Eat My Dust

"It's an accelerometer, a speed measurer. It tells you how fast things go."

Well that's not really right. But that's what Golden Compass really made us think of. Magus was right when he said that the show's really a sort of fast-forwarded 2 hour trailer.

Liddis.

Lord Of The Rings, semacam travelling in a blimp - pacing not so fast/slow, very scenic, can take in everything.

The Chronicles Of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe, like in a cruise ship - also take your time, enjoy the sights and sounds that is Narnia.

Stardust, in an airplane - it's fast but you don't feel it going fast. Like watching clouds go by slowly, each scene in Stardust you can take in and understand what's going on in the film without feeling hurried, and yet the pacing of the show is good that nothing was draggy.

Golden Compass, that was like sitting in an F1 car for one lap. Everything speed pass you, you see lines only, can see a bit when slowing down for corners. There is no sense of time too, but that's because everything is zipping by so fast you keep thinking you're still in the 1st second.

And the worst bit? All the others can watch movie first then read the books. This is one show where you would best do to read the book before watching it. Because hell a lot of things were lost in the movie, and some of these were things actually strengthen the storyline. It was rather weird to see Lyra, just meeting someone for the first time, suddenly becomes close best friends two scenes later. Sense of time is so distorted.

So here's one or two things general things about daemons and such. So you'll be told that in Lyra's world, every human has a daemon which is part of that human. Daemons can change shape while the human is still young, but will stop changing and maintain a certain animal shape once the human 'grows up'. Humans and daemons have some connection - hurting one will hurt the other. Daemons can freely touch other daemons, but it's considered a gross breach of etiquette to touch someone else's daemon (worse than molest? dunno). If one dies, so will the other.

The importance of the human-daemon connection which was built up in the book got lost in the movie. So the shock of seeing a human without a daemon, or about intercision (cutting off the connection between human and daemon) wasn't as horrific as it was in the book.

Well enough about that then. Must say that we did have a premonition at the start of the show - as the show started, we quoted, "The world is changed," (no, we didn't do the "I amar prestar aen..." bits) and next thing you know Saruman and Gandalf were in the film, all thanks to New Line Cinema. No reminders of Casino Royale or The Invasion at least.

The movie eyecandy is absolutely stunning at the least. Anbaric power is shown to be some sort of atom-driven power, the structures are grand, the clothes are better than how we actually pictured them when we read the book (we admit to stereotyping based on most fantasy novels, so the priests of the Magisterium wore monk's robes of sorts instead of snazzy suits). The details on Daniel Craig's coat and vest at the start of the movie. When it came to appearances, they managed to pull off the 'almost the same, yet different' look very well.

Asides from that, this show lost to Stardust and Enchanted. We'll hope they pull their socks up for The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass.