"If I'm posting any wish to my personal Cinema Santa this year, it is for more and more wise and courageous distributors, with more and more big and small and beautiful cinemas. Distributors with the kamikaze vision that spreads the broad and long view."

Got that? Wise and courageous film distributors with the kamikaze vision.

Also:

Mixing commentary on politics and religion Swinton spoke of her character of the white witch saying, "At least we made her whiter than white, the ultimate white supremacist, and we managed to railroad the knee-jerk attempt to make her look like an Arab."

The fact is, as I clarified that day, I never stopped being a communist. The fact IS that the Communist Party of Great Britain no longer exists as such. That the party was morphed into the democratic left over ten years ago. That my membership of the party was an act of faith born out of an alliance with ideals of fairness and a commitment to a welfare state that it was clear to me then was in the process of being deserted by the parliamentary left.

Which is why actors are generally just barely competent to read words written by others. They usually quite stupid in any area outside their "craft."

Mixing commentary on politics and religion Swinton spoke of her character of the white witch saying, "At least we made her whiter than white, the ultimate white supremacist, and we managed to railroad the knee-jerk attempt to make her look like an Arab."

Interesting that whiteness is now symbolic of evil/Aryanness/Nazis. She made some statement about this a few months ago where she was even more explicit about the subliminal racial themes.

Got that? Wise and courageous film distributors with the kamikaze vision.

Wonder what she thinks about suicide bombers...

And I hope they do "Horse and his Boy"!

Kinky.

Narnia is the perfect Republican, muscular Christianity for America - that warped, distorted neo-fascist strain that thinks might is proof of right. I once heard the famous preacher Norman Vincent Peale in New York expound a sermon that reassured his wealthy congregation that they were made rich by God because they deserved it. The godly will reap earthly reward because God is on the side of the strong. This appears to be CS Lewis's view, too. In the battle at the end of the film, visually a great epic treat, the child crusaders are crowned kings and queens for no particular reason. Intellectually, the poor do not inherit Lewis's earth.

Does any of this matter? Not really. Most children will never notice. But adults who wince at the worst elements of Christian belief may need a sickbag handy for the most religiose scenes. The Guardian film critic Peter Bradshaw gives the film five stars and says, "There is no need for anyone to get into a PC huff about its Christian allegory." Well, here's my huff.

Lewis said he hoped the book would soften-up religious reflexes and "make it easier for children to accept Christianity when they met it later in life". Holiness drenches the Chronicles. When, in the book, the children first hear someone say, mysteriously, "Aslan is on the move", he writes: "Now a very curious thing happened. None of the children knew who Aslan was any more than you do; but the moment the Beaver had spoken these words everyone felt quite different. Perhaps it has sometimes happened to you in a dream that someone says something which you don't understand but in the dream it feels as if it had enormous meaning ..." So Lewis weaves his dreams to invade children's minds with Christian iconography that is part fairytale wonder and joy - but heavily laden with guilt, blame, sacrifice and a suffering that is dark with emotional sadism.

Children are supposed to fall in love with the hypnotic Aslan, though he is not a character: he is pure, raw, awesome power. He is an emblem for everything an atheist objects to in religion. His divine presence is a way to avoid humans taking responsibility for everything here and now on earth, where no one is watching, no one is guiding, no one is judging and there is no other place yet to come. Without an Aslan, there is no one here but ourselves to suffer for our sins, no one to redeem us but ourselves: we are obliged to settle our own disputes and do what we can. We need no holy guide books, only a very human moral compass. Everyone needs ghosts, spirits, marvels and poetic imaginings, but we can do well without an Aslan.

His divine presence is a way to avoid humans taking responsibility for everything here and now on earth

Hey, I'm all about personal responsibility, but that's going a bit far, eh?

Is sky too blue, the grass too green, Mt. Everest too high, the Grand Canyon too wide? 'Cause if so, then mankind surely is to blame ...

Lewis doubtless had a few kinks before his conversion---as do we all.

Word, sister.

C.S. Lewis, according to some accounts, also was an S&M connosieur:

Lewis developed and craved what even his Christian biographer, Jacobs, calls “mildly sadomasochistic fantasies”; in letters to a (homosexual) friend, he named the women he’d like to spank, and for a time signed his private letters “Philomastix”—“whip-lover.”

Gopnik's apparent suggestion that enjoying S&M -- especially of such mild and common variety as spanking -- makes one "a warped, morbid, stammering sexual pervert" is worth a chuckle (or a derisive snort), however.

Lewis doubtless had a few kinks before his conversion---as do we all.

I resemble that remark.

Gopnik's apparent suggestion that enjoying S&M -- especially of such mild and common variety as spanking -- makes one "a warped, morbid, stammering sexual pervert" is worth a chuckle (or a derisive snort), however.

Sloppy writing.

Gopnik's apparent suggestion that enjoyment of S&M -- especially of such mild and common variety as spanking -- can only result from one being "a warped, morbid, stammering sexual pervert" is worth a chuckle (or a derisive snort), however.

That's more like it.