~wide smile~ I have been listening to the unabridged book on tape of the Golden Compass and after looking at the previews I believe that the movie will be close to the book. Is anyone else excited about this movie?
Me!!
I found on the movie website a really neat test that will tell you your daemon. Mine is either a jackal or a fox. Neat!
Mine is an Ocelot. I can live with that.
Mine's a sparrow, like Baretta.
Cool Daemon.
Mine is a snow leopard. For some reason I was expecting a squirrel...
Link to website is: http://www.goldencompassmovie.com/
I'm not a huge fan of the books, but i liked them okay. I always thought they would make good movies, and this movie looks great so far.
My daemon is a Crow.
My daemon is Azaria, a tiger. I always wondered what the growling sound coming from my abdomen was. Now I know: it's a tiger!
Being truthful, I got Delila the Mouse.
"Modest, humble, relaxed, passive and spontaneous"
Would have much preferred a fox, or a large feline. *sigh*
well at least you didnt get a Raccon lol oh man lol I wanted a bear lol hahaha
Being truthful, I got Delila the Mouse.
I got Hypatia the Lynx...not bad I guess could have had worse but like Haun I would have preferred a Bear,lol
My daemon was the foxy Bryanna. How ironic.
I liked the first book best. The second book pushed religion buttons I'm not real comfortable with: God is dying, a Satan figure is winning.
Found the third book kind of slow. The imagery is pretty good though. SHould make a great film.
The first book was fantastic but the latter two degenerated into incomprehensible anti-Catholic hatred. Still, I'm looking forward to the movie.
And look at you guys, swooning over pet critters like 12-year-old schoolgirls getting their first glimpse of puppies and kittens.
MY daemon is a...a...sonnuva$^@$)(* , it's a cat! I hate cats!
Interesting... mines a spider.
Her name is Eumelia.
My wife's gonna hate that.
This looks like a fabulous movie.
I didn't know anything about it till I saw this thread. Thanks for the info. :-)
The first book was fantastic but the latter two degenerated into incomprehensible anti-Catholic hatred. Still, I'm looking forward to the movie.
A friend of mine describes it as the anti-Narnia.
I love the irony of selling realism through high-fantasy.
My Daemon is Anwyn, the tigress.
I am reading the book right now, largley because of the trailer.
Its a great world very unlike the fantasy I have read before.
Neat, I will have to tell my wife about this, I know we'll want to see it.
Oh, and I have chosen :
Philon, a Gibbon.
Aspadora, a crow.
My Daemon is Anwyn, the tigress.
I am reading the book right now, largley because of the trailer.
Its a great world very unlike the fantasy I have read before.
An interesting follow-up, I finished the book, and thought the website was cool and I really liked the idea of daemons - sort of familiars, but more like the ancient greek concept of genii - anyway I had my wife select a daemon - oddly enough she also received a tiger, a male named Aesop, I can just imagine story time with the kid's "Aesop's Tiger Tales." Going to restaurants would be fun, its not like your tiger daemon could sit on your lap.
While I liked the idea that was one of the things I found that made the world break down a bit - do you feed daemons - if so two tigers in the family and I'll be broke, and in public venues (say the bus or the train) having space for them, and the variability of space requirements, it would really change size and space requirements for a lot of things.
Will the UK version of the movie retain the original name instead, I wonder? Just downright odd how they rename things before sending them to the US (makes me feel a little condescended to, honestly).
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I think they will/have called it the Golden Compass here. I suspect the name change is done at the behest of the US publishers rather than the UK - since we would not get the possible (or possible lack of) cultural resonance in the US. Maybe Northern Lights doesn't resonate so much in the US (or parts of it, since the UK is a small country in Northern Europe whereas the US covers the arctic to (almost) the tropics) and the other two books are named after 'things', so maybe they changed it for consistency. Same thing with Harry Potter and the Philosopher's/Sorcerer's Stone - changed by the US publishers as they thought kids didn't want to buy books on philosophy. And it was called the Sorcerer's Stone when the film came out. US cultural imperialism is much more prevalent than the UK taking a patronising attitude to the people we share a language with. ;-)
I prefer 'The Golden Compass' to 'Northern Lights': it fits better in the context of this book and the titles of the other books.
Suidan, a chimpanzee.
