Movie of the week

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 Shadowlands: a story of CS Lewis and how he got married to an American divorcee. A two handkerchief movie.

I had a friend who scoffed and dismissed the film saying CSL was a Christian. I think he thought that it was a religious film: It is actually a well written drama about a person who had closed his emotional life after the childhood loss of his mother, and in middle age unexpectedly finds love, and learns about pain and how to face death.

and yes, in this play the actor playing him is Anthony Hopkins, best known for playing Hannibal Lector. When people forget and think actors are the same as the roles they play, I often point to Hopkins.

the film is best seen in high def but hey it's youtube and free.

If you are not familiar with CSL: this is a one man show about his early life and conversion to Christianity.

CS Lewis is best known as the author of the Narnia series (which I believe is now being remade by Netflix.) One shudders at that announcement: Presumably it will be made politically correct.

 However, the older film version is worth finding on a streaming service:

trailer here:

or you can watch the BBC TV miniseries version:

CSLewis has written quite a few books to explain Christianity, which if you google his name you can find the audio versions on youtube.

I don't especially like his religious writings: too brittle for me. But Mere Christianity is as good a book to explain the basics to the ignorant as you can find, although it is a bit out of date.

Ironically, I predate the Narnia books so didn't read them as a child: which is good because they tend to be a bit preachy.

 My introduction to CS Lewis was because as a kid I hated kid books aimed at girly girls, and read my brothers sci fi books (Heinlein, Clarke, etc) and one of these books was CSL's SciFi book Out of the Silent Planet, where a clueless professor of language (who some say was based on Tolkien) is kidnapped and taken to Mars by two PC scientists whose attitude toward Martians is a satire on the British Empire's mindset (i.e. they view Martians as inferior beings who need to be exploited so humans can live there and steal their gold etc.). They assume the locals want to meet another human to dissect him.(actually the Martians just want to learn about humans but think the scientists are crazy so want to meet a sane member of humanity)... Again outdated but still part of the classic sci fi universe.