The Golden Compass

There's so much going for this film it's kind of surprising that it isn't better. The production design, costumes, and CGI are, for the most part, imaginative and gorgeous. The acting is good (even the voice acting. Ian McKellan makes a lovely fierce armored bear) and most of the beats are there (although, in order to give it an up-and-over and not-a-cliffhanger ending, they've ended the movie before the book ends). The problem, I think, is that the movie is made up of beats: each scene or event feels like a bead on a necklace, strung next to the next scene or event bead. The film looks like its flowing, and yet there's this sense of things happening not because they're happening but because that's what's supposed to come next.

That being said, Nicole Kidman has my vote as most-likely-to-replicate-Angela-Lansbury's-Mommy-role-in-Manchurian-
Candidate. Brrr. And Avocado and I were delighted to note that Dakota Blue Richard's Lyra still says "ent."

To Whom Was Concerned

After I posted, a few weeks back, an account of a brief spell of feeling rotten, a bunch of folk (you know who you are) were concerned for my health. So I saw the doctor today; given what he could hear of my heart, and my chronically low-ish blood pressure, and my good cholesterol numbers, he suspects that the rottenness I was feeling was some sort of spasm caused by acid reflux. However, I'm going to do a stress test on Wednesday, just because both he and I hate to miss important things. So everyone can stand down: I love you all, and I'm very likely fine, and in the meantime we're checking it all out.