HisDarkMaterials.org

Leading British writers and comedians have welcomed the defeat of a proposed religious hatred law, which they say would have stifled freedom of speech.

Oxford provided CS Lewis and his illustrious colleagues with inspiration for their fantasy worlds. Max Davidson takes stock.

I am sitting in a pub in Oxford, nursing a pint of warm bitter and getting stuck into a plate of bangers and mash. Not much new there, then. But the pub is no ordinary pub, even if the bitter and the bangers are. The little room where I am sitting, at the back of the Eagle and Child, is a holy place in the annals of English literature.

In this room, every Tuesday morning between 1939 and 1962, a group called the Inklings met to discuss, among other things, the books they were writing.

Note the years, then note the two best-known members of the Inklings: JRR ("Ronald") Tolkien, later professor of English at Oxford, and CS ("Jack") Lewis, fellow of Magdalen College.

Philip Pullman’s popular novels The Sally Lockhart Mysteries are being turned into a new fantasy-thriller drama series for the BBC.

The project is still in the early stages of development but fits into Corporation controller of drama commissioning Jane Tranter’s plans to create more family programming for Sunday afternoons and bank holidays.

Based on the three books that make up the Mysteries - The Ruby in the Smoke, The Shadow in the North and The Tiger in the Well - the BBC series will follow the adventures of 16-year-old Lockhart, a self-styled private detective, in Victorian London.

The Archbishop of Canterbury has extended to the wider Church his plea for Christians to engage with unbelievers.

Dr Rowan Williams, who in March took part in a public debate on atheism, said Christians could make it easier to persuade unbelievers if they were a “bit more convincing in their witness”.

Preaching at the Shrine to Our Lady of Walsingham, the nation’s favourite spiritual place, according to a recent poll, the Archbishop said the “unbeliever cannot manage to get out of his or her head the idea that God is an unfriendly alien", and that people who believe in God become “boring at best and dangerous at worst.”

This is a quite hostile article, mentioning Philip Pullman as follows: "It is not just the infantile obsession of Philip Pullman with poisoning the minds of children against Catholicism, in a very Anglo-Saxon, Popish Plot kind of way."

Easter has been infused with more of a religious atmosphere than has been usual in recent years, due to the interest generated by Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ. The screening of the Gibson film in Britain has now enabled people to make an artistic judgment. It seems that the one adverse criticism even the film’s keenest admirers would concede is its understated depiction of the Resurrection. One can sympathise with Gibson’s need to avoid the kind of Spielbergian special effects that might have trespassed into the realm of science fiction, but the very graphic portrayal of Our Lord’s humiliation required him, in counterpoint, to highlight the glory of the Resurrection.

Ok, this is not exactly "news", but take a look at the website Aurora Webcam.com which has pictures & videos of auroras and a webcam from Fairbanks, Alaska.

The His Dark Materials.org staff would like to offer our condolences to the victims of yesterdays terrorist attacks in Spain.

Click here for information about these atrocities.

Take a bow, Frodo. Hobbits and elves, wizards and witches are our new idols.

Middle Earth has been certified. The American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has fenced it in with a ring of golden statuettes. On Sunday night the roll call of honours for Peter Jackson’s The Return of the King, the closing act in his The Lord of the Rings trilogy, set numerous records. The film bagged 11 Oscars, it netted every award it had been nominated for, and it became the first fantasy film to snap the Oscar for best picture. In that last first lies yet another reason to celebrate J.R.R. Tolkien’s grand feat of invention and narration. Revisit the exploits of Frodo and Gandalf now because there are other universes opening up, universes deploying their own armies of daemons and witches to conquer the Oxford don’s hobbits and wizards. The vast acres of Tolkien’s imagination will always be on the pilgrim’s trail, but the Oscars for Jackson’s highly skilled cinematic rendition of his world coincides with the arrival of a new fantasy paradigm.

Since it's the first thing most "Lord of the Rings" fans want to know, let's get it out of the way up front.

No, Kristin Thompson didn't get to interview director Peter Jackson. But she did get to spend an hour in the same room with him while he was mixing sound for the giant spider sequence in "Lord of the Rings: Return of the King."

"It was a real treat," says Thompson, a film scholar and honorary fellow with the University of Wisconsin-Madison's communication arts department. "It was obviously one of the high points of my visit."

Locking down a deal that has been brewing since fall, New Line Cinema has acquired rights to develop bestselling German children's author Cornelia Funke's hotly pursued novel "Inkheart" as a potential kids fantasy franchise.

Now that "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy is complete, New Line has been casting its net for another multi-installment fantasy blockbuster. "Inkheart" joins development project "His Dark Materials," based on Philip Pullman's novels, among likely contenders.

A year on from the release of the first movie in his The Lord of the Rings trilogy it's clear that Peter Jackson's great gamble hasn't just paid off big time, it's also had an effect far beyond the cash registers.

Yes, the first film has made US$850 million-plus (NZ$1.7 billion) - already paying for the whole trilogy nearly twice over - and probably half as much again with its DVD releases and merchandise. And there has been a huge upsurge in sales of J.R.R. Tolkien's printed works, too.

This article is a bit of a rip-off from this article. The big difference is that this article says 'kidults' read HDM and the other article said they read Harry Potter.

THEY wear Nike trainers, spend hours on their PlayStation2, are obsessed by Harry Potter and can often be seen parking their micro-scooters outside Topman.

This may sound like a fashion-conscious teenager - but it's more likely to be an "adultescent", the new breed of 40-something who's determined not to grow up.

This article is about kidults. Adults who just don't want to believe that they are adults. It's not very HDM Related except for a part which is about the stageplay.

Everybody loves Levi's, the White Stripes, Harry Potter - and that's the problem. What can today's teenagers claim for their own when their parents won't let go of being cool?

As the White Stripes took to the stage at Brixton Academy in London last week, they looked at first glance like the hottest rock band of the day, playing to a typical young crowd. In red and black outfits and bowler hats, Jack and Meg White strummed and drummed to pogo-ing teenagers. But back in the 'seated ticket' area, was a quite different group of fans - contented mid-thirties couples in comfy jumpers and Hush Puppies, old punks, middle-aged musos and suited blokes straight from the office.

Now I've written a little something which started out as an article about perspectives, however it turned out a little different. I think this would be interesting to many of you. However, I ask you to read it lightly, if you like it, you can think more about it, do some research and the likes. However, if you dislike it, just leave it be. You have as much right to hating my work as to loving it. Comments (both positive and negative) can be sent to my HDM.org account, or email. There's also a topic in the Columns forum.

Caspian@hisdarkmaterials.org

The idea of a "republic of heaven" is in the air. Philip Pullman dropped it into popular consciousness with his fantasy trilogy His Dark Materials, serialised on Radio 4 and now about to get the blockbuster film treatment. The books tell the tale of Lyra and Will, whose destiny is to free humankind from the power of "the Authority" and his "Magisterium" - God and the Church; the children are the instruments by which the Authority's kingdom will be dismantled and men and women become "free citizens of the republic of heaven".

In 1999, I produced a very different book, Gerrard Winstanley And The Republic Of Heaven, about the 17th-century Digger, True Leveller and Quaker who agitated for an English republic based on community and cooperation.