Website MundoNarnia unveiled some 33 new photos from the set of Voyage of the Dawn Treader. They include Dinian, a minotaur, some fauns, Will Poulter as Eustace, and a very Strider-esque Ben Barnes as King Caspian.

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There have been many more videos posted from the set of the Dawn Treader over the last week.  I was hoping to get to these earlier, but I’ve been editing videos almost non-stop in preparation for a trip I have coming up on Friday.

I’m hoping my news team can pick up the slack while I’m gone for about 2 weeks.

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Narnia Fans Spy Kerrie wrote in with more pictures from the set of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.  This time, featuring some amazing shots of a Minotaur and Eustace (Will Poulter) on board the Dawn Treader.  If these photos are from a scene in the film, it looks like Eustace and the Minotaur could be friends, unless the Minotaur is carrying out punishment on him.  This is all complete speculation on my part, based only on three stills that you can see here.

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We made an attempt to get someone to this event, but sadly the one person that might have been available had to work during the event. Thankfully another Narnia fan site was able to have someone in attendance. I would have gone myself, but I had a wedding to go to during the conference. Micheal Flaherty is a great friend of mine, and I would have loved to see him again.

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This week’s mailbag is where we break loose. We’re going to tackle some pretty heavy questions about The Voyage of the Dawn Treader and more!  It’s going to be fun.  By the way, I just saw Disneynature’s Earth and I highly recommend it.  The visuals are unlike anything I’ve seen before, and it was entertaining, funny and sad and everything in between.  I’m looking forward, now, to their next Disneynature release: Oceans.  That one is due out on Earth Day 2010.

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The Early Childhood Parenting section of Chicago’s Examiner.com has chosen the name “Caspian” as the Baby Name of the day. It’s not really a name you hear all that much, but I guess it is gaining in popularity.

I can see plenty of NarniaFans naming their children after characters. However if they do, there are two things two keep in mind. If you name a child ” Eustace Clarence Scrubb” they better deserve it, and if you name a child Reepicheep, well, ” You people have no imagination.”

You can read the rest of the article by clicking the source link. There really isn’t much to the article past the mention of Narnia and the meaning behind the name. However, it is still nice to have the name Caspian get noticed.

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Grown ups love teens’ adult show

According to Will Poulter, his chances on having a career as an actor are, at the very most, slim.

Looking at the 15-year-old’s already sterling resume – which includes a lead role in the movie Son of Rambow, and a part in the forthcoming Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader film alongside Liam Neeson – that comes as a real surprise.

“It would be great if I could continue acting, but I think that it’s very unlikely I’ll be able to make a proper career of it,” says the affable youngster, who played bad boy Lee Carter in Son of Rambow, and is currently appearing on the Fringe in School of Comedy – a sketch show for adults, performed by teenagers and devised by his drama teacher, Laura Black.

“It’s all so competitive, and the chances of making it in this profession are slim,” he continues. “It’s a dream, of course, but I’m under no illusions.

“Put it this way,” he adds, “I’ve got my back-up plan should things not work out.”

A wise head on young shoulders, the young Londoner made his Fringe debut last summer in an earlier incarnation of School of Comedy.

“It’s a lot of fun being back in Edinburgh,” he says. “We had such a great time last year, and though I was a lot more nervous doing it the first time around, I still have great memories of it.

“The show was an enormous success. People seemed to love how original it was.

“I can remember there were a few gaping mouths, but they generally belonged to adults who didn’t have children and had forgotten what it was like to be 15 years old.

“The reaction this year has been just the same,” he adds. “We were just getting so many people in, so we’re all very pleased about that. It’s a real dream come true.”

For making his dreams come true, Poulter credits his drama teacher Black. “I was very lucky to get involved in acting really,” he says. “Ms Lawson was running an after school club, where people could get together and just try improvisational routines. She’d worked as a comedian before and just gave us scripts to read and try out ideas with. We got the chance to perform the act at school, and it’s just all developed from there.”

That development has seen the kids put in just as much work to the show as the crack team of comedy writers Lawson enlisted to help write the show for an adult audience.

“All the material starts really with the improv games we played with Ms Lawson,” explains Poulter. “We got to explore each character we created and try out different settings and situations to build workable scenes. It’s a real group collaboration.”

