(12/27/07) Tonight at 8:30 BBC1 will be airing the first adaptation of Philip Pullman's Sally Lockheart series: The Ruby In The Smoke.  Dr. Who star Billie Piper plays the lead role of Sally Lockheart - a young heroine uncovering a mysterious past set against the backdrop of Victorian England.

The HisDarkMaterials.org site team would like to wish the whole His Dark Materials fanbase a Merry Christmas!

Because our members are spread out all over the world we would like to break the English-only for once and wish you a merry christmas in your mother tongue.

Bon Nadal
Buon Natale

Craciun Fericit
Feliz Natal
Feliz Navidad
Fijne kerstdagen
Fröhliche Weihnachten
Geseënde Kerfees
Gleðileg Jól
God Jul
Hag Molad Sameach

Hyvää Joulua
Joyeux Noël
Kala Hristougena
Merry Christmas
Nadolig Llawen
Nollaig Shona
Selamat Hari Natal

Did we forget your language? Throw it in the comments and we'll add it rightaway!

From the (right-wing) "National Review Online":

"One of the unfairest demands adults make of children’s literature is that it conform to their particular religious or political notions of worthiness, and the new film projects of C. S. Lewis’s Narnia novels and Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy — not to mention that boxed sets of both books will be hard to avoid this holiday shopping season — has fueled the long-simmering feud between fans of each fantasy series."

Boxes of Wonder

C. S. Lewis and Philip Pullman still offer rich adventure.

One of the unfairest demands adults make of children’s literature is that it conform to their particular religious or political notions of worthiness, and the new film projects of C. S. Lewis’s Narnia novels and Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy — not to mention that boxed sets of both books will be hard to avoid this holiday shopping season — has fueled the long-simmering feud between fans of each fantasy series."

For those unfamiliar with the stories, C. S. Lewis’s Narnia is a magical country in a parallel universe created and ruled by a Christ-like lion deity named Aslan. Various English schoolchildren find themselves transported to Narnia by magical means; the wardrobe of the first book, for instance, leads to an snowy enchanted forest, which an evil White Witch has made “always winter and never Christmas.” (Disney and Walden Media have recently released a special extended DVD version of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe for just a few weeks.)

The Narnia series is generally called Christian allegory, but that’s simplistic as well as somewhat misleading. Lewis, whose theological writing for adults made him one the 20^th-century’s great Christian apologists, coined the word “supposal” to describe his fantasy world — suppose the Son of God appeared as the King of Beasts in a land of talking animals? And suppose that humans, with all their sins, entered this world? What then?

To call the stories allegory also gives no hint of why  readers return to them many times, as I have over the years, even past childhood, long after the page-turning adventures hold no more surprises. Lewis was a master stylist, and his children’s series are marked by the same dryly witty prose, comic characters and shrewd insight into the human condition that distinguish The Screwtape Letters and his other books for adults. Yet Narnia has its enemies, and since the first film’s premiere, they have been out in force.

Chief among them is the British fantasy writer Philip Pullman, whose popular and page-turning His Dark Materials trilogy was conceived as an atheistic answer to Lewis’s vision. Pullman, as the Washington Post reminded readers last year, sees Lewis’s magical world as “a peevish blend of racist, misogynistic and reactionary prejudice.” (This  strikes me as jaw-droppingly wrong, but more about that in a minute.) Riveting as Pullman’s trilogy is — the film adaptation of the first book, The Golden Compass, should reach theaters next year — it is philosophically incoherent, especially compared to the tightly argued Narnia series.

Pullman’s child heroine Lyra, for instance, endangers everyone around her by her insisting on an expedition to a miserable, shadowy underworld just “to say sorry” to a dead friend. Compellingly eerie (in a Twilight Zone-like way) as these passages are, the also seem rather ridiculous. The fight between good and evil in the Dark Materials books is basically between followers of Lyra’s father, Lord Asriel, a selfish egomaniac who’s only slightly less odious than Lyra’s mother, the wicked Mrs. Coulter.

