Prince Caspian quickie review

We went to see Prince Caspian yesterday with some Grad Christian Fellowship kakis. It's a pretty good movie...I'd rate it 8/10 all around.

For the most part, it stayed true to the book except:

• There are a few scenes showing discussions between Miraz, Sopespian, Rozelle, and the other Telmarine lords. I don't have a problem with this since their function is explaining Telmarine politics that are narrated in the books in another way.
• During the scene with Nikabrik and his black magic cronies, they actually summon up the White Witch. If I hadn't read the books I would have gotten the impression that she was going to be a recurring villain.
• Before the duel between Peter and Miraz, there's an SAS paratrooper-style raid on the Telmarines' castle which is a lot of fun to watch for the action scenes, but doesn't advance the plot in any way, so I thought it was really weird that the filmmakers wrote it in.

Special effects and action scenes are really good for the most part, except for one really weird bit where the Narnians use a tactic of making the roof fall in on themselves, which I thought was silly.

In terms of characters: Peter is full of testosterone, and himself. One fellow in the group who's a Peter fan commented that after the moral and military mistakes he made, he wasn't given enough time to redeem himself. Susan shows up really well in the action scenes and flirts outrageously with Caspian, much to the younger ones' scorn. ("I'm sure I'll understand when I'm larger." "I'm larger and I'm not sure I want to understand.") Edmund shines - both as a character in this book, and through Skandar Keynes' perfect deadpan delivery of his lines (I dunno where that name is from but it sounds totally Viking). Lucy, as before, is adorable. Caspian is a bit of a nonentity. He sort of reminds me of Hamlet.

As for Reepicheep: holy cow, I'm glad the mice in my lab don't fight like that.

2008 New Year's Resolution

I don't normally make New Year's resolutions (e.g. "I will not bite my nails" has been a historical failure since age eight or so) but I've come up with what I think is a viable one this year:

• To match any amount I spend aside from regular groceries, household, and toiletry supplies with donations to NGOs doing food aid, health, education, social justice, or women's issues - both secular and Christian.
• To match ALL spending on my cat with donations to animal welfare (not animal rights) and wildlife conservation organizations.

This way I'll probably spend less money this year on silly stuff and waste less time Internet shopping.

Maybe it sounds a bit extreme to some people but I've found since leaving home and starting to earn my own money at age 18, that the less stuff I buy, the less stuff I want. Materialism is a self-perpetuating lust, and most of the hobbies I really enjoy require very little material.

Other things I'd like to do:

• Write at least 2 short fiction stories and submit at least 1 to Writers of the Future or a science fiction magazine.
• Draw more, and spontaneously.
• Reinstall Creatures 3/Docking Station on my computer and start tinkering with the CAOS (Creatures Agent Object Scripting) language.
• Call parents and sisters and "small" boy more often (sometimes I forget my brother has a phone because he never calls me...)
• Clean my bike more often.
• Cook for my boyfriend and make him take his vitamins regularly.
• Watch more movies.

It's gonna be a personally interesting year...my project is going to get into animal studies...I'll have to write a thesis and hopefully graduate...my parents just got transferred to Penang...two of my London cousins are getting married in the summer so I'll finally have a chance to go to England...a couple of Phases kakis are getting married in Malaysia...another couple is having a baby, which makes them the first friends my age to reproduce...my boyfriend is taking 2/3 of a year off school for an internship...his mum wants to show our respective cats in the summer (TICA lets you show household pets)...

Et cetera. 'Tis life. =)

Philosophical zombies

I've just finished watching Shaun of the Dead (which is very funny and also has some touching moments) and went to look it up on Wikipedia. Somehow I ended up reading about philosophical zombies, which are hypothetical humans that look and react in every way exactly as a normal human being does, but have no consciousness. The concept is intriguing, but the arcana of philosophy bore me after a point. I think I ran out of attention span about 80% of the way through.

My opinion is that it's not possible for philosophical zombies to exist...as a Christian I believe that the soul exists after death, but I'm in the rather more unusual position of insisting that during life, the soul and the brain are identical, that is, the soul doesn't exist as a separate thingy from the physical body (click on the link for an old post giving my argument). Anyway...it's worth looking at, I wonder what you guys think.