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Nov. 1st, 2002 11:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
transmothrafinally got around to watching the 1988 BBC adaptation of The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. Barbara Kellerman is saucy as The White Witch! mm mmm good! i don't know why, but shesus, i liked her a lot. shit, i practically rooted for HER!
anyways, it was typical late 80's BBC fare, which meant a lot of bad bluescreen effects (term herein used rather loosely), very tall people wearing animal suits, and superimposed animation where the special effects team were too impotent to render such modern-day impossibilites as creatures that (gasp!) fly. the impractically lanky animal-suit people were by far the worst aspect. of course, having a great lion-king who was voiced by an old man with an unusually effeminate English tone of voice (even for the English), coupled with TWO people in ONE animal suit (albeit an abnormally realistic one, and at least they took great pains not to show the front knees whenever the great beast trod - which reminds me: i could have sworn Aslan was a male...?), and a "roar" (see above clause regarding use of terms) that was painfully obviously just a couple of mediocre samples played on an offstage Casio keyboard (talk about a letdown! impotent, indeed!), was a pretty awful way to enjoy a great story.
some good points: the transition between stone and flesh was actually damn decent (to the extent that i could not for the life of me figure out how the budget-impaired folks behind the technical production actually managed to pull it off), the Evil Queen was (for me) just so creepily sexy, and the cartoon wraiths were the only animations that almost kind of fit. almost.
but i simply cannot get past a six-foot tall beaver. i hear they at least used Warwick Davis as the valiant mouse Reepicheep in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader and Prince Caspian. so, yeah. at least the mouse was only three and a half feet tall, rather than six-foot-four. meh.
anyways, it was typical late 80's BBC fare, which meant a lot of bad bluescreen effects (term herein used rather loosely), very tall people wearing animal suits, and superimposed animation where the special effects team were too impotent to render such modern-day impossibilites as creatures that (gasp!) fly. the impractically lanky animal-suit people were by far the worst aspect. of course, having a great lion-king who was voiced by an old man with an unusually effeminate English tone of voice (even for the English), coupled with TWO people in ONE animal suit (albeit an abnormally realistic one, and at least they took great pains not to show the front knees whenever the great beast trod - which reminds me: i could have sworn Aslan was a male...?), and a "roar" (see above clause regarding use of terms) that was painfully obviously just a couple of mediocre samples played on an offstage Casio keyboard (talk about a letdown! impotent, indeed!), was a pretty awful way to enjoy a great story.
some good points: the transition between stone and flesh was actually damn decent (to the extent that i could not for the life of me figure out how the budget-impaired folks behind the technical production actually managed to pull it off), the Evil Queen was (for me) just so creepily sexy, and the cartoon wraiths were the only animations that almost kind of fit. almost.
but i simply cannot get past a six-foot tall beaver. i hear they at least used Warwick Davis as the valiant mouse Reepicheep in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader and Prince Caspian. so, yeah. at least the mouse was only three and a half feet tall, rather than six-foot-four. meh.
