I just know I've heard that somewhere before…

Narnian eye candy. That's what The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian amounts to, for the most part.

That's not a bad thing. It's a lot less than Lewis fans might have wanted, but in some ways it's actually better than we might have expected.

Judged on its own merits, the filmmakers have made a better movie than The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. They've also departed more from the source material — in some ways to the betterment of the film. Structurally, the book has issues, both as drama and as source material for a film. Some of the best bits in the film, especially the central set piece at Miraz's castle, aren't in the book, but are basically compatible with the book and help make for a better movie. Plotwise, character-wise, strategy-wise, it works — and it's great eye candy too.

My biggest complaints are twofold. First, Prince Caspian introduces two of Lewis's best characters — and the film gets them both wrong.

Peter Dinklage, a strong actor, is effective as Trumpkin, except he's not playing Trumpkin. He's playing some other, more soulful, less hearty dwarf. And Reepicheep — well. Let's just say I remember him as more dashing and less sarcastic.

Secondly, I don't mind a somewhat revisionistic approach to the story, as long as it honors the spirit of the book, as long as it honors the themes. Caspian gets the spirit of Lewis's plot, but eviscerates his themes. I've said in the past that LW&W got maybe two-thirds of Lewis's intended meaning; if so, Caspian might get a quarter — if it's lucky.

Here's the thesis of my review in this regard:

Thematically, Prince Caspian the book may be said to be about the triumph of mythic imagination over Enlightenment rationalism and skepticism. The movie almost entirely omits the skepticism, and greatly diminishes the triumph of mythic imagination.

Basically, to enjoy Prince Caspian, you have to put C. S. Lewis out of your head and enjoy an action-packed movie with gorgeous vistas and special effects, a dazzling central set piece, and a bizarrely annoying pop song in the last five minutes.

Even though it's more revisionistic, Caspian is less annoying to me than LW&W, in large part because LW&W is a more important story. I mean, the triumph of mythic imagination over Enlightenment rationalism and skepticism is all well and good, but it isn't exactly the passion and redemption, you know what I mean?

Still and all, I was hoping that Caspian might put the franchise on firmer footing for the third film, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Now that is a story they must get right, especially if the franchise is to continue.

In that regard, I'm glad to see that a new creative team is coming on board: Andrew Adamson and his two-time screenwriting team are moving on, and director Michael Apted will be taking the helm for Dawn Treader with screenwriter Steven Knight, who previously collaborated with Apted on Amazing Grace (also for Walden).

I have no idea whether Apted and Knight are the right team for Dawn Treader. I just know for sure Adamson and company aren't. Let us just hope and pray that they rise to the occasion and sail the Dawn Treader straight and true.

Incidentally, wondering why, even with Lewis's stepson Doug Gresham producing, these films are so far from the mark? I've interviewed Gresham, and I haven't been particularly impressed with the perspicacity of his take on his stepfather's work.

Get that story.

Prince Caspian review

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe review

I've been thinking for a while about doing a post on who I think the final cylon is. I've even started the post at least once, but I haven't finished it.

This post isn't it, by the way. (So let's not speculate on who the final cylon is in the combox; let's save that for next time.)

But I thought I would do a little bit of speculating about who is a cylon in this post, and I think that the woman on the left is.

Who is she?

Well, it's Ellen Tigh, wife of Col. Saul Tigh.

Why do I think she's a cylon? A big reason is that there was a lot of hinting in the very first episode she appeared in that she is a cylon.

Remember? She was found mysteriously on one of the ships of the ragtag fleet, unconscious, with nobody remembering how she got there. Then she wakes up and is brought to the Galactica, where she proceeds to bring out all the worst aspects of her husband, like a cylon sleeper agent might want to do to undermine fleet command.

And to settle the question of whether she is a cylon, Dr. Baltar gives her his cylon-detector test and publicly says that she's a human but privately admits to Head Six that the test may have indicated otherwise but that he'll "never tell" if it did.

So there's all that.

