Comments on: The Magician’s Book: Actual Smart Things About C.S. Lewis (and J.R.R. Tolkien)

By: tyrantking

tyrantking — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 01:25:09 +0000

You Narnia boys are like the Númenóreans who tried to conquer the Undying Lands. You just don’t mess with the Immortals.

By: dennitzio

dennitzio — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 21:23:33 +0000

Yeah, real people, fake ball. The guy doesn’t look like Bruce Lee to me… But it wouldn’t be impossible to map Lee’s face onto someone else, especially at low res. Explains why a third the ad is from behind Nunchuk guy’s back. Also, if you watch the ball, it does some wonderful non-linear moves (that my brain at first explained as “spin”) in order to keep the paddle and the chucks in synch. There was a rage of student films with fake ping-pong balls a few years ago, it’s not hard to do. You can’t really see the ball’s third dimension, so you can even do it in 2d with a white circle and rotos for paddles/bodies/net.

By: hambyiii

hambyiii — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 15:37:58 +0000

How did they do it? Depressingly simple actually. Get two guys to do their thing around a ping-pong table, sans ball, and then CGI the ball in after. Easier than finding a guy that bears a passing resemblance to Bruce Lee and then training him to whack a ball with nunchuks!

By: tereglith

tereglith — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 01:55:38 +0000

It’s LWW and MN in most abbreviation nonmenclatures. You leave out “The”.

I enjoy both authors, but (cliche alert) in different ways. I agree wholeheartedly with the “Creator” and “Dreamer” classifications.

By the way, has anyone heard of “The Worm Ourobouros”? While we’re talking about the founders of the modern fantasy genre, it might be useful to include – it was written around the turn of the century or before and was read by Tolkien and possibly Lewis.

By: Cliff

Cliff — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 00:17:03 +0000

I was a Narnia boy as a kid, which hierarchically speaking put me below the Tolkien boys in terms of manliness, which is pretty far down when you consider where the Tolkien boys ranked on the Great Chain of Manliness.
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Huh, I didn’t realize there was such a thing, since I was the only kid in school who bothered reading any of those books at all.
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Also, I never tried to reconcile the continuity of TLW&W and TMN (I’m guessing at these acronyms). It might have bugged me but it didn’t keep me up at night.

By: Kemper

Kemper — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 22:10:08 +0000

I defy anyone to find another article that manages to cover literary criticism, Narnia, the Lord of the Rings, Jesus lions, drunken lashing offers, Bruce Lee, nunchuks and ping pong.
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Put those key words in Google and this has got to be the only thing that comes up.
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By: Dave

Dave — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 21:29:55 +0000

I’ve always been a Narnia boy myself – I lack the patience to really enjoy Tolkien as much as I’m supposed to (and I suppose to be a full-fledged nerd). At the same time, it entertains me to watch people try to explain (and replicate) the success of Narnia, Lord of the Rings, or Harry Potter. Heck, take it a half-step further and add in Star Wars. Yes, they’ve got the right elements, or enough of the right elements, and you can give good and bad reasons all day long why they’re the brilliant, timeless successes that they are. Maybe I just think it’s easier to explain why something is bad than why something is good :)
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Side note: am I the only one who read “lit crit” and immediately thought of rolling 2d6 for damage from throwing a book at an enemy?