HisDarkMaterials.org

BELVEDERE COLLEGE, DUBLIN will present Nicholas Wright's two Play adaptation of Philip Pullman's HIS DARK MATERIALS in the O'REILLY THEATRE at the College from March 5th to March 11th 2007.

Performances are at 7.30pm each evening (except for Sunday 11th March when PART ONE will be presented at 3pm and PART TWO will be presented at 7.30pm)
ADMISSION per performance is € 5

PART ONE: MONDAY 5th / WEDNESDAY 7th / FRIDAY 9th at 7.30pm / SUNDAY 11th (3pm)
PART TWO: TUESDAY 6th / THURSDAY 8th / SATURDAY 10th / SUNDAY 11th (all at 7.30pm)

The stage play uses the original music from the National Theatre's stage production, as well as using authentic Armoured Bear and Harpy costumes.

Visit their website or download the booking form.

MTV Movie News writes: Anyone trying to navigate their way through the film adaptations of "His Dark Materials" — without having read the books — is going to need their own golden compass. After all, within the installments of Philip Pullman's trilogy, even his own characters have a lot of questions that need answering, such as our heroine Lyra's ever-pressing, "What is Dust?" — and she's the one with the alethiometer! (More on that in a bit.) So if the buzz on Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig's upcoming film series has left you wondering what's so dark about this material, here's a few things you'll need to know about this anti-"Narnia."

Armored Polar Bears, Stolen Souls: A Guide To 'His Dark Materials'

Golden Compass' moviegoers unfamiliar with the book trilogy may need help navigating this anti-'Narnia.

Anyone trying to navigate their way through the film adaptations of "His Dark Materials" — without having read the books — is going to need their own golden compass. After all, within the installments of Philip Pullman's trilogy, even his own characters have a lot of questions that need answering, such as our heroine Lyra's ever-pressing, "What is Dust?" — and she's the one with the alethiometer! (More on that in a bit.) So if the buzz on Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig's upcoming film series has left you wondering what's so dark about this material, here's a few things you'll need to know about this anti-"Narnia."

First of all, there are three books — "The Golden Compass" (named for the aforementioned alethiometer), "The Subtle Knife," and "The Amber Spyglass." ("They're three of my favorite books," Daniel Craig says.) The first concerns a preteen girl named Lyra — played in the film version by newcomer Dakota Blue Richards — who gets caught up in a conspiracy to kidnap children and sever them from their souls. This is no mere children's story; as actress Eva Green, who plays the witch Serafina, puts it, "It's more for adults."

In Lyra's world, your soul manifests itself on the outside of your body, and takes the form of an animal familiar. That's partly how you know what someone is like — by the shape of their dæmon — and it's how you can distinguish when someone's come of age, because their dæmon can no longer shift shape. Kidman's character, Mrs. Coulter, for instance, has a golden monkey for a dæmon, while Craig's character, Lord Asriel, has a snow leopard.

At first, a dæmon might seem like just a talking pet. But the relationship between human and dæmon is much more complex. Pantalaimon, Lyra's dæmon, is her parental figure, her best friend, her conscience, her guide, her alarm system, her scout — anything she needs, to a certain extent. Pan can see and know things she does not, and advise her accordingly. When she is cold, he becomes something soft and furry to warm her neck. If she is scared, he might become as small as a moth so he doesn't give away her feelings, or as large as a wildcat so he can attack, if she needs a defender. The only catch is, he can't go that far from her. They both feel intense physical pain when separated for too long or too far, because something intangible connects them. To sever that connection — and harness the extreme energy released at that moment — is the goal of more than one party in "The Golden Compass," and what leads to the traveling between parallel worlds of "The Subtle Knife."

Lyra has more than her dæmon for help in this first part of her adventures — she's also got a variety of people who accompany her on different stages of her journey, such as the wayfaring gyptians, the flying witch-clans, a Texan aeronaut, and a Panserbjørne (an armored polar bear). But Lyra's biggest advantage is that she's been given a strange and rare device called an alethiometer, the so-called "golden compass." It's an oracle of sorts, which can answer any question asked, but only once and only in symbols that have many layers of meaning. Anyone else would need a book and years of study to decipher it, but Lyra has an intuitive grasp of what the symbols mean. Despite this, she's still got a lot of unanswered questions, such as why children in her town of Oxford and elsewhere have been disappearing, what's being done to them, and how this all relates to a mysterious particle called Dust.

Some fear Dust as physical evidence of Original Sin, while others interpret it as consciousness or wisdom — the latter view being the one adopted by the filmmakers. Either way, it's invisible to the naked eye, and can only been seen through special devices. And because it's attracted to adults more than children, whose dæmons are not yet fixed, people in Lyra's world began to draw a connection between the two — hence the soul intercision experiments, which are operated on the premise that Dust is evil and to be feared. In our world, where "The Subtle Knife" picks up, Dust is studied as dark matter.

One sticky point, small in "The Golden Compass" but more crucial later on, is that the revisionist Church of Lyra's world is what sanctioned these experiments. In the film version, the Church is more simply referred to as the Magisterium, since, as one of the film's producers puts it, "Religion is out." With Pullman's blessing, the focus instead is on fascism, control and choice. But it begs the question, what's going to happen in the film version of "The Amber Spyglass" when the time comes for the battle with God and the angels? If the first two films are a success, will New Line become more comfortable reinserting the Gnostic thought of the books, or will they keep God out of it entirely? That's a question no alethiometer — at least not in this world — can answer.

The Guardian reports: The proposed changes to the national curriculum for 11 to 14-year-olds (key stage 3) in England include:

English: Pupils will continue to study Shakespeare plays and sonnets as well as the canon of pre-20th century literary classics, including Charles Dickens, Jane Austen and George Eliot. There will be a suggested list of contemporary authors, such as Benjamin Zephaniah, Philip Pullman, and Bill Bryson.

