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"Recently I've been working as a kind of industrial spy in Hollywood. The truth is ... [that period's] over." --Oscar-wining actress Tilda Swinton

There is a lot to be said about The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian in relation to its predecessor, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, in matters both internal (the film itself, content and theme-wise) and external (its worldwide reception as measured in terms of strictly financial success). Those will be examined in greater detail shortly. What I find noteworthy and most enjoyable about it is how it comes towards the tail end of Swinton's decade-long swing through higher-profile independent pictures (The Deep End, for which she received a Golden Globe nom), offbeat star projects (Vanilla Sky, Michael Clayton) ensemble dark comedies (Broken Flowers, Burn After Reading) and big-budget special effects-driven projects of wildly differing genres (the Narnia films, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Constantine).

I recall my first encounter with Swinton on-screen during the late summer of 1993, catching Orlando at the Koin Center, a six-screen independent/art-house venue in downtown Portland, Oregon. It was one of the first films I viewed after becoming a more or less permanent denizen of the town and freshman at one of the finer local liberal arts college. Even before seeing Orlando, I was intrigued with the subject matter of the film and Swinton's features – fiery hair, pale skin, Rubenesque shape — and eager for it to finally wend its way to my part of the country. What I carried away from the film was an appreciation for what Sally Potter had achieved with her direction and screen adaptation and a deep impression with how effortlessly Swinton straddled lines and issues of gender, finding the uncertainty and sexiness commingled in androgyny and keeping an offbeat tale grounded and unencumbered from veering into becoming simply a feminist or political or sexual tract. And of course, there was the uninhibited, unashamed, quite breathtaking full frontal nude shot halfway through (don't let's ask the MPAA how that stayed in and the film kept a PG-13 rating.) My mother and godmother accompanied me to the screening. Orlando made its mark felt deeply on the latter, as she still brings the film up apropos of nothing, in casual conversation, all these years later.

Swinton is a chameleon of sorts, as all the best actors are, but her modus operandi is to seem enchanting while remaining willful (or vice/versa.) She has the ability to shift her eyes from warm to steely in an instant, almost imperceptibly and fix them on you, as if daring you to challenge her. My argument for her winning the Oscar for Michael Clayton is a) she is immensely respected and envied by her peers and they rightly figured this might be their best and last chance to honor her this way and b) everyone was stunned to see that she could convincingly play a character who was (to an absurd degree) not in control, in quite over her head, in fact. Panic and desperation seemed new to her repertoire.

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