Letters to the Editor
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Shawshank Redemption isn't a novel
I would have guessed one of you unmedicated anal retentive nit picking grammar correcting narcissicist assholes would have commented on that minor point a LONG time ago. C'mon dipshits it really IS all about you.
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If this is "hell," hand me a pitchfork!
I don’t know what movie Stephanie Zacharek saw, but it sure isn’t the same one I came away from all starry-eyed. “I can't tell who this thing is for,” she sneers. I’ll tell you – it’s for ME. Me and every other person, young or old, who appreciates a gutsy heroine (how many big-budget, tentpole movies have a female protagonist?), a dangerous and worthy quest, utterly beautiful visuals and an enthralling parallel world, with plenty of colorful and swashbuckling characters, true friendship and loyalty, villainy, sadness, joy, and yes, magic. Magic aplenty. I thought the alethiometer was amazing – what kid, after all, questions things like a truth compass in their world of chocolate frogs and flying broomsticks? I found the movie every bit as wonderful, in its own way, as the Lord of the Rings trilogy – considering it was written and made for KIDS.
The Golden Compass is head and shoulders above all the Harry Potter movies combined – and its battle between good and evil much more believable. Mrs. Coulter and her daemon-killing machine is far more horrible than anything Voldemort could ever come up with.
It is particularly, needlessly mean-spirited for Zacharek, after bashing everything from the actors to the budget, to moan about the “suffering” this movie supposedly puts “us” through, in light of the real bashing The Golden Compass is taking at the hands of conservative religious nuts. It is sad that her nasty rant will probably discourage people from giving the movie a chance. Go ahead, send a message about the kind of entertainment we want. Saw 5, anybody?
“Utter, soulless crap”? “A spectacle with no heart, no brains and no soul”? I beg to differ, and I am disgusted by Zacharek’s Scroogier-than-thou cynicism and her apparent belief that to be a legitimate movie critic one must blindly savage what is one of the best entertainments for children to emerge this entire year, if not this decade.
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Salon trolls now have two topics to write about
Salon now has two topics to write about
Religion (or anti religion more properly) and George Bush. I can pick out tomorrow's topics today.
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Glitz and Glamour With No Heart
Golden Compass is quite fun to watch, with plenty of visual spectacle to marvel at along the way, but after being swept along you end up feeling a bit cheated. This is not to say I didn't like it, but that it was done for money, not love. It feels mechanical, like we're being force fed this universe of beautiful technology and garbled terminology without actually feeling anything.
The daemons are totally cool, especially Sam Elliot's sidekick, which gets far too little screen time. As for Zacharek's complaint that the polar bear is "the most believable of the movie's fake-looking talking animals" I'm a little confused. Beowulf's animation was too "real" and now the animation in Compass isn't real enough—you can't have it both ways.
Whatever. Compass will make a decent trilogy, but hopefully the sequels will be less constrained by the meticulous meddling of the money machine.
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About the Editor's Choice letters
I find it curious that none of them were in defense of either the movie or the books, especially the books. Plenty of letters comparing them unfavoribly to Tolkien's books, while at least one letter writer made very good points in favor of Pullman compared to Tolkien and should have made the cut. I've read all six and, frankly, I'm much more likely to re-read Pullman. I think alot of your letter writers simply can't handle the Pullman.
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The Subtle Knife
I liked The Golden Compass, but the second book was the one that kept me up all night reading. The Specters were downright frightening and I enjoyed the interaction between Will and Lyra. I didn't read Lyra as brave in the first book. I thought she was fearless rather than brave...and kind of a brat.
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Cat Ballou
Lee Marvin's Kid Sheleen portrayed by a CGI hooch-swilling polar bear?
The mind boggles.
The pitch:
"It's like Cat Ballou, except with a polar bear, and some Star Wars Lord of the Rings and Neverending Story thrown in the mix and we will give it a Brazil and Dune look. We will make millions!"
I think dust is a metaphor for something illegal. This string theory stuff has the authorities quaking in their underwear and if they were not so whacked on happy pills, they would surely bury this threat to the established order. The very idea of a child in possession of a bullshit detector is anathema - those things are a threat to national security.
How come the monkey wasn't blue with wings?
"What a world! What a world!"
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I feel sorry for Stephanie Zacharek
Despite this scathing, angry review, I went to this movie last night with my gf and we both loved it. We both felt empathy for the characters and found it easy to become immersed into the world of this story...and btw, neither of us have read any of the books.
Oh, and I found the Catholic church references delightfully present (catholic looking robes and references to heresy abound :))
While I appreciate different perspectives, I found this review to be waaaaaaay off. I would hate to be the type of person who couldn't enjoy this movie.
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Dissenting view
When so many people (31 of 33 at last count) concur that a film is deeply flawed or 'its own kind of hell', it does cause me to reflect on my own, very different, impression. And quite different it was. I loved the film. I saw two superlatives. One was Dakota Blue Richards - contrary to Zacharek, I thought she brought Lyra stunningly to life (except in those smarmy, saccharine moments when she hugs Iorek, which nearly killed the film - these were clearly directorial missteps). Close behind was the creation of atmosphere - so many scenes were a perfect, eerie melding of this world and some other unknown one. In this latter respect GC left LOTR and Narnia far behind (nothing that compares to the silliness of how Rivendell was depicted, or the idiocy of the beaver house scene in Narnia). And let me say, i am a big fan of the LOTR and Narnia films.
I would agree that there are many weak point in Golden Compass, the ones above being the worst. Yes, more Eva Green and Daniel Craig would have been very welcome - every time they appeared the film took on new gravitas. And yes, the film was jumbled; I left the theater wondering how it would work if you had not read the book. I did think the much-heralded bear fight was simply OK, certainly not very scary, even for a kid. Otherwise I thought the CG effects were quite good, particularly with the daemons, and did not come across as 'money thrown at the film' or 'machinery'.
The complaint list could go on, but ultimately my experience was one of great delight and enchantment. I would not claim that this is a 'great' film, but for me it worked, far more than I had expected.
As to the question of Pullman as a writer compared to Tolkien as a writer. I grew up with Tolkien (the books)in the late 60s, early 70s. He is god-like to me. I saw each of the films 4 times in the theater, and found much to love there. But I think the quick, dismissive comparisons to Pullman are very wide of the mark. Pullman has created something new, vital, and deeply creative. Too soon to play favorites, much less to pose as literary critics.