Exercising Demons

I had concluded not to see the Golden Compass movie, but then a small mouse in my study reasoned with me thus, saying "being as you are a virgin mind in this matter, never having been sullied by the books, you are in a special position to evaluate the movie as a movie." And so it was that I went to see the film, and after doing so I said unto the mouse, "Get real; you are supposed to be my demon? My demon is a twelve ton dragon that can slay armed hosts just by farting." "Yes" replied the mouse, "but conceptually that would not fit inside your study now would it?"

Frances Schaffer once said "An artist's creativity shows his world view, his world view almost always shows through." Philip Pullman however has all but stated that his art is merely a vehicle for his world view. However, my purpose here is not to critique Philip Pullman's world view, I am not even critiquing his book, I am critiquing a film based on his book and I shall try to evaluate it purely on its own artistic merits.

SFX
The special effects are impressive, which is a problem. You see if you are paying more attention to the special effects then the story they are supposedly telling then something is amiss. For example, the polar bears were extremely well rendered very realistic digital polar bears, and that is exactly what I was thinking every time they were on screen, oh and the fact that the king polar bear apparently likes to play with dolls does not help the suspension of disbelief any. Also the view from the air ship's observation room was quite memorable, which is more then I can say for any of the dialoged that was spoken there. And so I have to give the movie high marks for technically good special effects but they were special effects that replaced the story rather than told it.

CAST
Dakota Blue Richards as Lyra is fairly good, at least she is pretty enough to look at for two hours and she avoids hamming and seems to know how to curtsy. As far as her realization of the character goes, that is a bit more difficult to analyze. This is not a "classical" scenario of a girl and her polymorphic, talking pet going on an adventure. The bond they share is deeper and more mysterious, yet at times this is not very apparent. Whether Richards has sorted it all out in her own mind is not clear, but at least her confidence keeps there from being any real problems. As for the rest of the cast, they are adequate though largely irrelevant. Though I would like to give Christopher Lee and Sir Derek George Jacobi an honorable mention, the problem is that they were ask to sell a moral wait and expositional gravity that the script had not actually given them.

THE STORY
I must say that I find the "demons" (interdependent incarnate spirits dwelling alongside each humanoid) as a literary device, intriguing. The fact that children have polymorphic demons suggests even more possibilities. Unfortunately the story that is being told here generally reduces the demons to mere sidekicks, or more often just character traits that fade into the background shortly after being introduced. The plot that seems to emerge is the idea that children are being kidnapped so that their polymorphic demons can be harvested for some nefarious purpose apparently involving spice (the spice is the worm the worm is the spice) sorry I meant dust of course. I say "the idea" because one is largely left trying to peace to gather what it is all really about and there seem to be a few peaces missing. There are some vague indications that the sequels have these missing peaces, but this is hardly satisfactory, if NL is thinking LOTR here, I have to say there is a big difference, delayed resolution is one thing, delayed explanation is quite another.

Reactionary Weekly indorses Tom Tancredo for US president!

What? You were expecting maybe John Edwards?

Silly Grownups

“Children have one kind of silliness, as you know, and grownups have another kind.” – C.S. Lewis

A while back I said something to the effect that I was sure Professor Dawkins could tell us all sorts of fascinating things about amino acids and helixes and chromosomes, and not come anywhere near all the nonsense he becomes entangled in when he talks about God.
Well I am afraid that after watching his lecture series Growing Up in the Universe, I must say I may have been mistaken. First though let me say that when it comes to telling us things about biology and ethology, he is really rather good. But he just cannot seem to keep from straying into more philosphic matters. At the end of the lecturs he saluts our ponderusly larg brains and proclams that at last there is a truly “grownup” specis in the unavers.
Now, I may be wrong, but is this not exactly the sort of conceit that he warns us against in The Ancestor's Tale? Is not the wasp “grownup” compared to the bacteria? Might we not be infantile compared to some other being?
The Ancestor's Tale, was apparently written well after the “growing up” lectures, perhaps Professor Dawkins’ worldview is evolving.