It’s funny to think of Pullman calling Lewis racist, considering the “darkie”-like “Gyptians” in the Dark Materials books. It’s beyond funny to think of him accusing Lewis of “reactionary prejudice,” since Pullman, not Lewis, seems tied to a stuffy and outdated elitism. Human characters in the Dark Materials trilogy all have “daemons,” totem-like animals that express their inner souls. But their inner souls seem bound by the inelastic old English class system — Pullman notes in passing that servants’ daemons are always dogs.      

Like Narnia, Pullman’s imagined universe involves a lot of comings and goings between parallel worlds — but in this cosmos God is not so much absent as a weak and exhausted Chronos-like character, suggesting a religious vision that is essentially pagan (or anti-theist) instead of atheistic. This seems not so much defiant as simply unevolved and simplistic. Perhaps Pullman’s quarrel, as he’s said in interviews, is really with monotheism. But in any case it’s not very convincing.

The big reveal in the Pullman series is a former nun’s loss of faith: A character named Mary Malone tells Lyra and her friend Will that flirting with a man in a café reminded her how much she enjoyed kissing a boy when she was 12 (about Lyra and Will’s age, as it happens). This makes Mary understand that the Christian religion is nothing more than “a very powerful and convincing mistake.” Maybe so, but while realizing you like boys seems a very powerful and convincing reason to no longer be a nun, readers may wonder what it has to do with believing in God or not.

Pullman’s a rip-roaring storyteller in the grand tradition of British fantasy-adventure writers Jules Verne and H. G. Wells and H. Rider Haggard, but his characters seem mostly wheeled out of a dusty prop closet; his “Texan” balloon pilot Lee Scoresby, for instance, is no more like a real Texan than Tiger Lily in Peter Pan is like a real Indian. Lewis’s fantasy characters, on the other hand, always have some dryly comical human trait that remind even the youngest readers of real people. Lewis is constantly accused of sexism, but consider his description of a couple of girls in The Horse and His Boy, the fifth novel in the Narnia series: Aravis, a girl escaping a forced marriage in an autocratic land south of Narnia called Calormen, runs into an old aquaintance who seems to be something of a Maureen Dowd in miniature: “The fuss she made over choosing the dresses nearly drove Aravis mad,” Lewis writes. “She remembered now that Lasaraleen had always been like that, interested in clothes and parties and gossip. Aravis had always been more interested in bows and arrows and horses and dogs and swimming. You will guess that each thought the other silly.”

Lewis’s vision of the world is essentially humane, with his keen eye for all the subtle forms of human vanity — whether expressed by a talking horse or a charlatan magaician. “I don’t quite hold with chariots or the kind of horses who draw chariots,” says the pompous Bree, the horse in The Horse and His Boy. And The Magician’s Nephew ends with Uncle Andrew, the selfish magician of the title, safely back in London after being terrorized by the evil White Witch of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in her previous incarnation.

For the rest of his life, Lewis writes, Uncle Andrew tells the story to anyone who would listen, but his version is a sort of celebrity encounter with himself as the hero: “‘A devilish temper she had,’ he would say, ‘But she was a dem fine woman, sir, a dem fine woman.’”

I’ve read the Narnia series repeatedly over the years because of passages like that. But leaving religion entirely out of it, I can’t imagine reading the Pullman books again. This doesn’t mean I wasn’t glued to them when I discovered the series a few years ago, but while Pullman’s imagined worlds are powerfully eerie, his characters are flat, humorless and generally annoying. Maybe in a generation or two Pullman will prove to be as enduring as Lewis, but I doubt it. Until then, though, I envy the child who hasn’t read either series yet, and receives a boxed set of both for the holidays.

 — Catherine Seipp is a writer in California who publishes the weblog Cathy's World. She is an NRO contributor.

[© 22/12/06, National Review Online]

While most of the studios are focused on this year's awards campaigns, New Line Cinema is looking ahead to next December.

Last week, the company sent out a handsomely produced promotional brochure heralding its big-budget fantasy movie "The Golden Compass," an adaptation of the first installment of Philip Pullman's best-selling "His Dark Materials" trilogy, which Chris Weitz is directing. It is set for release on Dec. 7.
The booklet -- oversized and on heavy stock paper -- has full-page photos and bios of the main actors: Nicole Kidman, Daniel Craig and newcomer Dakota Blue Richards. It includes shots of a fantastical Victorian-like world and a section on the supporting cast, producers and below-the-line talent such as the film editor, costume designer, production designer and director of photography.

