Aslan

In August BG Touring are to perform ‘The Voyage of the Dawn Treader’ at the 2006 Edinburgh Festival.

This comes from our friends at the French Narnia fansite, elbakin.net: A bunch of french Narnia sites have decided to unite their efforts to make change the pronunciation of “Aslan” in french dubbing.

Warning, this basically spoils the story for those that haven’t seen it. But if you have read it or seen it, you’re okay to read on. It’s pretty cool. Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is ranked at number four on their list.

“We needed to find a way to model the performance to create the essence of the noble, all-powerful lion,” explained Dean Wright, the film’s Oscar-nominated visual effects supervisor, “So we used Gregory Peck in ‘To Kill a Mockingbird.’ His Atticus Finch performance has some of the same regal qualities we wanted, so we used frames of Peck from that film to create movements for Aslan. That helped us build our library of movements, emotions and expressions so that when Liam gave his performance, it gelled perfectly with our Aslan.”

In the cavernous dining room of Cliveden House in Berkshire, southern England, Dawn French, encased in a Yum-Yum haircut and a silk trouser suit, looks like an ornament brought back from an expedition to the Orient.

Weta’s Richard Taylor gives Maggie Wicks an exclusive sneak peak at the armoury and tools of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is a beloved children’s book about four British schoolchildren who pass through a wardrobe into a magic land where a witch has made it always winter and never Christmas. There they meet Aslan, the lion of the title, who offers his own life to the witch to atone for the treachery of one of the siblings.

Catholic experts explore Biblical parallels, moral lessons at heart of classic children’s tale by C.S. Lewis, now a major motion picture.