Previewing Prince Caspian - and Summer 08.

The trail of Summer 08 linkage picks up here. It began with the entry on Iron Man and carried on last week with previews of Speed Racer and the summer season in general, followed by yet more Speed. And now, a sequel and more build-up to more blockbusting.

"The lion is back, the witch puts in an appearance, but that musty old wardrobe has been put out of commission in The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, a worthy if somewhat less wondrous successor to that 2005 phenomenon," writes Michael Rechtshaffen in the Hollywood Reporter. "Several shades darker in tone than the previous edition - which, to be fair, didn't carry the burden of expectation that a sequel must bear - the return to Narnia still casts a transporting spell that should nicely build on that $745 million worldwide foundation."

Updated through 5/16.

"Unquestionably the first film sequel with the distinction of taking place 1,300 years after the initial series installment, The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian features more clanging swords than all the Robin Hood and Ivanhoe movies put together," writes Variety's Todd McCarthy. "Closer to a straight-ahead medieval battle picture than the fantastical, other-worldly journey depicted in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe this new entry is a bit darker, more conventional and more crisply made than its 2005 predecessor."

John Hiscock in the Telegraph: "The question facing director Andrew Adamson after the success of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was how to make a sequel that would appeal to fans of the original film and draw in new audiences, too. His answer was to make it bigger and more complex in scope and story."

More from the Hollywood Reporter's Steven Zeitchik and Gregg Goldstein.

In the New York Times, Brooks Barnes profiles Ben Barnes, "an unknown actor on the brink of certain global fame."

Back in the Telegraph, Joan Smith: "If Sex and the City now seems dated, it's largely because it assumed that dating the wrong man, being dumped and getting the occasional sexually transmitted disease were the worst hazards its four heroines would ever have to face."

Latest takes on Iron Man: Jim Emerson (RogerEbert.com) and DK Holm (Vancouver Voice).

For the Wall Street Journal, Lauren AE Schuker previews the "small flicks" of summer. Via Movie City News.

Online listening tip #1. Spout talks summer movies.

Online listening tip #2. Talking real-life archeology and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull on On Point.

Paul Vallely profiles Harrison Ford for the Independent; Nigel Farndale talks with Ray Winstone for the Telegraph.

Meantime, less-than-enthusiastic reviews have begun appearing online, "despite an intense effort by the director Steven Spielberg, the executive producer George Lucas and Paramount Pictures to keep this highly anticipated sequel out of sight until Sunday, May 18," reports the NYT's Michael Cieply. David Poland and Jeffrey Wells comment.

Update, 5/11: Evan Davis quotes Slate's Dana Stevens - "How much collateral damage have we inflicted by trusting just such 'smart' weapons to make moral decisions for their users?" - and adds, "Since there is so much potential for making ambiguous the confluence of modern warfare and global capitalism within Iron Man, it is hard to forgive such a simplistic rendering of Stark's moral dilemmas."

Update, 5/12: "Four years, over 1,000 costume changes and endless rumours and internet leaks later, Sex and the City: The Movie will hold its world premiere in London tonight." Hadley Freeman reports for the Guardian.

Update, 5/13: "Perhaps I spoke too soon," sighs Alonso Duralde at MSNBC. "No sooner do I write an article for this Web site singing the praises of Walden Media for soft-pedaling the lion-as-Christ metaphor in The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe - despite the fact that the production company is owned by a Christian conservative billionaire with an agenda to make 'moral' movies - then the company gives us the latest Narnia saga, Prince Caspian, in which that metaphor is ladled on all too directly. But if you can plod through the without-faith-you-are-nothing stuff, to say nothing of the crush-the-swarthy-infidels message (more on that later), Prince Caspian is a rousingly entertaining adventure that children and adults will enjoy in equal measure."

Reuters' Bob Tourtellotte talks with M Night Shyamalan about The Happening. "People who have seen it say it's definitely the most intense movie I've made and if it's not, then I did it improperly," says the director. But then, he would, wouldn't he?

Updates, 5/14: "If Prince Caspian falls to Indy 4 at the box office, it won't be for want of trying to out-he-man the competition," writes Ella Taylor in the Voice. "Adamson has retooled the old-fashioned, handmade charms of his first Narnia into a schoolboy epic strung together by CGI-laden action sequences featuring men and boys wearing metal while showing mettle."

"The plot even allows for a whisper of an attraction between Susan and Prince Caspian, but sex is left only to sighs and longings - a cause for regret, given the potential, in a fantasy filled with leather-bound villains, plus strapping centaurs, goat-boys and other fabulous beasts," suggests David D'Arcy in Screen Daily. "The special effects in Prince Caspian can be as dazzling as its script is dull, particularly in a scene with the White Witch ([Tilda] Swinton) frozen in an ice block and threatening to emerge, or in a battle in which the earth opens to swallow Miraz's soldiers."