New Line previews 'Compass'

While most of the studios are focused on this year's awards campaigns, New Line Cinema is looking ahead to next December.

Last week, the company sent out a handsomely produced promotional brochure heralding its big-budget fantasy movie "The Golden Compass," an adaptation of the first installment of Philip Pullman's best-selling "His Dark Materials" trilogy, which Chris Weitz is directing. It is set for release on Dec. 7.

The booklet -- oversized and on heavy stock paper -- has full-page photos and bios of the main actors: Nicole Kidman, Daniel Craig and newcomer Dakota Blue Richards. It includes shots of a fantastical Victorian-like world and a section on the supporting cast, producers and below-the-line talent such as the film editor, costume designer, production designer and director of photography.

Rolf Mittweg, president of worldwide distribution and marketing at New Line, said the booklet is not an awards play.

"The intention is to tell the world that next year, next Christmas, a major blockbuster from New Line is arriving at a screen near you," he said. "It wasn't geared to the awards season. If it happens, that would be nice." He said the booklet was earmarked for exhibitors, distributors and the media.

New Line used a similar awareness campaign for its blockbuster "Lord of the Rings" trilogy with a pamphlet that it circulated two years before the movie opened and a calendar that it sent out a year in advance of the debut of the first movie in the trilogy. At the time, New Line wasn't positioning "The Fellowship of the Ring" as an Oscar contender, though, as realized by Peter Jackson, the first two movies ultimately received numerous Academy Awards and nominations, while the third installment, "The Return of the King," swept the 2003 Oscars with 11 wins.

"Golden Compass" is an important movie for New Line, which has been idling at the boxoffice since "King" was released in 2003. The studio's biggest movie since then has been 2005's "Wedding Crashers." This year, New Line's biggest boxoffice winner has been "Final Destination 3," which grossed $54 million domestically.

"Golden Compass" is budgeted at $150 million-$180 million, making it one of the biggest projects in the company's history and a potential franchise if it succeeds at the boxoffice.

"There's a lot riding on the success of this film," Mittweg said.

[© 21/12/06, Hollywood Reporter]

On an unseasonably warm day just south of the Arctic circle, the star of "The Golden Compass" flops into a chair near a snowdrift and braces herself for an onslaught of questions. She's bundled up, but since this is actually just a soundstage outside London—the Arctic will be digitally added later—she's shedding layers. She has been coached, surely, about how to handle this moment, but just in case, her mother sits beside her, and a publicist hovers nearby like a bee. The fuss is understandable. "The Golden Compass" is next autumn's $150 million film version of the first book in Philip Pullman's critically revered fantasy trilogy "His Dark Materials"—the next "Lord of the Rings," if you're into breathless hype—and its star, Dakota Blue Richards, is just 12 years old and about to give the first press interview of her young life.

The Arctic Adventurer

Dakota Blue Richards: Like Daniel Radcliffe, the young British star of 'The Golden Compass' came out of nowhere to portray one of the most beloved heroes in children's literature.

On an unseasonably warm day just south of the Arctic circle, the star of "The Golden Compass" flops into a chair near a snowdrift and braces herself for an onslaught of questions. She's bundled up, but since this is actually just a soundstage outside London—the Arctic will be digitally added later—she's shedding layers. She has been coached, surely, about how to handle this moment, but just in case, her mother sits beside her, and a publicist hovers nearby like a bee. The fuss is understandable. "The Golden Compass" is next autumn's $150 million film version of the first book in Philip Pullman's critically revered fantasy trilogy "His Dark Materials"—the next "Lord of the Rings," if you're into breathless hype—and its star, Dakota Blue Richards, is just 12 years old and about to give the first press interview of her young life. She's nervous for a minute, but soon she's racing through the story of how she landed the part. She was grumpy from a bad day at school when the director called. Her mother tried to put him on speakerphone but hung up on him instead. ("Accidentally," Mum interjects.) He called back and shared the news. "Then I screamed a lot," Richards says, "and I did the Snoopy dance." Sorry, the what? She hops to her feet and does an adorable little shimmy for a few seconds, then giggles and sits back down. "That's the Snoopy dance. There's a lot more to it, though."

