Monday, January 07, 2008


THE GOLDEN COMPASS

Today we ventured up to the huge 25 cinema AMC movie complex on 42nd Street at 8th Avenue, a short walk from Times Square with all its dazzling lights, to take our granddaughter to see the movie based on Northern Lights, the first book in Philip Pullman’s dazzling His Dark Materials trilogy.

As with all movies I see where I have enjoyed and admired the book on which it is based I went along with some trepidation. I needn’t have worried, it was a triumph with the strong storyline skillfully handled, the acting superb, and the special effects something to behold.

Our granddaughter is a few weeks off nine years of age and the movie had a PG13 rating but it was decided that as her Mom had read her the book, and she is a serious movie buff even at this tender age, that it would be okay. And indeed it was even if a couple of fight scenes had her closing her eyes briefly.

Afterwards while having lunch at the adjacent Applebees Restaurant we had quite a discussion about the movie and here are some of her comments:

Age group – 9+ including most adults.
Good movie, good characters, great story, great setting.
Really good realistic animals.
Pan was amazing & the way he changed was incredible.
They made a good choice of actors & especially the young actress playing Lyra was outstanding.
They had good voices for the daemons.
I loved the whole movie except for the “cut” scene which was terrifying and I had to look away.
A scary movie but still very nice. The Harry Potter movies gets scarier as the series goes along, the last one, Harry Potter & the Order of the Phoenix, number 5, was way scarier.

She sums it up well. Northern Lights is a complex story and I think that young kids in particular would struggle to follow the story in the movie if they hadn’t either read the book first or had it read to them.
I suspect Philip Pullman, one of the great contemporary writers in English, will be well pleased with the movie treatment of his book.

Footnote:
I was interested to read in the credits that a former Scholastic colleague, Deborah Forte, was one of the producers of The Golden Compass. Congratulations Deborah on a fine piece of movie making.

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