HIS DARK MATERIALS

Didn't I mention this elsewhere, s1ocki? For a long while now I've preferred to wait until series are complete before reading them (there are tons more self-contained things I can and do enjoy reading -- and writing! -- in the meantime).

so, is anne rice still writing those vampire novels? how can you BEAR to wait on those?

;-)

Hahah, THAT'S a train I'm glad I never got fully on (read the first three shortly after the third came out and then got bored -- LIKE ANY SANE PERSON WOULD BE).

imma back ian up 100% on game of thrones, they are a brilliant read.

anyone else try the prince of nothing series?

i actually just started reading this the other day. really enjoyable so far.

....btw, is there a thread on Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell? THAT book fucking rocks.

<I>Prince of Nothing</I>, I admit, really catches my eye. I might just go ahead and take the plunge on that one, plus Steven Erikson's stuff.

Steven Erikson is AWESOME.

Meantime, this Idolator post is prefaced with a bit including my new favorite phrase: "the increasingly fragmented attention economy." That really applies in my case! For instance, I'm gearing up on a long-mooted project with my NaNoWriMo work next month, one I expect to take up a lot of time beyond November. Being able to dip into a single book or standalone ones in a larger framework (like Iain Banks's Culture novels) feels handier for me right now; also, at a certain point I realized, "Wait, the more time I spend getting lost in huge series all over the place, the less time I have to do the writing I want to do!" It's all trade-off in the end, we make the choices we feel best about.

Didn't I mention this elsewhere, s1ocki? For a long while now I've preferred to wait until series are complete before reading them (there are tons more self-contained things I can and do enjoy reading -- and writing! -- in the meantime).

-- Ned Raggett, Wednesday, October 24, 2007 6:03 PM (53 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

but this series is finished! so that's what i wondered.

Oh right, I see the confusion. No, I finally read this trilogy a few months back, my comments are upthread somewhere.

I'm intrigued as to how a His Dark Materials movie sequence will go down in the USA, considering what happens at the end of the trilogy.
-- caitlin (caitlin), Monday, July 7, 2003 3:44 PM (4 years ago) Bookmark Link

this is the only reason I'm curious to see the film -- the plot really spins into areas that most of the moral majority will find unacceptable, it's completely unfilmable -- it's beyond the point where they can water it down, it's going to require a lobotomy

don't tempt me into reading the rest of the trilogy.
bad milton, bad caitlin.

it doesn't change in tone, though it does get darker and morally ambiguous. I'd only read it if you have time.

btw, is there a thread on Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell? THAT book fucking rocks

OTMFM. Never read anything quite like it.

Re: ending of His Dark Materials, I don't think it gets morally ambiguous in the end, i think he cops out and goes for a more standard ending. In fact, the entire last book was a major disappointment.

Am I the only person with family and acquaintances religious enough to be sending me forwards warning me of the dangers of seeing this movie - or letting my kids see it? Seriously, I got two today in my email.

(Also, why do people who know me think I identify as a Christian? I don't get it.)

Oooh... what are teh dangerses?

Sara -- send 'em this in turn and tell 'em to fuck off. (Politely.)

Aw, Ned. You know I always say that politely.

Here's the link to the Snopes.com page which contains the email and details of TEH DANGERS:

http://www.snopes.com/politics/religion/compass.asp

Of course, the ironic part is that this is probably the best word of mouth advertising that the movie could get; a good number of people will see it to see what all the fuss is about.

the churchy backlash was inevitable. i'm surprised they haven't made a bigger deal out of the books before, they've been popular enough in the u.s. i guess the forces of light were too busy fighting harry potter.

I would like the film version to be 2.5 hrs of bears in armor, with Marlon Perkins voiceover.

Sara, send them Pullman's v long interview with the Archbishop of Canterbury and/or tell them to shut the hell up.

The second of two interviews, not sure if the first one is also online.

Sorry, the first occasion wasn't a conversation, it was the Archbishop's address on the subject of religious education.

Just to clarify, Laurel's excellent link was to the last page of the conversation. Here is the start of it. Any hysteria over this book/film should be dispelled by reading this conversation.

So we went to see the film last night, and...

Emma and I really enjoyed it. It wasn't amazing, and nowhere near as good as the books, but considering I think the books are amongst the best I've ever read, to match them is a big ask.

I thought the girl who played Lyra was terrific. Nicole Kidman was very good. They kept all the key elements of the book, both plot and characters. The aesthetic was TERRIFIC, from the 30s style dinner parties to Scoresby's ship to the panserbjorn's armour, I thought it all worked. The electric carriage was particularly cool.

I wish... I guess I wish it had been a little braver and a little more adult; I wish they'd made it twenty minutes longer, given more context to the world, to the Gyptians, had the bit on the fens, not quite telegraphed things as much. The first 30 minutes of the film were SO FAST. I wish they'd upped the scariness / gore a touch too, made it a 12 or a 15A.

But overall, thoroughly enjoyed it, and would go to watch it again on a 2for1 Wednesday, definitely.

I like the previous work of that polar bear in the Coke TV ads.

i have to go see this today for work. lol.

i'm pretty much with scik. it's hard tho if you know the books already.

I am seeing it specifically because of this comment in the NY Times review:

"Despite the pit stops and lovely clutter, some of it visibly influenced by David Lynch’s “Dune,”

that's a WARNING

not to people like me and spencer!