For Pullman fans, this kind of plucky self-confidence must sound familiar: it's Lyra Belaqua, the novel's crafty protagonist, who travels from Oxford to the Arctic Circle—aided by armored bears, flying witches and a truth-telling compass that only she can read—to rescue her kidnapped best friend. Richards read the trilogy with her mother when she was 9, then fell in love all over again when she saw the National Theatre's stage version of "The Golden Compass" a year later. It's not unusual for little girls to leave the theater dreaming of curtain calls, but that's not quite how it happened for Richards. She didn't want to be an actress; she wanted to be Lyra. "I feel like I can relate to her," Richards says. "I like to think I'm quite brave. I stand up for myself. And I don't let other people tell me what to do." She glances at her mother and blushes a bit. "Well, unless it's my mum."

When Richards heard about the film version, which will costar Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig (also known as James Bond), she ventured from her home in Brighton, in the south of England, to Cambridge for the movie's open casting call. Her mother agreed to take her on one condition: that Dakota wouldn't be too upset when she got passed over. There were 10,000 other girls up for the part, after all, and Dakota had never acted before. "Usually, it's a gut-wrenching decision," says the film's writer-director Chris Weitz ("About a Boy"). "You realize the whole time how much rests on the shoulders of this kid. But I didn't have any doubts about Dakota. She looks not quite tamed, and that's Lyra." Weitz says he's trying to keep his young star insulated on set so she can be a normal girl for as long as possible, but he knows there's only so much he can do. "It was hard to cast someone, honestly, because you know that you may be doing them a disservice," he says. "I don't know if anyone can prepare Dakota for the kind of exposure that's going to come with this. Especially in England, where the press can be merciless."

Richards's first round with the press, however, is a snap. She handles with charm questions about shuttling between school and set ("That's quite annoying") and meeting Kidman and Craig ("I figured if I did something wrong, they'd be, like, 'Oh my God, why are we working with her?' But they were really nice"). Finally the questions end, and she offers a polite handshake, then scrambles back out into the Arctic. It's time to be Lyra again.

[© 2006, NewsWeek, Inc]

The new year will bring the 250th anniversary of the birth of William Blake. Philip Pullman explains how the writer and artist has inspired his work, and his life.

"What I've come to cherish most of all in Blake, as I've grown older, is a quality that (to use his own term) I have to call prophetic. It is prophetic in two senses: it foretells, and, like the words of the Old Testament prophets, it warns, it carries a moral force. Furthermore, without being a Blakeian (except in the sense that I follow his own proclamation "I must create a System, or be enslav'd by another Man's"), I admit that the words of Blake have joined a very small number of other texts as the best expression of the most important things I believe. If I didn't believe them, I wouldn't be able to work. How I came to believe them is another story, but I seem to have been feeling my way towards the principles set out below all my life. When I needed to find words for them, I found that Blake had already said what I wanted to say more clearly and powerfully than I ever could."

An English visionary

The new year will bring the 250th anniversary of the birth of William Blake. Philip Pullman explains how the writer and artist has inspired his work, and his life

In 1962 or thereabouts, when I was a young boy intoxicated by the sounds that poetry makes, I came across Allen Ginsberg's "Howl". I read it with astonishment and with an almost sensual delight. Having become drunk on "Howl", I moved on to other poems by Ginsberg, notably "Sunflower Sutra". Praising the beauty of the dusty old plant he sees in the wasteland of a San Francisco dock, with its

corolla of bleary spikes pushed down and broken like a battered crown, seeds fallen out of its face, soon-to-be-toothless mouth of sunny air, sunrays obliterated on its hairy head like a dried wire spiderweb . . .

Ginsberg evokes an earlier poet who had celebrated the same flower:

I rushed up enchanted – it was my first

sunflower, memories of Blake – my visions . . .

