Golden Compass
 

Awesome!:D:cool:

I heard that the movie was good but the books...I've heard that Philip Pullman is a raving atheist and makes the clergy the bad guys in all his movies. I read part of the Golden Compass before giving up on it and it sure did seem to be going along those lines.

The first book isn't as much of an attack as the rest, and the movie has toned it down.

But somewhere in the second book it goes from a general comparison to an outright hate for organized religion and the Catholic Church rather specifically (The Magisterium).

But, I did enjoy the plot in the first two, the third was too.. well something. I didn't get through it, and I'm a reader.

While parts of the movie sound interesting, I refuse to see it support Pullman (the author of the book) who blatantly says "My books are about killing God." And the Golden Compass is no difference.

The primary villains of the trilogy (of which GC is part) are the Magisterium (a renamed Catholic Church) and the Authority (known to you and me as the Lord Almighty).

And while the company that made the film said they pulled the Anti-Christian parts from the film, I'm surely not going to support it and support Pullman in doing so. And by NO means am I an uber-Christian. I just can't believe this is the kind of movie we're letting our children go see when we know what it represents...

Honestly, the movie will probably have little remnants of the book as far as those issues.
It's less an attack on Catholicism/organized religion and more of a criticism of an all powerful theocracy.

It was okay. And that goes for both the movie and the book.

In the movie they did show the questioning of authority and the dangers of institutions that engage in mind control and try to get rid of anyone whose beliefs are different- like some religious organizations have done in the past. But they did not have any overt criticism of religion.

Although IIRC, they only do some analysis in The Golden Compass book and they get to the downright criticism in the two sequels.

I prefer Narnia.

I was talking with my mom today about this movie. It seems that there are a lot of fundamentalist Christians picketing the movie at the hometown theater.

Hooray for their 1st Amendment rights and all, but I don't really have any respect for someone who would encourage others to boycott a movie they haven't seen, which is in turn based on a book they haven't read. Doesn't it actually make more sense for someone to read the book/movie in question, and then form their opinion based on it, instead of bashing it based on whatever the pastor of the moment has to say about it? That doesn't make much sense to me.

I agree with you, but thankfully the actual Catholic Church has stayed out of the issue. And most of us ignore the Catholic League. They're a few wafers short of a Mass.

This made me chuckle.

Thanks Pope, you're cool.

Btw, you don't photograph well. Try some cucumbers on those bags under your eyes. Or a little Oil of Olay maybe!

http://www.catholicnews.com/data/movies/07mv242.htm
From the Catholic News Service's review of The Golden Compass

Its a really nice looking movie. The production values are high without being annoyingly obvious.

I agree...don't know if I can sit thru 2 more.

did enjoy the bear getting his jaw knocked off...heheh

The fight scene with the bears was worth it. It was a good movie. I'm all for allowing people to excercise their free will, and that seemed to be what the Magisterium was trying to prevent people from doing.

Ugh, have none of you read Paradise Lost for christ sake? That's what he's basing a lot of his material on, not just his hatred (justified I think, in some ways) of organized religion.

Go read Milton, then read the damn books before you judge this.

So lame:rolleyes:

I read both Paradise Lost and the Golden Compass in college (different classes) and whether the connection was intentional on the part of the author or something someone else realized, I can see what you're getting at. I haven't read the other books in the series but I am interested to see how they play out in terms of this issue.

And I totally agree that picketing something you've neither read nor seen is just ridiculous. They're only propogating the statement the author made about organized religion... Moo?

or Baaa.
It's a movie. You have the choice to see it or not. Pick one.

That's the only thing I want to see. Bears make the world go 'round.

People protest things all the time without actually testing out the product first. They would rather protest for good measure than pay their money, etc. If you don't agree with the protest, don't protest.

I do see protests as free advertisement. I won't be going to see the Golden Compass until the dollar theater, either way. The bears can wait.

Actually, all the controversy makes me MORE curious about it, so I'll definitely go see it now.

See, you're willing to spend money directly. I can wait until it comes on TV. :p

I got a notice through our Catholic Committtee on Scouting Chairman back in September about this movie. (I had heard of neither the book nor the author until that notice.) It was more of a heads-up rather than a boycott issue. Last week, my son's principal sent a letter home saying that the series was being pulled from the library. (It's a private school.) He said that it was a precautionary measure until this could be sorted out. He also said that none of the books had been checked out since 2000.

:) I'm not involved in this boycott. I just don't pay full price for 99% of the movies I see in theaters.

I watched an interview with Pullman who stated that Paradise Lost was his favourite piece of literature and that he got goosebumps reading it, thus there's a lot of Milton influence within the books.
I just think this is dumb overall-reading Harry Potter won't make you a witch, reading the Golden Compass (Northern Lights in England, some trivia for you) won't make you an atheist.
Come on, armoured bears, different universes, standing up to a wrongful and oppressive institution? Read that into it instead of assuming anyone who reads Pullman stops believing in God.
It's his epic, he's said so himself.

Honestly, my issue with the series is that the books just weren't that good. And I like "teen" fantasy/science fiction.

And, despite the controversy, it appears that the movie's bombing. I doubt that the "boycotts" are the reason for this... The reviews were very underwhelming.

I don't think the issue for many people is really that watching this stuff will "make" you into anything.

The issue is with propaganda and the hypocrisy of ridiculing the existence of some propaganda and agendas while pushing one's own (however overt or subtle it may be). That's like saying that everyone's trying to subtly brainwash the world into thinking something...except you.

It's not as bad as folks like Michael Moore because it's an entertaining and fantastical (is that a word?) spin on it all, but it drives the point home to at least someone.

Its not as bad as eragon is it? That was a painful read. I was going to pick up the pullman books. The movie was fun to watch.

No I think it's better than Eragon. I've read both series... (yeah I can be a bit masochistic and/or obsessive I haven't figured out why)

Eragon is, IMO, an undeveloped, poorly written, story by a bad author. There's potential, but it is so obvious the kid is 15 and if it weren't for Harry Potter and the fact that his parents self-published him, Eragon wouldn't exist.

His Dark Materials is a cool idea. I love Lyra's world, I love the concept of daemons and the subtle knife and all of the environment, and Golden Compass/ Northern Lights is not bad at all. However I think the series is a downward slope where it becomes less about the story and more about Pullman's point. Narnia was so good because you didn't need to read the allegory to love the books. There's no way to avoid the "message" behind HDM because it's so.... OMG in your face.

And I say this as a person who's very fond of alternate reality novels, dystopias, post-apocalyptic, other-worldly fascist societies etc... so the fact that "The Church" is the "bad guy" doesn't inherently bother me. But it was less "Look a story" and more "don't you see my POINT, it's BIG, and DRAMATIC, Religion is BAD"

That said, YMMV, because I've heard some people who love it, some who hated it and they ran the gamut from Conservative Christian to atheist on both sides. I'm just kind of "meh" about it.

eragon was painful...

That's at least 2 hrs of my life I regret...a movie that looked like it was directed by a 15 years from a story a 12 year old wrote....nothing even remotely original...

They should have called Eragon

Lord of the Star Wars: The Fellowship of the Blue Dragon

Oh I refused to watch the movie.

If anyone dislikes Eragon, or enjoys snarky commentary there's a site out there that "sporked" Eragon and even rewrote certain chapters to show how they could be made not to suck.

It also points out thing like how Eragon is somehow drawing a bow and holding several extra arrows, so he probably has three hands, and how they push the horses so far and hard without feeding them or anything that they're probably zombie horses.

And I found the link http://eragon-sporkings.wikispaces.com/