And HI DERE (who is seeing this in 3 hrs, 25 min)!

Bombing at the box office, apparently:

http://www.slashfilm.com/2007/12/08/box-office-golden-compass-disaster-juno-a-record-breaker/

I never ever wanted to see this until I just read that Dune quote.

But I think its not being 3 fucking hours long is kinda commendable.

I think Scik's review absolutely nailed it. Good. But could have been so much more...

The books are amazing.

I'd almost say the best order would be to see the movie, then read all 3 books, then see the sequels (assuming they get made).

The folks I went with who weren't familiar with the book liked it more than I did. I still liked it, though.

Nicole Kidman was great. omg the scene where she slaps her daemon.

Nice euphemism.

is anyone here as annoyed by the ending as every reviewer seems to be (they cut off the end of the book; apparently filmed it but took it out, i assume it'll be on the dvd or used for the opening of the next movie, or put on itunes as a premovie trailer before subtle knife, or some newfangled trick)

I wish whoever posted that snopes thing would have said that there is a MASSIVE SPOILER in the first sentence. Pity as I had another browser open to order the first two books off amazon.

Oh, man, Nicole Kidman's face, watching her try to arch an eyebrow. Cut back on the botox lady.

Cutting out the end was pretty bad, but I thought they stayed truer to the spirit of the book than most reviews led me to believe. Best parts, like the book, were Lyra's relationships with the Gyptians, Scoresby and Iorek.

Now that I know what these books are about I want to read them. I knew it was "some kind of cult following thing," and that's about all I knew. I will probably skip the movie since I don't care for the look of the animal souls that I've seen in clips from it.

Anti-religious children's books. Yesssssss my precious.

xpost- sorry about the spoiler; I'm sure I posted that link (and I know I only skimmed the snopes article). Be assured, though, there is way WAY more interesting material in the books than that; it's almost anticlimactic. (I *think* I know what spoiler you're referring to; it's in the first paragraph, though, not the first sentence, so not entirely sure...?)

My first chance to see this movie is going to be Dec. 16. I really want to go. The mixed reviews people have been giving it make me want to see it even more.

I really enjoyed the movie. Going to read the books now.

can't believe this thread is missing
http://content.ytmnd.com/content/3/e/6/3e621738b7fe09ccb101532a9336f033.jpg

The movie's ultra-mega-feh.

But imagine the pitch to the studios:

"It's Paradise Lost but with bears?"

"In space?"

"No...just bears."

The books are the greatest books written in the history of book writing. At least that's how I felt reading em.

i didn't like the movie, but want there to be more, because i liked the idea of the movie. overseas b.o. more boffo than domestic could help, but probably not.

the movie really bummed me out.

not because it was horrible, but because i felt like they really were in distance of making something really great, something that lived up to the books...the set designs and visual style was perfect, excactly how i imagined.

the girl cast as lyra was brilliant, didn't seem like one of those creepy child actors at all...kidman, james bond, james bond girl as the witch, john faa, farder coram, all great casting...having mckellen be the voice for iorek was a little distracting, but not as bad as i thought...don't really get why they had christopher lee come onscreen for like 3 minutes, i guess they thought more LORT mojo the better.

buuuuut....of course, it wasn't great, only OK, and it's a shame.

biggest thing for me was the movie could have used AT LEAST another hour. it felt terribly frenetic just speeding between plot points. i really like in the book the part where she becomes a part of the gyptian community and the long journey north...that lasted about 10 minutes. you don't really get a feeling for any of the characters.

also they chickened out on so much stuff, not necessarily the church stuff which i expected, but when they find the boy in the shack why did they change the fact that he was clutching a dead, decomposing fish? That made it so vile to me, really got home how terrible it would be to lose your daemon....so many little things like that.

but yes the religion was played down, but i could live with that. what i can't live with is the ending...for shame. ugh. the big thing for me at the end of that book is you realize that azreal is just as ruthless and bad as everyone else, or apparently so at that moment, that it's not just a simple matter of black and white, good guys vs. bad guys....i just reread the book and it's amazing how unlikeable he is throughout the whole thing...but i think his betrayal of lyra at the end is important for the whole series, and to have them just sail off into the sunset defeats the book.

so yep overall, i don't mean to be a trainspotter, i was more than okay with many of the things that jackson changed/left out in LOTR...because i felt that it was a filmmaker whose motivation was to make the best possible LOTR film he could...this felt like a filmmmaker who had the studio and the marketing dept in his ear saying "oh well you know we can't have it be too long" ...."We can't get into a religious controversy"..."We can't have daniel craig seem like a bad guy"...

shame, too, because weitz really did a number of things well, i'd be curious to read an interview w/him and i wonder how much he clased with the studio...i know that mckellen was forced on him, that was not his choice....

I just saw this and I thought it really sucked. :( A real shame, since I thought the cast were fantastic, and the design and look was pretty much perfect. There just didn't seem to be any real resolution - everything was simply skimmed over way too quickly.

I think this would have worked much better as a mini-series rather than a movie because so many things weren't properly established, like the importance of the daemon and why it was so bad to separate a child from theirs. I saw this with my sister who has never read the books and she was either bored or completely confused by the various characters, many of whom appeared for less than 10 minutes tops. But it did make her want to read the books - only because it was clear this was a good story being told at breakneck speed.