And it seems the kids have built a real team spirit between themselves. “We spend every day with each other really, and it’s still always a lot of fun,” he says. “It’s good to share this weird experience, because we’re still only really children at this adult festival.”

This image of an ‘adult’ festival did initially concern Poulter. “There was a worry we might have just been seen as a novelty,” he explains. “We definitely didn’t want to be just some kids doing adult comedy. But we’re all really proud of what we’ve created, people have been coming along to the show with an open mind.”

The show – which also stars Ella Ainsworth, Lily Ainsworth, Max Brown, Jack Harries, Africa Nile, Beth Rylance and Arthur Sturridge – is soon to feature on an episode of Channel 4’s The Comedy Lab, which is an thrilling prospect for Poulter.

“The idea of our work being on TV is just amazing,” he beams. “It would be so incredible to do more television, but you’ve got to have that ultimate goal.”

Getting bums on seats in Edinburgh was a challenge in itself, but the hard work Poulter and his gang put in paid off. “We’ve really had to work hard with the flyering but it helped so much,” he enthuses. “Everyone I’ve spoken to who has been to see the show really seems to have loved it, and the audience reactions have been really encouraging as well. Lots of laughter.

“We have a really great laugh ourselves just doing it,” he continues. “Essentially, it is kids doing adult comedy, so it’s a little bit different in that respect from other shows on at the Fringe this year. But I think the most important thing is for everyone to have a good time.”

School of Comedy, Pleasance Courtyard, The Pleasance, 1.40pm, until Sunday, GBP 9 (GBP 8), 0131-226 0000

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Word on the street indicates that a choice has been made on a crucial member of the cast of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. That role is Eustace Scrubb. It is none other than High School Musical star, Zac Efron.

“They were hesitant on casting him at first,” the insider reported. “ As he is such a high profile star. But he gave the best audition.”

Other finalists on the very short list included Dylan and Cole Spraus from the Disney Channels Suite Life of Zack and Cody, Ricky Ulman from Phil of the Future, Jake Lloyd (Anakin Skywalker in Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace), and Haley Joel Osment.

“Our preferences were for either Efron, Ulman or one of the Spraus twins to get a role in this franchise,” said a Disney insider. “Narnia is one of our most bankable franchises, and these are some of our biggest stars. Efron, especially has a lot of street credence with our target audiences.”

“They’ve cast plenty no-names in the series, such as that guy from Schindler’s List ( JS: Liam Neeson) as the voice of Aslan,” said a member of the filming crew. “While he’s a great actor, what we need is a big star to carry the franchise. No one is bigger than Zac Efron right now. It was a perfect fit.”

Efron has already been training for his role and is meeting with his dialect coach to prefect a British accent. Reports indicate he is getting along well with the cast already. It has also been reported that Patrick Stewart ( X-Men, Star Trek: TNG), and Christopher Lee (Lord of the Rings, Star Wars Episode II&III) have also been seen on set. Could they also be filling in roles for the film, perhaps as Coriakin and Ramandu?

Check back with NarniaFans tomorrow for more news on these casting choices!

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One of the biggest names in Hollywood is getting to become part of one of the biggest fantasy franchises. Sources indicate that child star Lindsey Lohan has received a role in the next installment of the Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. She has been tapped to play the small, but memorable character of the daughter of Ramandu.

Fans of the series will remember that Caspian, Lucy, Edmund and Eustace meet the character at the last island they landed on before they reached the edge of the world of Narnia. The character is the daughter of the wizard Ramandu, a retried star. She and Caspian fall in love and get married. The two of them become the parents of Prince Rillian, one of the main figures in The Silver Chair.

The character is never named, but expect the screen writers to amend that situation. The star’s agent says that this will be a great way for her to repair her image following her legal problems that were the subject of tabloids for weeks, as well as the box office failures of her recent films.

An executive from Disney said, “We are honored to have her coming back. She has had a great record with us.”

The actress has gone on to say, “I really like the books. They’re my favorite. Goblet of Fire is my favorite out of all of them. Wait, this isn’t Harry Potter? Oh well, a jobs a job.”

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Foreward: This editorial is based on the book: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader; and includes story points from that book. -Paul Martin

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I remember pretty well what I used to be like as a teenager. With my parents being very busy and having little time for me I turned into a pretty independent person very early on. Most of the time I was on my own and therefore I had things go my way. I liked to make my own decisions. Now imagine my mom coming and telling me what I should do and what not. Boy, I could give her a hard time about it and be sulky and grumpy all day long. Which of course not only spoiled her day but mine also. But it was all her fault and not mine, at least from my perspective.

I’m a couple years older now and you should think I have grown out of that kind of behaviour. But I haven’t. Most my friends think I’m a smart girl and I got some wisdom in me. But sometimes I’m just a little girl still. Last year in January I had meant to go skiing with my best friend. We had everything booked and the bill was paid and we were both looking forward to it like none other. Two days before we would have left for our vacation my friend got sick with the flu and we had to cancel everything. It is understandable that one would be disappointed then. But I could convince myself perfectly that it was all my friend’s fault and that of course things had to come this way. I wanted to hate my friend and there was no way I wanted to see that it’s no one’s fault that he got sick and that it was best to stay home. I cried about it like a little girl, because my vacation got spoiled, and the whole world was bad to me.

Well, I don’t know if I’m an exception with that kind of behaviour. But there’s at least one other person, who has that same problem. He has the art of denial perfected and knows just too well how to give other people a hard time about not enjoying himself while there’s only himself to blame. Lucy and Edmund’s cousin Eustace. From the first minute on that he spends in Narnia it is all Lucy and Edmund’s fault that he is even there. Eustace is a perfectly reasonable boy. He knows everything about state of the art ships, he knows what is healthy to eat and he knows that the British consulate is the place to go when his rights are violated in a foreign country. And above all things Eustace detests people who cannot see the facts for what they are, performing animals and all sorts of adventures and tales. So what else would you expect other than him denying having his very own adventure born out of magic. Do you see the irony? One moment we fret about other people and the circumstances we are in not being what we expect them to be and at the same time we are in absolute denial of the facts ourselves.

I often catch myself in situations like that. I can even watch myself acting all silly and childish. But it might just hurt my pride if I admitted that the person I’m arguing with is right, and it’s easier to be upset then than to have a good laugh at myself.

I’ve often hurt people’s feelings that way and left them entirely clueless about just why I am even upset. The sad thing is that I am fully aware of me doing that. And when I’ve realized often enough, how much my selfish pride can hurt instead of bringing me any gain, all that is left for me to do is fall down on my knees. It is then that I would like to unzip my skin and leave it behind and be someone new.

Eustace goes through very much the same experience. Things have to turn really bad first, though. He needs a real eye opener before he actually realizes what a beast he is on the inside. He turns into a dragon as a reflection of his inner being. Only at this point Eustace cannot remain in denial any longer. All this time he was able to conceal the beast inside and it felt quite comfortable. But being bared like that he hardly dares show himself to his friends. His condition pains him so much that he doesn’t know how to help himself other than finally starting to be of use. He simply has to take who he is and make the best of it. It is not before this point of painful realization of his own nature and his willingness to be no foe anymore that he is in fact offered to strip off the old self.

And even then he is unable to do it himself. He peels of his dragon scales several times only to find that underneath he is still a dragon. It takes Aslan’s assistance to bring out the boy inside the dragon.

This point in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader touches me deeply. It is this metamorphosis that I often long for, that I think everyone longs for every now and then. We simply want to come undone and be made new, but no matter how hard we try we cannot accomplish it on our own. We have to ask God to do that for us, to turn us into who he wants us to be.

I’ve never gone through a literal metamorphosis like Eustace. But like him I’ve been dipped in a pool of water and came up as a new person. And every once in a while I get some of my old skin stripped off when I’ve grown out of it.

More often than not growing is a painful process and your skin itches and stings terribly when it gets too tight on you. But it is a grace, too. We never have to be anyone else than who we want to be and we can be comfortable for quite some time. But if we wish to be greater than we’ve let ourselves be, then we have a faithful helper who we can rely on to open the zipper like a father helps his kid to take off its coat.

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