What do the curriculum changes mean?

The proposed changes to the national curriculum for 11 to 14-year-olds (key stage 3) in England include:

English: Pupils will continue to study Shakespeare plays and sonnets as well as the canon of pre-20th century literary classics, including Charles Dickens, Jane Austen and George Eliot. There will be a suggested list of contemporary authors, such as Benjamin Zephaniah, Philip Pullman, and Bill Bryson.

History: Pupils will continue to learn about the importance and impact of events in the last century, such as the world wars and the Holocaust. The history and impact of the slave trade will be added to the curriculum with explicit references to the role of reformers, such as Equiano and Wilberforce.

Languages: Schools will be given greater freedoms to offer economically useful languages, such as Mandarin and Urdu. But students will be able to drop all languages at age 14.

Citizenship: Following Keith Ajegbo's review, pupils will study national identity and the diversity of living together in the UK, including issues such as the legacy of Empire.

Geography: Sustainable development and environmental change will be given a much stronger focus.

Cooking: Pupils will be taught how to cook simple healthy meals from basic fresh ingredients in revamped food technology classes.

Personal finance: Pupils will be taught essential financial life skills through functional maths and in personal social and health education (PSHE). These will include: personal finance, enterprise and financial capability; learning about risk and reward; investment and trade; personal budgeting; mortgages; interest rates; and balancing credit cards.

PE: Lessons will combine physical activity with learning how exercise affects fitness and health. Schools will have even more flexibility to run the physical activities that best meet their pupils' needs.

All 11 to 14-year-old pupils will continue to study all 12 subjects of the national curriculum covering, in addition to English and mathematics, science, design and technology, ICT, the humanities, a foreign language, art, music, PE and citizenship. The new curriculum will put more emphasis on general skills, such as initiative, enterprise, and the capacity to learn independently - which are particularly valued by employers.

Canmag writes: Ruth Myers designed the costumes for The Golden Compass. With star Nicole Kidman, who looks glamorous in anything, Myers let the clothing work for the actress.

"Mrs. Coulter, I wanted to essentially give you the sense of being the most glamorous woman in the world but I didn't want it to be loud glamour," said Myers. "So I had to go back and think what I thought the most beautiful looking women were."

Eva Green plays Sarafina, the witch, another joy to dress. "This is Sarafina who is the sort of pure shade of night," Myers demonstrated. " She has got this image, she is sort of your dream of midnight, or my dream of midnight."

Like the production design and prop masters, Myers had the mandate to combine real elements and a wide window of early 20th century time periods. "Somewhat between '20s Edwardian, '40s all mixed in. Yes, that was the idea so that every time I thought I was going towards a period, I pushed it another way so that you got a sense of what is this. We've taken modern things and played with them. We made period things, we moved them around. Also, in a world of elegance, by the time you get to the next book they talk about this world, our world. Nobody wears jeans and in this film, there isn't one pair of jeans. Women don't wear trousers. So we're living in a world that I'd quite like to live in."

She also got to produce the clothes in house. "One of the great joys actually about this book has been that we have been given the luxury of being able to make stuff ourselves. One of the reasons that you rent is because you neither have the time nor the facilities to make. My department has made something like 600 costume, we've painted you'll see, we've manufactured, we've done all sorts of extraordinary things. I myself am enormously proud of the work that we've done and I'm completely overwhelmed by what we've been able to do. It's been because we've all worked together. I've not had to go somewhere to see what they were doing, to somewhere else. In many ways, it's also made it economically a very viable thing because we've all been here together doing it. So although in the beginning, a lot of us thought it was going to be very expensive, in the end I think it's been a very, very, for what has come out which is huge, it's been a very economical way of doing it. And really, it doesn't look like anything else you've ever seen. We've not had to go and hire stuff. We've been given free range of what we want."

Myers played with fur to create some of the unique designs. "There's a lot of talk in the book of fur and I was very interested with the idea of actually not using very much real fur. I like the idea that I could play with other furs and again create a fur that we didn't know. So you can only see bits of them here. You possibly see one of Mrs. Coulter's coats on the screen and things like that but these sort of fur bits that we've really worked into."

CHUD.com reports: Standing in a vast expanse of green, the young girl hugs a disembodied polar bear head. She cries and speaks, inaudibly where I’m standing, to the head, which responds to her in an equally disembodied voice that is loud, gravelly and probably on tape somewhere. “I will try, Lyra Silvertongue,” the voice rumbles.

This is the set of The Golden Compass, the film adaptation of the first book in Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy, which is in its final week of shooting at England’s Shepperton Studio. I am standing with the biggest group I have ever been with on a set visit – someone has counted fifty of us, which means that we easily outnumber the crew here shooting climactic moments at the end of the film. Most of the people here are foreign press, and I wonder how much of any of this business makes sense to the big gaggle of Japanese women.

The Golden Compass is perhaps the most straight ahead of Pullman’s trilogy, and the easiest to translate into a movie – Lyra lives in a world similar to ours, but also strikingly different, with talking armor-wearing polar bear warriors and witches who fly on tree limbs and massive zeppelins that cruise the sky. Maybe the most important difference is that every person in this world has their soul on the outside of their body, in the form of a daemon, which takes the shape of an animal familiar. Lyra lives on the grounds of Jordan College in Oxford when mysterious Gobblers begin abducting children. Lyra gets caught up in events surrounding the Gobblers and their dark mission, traveling first to London and then to the frozen arctic north, where she discovers the terrible truth of why the children are being kidnapped and, together with a motley crew of friends that includes gypsies, polar bears and a cowboy, puts a stop to it.

