It’s been years since I last read it, but Dawn Treader is my favorite of the Narnia books. Its episodic island-hopping plot means that there’s always a strange new encounter waiting in the next chapter, and although some of the island adventures teach obvious Biblical principles, the Christian allegory is more subtle than that of The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. If the plot is looser than many of the other Narnia stories, Dawn Treader compensates by simply narrating a series of good old-fashioned imaginative adventures.

And it doesn’t hurt that one of the main characters is a brave, swashbuckling mouse.

So I’m certainly looking forward to the Dawn Treader film, although with the usual concerns about how the “Hollywood treatment” will change the story and characters. If you want to keep up with news and developments related to the film (and stress out about whether or not they’ll be faithful to the novel), NarniaWeb and NarniaFans are both posting regular movie updates as details emerge.

How about you? Are you excited about this movie? Does anybody else count Dawn Treader as their favorite Narnia book, and if so, what makes it so special to you?

I got to thinking about this after watching a recent video clip from Marc Driscoll in which he says that Avatar is the most Satanic movie he’s ever seen (Driscoll’s video is below). His main point is that Avatar‘s worldview is diametrically opposed to the Christian worldview:

James Cameron (the writer and director of Avatar) was clearly trying to make a pantheistic point about our own world. The closest thing to Christianity Avatar exhibits is a sort of messiah-figure in the main character, Jake.

I’d rather not debate the merits of Avatar, but it does provide a good starting point for a discussion of anti-Christian philosophies and worldviews in movies. Like it or not, Avatar isn’t the only movie that stands in opposition to the basic tenants of Christianity. In fact, the majority motion pictures—even the one’s without trashy content like nudity, crude humor or excessive violence—produced these days contain elements or messages that are decidedly unChristian.

What about you? Do you see a spiritual problem with watching movies that contradict Christian beliefs?

I think the reason we keep telling story after story of returning to the past is because it allows us to envision a world without guilt and regret.

We can go back and say “yes!” when we said “no!”, save ourselves or others from making a terrible mistake, or maybe even keep ourselves from sinning. We think it would allow us to keep tweaking our lives until we were perfect—or at least what we think is perfect. It’s an attractive proposition because it might even let us manufacture a life that didn’t need forgiving. We could, in short, create a sort of simulacrum of God’s grace cobbled together through an alternative timeline of correct choices.

Yet, as many of the characters in these stories realize, attempting to recreate the world to your own design usually introduces more problems than it originally had. Most time travel stories end with the characters foreswearing the ability to mess with the past. There’s an admission that our problems and mistakes are worthwhile in the light of a future guided by a small minority’s whims and ideals.

Also, it’s interesting to me as a Christian to read stories where secular authors come to the conclusion that, in the end, the original Creator’s intention with His Creation is better than anything humanity could come up for it. It’s a strong statement about man’s place in relation to an all-knowing God.

What about you? Why do you think people are fascinated with time travel? Or do you personally find it uninteresting?

It’s been interesting to read Christian responses to the Twilight books and movies; as they were with the Harry Potter tales, many Christian critics seem uneasy with this new and tangled vampire love story… but where it was shades of the occult that made some Christians nervous about Harry Potter, concerns about Twilight are focused on the melodramatic (but chaste) relationship between protagonists Bella and Edward.

Stephen Greydanus’ review of New Moon at Christianity Today explains why Twilight‘s primary love story feels emotionally and spiritually unhealthy. He’s not the only one to take that approach; and it’s not just Christians pointing this out, either: see this article explaining why the relationship between Bella and Edward is troubling.

Do you agree with these critiques—that the love story presents an unhealthy model for a relationship? Do you worry that Twilight‘s young fans will take away a misguided lesson about love? Or do you think these critics are over-thinking things, and that we should instead be grateful that Bella and Edward’s relationship isn’t reduced to gratuitous sex (a rarity for a cinematic romance these days)?

What do you think?

If you haven’t checked in at CT lately, they’ve been expanding their blog presence quite a bit over the last several months. In addition to their established Out of Ur blog, they added a Politics blog last year to cover the 2008 election cycle (among other things) and more recently a Christian History blog. They’ve got some solid Christian writers driving the blogs—well worth adding to your list of daily reads.

• First, what films have been nominated? Hollywood Jesus helpfully lists all of the nominations. Elsewhere on the HJ site, critics Tim Berroth and Darrel Manson share their picks for the best films of 2008.
• Jeff Walls and Greg Wright from the Past the Popcorn crew weigh in with their own lists as well.
• Film critic Peter Chattaway’s thoughts on the Academy’s list of nominees.
• Jeffrey Overstreet of Looking Closer doesn’t think much of this year’s nominations, and proposes something different for Oscar night.

Enjoy the Oscars tonight (or not), and browse around these critics’ websites to see what else they’ve got to say about faith and film.

Image by flickr user Anne Siegel.

Note: this post originally mis-stated the date of the Oscars ceremony. The correct date is February 22.

Hollywood must know what its doing. We have a long holiday weekend coming up, which would sure seem like a good bet for boffo boxoffice; but ticket sales are as low right now as they’ve been all summer. So maybe it makes sense that the studios haven’t given us anything to get excited about this weekend.

One indie house has released a small comedic gem—as long as you’re not easily offended. Ping Pong Playa “isn’t your standard late-summer dumper,” says Greg Wright “The star of this movie, Jimmy Tsai, has invented a truly hysterical character in C-Dub Wang—a Chinese ranconteur who’s equal parts Spike Lee, Quentin Tarantino, Charles Barkley, and Larry the Cucumber—and director Jessica Yu knows how to milk every setup for maximum laughs.”