Updates, 5/15: Via Moriarty at AICN, Frosty at Collider: "The Happening is a terrible, terrible movie. I mean, it's bad on an epic scale. It's so bad that I can't possibly tell you how bad it is without understating the point or making it sound like I'm picking on the film. But let me stress: this is not pent-up Shyamalan aggression or a desire to see him fail. This is bad in a jaw-dropping 'they can't really be serious, can they?' kind of way."

"Ben Barnes's titular prince is a Ken Doll cipher, a stud with forced mannerisms and vacant eyes, making him an apt crux for Andrew Adamson's sequel, a clumsy adventure - in which the four Pevensie kids return to Narnia to help vanquish an evil tyrant - that feels at once excessively long and yet sloppily hurried," writes Nick Schager in Slant.

"[L]ast summer's crop of films, driven by an unusual confluence of sure-shot sequels, was so big that this year's more inventive pictures, whether they win or lose individually, may come up short as a group." Michael Cieply in the NYT.

"[T]he problem with the (literal) deus ex machina story structure in both the books and the movies is less ideological than narratological," writes Dana Stevens, reviewing Prince Caspian for Slate:

Who cares about the death of a beloved character in a world where (if you know the right people - or lions) death itself is reversible? After the final battle, Lucy anoints a few favored survivors with what amounts to a kind of anti-death serum, so that we get to experience the thrill of near-annihilation without actually having to mourn. Richard Dawkins would have a field day with this vision of God as metaphysical Santa Claus, cozily negating all possibility of real loss (and in fact, when Lucy first received the healing elixir in Part 1, it was a gift from none other than Kris Kringle). But whatever their religious faith or lack of, most viewers know a narrative cop-out when they see one.

"The same people who made The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe into one of the best films of 2005 have turned around and made one of this year's biggest disappointments," writes Mick LaSalle in the San Francisco Chronicle.

"Last night our infrequent deep-throat contributor Mr Snruff snuck into a screening of the Judd Apatow-produced, David Gordon Green-directed action comedy, Pineapple Express." The Playlist hears it's pretty darn funny.

Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times on Prince Caspian: "Though it retains a kid-friendly PG rating and is directed with a surer hand by the returning Andrew Adamson, this film is noticeably darker in tone, even beginning with the piercing scream of a woman in childbirth.... Though the film makes sure that nary a drop of blood is shed in those battles - remember, this is the land of PG - all that fighting does make for an occasionally off-kilter mix with the kinder, gentler parts of the endeavor. Like a teenager having trouble finding its place in the world, Prince Caspian rights itself in the end but doesn't always have an easy time finding its balance."

Updates, 5/16: "Andrew Adamson's The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian is a much more elaborate, ambitious picture than the 2005 The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and it adds up to far less," writes Salon's Stephanie Zacharek. "There's very little real magic in Prince Caspian, unless you're talking about the desperate kind of wizardry that chiefly involves waving around a checkbook."

"Instead of fauns and Turkish delight, there are murder and betrayal, and a grave, martial atmosphere lingers over the story, even when the spunky dwarfs and chatty rodents return," writes AO Scott in the New York Times. "So Prince Caspian is quite a bit darker than The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe both in look and in mood. It is also in some ways more satisfying."

"In a way, Susan embodies the strengths and failings of the Narnia series, which, if all goes according to plan, will eventually comprise seven movies," writes Ann Hornaday in the Washington Post. "When she aims and fires, she perfectly conveys the vicarious pleasures of vanquishing the enemy, by way of a sure eye, steady hand and superior moral force. But her most pivotal and stirring scene, wherein she does single-handed battle with an oncoming cavalry in a wooded glen, ends with a retrograde whimper, reminding viewers that even as expansive and humanist an intellect as [CS] Lewis's was still a prisoner of his times where sexism was concerned."

"As directed by Son of Adam Andrew Adamson (the Shrek series), the Narnia movies are mostly about the plot and the effects, not necessarily in that order," writes Jim Emerson at RogerEbert.com. "They are serviceable spectacles, but don't approach the mythic grandeur and resonance of more grown-up films like John Boorman's Excalibur or Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth. And in part that's because character is not destiny in the Narnia pictures. Destiny is."

"For all their talk of staying true to the spirit of CS Lewis's novels, the makers of the Narnia films have frequently deviated from the books in ways both big and small, and the liberties they take with Prince Caspian - which echo but go far, far beyond the liberties they took with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe - both help the film and hurt it." Peter T Chattaway in Christianity Today.

"If the new film is a reliable forecast of what to expect from the remaining five, the series' commercial staying power might not be such a bad thing," writes Bruce Bennett in the New York Sun.

"The creatures remain beautifully designed and Narnia still looks like a colorful, inviting place, but it feels as lifeless as the fantastical anyworlds found on glittery unicorn posters," writes Keith Phipps at the AV Club.

"In technical terms, Prince Caspian is an improvement on its predecessor in almost every sense," writes the New Republic's Christopher Orr. "Yet, like the book on which it is based, it lacks much in the way of deeper resonance. It is a considerably sharper entertainment than the first film, but little in it aspires to do more than entertain."

Posted by dwhudson at May 10, 2008 9:15 AM