His Dark Materials stills up

[prog]

colorwheel notes that some publicity stills of The Golden Compass are available. Either they are rushing to public with them, before letting their FX people drop some daemons into the shots, or the film treatment is mangling how the daemons are supposed to work. ("You can only see them when they want to be seen" or some shit.) Look here I'm already being a HOW DARE YOU CHANGE ANYTHING fanboy but for christ I'd think this particular point pretty damn important, wouldn't you?

I hope the films are so good that I'll be bawlin my eyes out at the very last scene of the last film. Which is, now that I think of it, maybe one of my favorite ending-endings I've ever read.

Also if I randomly punch you in the face sometime it's because I used my Bene Gesserit training to foresee that at some point in the future you'd say "The name's Asriel. Lord Asriel. Hurr hurr hurr. Because it's James Bond get it?"

Comments

[radtea.livejournal.com]

I never got through the first chapter of Dune, and felt HDM was not quite there. I've enjoyed the Harry Potter books. For what it's worth my kids (ages 12 and 14, and big fantasy fans) weren't too keen on HDM either.

Personally, I have long had a rule that I don't read books with pronouns in the title--it's just way too cheap a narrative hook. I forgave Pullman that because it's a quote from Milton and all, and lots of people raved about the books. But they just lacked something, and I've never been able to figure out what it is. One aspect may be the relative lack of humour. Maybe I'm just superficial, but stories that take themselves too seriously, even ones about the end of the multiverse, don't grab me much.

All of which is too bad, because I think Pullman's crypto-gnostic theology is pretty cool.