More on The Golden Compass/Northern Lights: I'm a dumbass who didn't notice the tons of pictures you can view under "Lyra's World" (or maybe we can just pretend they weren't there yet when I first visited the website. Yeah). So I have screencaps of them for easy browsing, although you'll want to go to the site and read the descriptions of each character, just in terms of how the production is approaching them. From left to right: Lyra (Dakota Blue Richards); Mrs. Coulter (Nicole Kidman); Lord Asriel (Daniel Craig); Lee Scoresby (Sam Elliott); Iorek Byrnison (production art); Fra Pavel (Simon McBurney); Serafina Pekkala (Eva Green); John Faa (Jim Carter); Jordan College; "The Magisterium" (not sure who's pictured); "The Gobblers" (not sure who's pictured); Gyptians; "Ice Bears"/panserbjorne (production art). Click for full-size screencaps.
Cleo, if you want to label pictures, you can make text appear over the picture when the user hovers the mouse by adding the following html around the picture:
Oh, I know how to do it. I've done it before and had people ask me what pictures were of anyway, not realizing/understanding how to work something as "complex" as mouseover captions. So I just don't bother now.
Wow. I haven't read the series, so all I know of it is the Narnia vs Dark Materials article Cleo posted when Narnia came out, but... wasn't that kinda the whole point?
I read somewhere that Pullman wanted Samuel L. Jackson for Lee... all I could think of is having Lee say "I'm Sick of these Mutha Fuckin witches in my Mutha Fucking Balloon" Bah... I always pictured Fra Pavel as... older, more rugged... like who they cast as Fader Coram... and Fader being a little more... I dunno... decrepit. HDM w/o the religious element makes me want to cry.
Man, no wonder I stopped reading the novels because I couldn't figure out what was going on. I thought it was set in an alternate universe and perhaps five seconds in the future, but I also didn't get what was up with the animal Lyra was with in the opening ... so apparently I'm losing the brain cells that allow for comprending speculative fiction, which is why I finally sold my unread boxed set of this trilogy on half.com.
Just last week, I asked myself, "Ter, what could Sam Elliot be up to nowadays?"
or maybe we can just pretend they weren't there yet when I first visited the website
In fact, I could swear some of the pictures in the "Lyra's World" section were added in the past two days, because I don't remember seeing Serafina Pekkala or Jordan College the first time around.
It could be just my brain being in the scatter mode, though.
OMG, so relieved -- at least they had a decent casting director who has chosen British and Commonwealth actors. Wish I could say the same about The Dark is Rising film, which Walden Media and that moron who directed The Path to 9/11 is bastardizing as we speak. In this upcoming "adaptation," all the characters are now American, they've eliminated half of them and have given new ages, personalities and occupations to the remaining ones, and are in general turning it from a great YA fantasy with strong echoes of Celtic and Norse mythology into a stupid afterschool special about a "shunned and geeky boy" who becomes a "warrior against evil."
You'd think that since the Harry Potter and Narnia films made a ton of money without changing the original stories and characters that these yabbos would take a lesson and do the same. But no.
Go to the imdb.com Dark is Rising boards if you want to see the full extent of the hideous changes that are being visited upon this great story.
I hope The Golden Compass is a huge success, and that the upcoming horrible version of The Dark is Rising tanks big time. Maybe then filmmakers will adhere to that age old saying: "If it ain't broke, DON'T FIX IT."
I have never heard of the books, but I just navigated the website (which looks really nice in IE) and I am now looking forward to this film. It looks really neat and interesting. Will there be steampunk goodness?
Yes! Click the "his dark materials" tag I've put on the entry and go to the previous entry on HDM. There's a link to some production art wallpapers of London and what must be Mrs. Coulter's carriage, and they're very steampunky.
Actually, Philip Pullman is British, and the book was called Northern Lights in the UK before they changed it to The Golden Compass for the US. The trilogy itself is called His Dark Materials.
I am so terrified of this film. I am SO terrified that this is going to suck harder than a black hole going down on gravity.
Because the casting, first of all. I think Nicole Kidman as a choice for Mrs. Coulter is, in a word, horrible. Couldn't they at least have given her dark hair? Mrs. Coulter has a substance and weight to her presence that Nicole just...lacks.
Daniel Craig as Lord Asriel? Fail, fail, fail. Horribly.
I love the books with a passion, and the more I see of the production, the sadder I get.
I started rereading the book a couple of hours ago, and given how the Mrs. Coulter chapters, through "The Cocktail Party," focus on how "glamorous" (a word that's used 30 times if it's used once) and elegant she is, I can see why they might have focused on that and gone with Nicole.
Daniel Craig and Eva Green in another movie together. What are the odds. At least she's not playing Mrs. Coulter or Ruta Skadi.
So after seeing your post gushing about the movie, I picked up the books and have finished the second one today. Am I the only one who keeps on reading Scoresby as Scorcese?
I can't say why, exactly, maybe because he was always described as being so scraggly and tough, but I always pictured Lee as being older. I saw these pics a couple days ago on ONTD and squeed over Sam Elliot. Him and Muse Watson were always who I pictured as my ideal Lee. It's a stroke of dream casting for me!
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