I remain grateful to Ginsberg for several things, not least for having pointed the way to a greater poet. In my search for the sort of visionary intensity I'd found in "Howl" I followed his lead towards Blake, and bought the only edition I could afford, a little paperback selection edited by Ruthven Todd. I carried it everywhere; I have it still. It's on the desk beside me now, its paper yellowing and fragile, its cover as battered and grimy as that sunflower of Ginsberg's. I'd let many other and more costly books perish before failing to save that one. I read every word over and over and learned many of the poems by heart. Some of my first attempts to write were imitations of the great lyrics.

I am not a Blake scholar, and there are large stretches of the prophetic books that I have never read and probably never shall. But it was not scholarship that lured me on: it was intoxication. Blake's world is large and complex enough to provide endless matter for the delusions of the floridly paranoid as well as for academic study. He had the precious gift of expressing that complexity of thought in lines of unequalled force and limpid clarity:

It works as poetry always does, on the ear and in the mouth, before it lets itself be disen tangled by the mind. There is some great poetry which works like that, but which when disentangled leaves little but a delicate fragrance: Tennyson's "The splendour falls on castle walls" is an example, and so is Edward Lear's "The Owl and the Pussy-Cat". But the best of Blake's lyrics, when examined for their intellectual content, disclose tough, dense and sinewy argument, always surprising, always original, always disturbing:

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

 

The reason they work so well, the reason they are unforgettable, is that they have an incantatory power unlike anything else in English.

What I've come to cherish most of all in Blake, as I've grown older, is a quality that (to use his own term) I have to call prophetic. It is prophetic in two senses: it foretells, and, like the words of the Old Testament prophets, it warns, it carries a moral force. Furthermore, without being a Blakeian (except in the sense that I follow his own proclamation "I must create a System, or be enslav'd by another Man's"), I admit that the words of Blake have joined a very small number of other texts as the best expression of the most important things I believe. If I didn't believe them, I wouldn't be able to work. How I came to believe them is another story, but I seem to have been feeling my way towards the principles set out below all my life. When I needed to find words for them, I found that Blake had already said what I wanted to say more clearly and powerfully than I ever could.

. . . and shew you all alive

The world, where every particle of dust

breathes forth its joy.

To begin with, then, this world, this extra ordinary universe in which we live and of which we are made, is material; and it is amorous by nature. Matter rejoices in matter, and each atom of it falls in love with other atoms and delights to join up with them to form complex and even more delightful structures.

Man has no Body distinct from his Soul;

for that call’d Body is a portion of Soul discern’d by the five senses . . .

 

Things arise from matter-in-love-with-matter that are not themselves matter. Thoughts emerge from the unimaginable, the non-disentangle-able complexity of the body and the brain, thoughts that are not material, though they have analogues in material processes. You cannot say where one ends and the other begins, because each is an aspect of the other.

How do you know but ev’ry Bird that cuts the airy way,

Is an immense World of delight, clos’d by your senses five?

The consciousness that emerges from matter demonstrates that consciousness, like mass, is a normal property of the physical world, and much more widely present than human beings think.

2. Energy is the only life, and is from the Body; and Reason is the bound or outward circumference of Energy.

3. Energy is Eternal Delight.

Bodily experience underlies, sustains, inspires, and cherishes mental experience. The mental templates on which are formed such things as metaphor, the very ways we understand and interpret our experience, are based on the ways our bodies move around in the world and interact with other physical entities.

A dog starv’d at his Master's Gate

Predicts the ruin of the State

The visionary and the imaginative are not different realms from the political, but the very ground on which politics stands, the nourish-ing soil from which political awareness and action grow.

God Appears & God is Light

To those poor Souls who dwell in Night,

But does a Human Form Display

To those who Dwell in Realms of day.

The fullest and most important subject of our study and our work is human nature and its relationship to the universe.

Eternity is in love with the productions of time.

Lastly, we should never forget that the work we do is infinitely worth doing.

I know that this credo of mine is highly selective, and that it would be possible to put together passages from Blake to support a quite different set of propositions. What do I care about that? I have never doubted that Blake was larger than my understanding of him.

Blake was a poet and artist before he was anything else, and he worked as all writers and artists do, feeling his way through the medium (the words, the forms, the colours) to the truth. There is an astonishing example of that in the draft of "The Sick Rose" in Blake's notebook, now in the British Library. In the last line but one, he originally wrote "his dark secret love" - and then crossed out "his" and wrote "her". Later he changed it back, but there was a stage in the composition of that poem, which is so simple and so rich in implication, when he might have turned it quite another way. The dense and disturbing lyrics in the Songs of Innocence and of Experience were not just pretty ways of dressing up ideas that had already been fully worked out in the medium of prose: they were the very hammer and anvil of thinking itself.

I have not even mentioned Blake's illuminations. Some of his great designs would be enough by themselves to ensure that he was remembered among the most powerful and original artists England has ever produced: Glad Day, the joyful and exuberant image of a nude male figure extending his arms wide against an aureole of rosy light - perhaps, Kathleen Raine said, "the first work to show those inimitable Blakeian qualities of joyous energy and elegance of form"; Newton, the image made famous recently by Eduardo Paolozzi's giant bronze sculpture in the British Library piazza; and perhaps the most well-known of all, The Ancient of Days, the aged creator, white hair and beard streaming in the wind, crouching tensely to lean down and spread the arms of a great pair of compasses open on the face of the deep.

I can't be objective about Blake; I can't be judicious and measured, weighing his merits against his deficiencies and coming to a balanced and thoughtful conclusion. The fact is, I love him. I am as intoxicated at 60 as I was at 16. As I've grown older, in fact, my wonder has only increased. Next year, we reach the 250th anniversary of his birth. If England cannot mark this year with proper celebration and tribute to one of her very greatest sons, then England should be ashamed of herself.

Blake : an inspiration

Patti Smith, musician

Responding to injustice in the world through songs is something I learned from Blake at a very early age. That's one debt I owe to him . . .

I love the story of William Blake and his wife, Catherine. When he was young he fell in love with another girl, who had had a lot of men. He wanted someone constant, and she called him a fool. He was very upset, and went for a long walk, and he eventually reached the house of a farmer. He was invited to sit down at the table, where he was served by a very simple, honest-looking woman. He liked her instantly and told her the whole story, and she was very sympathetic. He asked: do you pity me? And she said yes. So he said, well I love you . . .

Despite all his financial difficulties, and the lack of recognition for his work, Blake succeeded in doing what he would wish us all to do with our lives, and that is to embody God. Even if he did not prosper materially, he was extraordinarily rich in a spiritual sense.

From a speech given to the Blake Society

Blake : an inspiration

Tracy Chevalier, writer

My first contact with William Blake was through reading Songs of Innocence and of Experience at university in America, where few are familiar with his work. The Songs have an unaffected power that stuck with me. Afterwards I often found myself murmuring "Tyger! Tyger! burning bright" under my breath; or "I wander thro' each charter'd street,/Near where the charter'd Thames does flow,/And mark in every face I meet/ Marks of weakness, marks of woe." I particularly loved those last lines when I first moved to London, for Blake captured the exhausted desperation I often saw in the faces of fellow commuters on cold, grey days.

It was when I first saw his illustrations at the Tate that Blake really began to open up to me. In those days his coloured prints were kept in glass cases, with cloth covers to protect them from overexposure to light. Uncovering each one felt like unwrapping a present, and I couldn't take my eyes off Newton hunched over his drawing, Nebuchadnezzar crawling on hands and knees, God judging Adam with a stern pointed finger.

Then and now, my response to Blake's work has been an uneasy combination of awe and fear. His words are often angry, or obscure, or both. His illustrations are beautiful but also dark and apocalyptic. People are rarely having fun, but fighting losing battles in a cold world, railing against an indifferent or vindictive God. And yet, there is something alive in his work that draws me back: what Blake called "contraries", fire in the dark, sweetness amidst dread. These contrasts, in both word and image, make me think, and look, and think again. His poems and pictures never get resolved, and live the longer for it.

Tracy Chevalier's "Burning Bright", a novel about Blake, is published in March by HarperCollins

Blake : an inspiration

Chris Orr, printmaker

Many years ago at a private view in a gallery in Notting Hill, I encountered a drunken Scottish poet who loudly accused the English of never producing a single decent poet or painter. I breathed the name William Blake and he shrank away in sober horror; for the truth is that Blake is a towering figure in all his creations, not the least printmaking, in which he succeeded in turning the mundane industry of etching and engraving into the pure voice of an artist.

