ALERT ALERT ALERT

[cleolinda]

Full Golden Compass trailer now online. (Hey! There's Christopher Lee!) As for voices you hear in the trailer, Kristin Scott Thomas will voice Stelmaria; Kathy Bates is doing Hester, as I'd already suspected (ETA: Huh. The clip I posted the other day isn't actually in the trailer); and as for the new Iorek voice that I, for one, was not all that happy about: " 'It was a studio decision…You can understand why you would cast Ian McKellen for anything,' Weitz told us. 'But letting go of Nonso was one of the most painful experiences on this movie for me. I need to say about Nonso that he is one of the most promising and soulful young actors I have encountered in England and I’ve worked here for quite a bit now and he’s actually in the next Mike Leigh…But it was, uh, that was kind of a dark day for me. I kinda wanna go out of my way to point out how much I love Nonso’s work. And that’s that.' " It just kills me because Kathy Bates is right for Hester, and I can totally see (hear?) Kristin Scott Thomas doing Stelmaria, but... McKellen is just wrong for Iorek. I love him, but... the voice they had in the earlier trailers was just so perfect.

Comments

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

I didn't really have a problem following the opening, so I was trying to think of something, but... yeah, the alternate universe thing is pretty apparent. Again, just fishing. Now that I think about it, I think I did find it a teensy bit disorienting, but in a really interesting way. I felt more like I wanted to read more and find out what was going on, rather than the opposite, but that was just me. The books can be pretty polarizing--my aunt loathes them, for example, but for her it's a very cut-and-dried religious issue ("blasphemy" was the word she used, I think. And she loves Harry Potter, so she's not one of those book-burning types).

The effects, though, have gotten better trailer by trailer--they seem to be so eager to promote the movie that they're trying to get the material out there before it's done. (And give the issue you mentioned, about getting prospective audiences to understand the core magical premise, I don't blame them.) I remember in the first preview that they literally had some of the effects sketched in, like, "Here's the world we're going to build, but we haven't done it yet." Even Gollum got better from trailer to movie, so I'm still holding out hope here.

[ter369.livejournal.com]

The books can be pretty polarizing--my aunt loathes them, for example, but for her it's a very cut-and-dried religious issue ("blasphemy" was the word she used, I think. And she loves Harry Potter, so she's not one of those book-burning types).

That's part of what intrigues me. And it's not like I don't read Shakespeare, Jacobean playwrights, or go to the opera, where the texts are challenging in different ways. I refuse to be defeated by Mr. Pullman's prose when his ideas seem so compelling!

Still -- on the religious issue -- I do wonder just how familiar people are with the major world religions, after all the comments post-Deathly Hallows along the lines of, "Did Rowling have to make Harry like Jesus, yeesh." Because my familiarity with Matthew/Mark/Luke/John somehow missed the part where Jesus of Nazareth returned to life, married his best friend's sister, and was still around nineteen years later sending his son off to schul.

(I hope I haven't polarized your post by discussing religion ..... but good for your aunt for at least tackling Rowling.)

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Hey, no problem. What's weird is that my aunt and uncle have always been pretty strict/protective with my cousin, but other than that, they're completely cool--I always sit around with my uncle and talk film at holiday lunches. And my aunt loves Harry Potter through and through, is fairly open-minded, etc. I think the actual phrase "We're going to kill God" (or something very like that) is where she just shut off, though. Like, we're going to kill God, do not collect $200, game over. I can't really say whether you'd like the books, but I think you would enjoy the interplay of ideas at least (whether you agreed with them or not). I would argue that Pullman isn't so much anti-religion as he is anti-church; I mean, they're still talking about the Republic of Heaven in the third book.

[christwise.livejournal.com]

I was on Pullman's website and he said that he is indeed anti-church, not anti-religion. He mentioned the scene in Amber Spyglass when the Authority disintegrates and it's described as pieces of paper flying away (or something) which he thinks is a significant description. I'm not explaining this well but in the end, no, he's not an angry athiest.

His website also mentioned that the religious aspect is going to remain in the films. He said he wouldn't have agreed to it if it wasn't. But then again, he goes on for a while about metaphors which may be his code for "the religious stuff is going to be there but only if you're really really REALLY looking for it." So I guess we'll just have to see. And we'll have to wait a while since it doesn't really get going until the later books.

Brokeback Mountain was the gay cowboy movie. The Subtle Knife will be the gay angel movie (I hope).

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

You know, if they sell it correctly, I think an anti-church movie could fly fairly well. Not anti-church in the sense of, you know, anti-actual-church-as-we-know it, anti-Religious-Right, but if you portray it as a quasi-government authority that's (literally, what with the Metatron and the Authority and all) taken the place of the True God, well, that's a very Protestant notion anyway, and "rebellion" tends to play really well with American audiences, as themes go.

[christwise.livejournal.com]

I mean, the trailer was playing up the Magisterum (or however you spell it) as the evil enemy so I'm feeling pretty good about it. They could definitely make it work.