The scene we briefly see being filmed takes place right at the end of the film, as Lyra, played by newcomer Dakota Blue Richards, takes her leave of her friends and begins the next step of her adventure, which continues in the book The Subtle Knife (and the movie as well, should this film do well enough, but more on that later). Shepperton’s Stage H has been transformed into a giant green screen, with crosses peppering the walls as reference points for the computer animators. Richards and the bear head – it’s controlled with a rod by a group of puppeteers – stand on a small patch of fake white snow amidst all the green; while the snow is fake the cold is real, with crew member’s breaths coming out in thick mists. It must be easy for Richards to pretend to be far above the Arctic Circle; less easy is crying, and so she has crystals blown into her eyes between takes to stimulate real tears.

Director Chris Weitz sits huddled by a portable heater in the video village, watching the scene on a monitor. The camera is positioned over the shoulder of the bear – named Iorek – so no facial movement is needed, but there’s another bear head, this one all green, that I assume will be used in shots where expressions and lip synching need to be added in later. Weitz says hello, but the crew is pressed for time in the final days, and there are just an overwhelming number of us, so there’s no opportunity for interviews. Sadly, there are pretty much no interview opportunities at all, only time given for presentations.

After watching a couple of takes, our massive group is shuffled off for just such a presentation. The adjoining stage has been turned into an ersatz Golden Compass museum – parts of sets are displayed, as are costumes. In one corner is an antiseptic, heavily plasticized bit of set from Bolvangar, where the Gobbler experiments are carried out. In another corner is the massive carriage from cowboy and aeronaut Lee Scoresby’s balloon (Scoresby is played by Sam Elliott, the modern living embodiment of the West). Elsewhere are a couple of pieces of set from the living quarters of the glamorous and cruel Mrs. Coulter, played by Nicole Kidman, including a living room set topped off with an oil painting of Coulter and her daemon, a golden monkey.

In addition to the sets and costumes, the stage includes a long wall covered with concept art, arranged chronologically across the storyline. The basic visual building blocks of the film are here, from Jordan College to a polar bear duel to the death on the ice to a massive rip in the fabric of reality leading to another dimension… and the next film. Production designer Dennis Gassner gave us a presentation, walking us through the concept art, and we were also shown about ten minutes of the film in scenes taken from the entire length of the story. Looking at the art and watching the footage it became immediately apparent that this film is going to be remarkably faithful to Pullman’s literate and sober novel. Weitz and his crew haven’t punched up the story with extraneous comic relief or added action scenes that aren’t in the text. With some major thematic exceptions (more on that soon), this is Pullman’s book done in a way that is sure to delight fans of the property.

The ten or so minutes we see doesn’t have the effects in place – at one point we see a scene with Lyra walking and talking with her daemon, Pantalaimon, who is quite noticeably not visible yet – and the sound isn’t mixed. It’s not an ideal way to see footage from a film like this, which will have FX in almost every single shot as all the daemons (except those in the form of dogs) will be created in computers, but we do get a feeling for the film’s visual aesthetic, which is rich, with the early scenes bathed in golden light. We also get to see Daniel Craig in action as Lord Asriel, Lyra’s uncle who has a small but crucial role in this film and a larger, more central one in the third book, The Amber Spyglass. Craig proves that the difference between himself and the other James Bonds is that he’s an actor – the man is completely different in every way from any other Daniel Craig role. Lord Asriel is only in two sequences in this film, and I think we’re going to miss him when he’s offscreen.

Dakota Blue Richards seems fine enough in the quick moments we see of her, but in just a couple of seconds Sam Elliott blows everyone else away. There is not even close to enough footage of Eva Green in billowy silks as the witch Serafina Pekkala. In general we see enough to prove that this is a movie whose budget – according to some reports 150 million dollars – is on screen.

After some more presentations, including a bit about the CGI creation of Iorek (sad but true – any CGI footage of polar bears calls to mind Coca Cola commercials. This is going to be a minor hurdle to overcome in the earliest trailers), we are herded to the next stage, where we get a stunt and gunplay demonstration. We see the stunt crew working out a large fight scene that includes more than half a dozen participants; on hand is Dakota Blue’s stunt double, an 11 year old martial arts champion. I find myself delighted by the very tiny and compact, almost midget adult stunt people playing children (the fight being rehearsed is the massive escape from Bolvangar) and also by how the stunts are infused with a sense of play; when a stuntman raises a gun and pretends to fire it he says, ‘Ka-pow!’, and when stunt people throw punches they provide sound effects like kids acting out their favrorite scenes in action movies. Maybe more interesting, though, is the level of violence – the action on display ends with a number of people being stabbed and slashed to death. Definitely PG-13 material.

Next we’re shown the flying rig, which is used to allow the witches to take off and land, as well as against a green screen for all the flight close-ups in battle. Two journalists – the wrong ones (ie, neither was me, even after I raised my arm and ‘Ooh! Ooh!’ed like Horshack) – get done up in the crotch-coddling rig and twirled around in the air for a bit. As they do that, we’re given a demonstration of the different guns in the film as they’re each fired off. We put our fingers in our ears for each bang – some are quite loud while others are calibrated for scenes with child actors on set. None of them seem that awe-inspiring until we’re shown one (and damn my notes, I can’t tell you what it is – most of the guns are based on old firearms from the 19th and early 20th centuries, though. Most of the look of Lyra’s world is pre-WWII) that delivers a blast so loud I feel it in my balls. It’s like standing next to a thunderclap. Involuntarily I find myself grinning at the sheer awesomeness of the fire power.

The next day at lunch during the Inkheart set visit, also at Shepperton, I sat down with New Line exec Mark Ordesky. The Golden Compass is the easiest book to film, he admitted – The Subtle Knife will be the bear. It’s a more interior novel, with a scope that, while it traverses multiple alternate Earths, is actually smaller. And it doesn’t have a big set-piece like The Golden Compass’ Bolvangar escape finale. Still, looking to the big screen adaptation of The Subtle Knife may be premature (even though New Line has assigned a writer to take a crack at it – my advice is to fold the battle at the opening of the third book into the end of the second movie); if The Golden Compass does indeed cost 150 million dollars, the movie will need to make a lot of money to guarantee a sequel. It will need to be a massive blockbuster and prove to have a great life on video.

How to ensure that? One of the ways New Line has upped the sellability of The Golden Compass is to take the Church out of it. Pullman’s series is often described as the anti-Narnia, and over the course of the three books the writer posits the Church as the villain and Original Sin as a great moment in humanity’s history. He even has the death of God, who has been usurped by the angel Metatron, a very Gnostic look at the universe. The Church is now The Magisterium, a change that producer Deborah Forte – who has been working on getting this film made for 11 years – says Pullman is fine with. She told us that the change retained what Pullman’s real interest was, which is fascism and control. Which is fine, but in the books the fascism is spiritual and religious, and while the changes to the nature of the villains doesn’t have too much of an effect on The Golden Compass, the next two books are already at a disadvantage – one of the great mysteries of The Golden Compass is the nature of a strange phenomenon known as Dust, and the explanation of what Dust is will have to be massively revamped in the potential film versions of The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass.

Again, though, future films are by no means assured. Unlike The Lord of the Rings, whose success New Line obviously hopes to at least partially ape, the His Dark Materials books are not being adapted all at once, and the studio still has the major battle of selling this property to people between now and December. Most of my set visits are embargoed until just a few weeks before a movie’s release – this visit has no embargo, probably because New Line wants to start the marketing and branding of the title and concept immediately. The throughline of The Golden Compass can be simplified, as I did in one of the opening paragraphs of this piece, but that simplification offers no real glimpse at what has made the books as popular as they are. It also doesn’t clue you in to why the books will never be as popular in the US as many other fantasy series – they are frankly too brainy, too interested in concepts before action, to appeal to most of the people who buy paperback sword and sorcery. And they’re definitely far smarter than the standard family film blockbuster. These are books that explore Gnostic belief and quantum physics, that take their overarching name from Milton’s Paradise Lost. And Pullman doesn’t stick to just one fantasy archetype for his books – there’s everything from steampunk to spellcasting here, a mix that isn’t familiar to moviegoers. What will your average audience make of a trailer that has armored polar bears, witches AND a cowboy?

If New Line does make a trailer that manages to include those disparate elements in a way that doesn’t confuse audiences, they can easily win the first weekend. But what then? This movie needs to be a huge hit, the kind of hit not made in three days. The Golden Compass ends on a very open note, much like The Fellowship of the Ring – but unlike that film there’s no guarantee of a follow-up in 12 months. Also, many of the film’s major questions remain unanswered at the end, left to be tied up in the following stories. Will audiences walk out of the opening weekend of The Golden Compass telling their friends that the movie doesn’t end, to wait for the next one and see this on DVD?

Let’s hope this does well. It’s too rare that cerebral books get adapted for the screen, especially as films aimed at wide and family audiences. New Line took one of the all-time great cinematic gambles with the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and that paid off beyond anyone’s expectations. Can they hit the same jackpot twice?

Today we launched two major additions to our website. First of all the information menu has been recoded to ease navigation around the website. Secondly we are proud to present the Cittàgazze Connection, your one stop shop for all your His Dark Materials needs.

If you have any remarks about these additions, or if you have ideas for items for the store please leave a comment!

Access Hollywood has posted some new stills from The Golden Compass.  The new images are mixed in with previous stills and include Ben Walker as Roger Parslow, Dakota Blue Richards with the photogram machine and some concept art.

Check the new images.

Thanks to anna11 for the alert.

The Times reports: The Richard Hillary Memorial Fund funds an annual lecture at Trinity College, Oxford, where Hillary had studied. Three winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature have given the lecture and this year the children's author Philip Pullman will speak on "the smallest possible units of narrative".

"It's much the same as scientists researching fundamental particles, something irreducibly small such as the metaphor of a task being a journey," says Pullman, whose own father was a fighter pilot, killed in action in Kenya in 1953. "It's a subject I have become obsessive about."

The lecture - this year at the English Faculty's St Cross Building - is on Friday 9^th February at 5pm.

ComingSoon.net reports: New Line Cinema is currently adapting Philip Pullman's fantasy adventure tale The Golden Compass, which is the first volume in the author's "His Dark Materials" trilogy. The movie is filming right now at Shepperton Studios in London and ComingSoon.net got a sneak peek at 10 minutes of early assembled footage when we recently visited the set.

The story centers around a 12-year-old girl named Lyra (played by newcomer Dakota Blue Richards) who is trying to find her best friend Roger. She lives in a world that is somewhat similar to ours, but in her universe a person's soul lives on the outside of their body and takes the form of a talking animal spirit called a dæmon. As a child's dæmon matures, it can change in shape, but as a person gets older, their dæmon settles into one form. The attachment between a person and their dæmon is incredibly forceful and a human without their dæmon is considered to be horribly disfigured and taboo. As Lyra sets out on her journey to rescue Roger, she finds herself on an unexpected mission to not only save her world, but ours as well.

The Golden Compass stars Nicole Kidman as Mrs. Coulter, who is hopelessly enchanting but conceivably dangerous, and Daniel Craig as Lord Asriel, who is a merciless voyager and intellectual with a peculiar past. The film also stars Sam Elliott as Lee Scoresby, Ian McShane as the voice of Ragnar Sturlusson, and Eva Green as Serafina Pekkala.