It is Blake who has shown that the printmaking process is more than just a means to an end, but is a beautiful end in itself. There is something elemental about drawing with a metal point on to a copper plate and then submersing into the bubbling acid to etch the line to a sufficient depth to hold ink, and nothing can compare with the joy of pulling a print, a moment of revelation as the paper is gently peeled back to reveal the printed and reversed image.

Over the years as my career developed along the lines of a self-publishing artist, writer, printer and salesman, I settled into a pale image of Blake. In 1992 he overwhelmed me and I made a series of etchings, Chris Orr's Life of W Blake.

You might assume that, with more than 500 years of printing history, there is nothing new to be discovered in etching. You would be wrong. The subtlety and nuances of this medium are potentially infinite. Blake connected back to one of the important roots of etching in alchemy, and clearly shows us that the artist may bring to this process a poetic, innovative spirit. My own, sub-Blakeian description of all printmaking is "poetry through mechanics".

Chris Orr is professor of printmaking at the Royal College of Art and is a Royal Academician

[© 18/12/06, NewSatesMan.com]

Six more movie stills were posted on X-Realms.net.

View the images!

New Line Cinema has launched the official website for The Golden Compass.  The website features sections on cast and crew, the alethiometer and story summaries.  Fans can also catch more visualization art, studio stills and the long-awaited front photographs of Dakota Blue Richards.

The casting list points to the renaming of the armoured bear king Iofur Raknison (voiced by Ian McShane) to the name "Ragnar Sturlusson."

View the press release.

You can unlock concept art by entering certain combinations into the alethiometer on the website. Various people have thusfar managed to reverse engineer the alethiometer, yielding the combinations, but the first person to do so was Energy, well done!

Combinations

Thanks to Lux&Saphi for translating the combination to symbols!

Candle, Globe, Compass
Cauldron (Crucible), Lightning, Horse
Baby, Griffin, Walled garden
Beehive, Chameleon, Angel
Globe, Bull, Cornucopia
Horse, Griffin, Dolphin
Horse, Compass, Beehive

Interesting Facts

In the XML language file, two entries are currently commented out, Serafina Pekkala and Witches.

SERAFINA PEKKALA is the Queen of the witches of Lake Enara. More than three hundred years old, she has the longevity and vigor of her kind, with the appearance and energy of a woman in her twenties. Like all witches, she has the power of flight and is privy to arcane knowledge that comes by way of the signs of the forest and tundra she inhabits and its proximity to the far North, where the barrier between worlds is thin.

WITCHES live in the tundra and forests of the North. They are all female and possessed of an attunement to nature so seen as to be regarded as magic by other mortals. Witches live to a great age – centuries – but retain their compelling beauty and youth. Occasionally they take lovers from amongst he men of the lands beyond their own; often with tragic ends; for they invariably long outlive their mates.

Various sources are reporting that Nicole Kidman is done with her scenes for The Golden Compass. This would mean that a lot of different parts from the books have already been shot, including Bolvanger and perhaps even the final chapter?

It also raises the question how far New Line is with the filming in general. After all, most of the movie will be green screen so we can probably expect them to be done in the coming weeks.

Racism, the environment, religion, war and climate change were all up for debate at a star-studded talk in Oxford.  TV newsreader Jon Snow, Chancellor of Oxford Brookes University, hosted a panel of thinkers and doers, including the city's own Sister Frances and author Philip Pullman.

Self-confessed pessimist Philip Pullman predicted that the earth would take revenge on the human race.

He said: "We are using the earth's resources far too quickly. I think the earth is going to get rid of a large number of us quite soon.

"I think we must do something about it. We must impress on these politicians, who are so frightened of Rupert Murdoch, the tabloid press and the oil companies, the absolute necessity of doing something to stop this catastrophe.

"The human race will survive, civilisation might not, but I hope that those of us who do survive will learn something and live more slowly."

Racism, the environment, religion, war and climate change were all up for debate at a star-studded talk in Oxford.

TV newsreader Jon Snow, Chancellor of Oxford Brookes University, hosted a panel of thinkers and doers, including the city's own Sister Frances and author Philip Pullman.