I prefer 'The Golden Compass' to 'Northern Lights': it fits better in the context of this book and the titles of the other books.I prefer Northern Lights, personally - sounds a bit more mysterious. I don't know if the titles are allusions to other things, like Pilgrim's Progress or whatever.
On the wiki, it says that the compass in the title is the navigational compass - the kind that is two prongs that allows you to dissect an angle - not the alethiometer.
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On the wiki, it says that the compass in the title is the navigational compass - the kind that is two prongs that allows you to dissect an angle - not the alethiometer.
Hmm, I have my doubts about that particular suggestion - the alethiometer seems the obvious allusion to me. Kyr's wiki source sounds somewhat arbitrary as the book title to me.
On the wiki, it says that the compass in the title is the navigational compass - the kind that is two prongs that allows you to dissect an angle - not the alethiometer.Hmm, I have my doubts about that particular suggestion - the alethiometer seems the obvious allusion to me. Kyr's wiki source sounds somewhat arbitrary as the book title to me.
Okay well here's the quote:
Title
For some time during the pre-publication process, the series of novels was known as The Golden Compasses. The word Compasses referred to a pair of compasses—the circle-drawing instrument—rather than a navigational compass. Pullman then settled on Northern Lights as the title for the first book, and continued to refer to the trilogy as The Golden Compasses.[5]
In the US, in their discussions over the publication of the first book, the publishers Alfred A. Knopf had been calling it The Golden Compass (omitting the plural), which they mistakenly believed referred to Lyra's alethiometer, because the device resembles a navigational compass. Meanwhile, in the UK, Pullman had replaced The Golden Compasses with His Dark Materials (a title that Pullman had taken from a line in Paradise Lost) as the title of the trilogy. But according to Pullman, the publishers had become so attached to The Golden Compass that they insisted on publishing the US edition of the first book under that title, rather than Northern Lights, the title used in the UK.[5]
As the book was known as The Golden Compass in the US and Canada, New Line Cinema chose to use that title for the film adaptation.
For anyone that just wants the link to the site her you go: Golden Compass wiki
I just finished the book and was intrigued by the world, so I poked around a bit more and saw other similar comments on the book title. I appreciate that wikipedia is not the most accurate data source in the world, but in this case I think I'll go with it - of course your mileage may vary.
Cheers
I'm still stoked that my wife and I both came up with tiger Daemon's.
I've read the books, and I saw the movie a few days ago. I enjoyed it, but it was alot of info crammed into a short time. I wish they had stretched it another hour. They also stopped before the first book ends. I guess that wanted to end on a happy note for the kiddies. I liked it, but it wasn't the book. I felt like they took out the soul or deamon of the book. You can tell they decided to take out alot of the religious aspects of the book. They also made it more child friendly.
These books are kind of the anti-Narina. They show that childhood can suck. There are moral based, sexual based, religious based ideas that everyone has to cope with. This movie while good had no soul. they castrated what could have been great.
Fizz
Saw the movie last week at a sneak preview, and read the first two & 1/3 books during the summer. Strangely enough, I think the movie tries to be too faithful to the book and fails to flow properly as a movie. Most introduction-to-franchise movies have the problem of lots of exposition and character introduction for too little time. But the Golden Compass movie handled each such scene remarkably well.
Unfortunately, the scenes weren't connected together at all, so it's difficult to determine how the characters/groups/ideas all fit together (unless you already know from the books). The movie should have been longer, but that time should have been used for transitional scenes. The effects and acting (and sound/visual editing, costumes, etc.) were all so wonderful, if the flow had been better, Golden Compass would have been a major Oscar contender.
And I've got sort of a problem with folks comparing the His Dark Materials trilogy to the Narnia series. Narnia was very dark and scary, in its way, and dealt largely with themes of innocence lost, paradise regained (and lost), and being responsible without trying to be "grown-up". Two books in, HDM seems to be covering pretty similar themes.
Frankly, even from a religious standpoint, both Lewis and Pullman wrestle with notions of the meaning and implications of faith, especially relating the individual's faith to the doctrine of society-at-large. It really burns my bacon to hear folks online and in RL casually tossing out uninformed notions of what the books are all about. A guy at work said that his kid's school asked the parents to cross out the HDM books from the monthly Scholastic book order slip. Let the kids (and adults!) read it and make up their own minds, I say.
Mine's a sparrow, like Baretta.
He kept his eye on the sparrow but lived with a cockatoo. That poor bird of his must have gone through such fits of insecurity and jealousy.
I'm an ocelot?
Ocelot a BS.
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Visually stunning. Great art direction. I loved the design of all the gadgets and architecture.
But possibly because I have not read the books, I felt that there was too much crammed in this movie. It reminded me of the beginning of The Fellowship of the Ring. They crammed a lot of exposition and detail into that movie at the start, but eventually it settled down and I could enjoy myself.
It never stopped with this movie. It was like 16 different 5 minute set pieces. It felt like the little girl (who is great by the way) could have always been giving the movies subtext, "And now on to the next part of our adventure" . . .
All that being said, I did like it. Its a pretty good fantasy movie in a time when there is a flood of fantasy crap out there. I just wish it had settled down a bit.
I love the books and enjoyed the movie, but this is a totally fair review. Beautiful and a decent interpretation of the book, but just too much, too fast and without connections.
I liked it. I thought the acting was great. I especially thought Lyra was played very well. I think kids will really enjoy this movie. It's fun with lots of colorful characters. And who wouldn't want a daemon?
I have to say that I'm sick of seeing Sam Eliot in movies though. He only plays one character.
My daemon is: Hyratia, a snow leopard
Theonilla
Tigress
Interesting...I wonder how many kinds there are.
I was highly disappointed. I thought the movie played like a series of highlights from the book, and left out and changed all of my favorite details, and (spoiler!) ended before the actual climax of the book. Such a let down.
They should have told us the story through the eyes of its protagonist, Lyra, instead of constantly explaining everything with clumsy dialouge. I thought the Witches sub plot got particularly shafted due to this.
It makes me hope that they don't even make the Subtle Knife and Amber Spyglass.
Saw the movie last week at a sneak preview, and read the first two & 1/3 books during the summer. Strangely enough, I think the movie tries to be too faithful to the book and fails to flow properly as a movie. Most introduction-to-franchise movies have the problem of lots of exposition and character introduction for too little time. But the Golden Compass movie handled each such scene remarkably well.
Unfortunately, the scenes weren't connected together at all, so it's difficult to determine how the characters/groups/ideas all fit together (unless you already know from the books). The movie should have been longer, but that time should have been used for transitional scenes. The effects and acting (and sound/visual editing, costumes, etc.) were all so wonderful, if the flow had been better, Golden Compass would have been a major Oscar contender.
And I've got sort of a problem with folks comparing the His Dark Materials trilogy to the Narnia series. Narnia was very dark and scary, in its way, and dealt largely with themes of innocence lost, paradise regained (and lost), and being responsible without trying to be "grown-up". Two books in, HDM seems to be covering pretty similar themes.
Frankly, even from a religious standpoint, both Lewis and Pullman wrestle with notions of the meaning and implications of faith, especially relating the individual's faith to the doctrine of society-at-large. It really burns my bacon to hear folks online and in RL casually tossing out uninformed notions of what the books are all about. A guy at work said that his kid's school asked the parents to cross out the HDM books from the monthly Scholastic book order slip. Let the kids (and adults!) read it and make up their own minds, I say.
Well, the thing is, Pullman has said himself that he wrote His Dark Materials in response to Narnia. So comparisons are not only expected, they are necessary when analyzing the work. Pullman has stated the His Dark Materials was an exploration of fantasy and religion from a non-religious standpoint (he felt Narnia was too heavy handed).
Trina, a Tigress.
His Dark Materials is a cracking a series- I don't think I've ever read books where the fundamental underpinnings of organized religion are so elegantly kicked at.
I don't see it as anti any particular doctrine, rather it's opposed to the trammeling of human spirit in the name of dogma and institutional control. Whether it's Soviet Communism or Catholicism or Focus on the Family, it's about maintaining an agenda through control of thought, and free questioning is as poison to any such organization.
That said, as a Fantasy, I'm not 100% convinced of it's greatness, particularly in the second book, but it's the questions raised for readers that make the whole enterprise worthwhile.
My wife called me in to the living room in disgust when she heard Cheri on "The View" denounce Golden Compass since it has DEMONS (not Deamons) in it. If yer going to make a statement on may subject, especially when millions are watching, it'd help if you actually do some research.
Yeah, this from the Muppet who remains unconvinced the world isn't flat- why do they give this moron air time? I swear you'd get more intelligent conversation from a spastic colon.