, poisonous things I have ever read”.
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