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Review: The Chronicles of Narnia- The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Easy A, Megamind, Rare Exports and Skyline

By Cinema and Reviews

After the unusu­al occur­rence last week of actu­ally lik­ing everything, reg­u­lar read­ers will be reas­sured that nor­mal nit-picking ser­vice is resumed this week.

Firstly, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, the third in the series of big budget adapt­a­tions of CS Lewis’ beloved alleg­or­ies (and the first to screen in 3D). Roughly three years after the last film ended two of our hero­ic child-royals are returned to Narnia via a magic oil paint­ing of a ship at sea.

Edmund (Skandar Keynes), Lucy (Georgie Henley) and their annoy­ing cous­in Eustace (played with gusto by young Will Poulter) arrive in Narnia to join the Dawn Treader on a search for the sev­en lords (and sev­en swords) who will finally unite all the war­ring coun­tries and bring peace, etc., etc. All is much as you would expect from the pre­vi­ous install­ments, apart from the fact that Caspian (Ben Barnes) has lost that annoy­ing vaguely Mediterranean accent and the talk­ing mouse Reepicheep now sounds like Simon Pegg instead of Eddie Izzard.

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Review: Grow Your Own, The Chronicles of Narnia- Prince Caspian and The Jammed

By Cinema and Reviews

Grow Your Own posterThe allot­ment is one of the United Kingdom’s greatest achieve­ments, unre­peated I believe any­where else. In exchange for mov­ing in to shoe­boxes stacked upon each oth­er the British poor were giv­en a back garden some­where else – a nearby shared field con­ver­ted into small plots where they could grow some food and still exper­i­ence some­thing of a life out­doors, con­nec­ted to the sea­sons. And who could have guessed that, at the same time, the allot­ment could also be such an effect­ive meta­phor for life in mod­ern England.

In Richard Laxton’s film Grow Your Own, the spare plots at a Liverpool allot­ment are being alloc­ated to refugees, to help them adjust to life in their new coun­try and give them some­thing to do dur­ing the oth­er­wise long days. The loc­als, led by ex-cop Big John (Philip Jackson) with the help of his down­trod­den son Little John (Eddie Marsan from Happy-Go-Lucky), don’t like the idea of their patch being invaded by “gypos” and turn a cold shoulder to their new neighbours.

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