HisDarkMaterials.org

The Oxford Mail reports: Oxford bands are set to battle it out for the chance to appear on screen in a new film based on Philip Pullman's novel The Butterfly Tattoo.

Bands were invited to send in demos and those chosen will perform at a gig tomorrow to choose which one will get to star in the film, a contemporary love story set in Oxford.

The bands performing will be Lightbox, The Plugs, Not My Day, Fatally Yours and Amber State - and the winning act will be filmed playing at the Jericho Tavern, Walton Street, during a key point in the film.

The National Theatre has posted the recording of the debate between Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Philip Pullman, held at the National Theatre on the 15th of March 2004

They discuss whether consumerism and the mass media have created a crisis of childhood with reference to Pullman's play His Dark Materials. The debate was chaired by Robert Butler.

Listen to the debate

For the third year in a row, Mythopia is one of the most prominent literary conventions in the Israeli landscape. Starting off with academic lectures on the works of J. R. R. Tolkien and J. K. Rowling, it began to house other literary endeavours such as those of Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials", G. R. R. Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" and C. S. Lewis's "Narnia".

The convention attracts a wide range of audiences, from early teens to mature adults, all interested in fannish delving or academic exploration, with no correlation to the age of the audience, who enjoys the stage of Israel's top academic lecturers concerning literary works in the fantastic genre, producing a fantastic convention.

This year we have a few interesting events concerning HDM:

This article from Entertainment Weekly mentions the removal of the religious themes in the movies, and confirms that Daniel Craig and Nicole Kidman have signed on for The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass.

Fall Movie Preview

Clergymen who kidnap children. Witches who aren't wicked. Even a pair of sexually ambiguous angels. If you thought Harry Potter was blasphemous, wait till you get a look at the His Dark Materials trilogy. New Line's $150 million adaptation of the first in Philip Pullman's series of theologically trippy novels, The Golden Compass follows 12-year-old Lyra Belacqua (Richards) as she sets off on an epic odyssey through a fantastical parallel universe inhabited by armor-wearing polar bears and shape-shifting daemons.

We're proud to present the preproduction movie of The Golden Compass. It's basically a run-through of the whole movie before — as the title implies — any shooting was done, so the material consists of storyboard sketches, scene tests, and preliminary CGI. It provides a wonderful view into how the movie was out together, and come to life. Be warned, this 27 minute movie contains spoilers for those unfamiliar with the storyline.

Thanks go to our members situ, for bringing this to our attention, and Pylse, for helping us publish this.

View the preproduction movie.

Movies on MTV.com reports: There's another character that has been written with Kidman in mind: Mrs. Coulter from the "His Dark Materials" fantasy-book series, which is headed to the big screen. Author Philip Pullman has suggested he had Kidman on the brain when he wrote the manipulative character, leading her to laugh: "I don't know if that was an insult or a compliment!"

Kidman will play the character against Craig's Lord Asriel in the film adaptation of "The Golden Compass," the first "His Dark Materials" installment. But before we seem them working against each other in the fantasy epic, they'll be onscreen in "The Invasion," the update of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers."

The official Golden Compass blog has been expanded to contain a lot more side-information about the movies. The newly added content includes storyline information, a video and images section, character and cast bios, design and filming locations.

The video section features a movie with outtakes from the footage we've seen at the Cannes Filmfestival, focussing on Panserbjørne visual effects. Although it is all footage that has been released before, it is interesting to see all the Panserbjørne outtakes pasted together.

Watch the video here

First off, I’d like to thank Dr. Frost for her patience, time, and wonderful answers. She was very kind and helpful even when I was at a loss for questions. It has been an excellent experience that I feel honored to have been involved in.

Read the interview!

The Herald reports: It's easy to see the appeal of His Dark Materials for a large, young and talent-rich company such as Scottish Youth Theatre. Among the characters populating the multiple worlds of Philip Pullman's epic are shape-shifting daemons, evil scientists and armoured polar bears, and there's certainly no shortage of high drama in this story of good and evil that reaches uncompromisingly into the realms of religion, science and philosophy.

The New Line presentation at Comic-Con 2007 screened a special 5 minute long extended preview. It's basically an edited version of the 10 minute preview which we saw in Cannes.

The preview includes a lot of cinematics, dialogue and more dæmon detail than ever seen before.

View the extended preview.

MTV Movies Blog reports: Our team is on the ground in San Diego, and we’re the first inside Comic-Con!

Our friends at New Line were nice enough to sneak us in a side door and let us tour their massive display for December’s “The Golden Compass.” And to even call it a “booth” is ridiculous, because it’s big enough to house the cast of a Steve Martin family film.

View the photos

This week sees the start of an 11-day run of the Scottish Youth Theatre's performance of His Dark Materials, adapted by Nicholas Wright. The performance runs from 25 July 2007 - 04 August, 2007 at the Citizen's Theatre in Glasgow. This production marks the Scottish première of His Dark Materials.

Tickets may be purchased from the Citizen's Theatre website.

GamersHell.com reports: SEGA has released several new screenshots from The Golden Compass, illustrating this game developed by Shiny Entertainment and based on the first book in His Dark Materials trilogy, by British author Philip Pullman. The game is being developed for multiple platforms and will ship Christmas 2007, just prior to the opening of the New Line Cinema motion picture on December 7th.

Animation Magazine reports: Noted CG and vfx house Framestore CFC will use REALVIZ Movimento for its jam-packed 2007-2008 production pipeline, including His Dark Materials: The Golden Compass. REALVIZ Movimento is a state-of-the-art video-based motion capture solution, “powered by smart,” REALBIZ’ powerful automatic 3D tracking engine. REALVIZ Movimento was unveiled at SIGGRAPH 2006 in Boston, and offers the unique capability to capture the motion of any non-rigid object (humans, animals) in post-production, from synchronized image sequences with total flexibility—starting from two cameras, to as many as needed, cameras can be fixed for moving, of different frame rates and definitions, and no need for a mo-cap studio.

New Line handed out production notes to the press at Cannes; these notes contain a huge amount of information on the process of adapting The Golden Compass, and about the cast, crew, and creative team of the film.

View the production notes