Brookes' annual Chancellor's lecture, entitled What does the world need from us?, looked at what challenges the world might face in 2015, Brookes' 150th birthday.

Hospice founder Sister Frances talked about the difficulties facing young people today.

She described living near the lively Cowley Road, which she loved, and said: "I happen to know that a great many of those young people are carrying knives, some are carrying guns."

She also highlighted racism and said her adopted teenage son, originally from Africa, had recently had his jaw broken in a racist attack while out with three friends.

She said: "Can I persuade those four people to report this to the police?

"No. They know that in all probability what the result would be. He would probably be in the dock."

Self-confessed pessimist Philip Pullman predicted that the earth would take revenge on the human race.

He said: "We are using the earth's resources far too quickly. I think the earth is going to get rid of a large number of us quite soon.

"I think we must do something about it. We must impress on these politicians, who are so frightened of Rupert Murdoch, the tabloid press and the oil companies, the absolute necessity of doing something to stop this catastrophe.

"The human race will survive, civilisation might not, but I hope that those of us who do survive will learn something and live more slowly."

Thanks to IanG for notifying us of this event.

Luminaries including author Philip Pullman and musician Billy Bragg will take part in a lecture at Oxford Brookes University tonight [29/11/06].

Brookes' annual Chancellor's Lecture - an event open to the public and hosted by University Chancellor and journalist Jon Snow - takes place from 6pm to 7pm.

Panelists also include Helen House founder Sister Frances Dominica and human rights lawyer Imran Khan.

The panel will consider the question, "What does the world need from us?", looking ahead to what challenges the world will face in 2015, and how universities can respond.

Mr Snow will chair the panel and there will a chance for the audience to ask questions.

[© thisisoxfordshire.co.uk, 29/11/06]

Lux&Saphi reported in our forums that IMDb currently lists Alexandre Desplat as the composer of His Dark Materials: The Golden Compass.

The Frenchman is a relatively unknown composer who has scored some reasonably well-known movies like Syriana and Girl With A Pearl Earring as well as the videogame Splinter Cell. While Desplat is not among the big names in the Soundtrack scene, he's received praise for his dynamic and captivating scores.

Even though IMDb has been quite reliable so far, just remember that this is yet to be confirmed by New Line Cinema.

The National Film Theatre in London is hosting a special preview viewing of the first adaptation of the Sally Lockheart Series: The Ruby in the Smoke.  The event takes place on December 6, 2006.  Philip Pullman will be attending the screening and the after-show Q&A session.  Tickets can be purchased here in advance.

Thanks to Lesley for notifying us of this event.

'On a cold, fretful afternoon in early October, 1872, a hansom cab drew up outside the offices of Lockhart and Selby and a young girl got out and paid the driver. Her name was Sally Lockhart; and within fifteen minutes, she was going to kill a man.' This sophisticated and exhilarating drama, based on the Philip Pullman novel, stars Billie Piper as Sally, a girl who embarks on a journey to discover the truth behind her father's death - armed with a pistol, a thorough grounding in the principles of military tactics and a working knowledge of Hindustani. Philip Pullman will take part in a Q&A following this preview.

[© BFI, National Film Theatre]

Thanks to Ciboule for notifying us of an interview with Eva Green in the French magazine Studio.

In the article it mentions that Eric Bana and Kevin Bacon will star in the The Golden Compass movie.

At the moment no sources are confirming it yet, so I wouldn't yet get your hopes up.

In an interview with www.moviesonline.ca, Daniel Craig talked briefly about the "His Dark Materials" books and his role as Lord Asriel.

Q: How is His Dark Materials going?

DC: That’s fantastic. Those are three of my favorite books, the Philip Pullman trilogy. Just the timing worked out. New Line came and said, ‘Are you interested?’ And I was interested. I think they are fantastic children’s books. I think they’re about love and they’re about growing up and they’re about how, as adults, we should see the world, and how, for children, growing up is one of the biggest struggles, one of the toughest things you’ll ever do.

Q: What direction are you going with your character?

DC: A fine direction. He’s single-minded. He’s not unlike the one I’m playing at the moment. He’s singled-minded in trying to achieve something, because he believes that without a little change in the world then it won’t move on.