Philip Pullman: His Dark Materials

So… I burned through the three books (Northern Lights / The Golden Compass; The Subtle Knife; The Amber Spyglass) in the course of 72 hours, and two days later I’m still not sure what I want to write about them.

As soon as I found out about the subject — some kind of alternate universe where you don’t wear your soul inside you but outside, embodied in a companion animal — I was hooked, and I wanted to see how the story was really developed and not limit myself to whatever could fit in a two-hour Hollywood movie.

I was right to want to read the novels: the story is so dense I can’t imagine how you could reduce each book to a single movie script (I know that’s also true of Harry Potter or The Lord of the Rings, for instance, but the bottomline is I don’t care about whiny orphan sorcerers and whiny dim-witted hobbitses and OMG I just figured out a trend here) and, while the author’s style is not spectacular, it’s efficient and straight to the point — quite cinematographic, one could say, if one could imagine that word not being an insult.

The big disappointment, though, was the lack of what I really hoped to find in the book that couldn’t possibly translate well into the movie: a coherent explanation, a real theory, of why those people have their souls outside of them and how that works. To be sure, the daemon thing is not a gadget — it’s really central to the first volume, and quite nicely exploited in the other two — but I could never really get over the fact that it makes no sense and, more importantly, that there’s no clear definition of what part of the characters’ personality lies in their heart/brain, and what lies in their soul/daemon. One of the books actually separates some characters from their daemons, and yet they don’t appear to act or think differently; if the soul is neither your emotions nor your conscience or, I don’t know, the center of your rational thought, then what’s your daemon really more than a talking plush toy with an uncanny gift for empathy (and an additional pair of eyes so you can watch behind your back)?

But that’s not so bad; the story is strong enough to make you want to go on, despite the kind of nitpicking I can’t really ever let go of. What is bad, however, and more distracting from the story, is the author’s anticlericalism — if you thought that Christian associations protesting the adaptation on movie screens were out of line, well… consider this: I’m an agnostic, raised an atheist, and the author’s attack on the Christian religion is so violent that I would think twice before stocking those books in a school library. It’s one thing to depict an alternate-reality Vatican as a worldwide dictatorship (they’ve kinda been there and done that); but what Pullman establishes in the third book is heinous, and properly insulting to anyone who believes in one God, and that’s a lot of people. I don’t mean that it’s a bad story or it shouldn’t be told, just that it’s quite impolite, in a way, and that it shocked me out of solidarity with my believer friends (and I’m not sure I have any). Or maybe it’s less the story than the way it’s being told.

Which brings me to the part where I’m glad I read the books but didn’t buy them (Thanks, rhino75): I don’t think I like this Pullman person very much. Nevermind writing a whole trilogy against religion (and making it all about destiny and religion, only pagan and new age-y); what really stopped me in my tracks was reading that dull people have dull daemons, and all manservants’ daemons are dogs and all maids’ are hens (if I remember correctly — the dogs are mentioned at least twice, but I’m not so sure about the hens). Erm… I’m sorry, that’s not something I’d much like to write, or read — and particularly not in a novel that’s purported to be for “children and young adults.” Yeesh.

And yet, like I said, I really am glad I read the books. Because the story is interesting, the universe is original, and the plot twists are… well, let’s say you really should read the trilogy before they start promoting the third movie, because you’ll want to save yourself the surprise of what’s going on there — by the way, I can’t wait to see how they handle the adaptation, if they removed any reference to religion from the first movie. (And the trilogy would make a very nice two- or three-season TV miniseries, if it were at all possible to produce a TV show with such a subject matter.)

Recommended, then, not because it’s a masterpiece, but because it’s an original perspective, and a break from those whiny orphan sorcerers.

Illustration: AeroMartin.

Dexter 2.10–2.12

That was shaping up to be an intense season finale if only it had focused on the confrontation with Doakes. Dexter has way too many guardian angels in this show — didn’t something comparably fortuitous and silly happen in season one?

Obviously there was a very cathartic scene for the audience somewhere in there, though.

The Bourne Ultimatum

Well done, and not particularly interesting. It doesn’t really work to have a whole trilogy dedicated to shooting chase sequence after chase sequence, and only deliver such a lame payoff at the end. (Although I guess it makes sense to downplay the plot itself considering that it’s based on ancient novels that have already been adapted before.)

I’d heard conflicting opinions about the big Tangiers fight, but I thought it was very efficient — while it’s insanely frustrating in a Transformers fight scene to have the camera struggling to keep up with the action and show anything significant on screen, it’s actually quite a good way to express the intensity of a bare-handed fight between two trained assassins, both acutely aware that only one will come out alive.

Although it may quite possibly work better on the small screen than in a theater.

Stardust

Oh, imagine that — a Neil Gaiman story about a gateway to a magical parallel universe. But, even if it’s not very original, and the twists are too predictable, and the ending is a little too easy (you’d better have an insanely clever reply if one of your characters is going to end up asking “Why didn’t you do that earlier?”), and the director was rather uninspired… a Gaiman story still makes for a very sweet movie.

I think I preferred ‘Mother.’

Did Claire Danes butcher her poor eyebrows by herself, or was it for the movie?

P.S. Disclaimer: I watched this movie at 10am. (For some reason I couldn’t sleep anymore.)

The Simpsons Movie

It’s hard to justify making a movie from a show that’s still going — a canceled show, like Futurama, can afford to release so-so episodes bundled together as a DVD, but when it comes to the Simpsons (which has to be the most popular comedy show currently on air, as low as it’s sunk) it’s much harder to provide something worth your time and money.

Oh my god her first word!

So let’s cut them some slack and say this long episode had the best jokes the Simpsons had in a decade. Which isn’t saying that much, but still. I wouldn’t be pissed if I’d been to a theater to see it, and it’s more than certainly worth buying the DVD. Even though there’s a definite lack of fresh ideas (and jokes, for that matter) in the second half of the show.

Ratatouille

I never really share everyone’s enthusiasm for Pixar movies — there’s always something missing or something too much that screams of design by committee.

In this case, the rats are amazing and there are some excellent scenes, but it’s all wasted by way too much of the irritating humans. Plus those stupid morals about how stealing is wrong. They’re rats, for crying out loud.

And I wish I hadn’t watched the English version. Listening to actors fake diverse levels of outlandish French accents for a hundred minutes is really painful.

Heroes 2.11

God. Awful.

Is Maya’s accent real or faked, by the way? It’s been so annoying from the start.

Pushing Daisies 1.08

Meh. But then, a “Meh” episode of Pushing Daisies still gets 4 stars. And that’s not even counting the cliffhanger.

Perfect Creature

I like seeing steampunk blimps fly above a gritty city as much as anyone else (the setting is eerily reminiscent of TimeShift, by the way), but I don’t quite get the point of inventing a story about vampires being the result of genetic engineering and the cure to all human diseases, if it’s going to take place in an alternate future-past. Good vampire stories are all about what’s lurking in our shadow; who cares who they are and where they come from when the story isn’t taking place in our universe?

Anyway… pretty photography, boring direction and dull actors (oh, and laughable stunts). Too bad, I like original takes on vampires and demons.