Although the screenplay was initially written by Tom Stoppard, the studio and Pullman felt it was not quite what they were looking for so they had the film's director, Chris Weitz, rewrite the script. Ileen Maisel, senior VP of European Productions, said Stoppard "took the script in a direction that we did not want to make. It's that simple. He focused on the science. He focused on the physics. And he focused on the majesterium. We always believed what Philip believed which is the story is about Lyra."

Before we were shown clips from the film, producer Deborah Forte told us how long she's waited for this project to be made and how excited she was that it's really happening. "Just to give you a little context for what you're going to see by way of background, this project for me started almost 11 years ago when I read the manuscript for "Northern Lights," which is the name of "The Golden Compass" in the U.K. When I read the manuscript for the book, I thought to myself, 'Who is this extraordinary writer?' I had never read Philip's work before. And wherever he's going, I want to go with him. And it struck me that this material was singularly visual, emotional and cinematic. And I called him about making a film and he said, 'Okay, I think it's a good idea. Even though films never get made from books that are options, let's see what happens.' It took a very long time. It's 10 years later now and it's been a really interesting journey."

The very first scene we were shown was of Lyra playfully walking across chairs to a really long table in Oxford's Jordan College dining hall and talking to her dæmon.

In the next clip, Mrs. Coulter appears as Lyra is being lectured by a professor. "I know you don't always understand our wish to educate you. Sometimes you do what others think best," the scholar tells Lyra. Coulter then gracefully strolls in and sits next to her and whispers to her a secret and asks her not to tell anyone. "I'd never," Lyra replies.

The third scene was with Lord Asriel as he sternly scolds Lyra in the garden at Jordan College. "I will not have my niece slithering around like an alley cat." As the two are bickering, you can see Lyra's dæmon change form, while his remains the same. He comments on it and she asks him about Dust, a particle that is rumored to fuse different worlds. "What do you know about Dust," Asriel angrily asks. "Nothing," she replies. "Good, keep it that way," adds Asriel.

We also watched an extended scene featuring Iorek, a massive armored bear who Lyra helps during her quest. Iorek runs loose through an outdoor market knocking over everything in his way. Lyra sees what is happening and starts to chase him. Armed soldiers are also after the bear and they surround him with their weapons drawn as he hides in a nearby small building. Lyra, upset by what is taking place, reasons with Iorek and he races through the wall and faces the men. Lyra runs in front of him and begs the men to not shoot.

After the clips, Forte reminded us this is still a work in progress and not the finished footage and explained how it's going to come together. "I just want to say in light of what you see here, it is very rare that a film of this scope and size and duration to have the initial concept art, which was created a very long time ago, actually be the template for almost every shot in the movie. I must say what Dennis [Gassner, production designer] and his team created with Chris [Weitz] is all here and we have not strayed very far from any of these images. So, it's just a wonderful visual photograph for the film and the inspiration for the people who you're going to hear from now, what they had so it set a context for them to work in."

She also talked about the CGI element versus practical. "I think also some of those decisions were not just practical decisions. They were creative decisions. There's a big difference I think to something like 'Narnia' and 'Lord of the Rings' and this story. Every one of the people you're going to hear from and talk to today had a certain approach to this which is guided by Philip's approach, which is to take something that is real and relatable and familiar. This is not a world where huge gargoyled monsters or magic - there's no real magic in this world. It's a real world but there's a twist. Some sort of main twist and I think that's the brilliance of what people here have created. It's going to be relatable and familiar at first glance. And then you're going to notice things, just the way you do when you read the books. Hey, this isn't the Oxford, I know right now. What is this? But it's Oxford. And so I think that that is a really big distinguishing characteristic that's involved with the material we're adapting and our approach to adapting the material. You're going to hear from a number of other professionals and artists on the film who had the exact same challenge of how do we make it real and give it a twist? And then allow it to do what it needs to do to advance the total story and the emotional resonance."

In addition to the short clips, we briefly saw Richards shoot an end scene where she is saying goodbye to Iorek. The scene was filmed on the H Stage at the studio which is really a huge green screen room. She is crying as she looks at a large stuffed white bear head on a stick. In between one of the takes, a makeup person puts eye drops in to make her cry easily. After that she's back in character tearfully saying bye to her friend.

Forte talked about how happy she was to have cast Richards for the role. "I'm very proud of the fact that we have found Dakota Blue Richards who is our Lyra who you just met on the soundstage, because she is both an uncommonly good actress and personified a lot of characteristics of Lyra as a person. It's one of those really wonderful moments when we asked New Line if they would allow us to move forward with an open casting call for this film, which is sort of weird on a very big movie to cast an unknown, and they said, 'Yes, let's see who you can find.' And we did three open call sites. And the first one was Cambridge and Cambridge actually turned out the most promising candidates, even though many of these girls traveled the farthest and in retrospect it makes sense because the kids who were most passionate about the material were willing to travel any distance to try to audition for this part. And Dakota Blue Richards was among the first group."

The Golden Compass will open in theaters on December 7, 2007.

CanMag reports: Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy will become the next piece of fantasy literature brought to the screen. The first film, The Golden Compass, is in production in London and producer Deborah Forte invited press to observe their work so far.

"This project for me started almost 11 years ago when I read the manuscript for The Northen Light, which is the name of The Golden Compass in the U.K.," she said. "When I read the manuscript for the book, I thought to myself, 'Who is this extraordinary writer?' I had never read Philip's work before. And wherever he's going, I want to go with him. And it struck me that this material was singularly visual, emotional and cinematic. And I called him about making a film and he said, 'Okay, I think it's a good idea. Even though films never get made from books that are options, let's see what happens.' It took a very long time. It's 10 years later now and it's been a really interesting journey."

