Grand Prize: A private screening of Walt Disney Pictures’ and Walden Media’s THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA – THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE for winner and up to 250 of winner’s guests at a movie theatre in winner’s locality of residence on a date selected by Sponsor, in its sole discretion, between November 28, and December 8, 2005.
Entries are due by September 8th.
Following in the footsteps of its efforts for The Passion of The Christ, Catholic Outreach is building a network of Catholics – Parish Promoters – who want to help promote this epic adventure in your local area.
Since its release in 1950, The Chronicles of Narnia series has been embraced by hundreds of millions of readers. You have the chance to introduce a whole new generation to the excitement, enchantment, and valuable moral lessons the books have to offer.
Are you a DRE, youth minister, priest, CCD teacher, or just an active layperson? If so, we need you!
As a Parish Promoter, you will receive free promotional materials – posters, flyers, envelope inserts, bulletin announcements – and be given a simple plan to promote the film to your parish, area youth group, Catholic high school campus minister, and more. There are even materials for public schools.
You may also have the opportunity to attend and help promote local Narnia screening events preceding the December 9, 2005 release.
To become a Parish Promoter, send your name, address, phone number to info@catholicoutreach.com. Please also tell us if you are a member of the clergy or work for the Church in any official capacity (CCD Teacher, DRE, youth minister). If not, simply write: Active layperson.
Once in a generation, there comes a motion picture event that combines all the elements that attract young audiences – a wonderful tale, grand adventure and excitement, breathtaking cinematography, state-of-the-art special effects – with positive moral values and allegories that relate perfectly to our Christian faith. This is a movie that we can not only approve, but also whole-heartedly embrace and endorse – a family movie with timeless Christian themes.
We hope that you take full advantage of the FREE Narnia promotion materials we have ready for you and discover engaging ways to open minds and hearts to the gospel message.
One of Tilda Swinton’s ancestors on her very posh, very military Scottish family tree was painted by John Singer Sargent, and it is easy to imagine Swinton, with her alabaster skin, otherworldly green eyes and regal 5-foot-11 bearing, captured in oils. “I do look like all those old paintings,” Swinton joked over a midsummer lunch of raw oysters at the Mercer hotel. “But I’m afraid my temperament does not conform. At all.”
She said this, as she said nearly everything, with a mix of direct authority and engaged enthusiasm that was both immediately ingratiating and commanding. Swinton, who is 44, was wearing no trace of makeup, a print sundress and flip-flops, and her hair, which is naturally red, was dyed white-blond. “I love the roots,” she said, as she tilted her scalp forward for inspection. “That’s the best part of being this blond.”
Her unique looks, her ease with herself and her voracious interest in the more esoteric worlds of cinema and style have made Swinton a kind of goddess of the avant-garde. In her movies, she has continually transformed herself — changing class, nationalities, gender. For “Orlando,” perhaps her most famous film, she played multiple incarnations of the title character, including a man. In “Thumbsucker,” opening in theaters on Sept. 16, she is utterly convincing as a suburban American mom. The director Jim Jarmusch cast her as an ex-girlfriend of Bill Murray’s in the recent “Broken Flowers,” in which she is terrifying, her face half-obscured by a foreboding curtain of long brown hair. For “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” a big-budget movie that is due out from Disney at the end of the year, Swinton embodies the White Witch. “The studio couldn’t understand that someone evil would not have black hair,” she said. “They told me, ‘She has to be beautiful.’ I said: ‘The witch will be beautiful; the key is no makeup. After all, she’s the White Witch; her face should be bare.’ And I think, eventually, they saw my point. She’s very scary. I’m fully at peace with the idea that children who see this film will be backing away from me for the rest of my life.”
Weta Collectibles, the consumer products division of New Zealand’s premier creative company, Weta Workshop, has released the first approved product photography of its initial series of limited-edition sculptures based on characters from Walt Disney Pictures’/Walden Media’s upcoming film version of C. S. Lewis’ classic work The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe from C. S. Lewis’ beloved Chronicles of Narnia series.
Weta Collectibles is producing up to ten unique pieces in the series, with release dates slated for late October 2005 and a second wave following in conjunction with the December 9, 2005 film release date.
The October product releases will consist of: White Witch with Ginarrbrik statue, Oreius statue, Minoboars design maquette, Mr. Tumnus design maquette, and Lion and Witch bookends.
The December product releases will consist of: Girls on Aslan statue, Peter on the Unicorn statue, General Otmin statue, Satyr design maquette, and White Witch’s Castle Environment – White Witch Castle currently remains in development. The statues of Oreius and General Otmin are designed to be placed together, recreating the intensity of the battle for Narnia.
“In addition to their fabulous work on the actual film production, the artisans at Weta are bringing all of their skills forward on this line of consumer products,” Dark Horse Director of Distributed Products Rachelle Callaway remarked, “and we believe these pieces will set a new standard for this important product category. They have selected challenging and striking poses for each statue, choosing exactly the right moment to freeze them in time, with a dramatic and touching result.”
Weta was catapulted to worldwide prominence by virtue of their close association with director Peter Jackson on the Lord of the Rings films. Since then, they have worked on a variety film productions, starting with The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Entrusted with the task of designing some of literature’s most beloved characters, Weta Collectibles principal Richard Taylor and his team have crafted an extremely detailed rendition of the film’s characters as sculpted, pre-painted large-size statues. No expense was spared in ensuring the most accurate reproduction, and this attention to detail extends to the packaging design and artwork as well as the pieces themselves. Additionally, each design maquette will contain a full-color booklet highlighting the evolution of each individual piece.
Weta Collectibles has named Dark Horse Comics, Inc. of Milwaukie, Oregon as its exclusive worldwide sales agent outside of New Zealand, Australia and Singapore.
THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA, NARNIA, and all book titles, characters and locales original thereto are trademarks of C.S. Lewis Pte Ltd. and are used with permission. © DISNEY ENTERPRISES, INC. and WALDEN MEDIA, LLC. All rights reserved.
In this exclusive interview with ComingSoon.net, Moseley told us how he got the job and how it was an experience that changed his life. For the rest of the interview, visit the source link above.
CS!: How did you find out about this movie or how did Andrew find you?
William Moseley: Well, basically what happened was I had a casting director who knew me from a period drama. She liked me and remembered me from this agency. If you’d like, I can tell you the story. What happened was I was at this tiny little primary school when I was ten years old. There, we studied the three core subjects and it was relaxed and easy and everyone knew everyone else. One day, this casting director comes to town looking for a knobbly-kneed red-faced village child. I sort of fitted the bill. I was not self-conscious; I was a total show-off. I just loved all the attention and I loved doing these improvisations and just being in the moment. It was for this period drama on BBC that I couldn’t do because I was too young for the older role and too old for the younger role.
CS!: How was it to act opposite all sorts of creatures that weren’t really there?
Moseley: That’s a good question, because when I first got there, I found it kind of weird, because you have this guy just holding a pole with a piece tape or something on it, and you have to be scared or empowered or frustrated by it. What we all did as almost child actors was we used our imaginations and we created the perfect Aslan or the perfect Beavers or the perfect wolves, which were scary. We saw them in our minds and it was almost better that way, because they were perfect to us and unique to our imagination. I remember watching “The Lord of the Rings” one day and I could see that the guy was looking at an “X” on the matte box of the camera. That was his sightline and that was supposed to be Gollum. I remember thinking that his eyes weren’t moving. When you talk to someone, your eyes and your face are constantly moving. Your eyes aren’t locked, so that was something that Andrew helped with. He could become the eyeline of that character, because he knew everything about it, as far as the dimensions.
CS!: What were your favorite scenes to shoot? All the war stuff?
Moseley: Yeah, that is an easy question, because that was amazing. I couldn’t have enjoyed that any more than I did. Like I said, I rode on this perfectly trained white Spanish Andalusian horse, bareback with a full suit of armor, sword and a shield across a battlefield, galloping towards snow-capped New Zealand mountains. I mean, that was the greatest experience of my life.
CS!: Were you the one who had problems with armor constantly having to be refitted?
Moseley: No, actually that was Skandar [Keynes], who played Edmond. He grew six and a half inches. I think I grew a bit, so they had to do me now and again, but he grew weekly.
CS!: Peter also appears in the second Narnia book, so do you know if you’re already signed to do another movie?
