It was only a matter of time before a major studio got its talons into C. S. Lewis. The one thing delaying any attempt to film his Narnia novels was the lack of technology; until recently, for example, there was no computer-imaging program powerful enough to re-create a wholly convincing wardrobe. That obstacle has now been surmounted, and “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe,” is upon us. The leap of the story is unchanged: the Pevensie children, Peter (William Moseley), Susan (Anna Popplewell), Edmund (Skandar Keynes), and Lucy (Georgie Henley), are evacuated from London during the Blitz and dumped in a pile of old chestnuts: the creaky country house, the shrewish housekeeper, the twinkling professor who knows all.

And so to the conceit that, for decades, has stirred both the souls of the faithful and the loins of professional Freudians: first Lucy, then Edmund, then all four children feel their way uncertainly through the folds of a deep, furry passage and into another world.

# posted by Gerry Canavan @ 1:36 AM  |