Ronge Now On Right Track In Terms of Compass' Direction

Last week I posted an article on this blog raising an eyebrow at Barry Ronge's review of The Golden Compass. I was surprised in that review because Barry Ronge had downplayed the anti-Christian statements made in this film, probably because it's the sort of delightful fantasy that seems appropriate for a Christmas flock. It's also the sort of uncomplicated populist view that is easy. Except that Pullman conceived his stories with an explicitly anti-Christian intention, employing an anti-control ethos. And knowing the Christian community, it was probably a little naive to think that this film wouldn't create a storm.

‘Why should Christians sit back and meekly accept these attacks on their faith? When Muslims think their religion has been insulted, they take to the streets, but when Christians speak out, they are called bigots’

Just so: in today's Sunday Times Mr Ronge set things right with this article: Movie sparks a virtual jihad for Jesus. This made the front page of News & Opinion.
In my review of the movie and Barry's review I said: I think Barry is trying to say that it's a flick that can be enjoyed without getting drawn into religious bickering. This is confirmed in this second article of his. Although audiences ought to enjoy the flick for its superb story, its creative exposition of courage and loyalty, and enthralling special effects, it is just too much of stretch to expect Christian audiences not to screetch foul and add poster burning to carol services all over the country.

Barry Ronge calls the brou ha ha erupting the biggest storm in a tea-cup since Harry Potter. Well, for sure Christians are going to object to the nomenclature involved: witches and demons, and the church/Magisterium itself is represented by very Dark Lords. It does demonstrate how silly and precious the Church is about itself. If I want to stir, I can write a story and call my pet dog, who is supremely loyal and good, Demon, and my dad, Lucifer, and basically subvert all the mythology. Does that make it evil? Evil stories essentially encourage malevolence, they have an anti-hero, and they often lack virtue. Most movie stories never eschew courage, and courage is a form of standing by one's beliefs. The Golden Compass is essentially about this, and this is a very encouraging and heartwarming trait in a young person. Harry Potter does the same, so does Jesus, Robin Hood, Hercules and Luke Skywalker. More important than names is intent, motivations, and actions. That's why telephone books don't inspire, but stories about virtue do.

Christians forget, when you criticise their faith, that you are not always attacking morality. You're more often than not attacking dogmatism (the same thing Pullman drives against). Blind morality isn't moral. In Christianity you are revered all the more for accepting something on the least amount of evidence. Sometimes this doesn't work. The pastor of a church I once belonged to went to Mozambique and died of malaria. He died because he refused to take anti-malarials, and made it a faith issue. He left behind a wife and four children. It's that sort of dogmatism that is dangerous and scary.

Christians and atheists ought to be able to agree that what is important is that community is preserved. We ought not to find reasons, take out licenses, to attack one another because the fine print doesn't match. Our intentions, our basic moralities ought to be enough. We ought to find those things that affirm, that we can agree upon. The rest is silliness.

Golden Compass world premiere (REUTERS VIDEO)

Actors Nicole Kidman, Eva Green, Daniel Craig and Dakota Blue Richards attend the world premiere of 'The Golden Compass'.

The story is set in a world where witches rule the northern skies, ice bears are the bravest warriors and where every human is joined by an animal spirit representing their soul.

But the film has already come under attack from conservative Christian groups for portraying religion in an unflattering light.

Also: Taking Direction From 'The Golden Compass'

Whose Your Daemon?

It's an interesting concept; that our spirit can be represented by some animal form. The North American Indians went as far as making this part of their nomenclature. It raises an interesting question: what animal spirit would represent you and me?

Nicole Kidman chose the kitten and a tiger, and I have to admit, I have a similar altercation, as it were, between a 'lower, passive' spirit, and a more 'assertive' spirit. I thought about it over lunch and I guess I would choose - wait for it - the parrot as my kitten, and the eagle as my tiger.

Interestingly, at school I was nicknamed Tintin for a while, but for the most part: 'Bird'. Not sure why, think it was a combination of doing an English oral on birds in Std 6, and being dumb enough to distribute scrapbooks and information books on my hobbie to a critically amused audience. The name was further reinforced by my being fleet of foot, and because cycling to school blew my hair into a sort of punk blond hair style (which vaguely imitated the cockatiels' 'kuif') and a Bart Simpson overbite which I was told was like a beak. External braces somehow contributed to the rickety 'birdy' appearance.

I can't blame my class mates entirely though. I bred cockatiels and lovebirds when I was in High School and occasionally went into the aviary before school to feed them. I'd arrive at school and learn, to my dismay, I had some bird poo on the back of my blazer. This happened a few times and that's how the name stuck - like poo to a blazer.

I find the parrot metaphor interesting. A parrot is a colorful, much parodied bird, but it is also intelligent and expressive and curious. It's also reminiscent of a ventriloquist's dummy; that is the parrot says what is observably true often unacceptable to say, but nevertheless true. I'm all of those. I'm also not the most socially well adjusted human being on the planet, and I think I do have the habit of regurgitating information that isn't necessarily mind - but information I have taken to heart. This blog is enough evidence of this. But it's not the full story either.

I remember reading the loving Richard Bach's story of the seagull, Jonathan Livingstone. There is something pure and heartbreakingly sad about the seagull, who mews and sweeps over the oceans of the world, and can only feed by dipping its beak and its body into the waters of the world. A dangerous manoeuvre to be sure.

I don't identify 100% with the seagull, because they are also scavengers. I am not sure they are that dignified. I aspire and sometimes explore the strength and vision of the eagle, with its predatory and strategic approach.