Starring Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig, Forte really got her dream cast.

"When Philip and I sat down to talk about the film 10 years ago, we both said that our first pick for Mrs. Coulter would be Nicole Kidman. We had our little dream cast lunch session that all producers have and very rarely are able to realize. And many years later, we do have Nicole Kidman. We have Daniel Craig. We have a fabulous cast, Tom Courtenay and Jim Carter. It just goes on and on with wonderful actors, Simon McBurney, who populate this story."

The star of the film is young Lyra, played by newcomer Dakota Blue Richards.

"Most of all, I'm very proud of the fact that we have found Dakota Blue Richards who is our Lyra, because she is both an uncommonly good actress and personified a lot of characteristics of Lyra as a person. It's one of those really wonderful moments when we asked New Line if they would allow us to move forward with an open casting call for this film, which is sort of weird on a very big movie to cast an unknown, and they said, 'Yes, let's see who you can find.'"

The production held three casting calls to find Lyra, but discovered Richards early on.

"Just by way of an anecdote, I keep in close contact with Philip and he kept calling me to ask me how it was going and if we had seen any promising candidates. I said to the casting agent, 'Just send him the DVD with the [first] 40 kids that we selected because it's going to take weeks to go through them and we have two other locations, so we'll keep him busy for a while.' And he called me 48 hours later and said, 'It's one of two girls.' And one of them was Dakota. And he went through another month long exercise to make sure that he looked at everyone and turned over every stone, but he knew all along that he wanted Dakota. And we're very, very, very proud of her and the way that she has been part of this film and she's a very, very important part of this film."

CanMag reports: Production designer Dennis Gassner had quite a task on The Golden Compass. As the fourth or fifth major fantasy franchise to come to the screen, how could he distinguish it from the other popular entries? This one even has many snowy arctic scenes like Narnia and Lord of the Rings.

"Obviously color is really important but also the architecture of the snow is interesting," said Gassner. "I've taken basically one crystal of snow and manifested it into a very large element. It's a fusion. I wanted a place where a meeting took place so the nature of snow and ice converge and create a massive shard which gave a focal point to that world itself."

That sounds like a job for CGI, but Gassner has done his best to create the world of Philip Pullman's books in real life.

"More practical. Everything here is practical and extensions in CGI. When you have a long, long journey in how to make this movie, there's push and pull in all films so you say, 'What can we build physically? What does CGI have to take over?' But it's a practical element of dealing with the financials of the film. You divide it up, you have so much money and you say, 'Where is it going to go? What's the best use of it?'"

The mandate for the film has been to combine real world elements together to create something fantastical, a process Gassner dubs "cludging." As such, viewers may recognize London, but not the London they'd visit today.

"It's very, very complicated. The time period was obviously something that came forward actually quite quickly to me, sort of where are we placing this? This told me that story. I said, 'This will be the turn of the century to the '40s. We have that window of 40 years to say…' For costume, for props, everybody needed to have a window in time to deal with. But it's a broad window of time. So we're dealing with a generality and that opened things up so it's much more fun for the audience to look at because it is a fantasy even though we're basing it in a reality environment. We're saying, 'This is a real time, real place that you're in now.' But it gave me the scope to play with a lot of elements of time. And that accumulation is the exciting part about getting to do something like this."

Which elements come together are purely Gassner's instinctive decisions.

"It's what looks good. For me, it's the emotional content of the pieces. I react emotionally to as well to material and say, 'Oh, that feels about the right size and the right shape and the right proportion because emotionally that should be happening at this point in the script.' The environment is just really the backdrop. Like any piece of architecture, any environment that we all go through, it's how it feels in space."

BBC Oxford's Dominic Cotter spoke to Philip Pullman on the occasion of him receiving the Freedom of the City of Oxford. Philip also talks about how the film adaptation of the first part of his 'His Dark Materials' trilogy is coming along.

Listen to the interview.

Dawn Primarolo, the UK MP and Paymaster General visited Shepperton Studios earlier this month and met with - amongst others - Chris Weitz, Dakota Blue Richards and the producers of the movie. Pictures were taken of this event, and it shows a look on the set of The Golden Compass.

See the pictures here.

We'll probably receive the pictures from the press event Ryan visited next week. Those pictures should provide us with even more footage from the set at Shepperton Studios!

Introduction

Most people who have read Philip Pullman’s “His Dark Materials” are looking forward to seeing Chris Weitz’ adaptation in cinemas this December. In this article we take a look at why they should keep an open mind.

Over the last three years that we have run HisDarkMaterials.org it has become clear that there is a kind of magic to the trilogy that is not easily found in other books. Almost all readers of the books have fallen in love with them; this has lead to a very intense scrutiny of the whole process of the movies’ development. Let me just take a look at some of the concerns that have been mentioned before by members of the website.

A Movie?

When a studio announces that they will be filming a popular book there are always those readers that denounce the development because in their eyes it will ruin the essence of the story. For a book bearing such heavy philosophical burdens as His Dark Materials the case is even worse. Finally the fact that Pullman mentioned that he would not be meddling in the creative process only exacerbated matters. Fortunately it seems things aren’t exactly as black and white as some people would have thought.

Casting

Casting is always an issue, but with His Dark Materials particularly so as it features prominent protagonists that a lot of the (younger) readers can associate with. Logically this has lead to many adolescents putting themselves forward to play either Lyra and Roger; a chance partially offered by the open casting call for Lyra.