It later became clear that, if Ellen was a cylon, she wasn't a sleeper agent who knew what she was doing, because she was willing to risk everything to help her husband during the cylon occupation of New Caprica. Or at least she didn't care about betraying cylons to help her husband.

But that's not a problem since not all cylon sleeper agents know that they're cylons. The original Sharon "Boomer" Valerii, for example, did not know she was a cylon and others, like Sharon "Athena" Valerii have sided with humans against cylons.

So things were looking pretty inconclusive regarding Ellen, until . . .

"Wait!" you say, "I haven't seen any season 4 episodes! Don't spoil this for me!"

Okay.

I won't.

Stop reading now.

"Wait!" you say, "How can you say this post isn't going to be about who the final cylon is if you're about to say that Ellen Tigh is a cylon? Wouldn't her being a cylon mean that she's the final cylon?"

No, because I think she's just a version of one of the cylons that has already been established.

Specifically: I think she's a Six.

She's just an older version of Six--perhaps one of the first Sixes to be made.

After all, the Sixes don't all look the same. Even when they're played by Tricia Helfer, they look different. Some, like the "Gina" Six (the one who was on the Pegasus and later set off the nuke) or the current "Natalie" Six (the one leading the cylon resistance to the Ones, Fours, and Fives) wear their hair notably different than the platinum blond curls of Caprica Six or Head Six (and Head Six herself has worn her hair differently, as she did in the episode where she got Baltar to get the brainscan that convinced him she wasn't a chip in his wetware).

So Sixes don't all have to have an identical physical appearance, and thus there might be older versions of some models that have aged in a way that simulates human aging.

But that's not the core reason.

The core reason is that in the recent episode "Escape Velocity," Col. Tigh interrogates Caprica Six in her cell on the Galactica and, during the course of the event, starts hallucinating that Caprica Six is Ellen.

What they did was bring back the actress who plays Ellen and got her dressed up and coiffed as Caprica Six, platinum blond curls and all.

And, wow, is it convincing.

There are moments, watching the transitions between Six and Ellen, when you say "Which actress am I looking at here? They're so close once you put the same hair on them!"

And then there's this . . .

The characters act the same.

They're both highly manipulative and willing to use their feminine wiles to achieve their ends.

Also, neither seems to mind the concept of extra-marital affairs as long as some kind of fundamental love/loyalty-to-one-spouse isn't compromised.

And--perhaps most uniquely--they're both manipulating their Significant Others to make something more of themselves in the world.

I mean, think about it: From the moment Head Six shows up, she starts manipulating Gaius Baltar to ensure that he assumes his "destiny," right?

And from the moment Ellen Tigh shows up, she starts manipulating Saul to get him to assume command of the fleet/increase his influence and power, right?

Both of them are catty, morally loose manipulators who are trying to drive their chosen men reluctantly into positions of prominence and power.

So, not only do they look the same, they act the same. They have the same basic personality and modus operandi.

Okay, that's it.

Unless the creators of the show choose to establish otherwise on screen, as far as I'm concerned, Ellen Tigh is simply a more mature Six.

Which makes her story all the more interesting.

Actually, it's an old Marian apparition, but it's been newly approved.

The apparition occurred in France between 1664 and 1718, and the visionary was--as so often the case--a young girl.

Video and info below.

GET THE STORY.

That's a question that's worth asking.

I mean, it isn't as if Christian art has always been lame. A visit to the Sistine Chapel or a read through Dante or a listen to Mozart will tell you that.

But for some reason, right in the here and now, an enormous amount of Christian art--whether visual, literary, or musical--is just really, really lame.

And it's not driving the culture the way it used to.

Instead, it feels like a shallow copy of secular culture.

That's something explored in a recent article at Salon.Com. Here's the money quote:

For faith, the results can be dangerous. A young Christian can get the idea that her religion is a tinny, desperate thing that can't compete with the secular culture. A Christian friend who'd grown up totally sheltered once wrote to me that the first time he heard a Top 40 station he was horrified, and not because of the racy lyrics: "Suddenly, my lifelong suspicions became crystal clear," he wrote. "Christian subculture was nothing but a commercialized rip-off of the mainstream, done with wretched quality and an apocryphal [sic] insistence on the sanitization of reality."

