'Golden Compass' Looks Leaden This Wkd (Anti-God movie bombs overseas, expected to flop in US)

Deadline Hollywood ^ | 12/07/07 | Nikki Finke

[wideawake]

They'd look at the failure and say, "See, I told you there wasn't enough homosexual underage sex in the movie!"

That's in the second book between the chracters Baruch and Balthamos.

[Lou L]

Golden Compass has sparked the ire of the Catholic League,

I hear this, and I'm confused. I heard that a group called the Conference of American Bishops (or something like that), has praised the movie...what gives? Can anyone explain why there's a difference of opinion?

[wideawake]

To Die For and The Others were good films.

But she has been in a string of terrible movies.

[Othniel]

Compass, shmumpass! Check this out: http://www.narniaweb.com/news.asp?id=1355&dl=14478175

[wideawake]

The United States Conference Of Catholic Bishops is the bureaucracy in Washington DC that officially coordinates the joint efforts of the Catholic hierarchy in the US.

It has all kinds of subsidiary offices, in charge of liturgy, education, etc. One of these offices is the media office, and it employs a film critic who apparently thinks this film is the bee's knees.

He gave his USCCB bosses his review and they rubberstamped it - I would expect that few bishops even bothered to actually watch it.

The few bishops who have are not happy with it.

The Catholic League is an organization of lay Catholics who are kind of analogous to the Jewish Anti-Defamation League.

They tend to do their homework, unlike the sluggish and bloated USCCB bureaucracy.

[HKMk23]

In other excellent movie news...

PIXAR’S "Ratatouille", starring the aspiring rodent chef, Rémy, is kicking Leonardo DiCaprio’s “Titanic” derriere in France.

[driftdiver]

“I hear this, and I’m confused. I heard that a group called the Conference of American Bishops (or something like that), has praised the movie...what gives?”

I think its the US Conference of Bishops. Don’t know what it is or why they ‘praised it’. Can’t see why they would praise it unless they had invested in it.

[driftdiver]

“What would this world be without MONEY.’

Broke - if you’re still doubting look to Communist Russia.

[Borges]

A recent film called ‘Margot At the Wedding’ (from the maker of ‘The Squid and the Whale’) is quite good. It has the breadth of a good short story.

[G8 Diplomat]

[L.N. Smithee]

If the third of the stories makes it to the screen, this is what the filmmakers are challenged with making palatable to a PG-13 crowd (from Entertainment Weekly, bold mine):

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...With success would come the handle-with-extreme-care challenge of adapting the next two books. Their ideas are more complex, the spiritual stuff more incendiary. In the third book, The Amber Spyglass, Pullman's slow-burning critique of religious dogma explodes with a Miltonian war in heaven. God is declared dead, hell is shut down, and two kids share an erotic encounter so magical it purges the cosmos of original sin...

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