I’ve never made any secret of the fact that I actually like movies, hence my title as unofficial faculty film fancier here at HogPro. The first Hunger Games movie, however, was mostly a tremendous letdown, despite a few useful and meaningful moments. Catching Fire was an improvement, though still with some shudder-worthy gaffes and a botched ending. This week saw the release of the final trailer for the first part of Mockingjay, set for release on November 21. The previews include big, loud, grab-those-viewers-by-the-lapels sequences, but there are a few moments that deserve some thought, consideration, and speculation. The shorter trailers that have been released, including Katniss’s return to 12, are actually quite thoughtful and haunting, boding well for the actual film next month. More TV spots have emerged, and more doubtless will appear in the airtime assault leading up to the film’s release. So, in our own prep for the big, big day, let’s look at some of what we can expect and dread, based on the previews we are seeing.
Mockingjay Part 1 Trailers Promise Plenty of Action and Maybe Even Something from the Book!
“Do You Want to Read My Blog Post?” Of Course, You Do! Seven Keys to Why Disney’s ‘Frozen’ is (still) Red Hot
A few weeks ago, our esteemed headmaster and a friend of this blog both consulted me in their puzzlement over the popularity juggernaut that is Disney’s Frozen. Rather than fading, the film continues to dazzle, with an ice show and Broadway productions in the works, connections on the popular show Once Upon A Time, and even a huge boom in the name “Elsa” for babies! My learned colleagues really don’t get it (and let’s be honest, the Headmaster hasn’t seen it. I think he had heard of it. Maybe…) As the resident faculty film fancier and a fully-fledged Frozen aficionado, I offered to toss out my Seven Keys to Frozen’s immense popularity, and I hope you will join me in the conversation. Please don’t shut me out, please don’t slam the door…
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But Wait, There’s More! J.K. Rowling Releases New Harry Potter Story about Quidditch via PotterMore
It’s funny how some authors only want to distance themselves from their most popular creations, while others keep right on keeping on as long as there is one devoted fan still breathing. J. K. Rowling is apparently steering a middle course; she is at once writing novels for a very adult audience (I have decided The Casual Vacancy should be subtitled “How to be Really Preachy While Using all the Naughty Swears You Held Back While Fighting with Your Publishers”) and still tinkering with her Wizarding World through the new Fantastic Beasts film and her work with Pottermore. Her newest contribution is a piece on the history of the Quidditch World Cup. [Read more…]
Jack the Giant Slayer: Someone’s Been Reading My Spenser!
We love fairy tales around here, as I suppose everyone knows. I have an author friend who evaluates people’s personalities based on their favorite fairy tales (hers is Andersen’s “The Snow Queen”; mine is “Cherry the Frog Bride,” in case you are wondering). I have to confess, “Jack and the Beanstalk” has never really been one of my favorites, even in its Appalachian incarnations of “Jack and the Bean Tree” or “Jack and the Giants”; perhaps goofy Jack just always seemed like too much a klutz for my taste. Maybe I just never approved of his kleptomania. But I’ve gained a different perspective, after finally seeing Jack the Giant Slayer (2013). Join me after the jump for more on how Hollywood got some things really right with this one, and how someone did some good reading, particularly from the works of some of my favorite tellers of tales: the immortal Edmund Spenser and his protégé, C.S. Lewis.
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Susan Pevensie: Post-Narniad Progressive Super Heroine
If your knickers are still in a twist about Susan Penvensie’s not getting to Aslan’s Country at the end of Last Battle, Read all about what really happened with Susan, the Narnia Queen that dismissed her royal status as childish fancy. In this article we learn how she grew up to outshine her brothers, sister, Eustace, really, even Aslan.
The short course is that Susan becomes the perfect liberal East Coast cause fighter, because, of course, that is what the Great Lion wants for all of us.
The best part? Susan as prophylactic smuggler because it’s the heroic thing to do for college co-eds…
Forgive me for wondering, though, if the author, quite despite herself, didn’t actually portray what did happen to Susan and that this was exactly what C. S. Lewis was pointing to in his lipstick and stockings aside as her spiritual ruin, namely, egotism, power concerns, and worldliness before character.
Unlike this writer, for whom Susan is a wish fulfillment fantasy in retro fan fiction (“How I Would Have Lived the Heroic Way in the Civil Rights Era”), Elizabeth Baird-Hardy understands the death of the oldest and least wise Pevensie sister. Listen to her comments on this subject here.
The curious thing for me, after listening to The Last Battle last week, is how charitable Lewis is to Susan when he was bound or obliged as an artist to make the point that the blindness of the dwarves in that story, literal and nominalist blindness, is a quality in materialist human beings as well. Especially of the young and worldly.
The author of this ‘I Know Susan Better’ piece only confirms Lewis’ point because she neglects the chapters following the few paragraphs about Susan about the true nature of the world.
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