Wednesday, December 12, 2007

THE GOLDEN COMPASS

Took my niece to see The Golden Compass at the weekend (finally got my weekends back). The cinema experience when going to see films with children is sort of akin to Christmas being reinvigorated with magic once again now my wife and I have a son.

I have to confess, in hindsight I thought the film was okay, but at the time I thoroughly enjoyed it (fueled somewhat by the novelty). Whilst wonderfully realized visually I wasn't too certain it had been wonderfully executed in terms of adaptation, but for the most part performances were fine, the casting fitting almost perfectly with how I had imagined the book. I was however perplexed by the film's ending (in contrast to the book), and shocked by a certain fight scene for it's moment of startling but bloodless gore. I had to explain to my niece there was going to be another film as the fade to black prompted her to ask "is that it?". After the film an in depth conversation ensued concerning Daemon's (the familiars in the film) as we waited in the lobby for my sister to come and collect us. I picked a hare after Lee Scoresby's Daemon - Hester the Hare (I was particularly fond of its ears) and my niece rather impractically picked a Killer Whale. That said though, it had been raining rather heavily all day so I suppose it wasn't so impractical after all.

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