After the cast was announced with Nicole Kidman, Daniel Craig, and Eva Green taking on the most important adult roles in the movie it settled most discussions. Face it; nobody doubts that they’ll do an excellent job. However, Lyra and Roger remained unknowns. As mentioned in the first Shepperton report I was sincerely impressed by Dakota Blue Richard’s representation of Lyra. Often when it comes to actors they are referred to as “translating” a role. With DBR this is not the case as her Lyra role seems to come very naturally. It definitely looks like New Line’s gamble with open casting paid off, unlike with Inkheart (more on that in a forthcoming article). The only risk is that Dakota will be seen as ‘Lyra’ for the rest of her acting career.

Aside from the fact that some people might have had a slightly different cast in mind (Jason Isaacs for Asriel?) there is no reason why they shouldn’t find peace with the current line up. That is, as long as Ben Walker turns out to be as good at portraying Roger as DBR is at portraying Lyra.

Production Design

Dennis Gassner is in charge of the production design for The Golden Compass. There were never too many reasons to doubt his skills as he’s done work for movies ranging f rom The Truman Show to Jarhead. Ironically he also worked on a movie called Ask the Dust. Still he was under a lot of pressure, not only because he has the jobs of setting the scene for some 1300 pages of material; material about which millions of people already have an idea of what it should look like. The hardest part was probably the fact that the first book takes place in an alternate world subtly unlike our own. Like somebody pointed out to me many Americans will have a hard time distinguishing an alternate London or Oxford from the real thing.

Luckily Gassner’s take on the architecture – think 1920’s London redesigned by Sir Christopher Wren with a touch a glass and steel – is very reassuring. It’s like our world, but some elements such as the sky ferry (zeppelin) docks and the looming tower of the Magisterium should convince even the most uneducated viewer that this is not our world.

During his presentation at Shepperton he explained that he always starts with a simple concept: for the design philosophy this entails the circle, symbolizing good, and the oval, symbolizing evil. These motifs return in such places as the Jordan College gates – circle – and the Magisterium’s logo – oval. He continues to explain that the same goes for the architecture, where he started out with London’s Air Street as the ‘template’ for the design. It all looks very convincing.

The only slightly obscure part is the mention of the ‘alchemical power’ which supposedly powers vehicles in  Lyra’s world. I can only hope that they mean a form of ‘anbaric power.’

The Script

There has been a lot of discussion about the script, and more specifically, about the script writers. We all know that Sir Tom Stoppard was originally adapting the trilogy. However, at the end of May 2004 Tom Stoppard was side-tracked and it was reported that Chris Weitz would helm the adaptation of at least the first book. Some articles even mentioned that Weitz’ dissertation was presented to Stoppard which later on turned out not to be true when Sir Tom told the Times that

“[..] they did not want me to do any more work on the script than I had already done. They said they might come back to me for the second and third script. I think that is a polite way of saying cheerio.”

New Line was under quite a bit of pressure to clarify their actions, and end of November 2004 they gave us the following statement:

“We have an incredible amount of respect for Tom Stoppard and value his contributions to the His Dark Materials project. However, because Chris Weitz is a writer/director, we believe it is important to give him the opportunity to bring his vision to life. After meeting with Chris, His Dark Materials author Philip Pullman agreed with our assessment that Chris was the right man for the job. He is an Academy Award-nominated writer/director with an excellent take on the material and we are confident that he will do this wonderful story justice on the big screen.”

In other words, it seemed like they were saying that although they liked Tom Stoppard’s script they were impressed to such an extent with Chris Weitz application that they were willing to dismiss one of the most promising contributors to the movies. Needlessly to say this didn’t fare too well with the press or the readers, with the Independent going as far to run an article titled “Tom Stoppard dumped as 'gross-out' director takes over Dark Materials.”

Luckily for us His Dark Materials fans, New Line Cinema’s Senior VP European Production Ileen Maisel was kind enough to enlighten us on this oft debated matter. She told us that

“[Tom Stoppard] took the script in a direction that we did not want to make. It was that simple. He focused on the science. He focused on the physics. And he focused on the Magisterium. And we always believed what Philip believed which is that it’s the story about Lyra.”

So there you have it. It wasn’t a case of Stoppard getting axed because Weitz was more dedicated, it wasn’t a case of Stoppard falling out with New Line; it was simply the fact that Stoppard’s often lauded overly intellectual approach wasn’t appreciated. Interestingly enough it’s not like New Line never informed Sir Tom of this creative difference. In the Guardian he once remarked “I was also attracted to Philip's wide reference to everything from particle physics to Paradise Lost - too attracted in my first draft. I was asked, quite rightly, to make the script more "Lyra-centric". The job became harder the further one got into the trilogy because Philip makes time and space elastic. This doesn't trouble the reader, who may not even notice, but it is harder to deal with in a film.”

All that remains is the question why Chris Weitz returned to the project after leaving citing technical challenges. When we questioned him why he returned he hardly gave a satisfactory answer. Could it be that he conquered his fears of green screens? Could it be that New Line made him an offer he couldn’t refuse? Could it be that he though the alternative directors not good enough to work with the material? As soon as we have the answer we’ll let you know.

Religion

Religion is without a doubt the most controversial point when it comes to adapting His Dark Materials. When Nicholas Wright adapted His Dark Materials for the stage he retained all the religious elements, leading to various Christian organizations boycotting the show.

Although Philip never meant to portray the Magisterium as a representation of our Church, almost all who read the books have interpreted it that way. It’s no wonder that now and then some religious zealot kindly informs me that I’ll be heading straight to Lucifer’s lounge. For those of you that haven’t read the books, the Magisterium is portrayed as a modern, totalitarian Inquisition.

When Tom Stoppard was still writing the script he mentioned that

“Philip Pullman is making a very uncontentious point that some of the worst excesses in our hundreds of years of history all over the globe have been committed in the service of religious fervour. He clearly takes the view that religious fervour has spread a lot of wretchedness and violence and so forth around the world.”