SOURCE [WARNING: There are a few just plain gross references in the article.]

The article largely focuses on culture schlock in Evangelical circles, but we all know the same thing is true in Catholic circles, as the insipid folk-esque musical spoutings of Oregon Catholic Press or the chunky abstract patterns that pass for stained glass windows in many parishes reveal. Those are just cheesy ripoffs of secular music and secular art (and dated ripoffs at that.)

So why isn't contemporary Christian art better than it is?

SDG here with a belated guest blog post from a 15-year-old who saw B16 at the youth rally. His excitement is palpable. The Church belongs to the young!

This weekend I was blessed to be able to visit the Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, on his first Pastoral Visit to the United States. People flocked from the far corners of the Americas to see the Vicar of Christ. They came by the thousands hoping to catch a glimpse of the Pope. They stood on street corners in expectation of a momentary view as he drove by. Those who saw him will tell you that it is a meeting, even if for only a second, that they will treasure for all their lives.

But why did they come to see him? What did they see in the Vicar of Christ that inspired them to come from all around the globe to just to hear him?

The Pope made a visit to America, but those who watched on TV, or listened on the radio, or actually saw him, would say that they came to see him; that America came to see the Pope. People throughout the Western Hemisphere flocked to the Holy Father; it was not the other way around. The Pope came to bring the Truth to us; instead the Americas came to find the Truth in him. People have always been in search of happiness and many times they look in all the wrong places. They search for happiness and truth, for they are one, happiness is found only in the discovery of the Truth, and the discovery of the Truth begets happiness or more correctly joy and peace. Many, however, look for these two things in the world and fail to delve into the unknown glory of the realm of the Spiritual. People came to see the Holy Father because they saw in him both happiness and Truth.

In turn, the Holy Father was eager to share the Truth with us. He came with a message that called all Christians throughout the world to Holiness, a message that called us to Christ. He brought Hope to many who had lost Hope. At the Youth Rally he called the future Church of America to truly live their freedom. For freedom is not the right to choose between good and evil, but the ability to do good. He called the young people to silence, to meditation. He called them to find their vocation, to discover what God has planned for them to do in their life on Earth. He asked them to seriously consider the religious life.

And the young people of the Western Hemisphere responded with cheers of “We Love You Benedict”. They became so loud, that the Pope in his eagerness to get his message out, had to raise his hand and calm the crowd. Every time he stood up, or sat down, or spoke, he was greeted with cheers. The Pope showed how much he loved the children on the steps of Saint Patrick’s in his embrace of a small baby, and the youth showed their love for their Leader in their cheers and in their presence.

Benedict returned to Rome, the capitol of Christianity, on Sunday night, April 17th. However, his message and his image will be engraved upon the hearts and minds of all those who saw him forever. He now is thousands of miles away in Italy, but for those who saw him on TV, heard him on the radio, or were there with him, he will never leave.

Viva Le Papa!

I want to thank Mark Shea both for calling my attention to a set of loony criticisms being made against me and for defending me against said loony criticisms.

GET THE STORY.

Here's a key excerpt from Mark's blog:

One reader, for instance, prophesies (on the basis of nothing whatsoever) Jimmy Akin's looming apostasy. Why? Because Gerry Matatics has apostatized into nutty sedevacantism and, if you've seen one convert, you've seen 'em all:

I'd bet you dollars to doughnuts that if Benedict lasts another decade or is succeeded by a like minded pope, some of the lay apologists that are trashing Gerry now will be jumping ship themselves.

There's NO WAY the Jimmy Aikens are going to sit by while Rome says things like: "pro multis means for the many", "the Mass of Pius V was never abrogated", "Protestant Churches are not true Churches."

Jimmy's accuser has a far higher regard for his own mind reading powers than the actual record warrants. But when you are engaged against an enemy of the faith as slippery as a convert, accuracy is of secondary importance. So you can just sling such prophesies, even when they are contradicted by known facts and ignore requests to document, for instance, a single place where Jimmy has ever dissented from the Church's teaching on our relationship with Protestant ecclesial bodies. The main thing to remember is that converts aren't *really* Catholic.