Moseley: Well, the script isn’t totally done yet, and they’re still working on it, but I’m very happy and willing and looking forward to doing the next one.
By REUBEN SCHWARZ
Filming The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe required hundreds of extras, millions of dollars and many thousands of hours creating digital effects – but it couldn’t have happened without Telecom.
The telco provided cellphone, fixed line and data services to the film crew during the two years of filming and post-production work.
“Production must be flexible enough to absorb the uncertainties and unpredictable nature of the film making process, and telecommunication systems sometimes need to be delivered in an equally flexible manner,” says New Zealand line producer Tim Coddington.
The crew often moved between 50-100 gigabytes of data daily between filming locations and its main studio complex in Hobsonville, Auckland.
The ICT budget for the film – due out in December – topped $1 million.
The connection from the Hobsonville site to the Los Angeles-based special effects teams could be bumped from 10 megabits per second to 100 Mbps as needed “with a flick of the switch”, minimising costs.
At one point the crew was sending 10 gigabytes to LA every night.
“We had a lot of visual effects and that material has to flow back for people to work on,” says Mr Coddington. “The choke point was getting it out into the suburbs of LA. Their suburban infrastructure is way behind.”
Filming for three months in a remote area near Arthur’s Pass in the Southern Alps where not even cellphones work, Telecom and the crew set up a point-to-point connection to transmit data to the main fibre trunk on the West Coast.
Telecom’s communications equipment was housed in a tent for the two months of filming in the Alps, powered by a car battery in a chilly bin.
Wireless networks were set up at all the filming sites, even in the Southern Alps, to provide a local intranet to exchange email and files among up to 600 crew.
Extend the life of your computer’s screen by using this dynamic Narnia screen saver. NarniaResources.com has added a screensaver featuring images from the film. Narnia-chroniken.de got these screenshots. If you link to these images, please link to http://www.narniafans.com/archives/360 and not to the images themselves. Thanks!
For NarniaFans News Updates get our Narnia Newsletter
And another big thanks to Narnia-Chroniken.de for the awesome images
Take a look at Narnia.com, they’ve added a tour of Narnia, in which you’ll eventually be able to explore all of Narnia. There are currently two places available to visit!
You can visit the Lamppost, which will bring up a little bit of Lucy and Mr. Tunmus, running towards it.
You can also take a look at the home of Mr. Tumnus, which includes the music that Tumnus plays to Lucy, I believe, which is the first bit of score that Harry Gregson-Williams composed for Narnia!
Thanks to Julian!
Today on FilmForce, we have an extra special treat for all the Narnia faithful out there. Up until now, Disney has remained very protective of the young cast, many of whom have had very little acting experience. FilmForce recently got the unique opportunity to speak exclusively with William Moseley and Anna Popplewell, who portray Peter and Susan in the film, respectively.
IGNFF: What was it like meeting first time?
William Moseley: I thought he was a bit like Garth from Wayne’s World, he looks like [that]! I liked him, I just liked the way he sort of sat back and let the kids run wild. What was nice was he got involved as well. There was a kid that was kind of annoying and Andrew was, within one minute, just on top of this kid and [he] quieted him down. This kid had gone to drama school and thought of himself rather highly and Andrew managed to withdraw him.
IGNFF: For Adamson, this film is a pretty big switch from working on animated films. There has been some concern and question as to how he would work out with actual humans versus CG green ogres.
Anna Popplewell: Well, I think everyone was kind of surprised at the idea of Andrew on The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe because he had a background in animation. The thing is, Andrew’s so wonderful with people! He’s not only a genius, he’s such a nice man. He really knew how to relate to all of us as individuals. It wasn’t “the kids,” he communicated to all of us in different ways appropriately. He’s just a brilliant director really.
William Moseley: You know, it was a challenge for everyone. Mark Johnson, the producer, had done Rain Man, you know, and Mark said this was the biggest film he’d ever worked on. Everyone had a challenge, everyone was working for the passion. I just felt like Andrew had so much dedication to making the film work! So much want and love for it! It just sort of worked out.
IGNFF: How did the sets compare to what you pictured in your head reading the books?