Nevertheless the eagle is a fragile creature, itself easily hunted by men, and shot (whether on a telephone or mountaintop perch). It is a perceptive and powerful creature, disciplined and hardy, and an explorer of the heights. More than other quality, this animal embodies the beauty of freedom and truth, expressed by its beautiful strong angelic wings. The eagle is able to see the details and the surrounding terrain better than perhaps any other animal. It is also able to move effortlessly over this environment. This is a quality I believe myself capable of, on occasion, and one is obviously consistently inspired towards this sort of power of presence and perception.

The Golden Compass: The (Bravery and Courage Behind the) Making of an Epic Fantasy

Somewhere in England a cowboy and a witch are flirting on a balloon.

"It's a flying boat," clarifies Sam Elliott, the weather-beaten character actor who plays Texas aeronaut Lee Scoresby. Indeed, the airship looks like a dinghy held aloft by multiple balloons, a visual detail not mentioned in The Golden Compass, the first book in the wildly popular His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman.

"One way to go is the traditional wicker-basket balloon," director Chris Weitz says. "But the kids want more these days." He's wearing a black T-shirt, a tan sweater with rolled-up sleeves, and aqua corduroys. He ambles around the soundstage, casually observing at the production he's responsible for. The budget for the film adaptation of The Golden Compass is $180 million, and almost no element of its production has been simple. "It's really hard to make a movie," Weitz says. "It's hard enough to make a small, bad one — trying to make a big, good one is definitely a challenge to your physical and mental stamina."

Eva Green, who plays the witch Serafina Pekkala, gets ready for the scene, flexing her jaw, adjusting her dress, quietly saying her lines to herself while she makes delicate figures with her left hand. Then she and Elliott climb up a 20-foot-high platform and into the ship. The walls all around them are a punishingly bright shade of green, useful for both burning your retinas and letting digital artists superimpose CG backgrounds later.

A technician turns on a humongous fan, on loan from the farm of Henry Braham, the largest producer of industrial hemp in England, who just happens to also be the film's cinematographer. With the actors' hair artfully blowing back, the balloon-ship begins to rock and sway. Its motion is controlled by another technician, who's wielding a toy plastic spaceship mounted on top of a joystick. A Panavision camera affixed to a SuperTechno 50 crane does an elaborately choreographed dance around the balloon while Green and Elliott look into the distance, which at some point in the future will be more than the color green.

Green says, "There's a prophecy about that child, Mr. Scoresby. She'll decide the war which is to come." Then Elliott muffs a line.

"Sorry, sweetie," he says.

The shot gets set up again. Green looks down at the technology surrounding her. "I feel like I'm in a computer game," she says, cheerfully enough. If she were, it's not clear whether the game would be winnable.

Set in a world of shape-shifting animals and armored polar bears, The Golden Compass was aimed at kids, but it has also been devoured by adults. Drawing in equal measure from Grimm's fairy tales and Milton's Paradise Lost, Pullman's trilogy has become wildly popular over the past decade, selling more than 5 million copies in the US alone. The Golden Compass won an assortment of awards and was dubbed "the most ambitious work since Lord of the Rings" by New Statesman.

In the wake of the success of the Lord of the Rings and Narnia franchises, it might seem like a no-brainer to use His Dark Materials as the basis for another series of epic fantasy movies — but this franchise comes with so many extra degrees of difficulty, it seems unbelievable that it ever even got a green light.

First is the sheer scope of the book: The action shifts from Oxford to London to the frozen northern wastelands of "Norroway" to a hole ripped in the sky underneath the Aurora Borealis, a portal to other worlds. Then there is the notion of "daemons," one of Pullman's great literary inventions. Humans in The Golden Compass have an externalized soul in the form of a talking animal. Children's daemons can change forms at will, but when they reach adulthood, the daemon's flesh becomes fixed and reflects the personality of its human: A servant might have a dog, a sailor might have a dolphin, and an Arctic adventurer might have a snow leopard. The daemons stay in close proximity, which means that every single scene in the movie could potentially have CG squirrels and golden monkeys scampering around. "It's like making two different movies," producer Deborah Forte says.

All those effects are the principal reason why the movie's got that gargantuan price tag. "It really is a lot, a lot, a lot of money," Weitz concedes. "Fortunately, it's more money than I can really understand, so that's helped me not to worry about it."

But most daunting of all, perhaps, is the trilogy's antireligious theme. The book's primary villains are the Magisterium (a renamed Catholic Church) and the Authority (known to you and me as the Lord Almighty). As Pullman once baldly put it, "My books are about killing God." That's not the traditional recipe for boffo box office at Christmastime.

New Line Cinema brought in bargeloads of cash with The Lord of the Rings, but lately it has had more middling success; its big summer movies were Hairspray and Rush Hour 3. The Golden Compass is the most expensive movie the company has ever made. If it doesn't do well, it won't just be a bad year on the balance sheet — the entire division could find itself folded in with its corporate big brothers at Warner Bros. Back in 1998, the heads of New Line essentially bet the whole company on a fantasy trilogy: an audacious wager that paid off as Peter Jackson's tale of hobbits and the Ring brought in billions of dollars. Now, almost a decade later, they're betting the house again.
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I had conversations with Pullman about this, and as far as he's concerned, his story is a statement against dogmatic authority of any kind."

"Religious tyranny is one form of tyranny," Pullman confirms. "It's tyranny that's the bad thing. Totalitarian ways of thought are just as bad when they're inspired by religion as by some other body of doctrine."

NVDL: Amen brother.

Welcome to my Parlour...

Nicole Kidman in The Golden Compass

Mrs. Coulter’s daemon is a ferocious monkey. What would Kidman’s be?

“It changes. Yesterday it was a kitten, ’cause I love milk and” - she giggled - “I like to be patted and taken care of and sleep a lot. Today it’s changed, and it’s a tiger.”
From BostonHerald.com