Now, I'll be the first to concede that the critic has a point that in the cases of some converts, the conversion hasn't "stuck." In other cases, it hasn't proceeded far enough, and the convert has retained undue elements from his prior religious affiliation. (Just as somemany cradle Catholics leave Catholicism or adopt false elements of other religious traditions. Both converts and non-converts have free will, and many are willing to use it inappropriately.)

I can't speak for such converts. In my case I have tried to rigorously assimilate the Catholic spirit. My religious reading matter consists principally of official Church documents, the Bible, the Church Fathers, and Catholic authors who are almost wholly from pre-Vatican II days.

I really don't read much, if any, "convert lit." While it's a historical fact that I am a convert, I don't walk around every day thinking "I'm a convert." That's not what is central to my identity. I think of myself as a Catholic, and days can go by where I don't even think about my conversion.

I certainly don't make a point of it, except on those rare occasions when someone asks be to tell my conversion story. And I daresay that most people who hear me on the radio or read my writings don't even know that I'm a convert until it's pointed out to them.

I don't wear my conversion on my sleeve, because I don't think it's anything to be particularly proud of. It is a miracle of God's grace, and the credit for that goes to him, not me. On my part, I just want to be a faithful Catholic now that I am one.

So when I read about the critic's linking me to Gerry Matatics, I just rolled my eyes. Not all converts to the Catholic faith are cut from cloth made of the same unstable molecules as Gerry Matatics. Such cloth may be an important asset for Mr. Fantastic and the Fantastic Four, but there are converts and then there are converts.

I was particularly struck by the critic making claims about me that are just loony and that in no way reflect my views.

I mean, I believe that "pro multis means for the many", I believe that "the Mass of Pius V was never abrogated" (certainly if you include the Missal of 1962 as an expression of it), and I believe that "Protestant Churches are not true churches" because they lack validly ordained bishops. The technically correct terminology for them is  "ecclesial communities," which is the language used for them in various Church documents.

So I was very pleased to see Mark rebutting these claims and citing posts on my own blog in refutation of them.

A big CHT to Mark!

But he did give me one compliment too many. In response to the critic's claim that I had changed my view on the translation of pro multis after Cardinal Arinze wrote a letter clarifying its translation in the liturgy, Mark writes:

So: according to my reader, Jimmy Akin held a private opinion but altered it when it seemed to him that the Magisterium was against him. Wow! That *is* evil! See how converts just blend in with Real Catholics[TM] by submitting their judgment to the teachers of the Church? They're like chameleons!

While I wish to be quite submissive to the authoritative teaching of the Magisterium, I can't claim that I changed a private opinion in this case.

Somehow in rad trad circles I got the reputation of changing my mind on the translation of pro multis, when in reality I always supported a literal translation of it like "for many."

Why?

Because I'm a student of languages, because I prefer literal translations to dynamic ones, and because that's what the literal translation of pro multis just is.

I've certainly made no secret of my disapproval of all kinds of squishy translations--even "official" ones--of Bible verses, Church documents, or liturgical texts. This one is no different. I prefer and always have preferred a literal translation of the original text.

Thus upon my first hearing of the letter from Cardinal Arinze dealing with the subject, I wrote THIS:

Hallelujah!

This is something I've really been hoping and praying for. I've even thought about writing Cardinal Arinze and imploring him to do this, because the release of the new translation of the Mass is the perfect opportunity to do this, and with B16 in office, the pope would have the sensitivity to the issue to realize how much benefit this change would be.

I was therefore DEE-lighted when a reader e-mailed this story from Catholic World News:

Pro multis means "for many," Vatican rules

[SNIP]

The only reason that there has been any confusion regarding my view of the translation of pro multis is that some rad trads have been running around babbling that the translation of pro multis as "for all" renders the consecration of the Eucharist invalid.

It doesn't.

And so, as an author writing on liturgical subjects, I've made exactly the same points that Cardinal Arinze makes in section 2 of his LETTER: