Silver Chair is my mother’s favorite of the series—mine less so. It was so gloomy and underground. When I got older and realized the Lady of the Green Kirtle was likely based on La Belle Dame Sans Merci, I did like that touch.

oblivious to the Christian messaging

I liked the recent Narnia movies, especially Lion, but... that BBC tv series from the late 80s is really good. Super low budget, and they - wisely I think, for the way they were pacing the series - combined Prince Caspian and Dawn Treader into one episode. They got all the way to The Silver Chair, which I think was…

Yeah, I really felt the Christian themes of the movies were very in-your-face so when I started reading the books, I was surprised by how nuanced and...non-preachy everything was. Some of it, like the treatment of multiple dimensions, could even be considered blasphemous by the super-religious. So I went in thinking…

IMO the Netflix ASOUE is one of the best book-to-screen adaptations. The aesthetic and the music and production is just about perfect, all the actors give it their all, they don’t really miss.... well, pretty much anything! from the books.

Ahhhh. I like Silver Chair because it’s dark and bonkers in a settled way. The heroes save the day, but it wont be enough. They still run out of time, and they all knew they would. Decay is starting to settle in at the fringes of Narnia. If Last Battle is something of a dystopia (it’s certainly apocalyptic), Silver…

I hear what you are saying and the wonder and horror of the natural world certainly is a key concern across his career.

Lewis was far from an atheist. He’s a famed theologian, whose religious writing was, probably still is, hugely influential. Mere Christianity still checks out regularly from my library, almost as much or more than The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe. I’m also told the Screwtape Letters are excellent.

Eh, I’d argue that Snape and his contemporaries were all cast 10-15 years older than they should have been. It takes away from the grim reality that most of them were college-aged the first time they fought Voldemort, that Harry’s parents were struck down so young and it makes it even creepier that they all misplace…

I half-interestedly read the first two books on a long car trip to Oregon one time, so I don’t feel like I’m quite the authority on whether the resulting movies are any good or not. They’re held quite dearly by the fanbase, so I think they’re all successes - and I think it’s funny that Boyhood got so much press and…

“it’s always annoyed me that Harry dueled Voldemort alone in the courtyard rather than being surrounded by his community of loved ones.”

Oddly, I enjoyed the film version of Prince Caspian more. The book is fairly boring. Dawn treader is great. Horse and his boy... Exists. Silver chair is probably the most profound. Nephew is silly fun, but later “reading order” sets put it first and it’s the worst place for it —- it explicitly depends on you having at…

There actually WAS a successor to the Harry Potter film franchise: it was Game of Thrones, which offered a darker, more adult fantasy novel adaptation to the same kids who had grown up on Potter and who were now 20something adults.

I finally watched the 8th movie for the first time a few months ago...and it was really bad, haha.

Splitting the third book into two films then cancelling the second one has to be a bit of a caveat about how well Divergent did.

Unsolved Mysteries: Entwives

It’s kind of amazing that the estate licensed rights at all, given how snippy they are about the Jackson LotR movies, which reps for the estate speak of as abominations. I halfway think they said, “We’ll start the bidding at something insane, like $300 million, and no one will ever bother us again,” and were shocked…

Muuuuuuuuuuuusical guest...Tom Bombadil!

The Suzanne Sommers show was called Step by Step. I was born in 1981 so prime age to watch alllll of the TGIF shows over the years. And yeah, they were pretty much all terrible.

"I'm so sick of the way the show has women characters with otherwise strong personalities turn into swooning little girls over the doctor."