Anna Popplewell: Well, some of them were almost exactly as I pictured. Some of them were slightly different and better than I could have imagined. It just varied. I think the nice thing about the books is there is a lot of room for interpretation. I know when I read them and come away with a specific idea that this detail must be in place, this detail must be in place, and the sets just kind of consolidated it all together for me.
William Moseley: It’s interesting from Andrew’s point of view with the books and everything! They aren’t trying to make a religious film, they aren’t trying to make a film with an opinion. All it is is a film from an imagination. It’s from Andrew’s imagination, it’s from his innocence as a child. When you’re a child, you don’t see the religious aspects. You’re trying to preserve that innocence. That’s what the books are partially about, is innocence and honestly and truth. I think that’s what Andrew tried to do and you can interpret it as a religious story, but I just feel like it was from Andrew’s imagination and he could create that world! Fortunately, there was enough money to create the imagination because sometimes I would go on set and think, ‘This is beyond my imagination. This is beyond what I expected!’ The imagination can be a very expensive thing.
IGNFF: William, did you look to any of the other actors for tips?
William Moseley: Totally. What I found with Tilda, I really did actually! James [also] told me – I learned two tips from both of them – Tilda would always say to me, you know, it shouldn’t be difficult, acting shouldn’t be difficult. You should just be enjoying it! It’s best to go with it and just be there and just let yourself go. You don’t have to really even try hard at all, that’s what she said to me. It’s something that she had found out herself over the years. And then James McAvoy also said to me, which is really interesting, because I had a problem in one of the scenes. It’s funny, because I can ride a horse bareback, galloping across the park, I can sword fight for hours, I can run across the frozen lake. But I had to smile, and it was so weird, smiling on screen. I hate smiling in photos, so I never smile. I find it posing, like I’m not really being spontaneous, I’m just posing! James said to me, ‘If you take up the posture in your face, your mind follows,’ and then he trained himself to do that. He was telling me that he couldn’t smile on camera or he couldn’t laugh or cry. He had to train himself to do. And so, they were both very interesting people. Even the mother, Mrs. Macready, I learned some things from, like the way she would just come pumped up! Really bringing out something and just shaking everything up, just going for it. That was a really interesting aspect as well. I found, for me, I have to go back and think, like, what happens to me before, what are my feelings now. With all these people trying to help me, I felt I really progressed as an actor.
For the rest, go to IGN FilmForce!
Cinema Confidential got an Exclusive Interview with William Moseley, and once again, to read the rest of it, visit the source link.
By Jenny Halper in New York City
Describing William Moseley as exuberant would be an understatement. A self described extrovert, this schoolboy from the British countryside scored big when casting director Pippa Hall chose him over hoards of hopefuls for the role of Peter in Andrew Adamson’s “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.” And William was so thrilled he cried.
CINEMA CONFIDENTIAL: How did you get the role of Peter?
William Moseley: One day this casting director Pippa Hall came to my village school casting for a TV drama, and I remember going to the audition, but I didn’t get the part because I was too young. I got an agent, and I remember thinking “acting sounds like my kind of game.” Performing, making everyone look at me, sounds like my kind of game! And then I got an agent and I auditioned for five years, and I got callbacks but I never got a part. And Pippa was casting for “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” and she remembered this boy who was a great big show off and not self conscious in any respect, and she asked for me, and I went for an audition, and a year and a half later of auditioning I get the part in “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.”
CINEMA CONFIDENTIAL: Were you a fan of the Narnia series?
William Moseley: The thing of it was, I read the beginning of Narnia in the third grade, and even though I knew the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by heart I’d never read the rest of the series. But when I got the part I’d been rejected so many times, just to get the part… I was crying I was so happy. I couldn’t actually believe it.
CINEMA CONFIDENTIAL: Was there anything you wanted to do but weren’t allowed?
William Moseley: Actually, Peter rides a horse, and I actually rode better than my stunt double. He gets on a horse bare back and gallops down this mound, and they let me get on the horse but they wouldn’t let me gallop! I was so upset but!
CINEMA CONFIDENTIAL: I spoke with Anna and she said Tilda actually scared her when she was in character.
William Moseley: What I liked about Tilda was she’s a force, you know? She walked on the set, even not in character, she’s got this energy around her. She’s the kind of person that just illuminates! I just couldn’t stop watching her.
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