The impression this gave a lot of the readers was that Stoppard was going to portray the Magisterium the same was as it was portrayed in the books.

The controversy erupted when Chris Weitz stated in an interview that

“New Line is a company that makes films for economic returns.  You would hardly expect them to be anything else.  They have expressed worry about the possibility of HDM’s perceived antireligiosity making it an unviable project financially.”

Afterwards various comments were made that hinted at the fact that ‘it wouldn’t be as bad as he had made it sound.’ I concur that quoted out of context it is a quote capable of causing quite a stir, but honestly, is His Dark Materials about religion? I don’t think so.

Once again Ileen Maisel:

Ryan: What’s your take on the whole religious aspect of the movies?

Ileen: “Philip Pullman himself has addressed this, which people don’t necessarily want to pay attention to. For Philip, and he said it in a number of talks that he gave at the National Theatre, Philip is against any kind of totalitarianism. Alright? So from our point of view the Magisterium is a totalitarian government. That’s what it is. It’s not about religion, it’s not about God, it’s about totalitarianism. And it’s about the struggle and the ultimate winning of individual self-responsibility and free will. That’s what this movie is about, that’s what all three movies are about.”

Ryan: I said to myself I’ll make up my mind when I see the first stills, and when I saw the still of the Magisterium guard I thought V for Vendetta.

Ileen: He feels that way about communism.

Ryan: You don’t necessarily have to go with the whole religious...

Ileen: If anything it diminishes the power of the stories.

Ryan: It also leaves you open to criticism.

Ileen: Yes it would leave you to criticism but that’s not what I’m interested in. What I’m interested in is the integrity of the story. What I’m interested in is what Lyra achieves, and what she achieves is ultimately accepting responsibility for who she is and her free will and her decisions. That’s why Serafina repeatedly says we can not let her know what her mission is because it has to be her choice. That’s what Philip is about, and that’s what these movies are about, and that’s what Chris Weitz is about. And to be honest with you it’s why Daniel Craig committed to playing Lord Asriel, it’s why Nicole Kidman committed to playing Mrs. Coulter. All of them were very very involved in the philosophy of these movies, because we all feel it’s so important, especially in this world that we live in right now. And to do it in an incredibly entertaining way in which he brings together this extraordinary gang of misfits and courageous individuals who themselves have to each achieve something to help her achieve something, it’s extraordinary.

Ryan: Is the Magisterium still going to have a religious undertone?

Ileen: It’s totalitarianism.

Ryan: So it’s purely totalitarianism?

Ileen: That’s what we’re up against.

Ryan: Then what is the Magisterium’s motivation to sever children from their dæmons? From the Christian perspective it’s about preventing Original Sin, so what is this about?

Ileen: You have to see the movie, because what we do, we take it in a direction that I think you’ll be very very happy with, that also Philip was very happy with. Because one has to define their terms, about what Original Sin is, what Dust is, what Dust does, and how it acts as a motivator. From Philip’s point of view, and what Philip has said, in fact Philip has written certain scenes for us; that he’s been involved with, that Chris has then rewritten. For us Dust is wisdom. And that’s why the Magisterium wants to separate it. What the Magisterium wants is little automatons to do exactly what they want. They don’t want free thinking individuals who challenge their authority: nothing different than what we come across in this world.

Ryan: Exactly like the staff in Bolvanger, who are bland because they’ve been severed?

Ileen: And that was Philip, Philip basically said Dust was Wisdom.

Ryan: We couldn’t have wished for a better answer.

Concluding

Not everybody had faith in New Line adapting these movies. Even Terry Gilliam once remarked that

“[His Dark Materials is] a big project and I'm not sure the studio really understands what it is, which may be why it seems to be languishing at the moment.”

New Line has always states that they’re absolutely committed to this project, but with the various troubles surrounding, in particular, the script and the religious aspects they didn’t really manage to convince the skeptics. After all, would any studio state that they’re not committed to a $150 million movie?

It is obvious that The Golden Compass might be very different from what people expect, which is not often something that people keep in mind when discussing the movies. Everybody is always so keen to point out to how differently they envisaged it – just read the discussions about Nicole being too blond – but I believe that if they keep an open mind they will end up enjoying the movie more.

All things considered I think it is fair to state that the movies are in very capable hands. Deborah Forte has spent more than 11 years guiding these movies, and to see that she and her colleagues are still showing the same passion and interest as if they’d read the books only yesterday is simply heart warming. Naturally they want to make a profit, but more than that, they want to tell a story.

Tell Them Stories, in Philip Pullman's words - it’s what His Dark Materials is all about.

© HisDarkMaterials.org - No part of this text may be reproduced without our permission. If you wish to use a part of this text please contact us.

Before I post my extended opinion on the movie I just wish to thank a few people who made my stay in London possible and/or a lot more enjoyable.

First of all Gordon Paddison for inviting me in the first place, Samantha Shuman for making last minute travel arrangements, Nicole Butte, Joe Whitmore, and Clare Anne Conlon for being helpful and generally nice people to hang out with. Thanks to Deborah Forte, Mark Ordesky, and Ileen Maisel for being so accessible and willing to shed some lights on the movie's development. A big thank you to Chris and Dakota who took the time to talk to us; also everybody on set who introduced themselves and talked about their experiences.

Also Scott from Hollywood.com, Jenny from JoBlo, and Heather from ComingSoon for explaining what a per diem is and being cool people to hang out with. Drew from AICN for making some good points about the movie. Kyle from UGO for accompanying me on my final day in London. Finally Jennifer from MTV and Devin from CHUD for brightening up the evening.