Wright also recommends the wake-up-call documentary I.O.U.S.A.—playing on only 21 screens around the country this weekend—describing it as “required viewing for every American. Helmed in an admirably restrained fashion by Wo for raising theordplay director Patrick Creadon, the documentary I.O.U.S.A. is PGP’s first salv level of public awareness about what a 60 Minutes report dubbed “the dirty little secret everyone in Washington knows: a set of financial truths so inconvenient that most elected officials don’t even want to talk about them.” Heavy—but important—stuff.

Michael Brunk was not so impressed with Traitor, the only big-name release this week. “I enjoyed the first two thirds of this movie,” he says, “and if the production team could have brought it home with a fitting final act, I think this would have been halfway decent film. But instead of a powerful message about belief and sacrifice we get a climactic moment that left the audience I watched with literally laughing out loud.”

Also reviewed this week: the self-describing Disaster Movie.

The gloves appear to be off as the studios dump the last of their summer fare on us at the tail end of August.

The lone bright spot in wide release is, somewhat surprisingly, an adult-oriented Hitchcockian thriller starring Woody Harrelson. Jeff Walls calls Transsiberian “a terrific thriller. Anderson and co-screenwriter Will Conroy kept me on my toes and I was never quite sure where the film was taking me next. The snow-covered, barren landscape is photographed beautifully, reminding me a bit of Fargo“—as does the rating. Even the best film this week is rated R.

Walls also enjoyed The Rocker, a PG-13 social satire starring Rainn Wilson. It’s raucous teen fare, like many of the summer’s film—but not excessively crude, as many of them have been. “I enjoyed this film from beginning to end,” says Walls. “Unlike the recent Step Brothers, which is a funny joke stretched into a movie, The Rocker is simply a funny movie—and believe it or not, it’s actually less heavy-handed when it comes to the inevitable life lessons.”

On the arthouse circuit, Greg Wright found Tuya’s Marriage intriguing. “Just be sure to take a patience pill before you buy your ticket,” Wright warns about this Chinese parable about Mongolian sheep herders… and sexism. “This is old-school filmmaking, after all: the furthest thing possible from The Dark Knight.”

Mike Brunk enjoyed Death Race, as well—as long as you recognize that you’re going in to see an R-rated film about “cars, guns, and explosions.” Brunk elaborates: “It’s hard to imagine anyone watching the trailer and being confused about what they’re going to see when the lights go down and the movie starts. Either you like this kind of action movie and you plan to see it or you don’t. I don’t think there’s much gray area involved!”

On the distinctly rough side, Greg Wright warns that In Search Of A Midnight Kiss will likely strike you as “something akin to inviting insanity into your presence… and then being asked not to pass judgment on that insanity”; Kathy Bledsoe finds Hamlet 2 to be excessively “sexual and profane,” deserving of an NC-17 rather than the R it got from the MPAA; and Jeff Walls felt that his “intelligence declined” while watching The House Bunny.

Wow. Things should quiet down—and shape up—soon, as we head into the Oscar-race season.

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2, says Mike Smith, is the rare beast: a sequel that improves on the original. The secret? More mature actors, he says… and a director that really gets the material. “Call me sexist,” Smith writes, “but Sanaa Hamni gets the chicks. Sorry, Mr. Kwapis—you’re a guy (like me), which pretty much prevents us from really ‘getting’ the psyche of the target audience convincingly. The original enjoyed some success, but I expect the sequel will outdo the first—it is simply the better film.”

Meanwhile, three of this week’s releases begin with the letter B.

Bottle Shock is a logical successor to Sideways, a veritable history lesson about how Napa wines outdid the French. “I do think some thanks are indeed in order” for that, says Greg Wright, “though there’s still enough ninny-muggins in this particular vintage to call it a corked film.”

Wright liked Boy A a bit better, though he wouldn’t call it great or original by any stretch. “To be sure,” he acknowledges, the film “treads a lot of familiar ground while it explores the breadth of the ‘leopards can’t change their spots’ vs. ‘clothes make the man’ spectrum. … It seems that I’ve been screening of lot of films about disaffected youth, but I may have enjoyed this one the most.”

Baghead is a different matter. “By the time the horror setup is really in play,” cautions Wright, “the film is well past half-over. And people aren’t dying near quick enough.”

Also this week are two mainstream releases that pretty much qualify as B-movie fare. Jeff Walls liked them both—Pineapple Express and Hell Ride—well enough forwhat they are, but cautions audiences strongly about the strong content of both.

One of the funnest films of the summer, says Greg Wright, is a gentle political satire… starring Kevin Costner, of all things. Swing Vote, going into release today is “a skewering of lax parenting, national politics of all stripes, political correctness, blue-collar stereotypes, and network news,” says Wright. “If you’re at all apathetic about voting, or if you’re at all fed up with the state of politics in America—and you don’t mind a little hayseed stuck between your teeth or up your shorts—get out and see Swing Vote. I’m very glad I did.”

Jeff Walls also liked American Teen quite a bit, calling it a worthwhile peek into a high school “not dreamed up by John Hughes.” He adds: “Still, I can’t help but think how much the subjects’ actions were exaggerated due to the fact that they knew they were being filmed.”

Not so successful, says Greg Wright, is the latest Mummy sequel: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor… “by the far the slackest and least entertaining film of the Mummy series. I really enjoyed the two directed by Stephen Sommers, but I did not find any enjoyment in this one at all… and honestly, I’m not at all sure who will.”

Also reviewed this week: Chris & Don: A Love Story.