Narnia poll

There is apparently a Narnia movie forthcoming on Netflix, produced by Greta Gerwig, which will star the actress Meryl Streep in the role of Aslan.

Obviously female.

A modest rewriting of the Wikipedia article on The Last Battle gives us this:

In the western regions of Narnia, the clever and greedy ape Gerwig persuades the naive donkey Streep to wear a lion's skin, and introduces her to the other Narnians as the Great Lion Aslan.

To celebrate this inspired casting, a mini Twitter poll will be held to decide on the people's favourite of the seven Narnia books.

Actually, a much more controversial poll would be to decide on the proper order in which to read C.S. Lewis's work. Do we put The Magician's Nephew first? Or last? Or penultimate? I'm not getting into that dispute.

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RESULTS AS THEY COME IN.

SEMI-FINALS

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader 42.3 v The Last Battle 57.7

Prince Caspian 11.0 v The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe 89.0

FINAL

The Last Battle 21.3 v The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe 78.7

So the first book was the best, and the last book the second best!

What the Prodigal Son did next

A sequel to the earlier parable.

1. So the prodigal son, Harry, with the prodigal daughter-in-law, the sorceress Meg-han le Fay, parted from his father a second time, and went into the wilderness to seek an even bigger fortune than he had already.

2. "Leave us alone!" cried the happy couple. "We have told you many times, by means of interviews, epistles, paintings, interpretative dance, commemorative mugs, even by means of the Metropolitan Oprah, that we are humble strolling players who wish to preserve a dignified silence."

Harry painteth a self-portrait in the style of Van Gogh.

3. But it was not to be. "I am going spare," said Harry, "and the only way to be ignored will be to write the best-selling story of my life, also to be called 'Spare'."

4. Meanwhile, the grandmother of the prodigal son, who happened to be the Queen, died at a great age, and his father became King.

5. This Queen had responded to the claims of Meg-han Le Fay by saying "Recollections may vary", which is how queens say "Thou art a silly cow and everything thou sayest is as the droppings of the bulls of Bashan."

6. But now that the Queen was dead, the prodigal couple decided to invent more stories about life at the royal palace.

7. "For I am black but comely," said Meg-han Le Fay, "and thus I am the victim of racial attacks by the late Queen and her corgis of war."

8. Which was not true, for the people had greeted her with "Who is this that appears like the dawn, fair as the moon, bright as the sun, majestic as the stars in procession?"

"Boris! Liz! Rishi! Keir! Attack!"

9.But Harry was also much grieved. "Once when I was three years old, my brother William called me a 'pest', and it hath traumatized me all my life. What can I do?"

10. And Meg-han le Fay replied, "Let us arise and go unto the men who flick the nets, and ask them to make a powerful twenty-six-part entertainment about us.

11. Thus can we remain private, as we have always wanted; we can be revenged on the wickedness of William; and, best of all, we can be rewarded with much gold."

12. And it was so.

The people are entertained by the story of the prodigal couple.

The Two Popes

A new film "The Two Popes" about Pope Benedict XVI and Jorge Bergoglio (as he was then), is soon to be released. As it will soon be available on the notoriously Catholic-friendly channel Netflix, we know that it will be completely true to the facts, and sympathetic to these two holy gentlemen.

Hannibal Lecter stars as Pope Benedict, Elliot Carver as Jorge Bergoglio.

The plot (loosely based on Austen Ivereigh's pot-boiler Pope Francis, the Great Redeemer) begins with Cardinal Bergoglio paying a humble visit to Pope Benedict in order to reassure him that, when he (PB) decides to retire, he (CB) will be ready to step in and correct all the mistakes that he (PB) has made, as well as the mistakes of all the other popes (P, L, ..., J23, P6, JP1, JP2) who came before him.

Nasty old-fashioned rigid Pope, no longer required.

Benedict offers Bergoglio some liver cooked with fava beans, and a nice glass of chianti, but the cardinal humbly declines the offer and explains his plans to use an encoder obtained by his henchman, cyberterrorist Henry Gupta, to provoke war between China and the UK.

I'm sorry, Austen, we're deleting that bit. You seem to have got the plot confused with The Silence of the Lambs and Tomorrow never dies.

Anyway, more details will be available later, but it seems that the main theological discussion concerns the Beatles, and Bergoglio asks the Pope whether he knows their famous song Emma Bonino. He doesn't.

Other hard-hitting plot lines involve a criticism of Bergoglio's shoes (made from the finest Argentine Amoorish Leatheria), and a general realization from all the characters involved that Pope Benedict is BAD and Jorge Bergoglio is GOOD.

A humble modern cardinal, who would never dream of being Pope.