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

Comments

my best line from the 80s

[jtroutman]

Bene Gesserit, eh? who do you think are? the cuisinart hat rack?

[aspartaimee]

i know a lot of people are stoked, but i have to say i don't get His Dark Materials. i read the first and half of the second.

come to think of it, i didn't read all the dunes either.

[taskboy3000]

I second this opinion about both Dark Materials (read the Golden Compass), and Dune (the first and second ones were compelling reads, the others trash).

What am I missing about the Dark Materials saga? I should also point out that the Harry Potter saga fails to capture my imagination.

Am I just getting to old for fantasy?

[ruthling]

Thirded. Thought Golden Compass was ok, the other two boring and infuriating by turns.

Don't remember how much Dune I read. Too much, no doubt.

I don't think it's an age thing, but I'm not sure what it is, as I have friends on both sides of this issue. (then again, I have friends who liked AI)

[jtroutman]

Mmmh. AI was an interesting movie. Flawed in many ways, but it does a very good job of wedging into your brain, and I found myself thinking about the various plot twists and statements on humanity long after I had watched it. I recall that after watching the movie, I had to immediately watch something else because I didn't want that to last thing I had seen before dreaming that night.

There is so much fiction of all genres out there now, and most of it is just dreck. I just don't have the time to wade through all of the crap fantasy and sci-fi out there like I did when I was a teenager (I used to read 5-10 books per week). I do enjoy the good ones, when I get enough pointers from other people to know they are worth the effort.

[modpixie]

as much as i love his dark materials and would thrill at a good movie version, i have my doubts that chris weitz would be able to pull this off. one of the things that really struck me about the HDM books was how well pullman dealt with class, and, well...i have this fear that weitz (who really doesn't do class well) would cast mike white and tim blake nelson as the gyptians. plus, he's not a very interesting director visually.

[radiotelescope]

See, I have very specific opinions about Pullman's writing. I thought _The Golden Compass_ was the first book of a really brilliant and insightful fantasy trilogy, but then Pullman wasn't able to write that trilogy and came out with _The Subtle Knife_ and _The Amber Spyglass_ instead. I'd say you should stop with _TGC_, but I can't even go that far; once Pullman spun out, it became obvious that he never had any idea where he was going, and was just throwing random implications around.

So my big hope for the movie is that someone -- and I really don't care whether it's Pullman -- is able to come up with a completely new ending. Ideally, one synthesized from the elements of _TGC_.

[prog]

I like this. I enjoyed the whole trilogy but I definitely loved the first book far more than the latter two.

Yes, I actually wasn't all that impressed by the larger resolution of the story, as much as I really liked the bittersweet final scene.