The Golden Compass
Dec. 26th, 2007 11:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragojustineThe Golden Compass (movie)
Fun movie! Has all the standard problems of a big-ticket fantasy book adaptation (disjointed, insufficient exploration of causes and motivations, lack of depth and texture to the histories and cultures). Plus, has Nicole Kidman, who used to be an actress but is now a scary ice queen with facial muscles so full of Botox she never perceptibly moves. On the flip side, the movie managed to include everything you wanted to see include, drastically distort nothing, move along at a wonderfully brisk clip, cast everybody brilliantly, and include STUNNING visuals.
Of course, including everything means that the… shall we say, connective tissue, is fairly weak. As always, I find myself thinking that if I hadn’t read it, I would be utterly lost. The brisk clip was more like a flat-out sprint, which robs the arduous trek to Bolvangar of a certain impact. It all kind of collapses under the weight of exposition- it’s all just too much strangeness in too little time, and the result is a bit disjointed mishmash. Plus, of course, we’re lacking a lot of the philosophy. So, like so many of the big-ticket fantasy blockbusters, it doesn’t stand on it sown as a movie. But as an illustration of the high bits of the book?
FANTASTIC!
My God! There is Nicole Kidman the freaky-creepy ice princess with the CREEPY SCARY golden monkey and all the fantastic daemons and the awesome airship and Lee Scorsby is Sam Elliott who is AWESOMENESS INCARNATE with his accent and his hat and his cold steady shooting and Hestor, who sounds just so utterly perfect that I just want to listen to her talk and then the BEARS! The BEARS! Ian McKellen is the most perfect person in Hollywood, and Ian McKellen and Ian McShane as 800 pound armored poloar bears roaring at each other is just a level of cool that CANNOT BE SURPASSED BY MORTAL MEANS.
*glees all over*
Fun movie! Has all the standard problems of a big-ticket fantasy book adaptation (disjointed, insufficient exploration of causes and motivations, lack of depth and texture to the histories and cultures). Plus, has Nicole Kidman, who used to be an actress but is now a scary ice queen with facial muscles so full of Botox she never perceptibly moves. On the flip side, the movie managed to include everything you wanted to see include, drastically distort nothing, move along at a wonderfully brisk clip, cast everybody brilliantly, and include STUNNING visuals.
Of course, including everything means that the… shall we say, connective tissue, is fairly weak. As always, I find myself thinking that if I hadn’t read it, I would be utterly lost. The brisk clip was more like a flat-out sprint, which robs the arduous trek to Bolvangar of a certain impact. It all kind of collapses under the weight of exposition- it’s all just too much strangeness in too little time, and the result is a bit disjointed mishmash. Plus, of course, we’re lacking a lot of the philosophy. So, like so many of the big-ticket fantasy blockbusters, it doesn’t stand on it sown as a movie. But as an illustration of the high bits of the book?
FANTASTIC!
My God! There is Nicole Kidman the freaky-creepy ice princess with the CREEPY SCARY golden monkey and all the fantastic daemons and the awesome airship and Lee Scorsby is Sam Elliott who is AWESOMENESS INCARNATE with his accent and his hat and his cold steady shooting and Hestor, who sounds just so utterly perfect that I just want to listen to her talk and then the BEARS! The BEARS! Ian McKellen is the most perfect person in Hollywood, and Ian McKellen and Ian McShane as 800 pound armored poloar bears roaring at each other is just a level of cool that CANNOT BE SURPASSED BY MORTAL MEANS.
*glees all over*