The Golden Compass

rogerebert.com ^ | 12/07/07 | Roger Ebert

[weegee]

Ebert is quite inconsistent.

[Sherman Logan]

Complete agreement. I’ve read the trilogy upwards of 20 times, and I get something new and profound from it with each reading.

[G8 Diplomat]

[Da_Shrimp]

Yes, she's called Mrs Coulter in the book, though as someone else said, she's described as a dark-haired beauty there rather than blonde.

The books were actually pretty well-written (thought the third was a bit of a disappointment). Not sure yet whether to see the film or not, as the plot will have to be pretty rushed to fit into two hours!

[grey_whiskers]

Armored bears?

"Does it not sicken a man, their padding wooly tread?"

But, Beavers in Chain Mail rock!

Full Disclosure: Never read the books, not going to, either, given the author's views. And if he wants to rail against mind-control, he should be attacking Marxists, not Christians.

Cheers!

[Sloth]

their popularity in the U.K. may represent more confident believers whose response to other beliefs is to respond, rather than suppress.

Believers? What, like a dozen of them? Western European churches are emptier than Michael Richards' day planner.

[goodolemr]

I sadly saw this last night. I really could care less about the anti-Christian overtones if the film had told an exciting story. It really pales in comparsion to other fantasy films (LotR, Harry Potter, Narnia). It was not a big sweeping epic that it wants to be.

[GOPPachyderm]

From an evaluation of the website to support Golden Compass:

The website for the upcoming film “The Golden Compass” is decisively simple in
its design and mission: to present Lyra’s world ... Going live well in advance of the
film’s December release, the site is obviously set to get the buzz started with
kids, asking questions like “what’s your daemon?” (a variation of the “what’s
your sign?” that I used to ask little girls when I was a kid) and “can you work
the Althieometer?”.

Instead of presenting the trailer on the homepage, the site uses audio to
introduce the characters of the film and their respective daemons, and then
provides a prompt to “Meet Your Daemon”. Twenty questions are presented which
promise to reveal “your true character and the form of your daemon.” Once you
complete the questionnaire, you can send your resulting daemon to your friends,
presumably to build a community of young daemons who will all later commune at
the theater. The site does a commendable job on its decidedly simple mission by
not overwhelming visitors with a bunch of extraneous features, and is a good
example of how restraint in design can actually improve intended results.
— Jason Scheidt, director of marketing, EyeWonder, Inc.

[GOPPachyderm]

Check out the previous post about ‘finding your inner demon.’

[x]

The books have been attacked by American Christians over questions of religion; their popularity in the U.K. may represent more confident believers whose response to other beliefs is to respond, rather than suppress.

That's just a cheap shot. First, how many readers of the books in the UK are believers? Second, how confident are they really? Third, what kind of a response do British Christians make to the book?

Could it be that most of the British readers aren't Christians? That they aren't very confident about their faith? Or that they haven't actually responed to Pullman?

Of course the big point is that disagreement and criticism aren't identical to "suppression." American critics of the book take Pullman's other comments into account. Ebert simply ignores them.

The problem with Pullman is that he wasn't content to simply be a writer and let the books he creates speak for themselves. He also preaches his cause. It makes him less of an artist and more of an ideologue.

People who disagree with his teaching are going to respond. And once a writer's made himself into a preacher, there's no going back to hiding behind the work. If his work is successful, it will stand alone without the preachments and weather controversy. But so far it doesn't look like it is.