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His Dark Materials (BBC)

Started by kalowski, July 20, 2019, 09:35:24 AM

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kalowski


NoSleep

Nice to see Tormund is still in work; and the polar bear from The Terror.


Shoulders?-Stomach!

It looks well put together but fuck sake I want to see the on screen The Subtle Knife now. I cannot fucking wait for that one.

Inspector Norse

I'm cautiously optimistic about this, because they will surely have taken notice of how crappy the film was, and taken great pains to get it right this time. Then again, they have reportedly made some changes to the setting and story...

The casting seemed a bit off to me, as well - McAvoy isn't someone I'd think of as having the gravitas or dark mystery of Asriel - but I'm hoping to be proven wrong.

kalowski

Quote from: Inspector Norse on July 20, 2019, 03:56:08 PM
I'm cautiously optimistic about this, because they will surely have taken notice of how crappy the film was, and taken great pains to get it right this time. Then again, they have reportedly made some changes to the setting and story...

The casting seemed a bit off to me, as well - McAvoy isn't someone I'd think of as having the gravitas or dark mystery of Asriel - but I'm hoping to be proven wrong.
Ruth Wilson is a fucking great choice for Mrs Coulter, though.

studpuppet

Quote from: kalowski on July 20, 2019, 04:37:27 PM
Ruth Wilson is a fucking great choice for Mrs Coulter, though.

I immediately thought that Lara Pulver, reprising her Irene Adler from Sherlock, would be a good choice as well.

Johnny Yesno

Wow, that trailer is great. I hope the series lives up to it.

Gulftastic

I like that Lin feller, but Sam Elliot was bang on casting in the other film

DocDaneeka

Bold of them to cast Jack White as Lyra.

touchingcloth

November 3 is when episode one will be broadcast.

Quote from: Shoulders?-Stomach! on July 20, 2019, 01:56:50 PM
It looks well put together but fuck sake I want to see the on screen The Subtle Knife now. I cannot fucking wait for that one.

Me too, bad though the film was I was gutted when I realised that I probably wasn't going to get to see a realisation of that. I'm less excited by the Mulefa, though.

Also, Lin-Manuel Miranda as Scoresby. Fucking yes.

Johnny Yesno

Bit more here:

Everything you need to know about His Dark Materials - BBC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pkw3qx4_fuU

Not much longer now...

Quote from: touchingcloth on October 15, 2019, 09:41:10 AM
Quote from: Shoulders?-Stomach! on July 20, 2019, 01:56:50 PM
It looks well put together but fuck sake I want to see the on screen The Subtle Knife now. I cannot fucking wait for that one.

Me too, bad though the film was I was gutted when I realised that I probably wasn't going to get to see a realisation of that.

I liked the film despite its flaws but, yeah, I was gutted for the same reason. I'm so looking forward to seeing what Cittàgazze looks like. In my imagination, it has this kind of atmos to it with an empty glittering sea:


touchingcloth

Quote from: Johnny Yesno on October 29, 2019, 05:16:51 AM
Bit more here:

Everything you need to know about His Dark Materials - BBC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pkw3qx4_fuU

Not much longer now...

Me too, bad though the film was I was gutted when I realised that I probably wasn't going to get to see a realisation of that.

I liked the film despite its flaws but, yeah, I was gutted for the same reason. I'm so looking forward to seeing what Cittàgazze looks like. In my imagination, it has this kind of atmos to it with an empty glittering sea:



That's pretty much how it is in my mind, too. Interesting, as I'm not sure I've ever seen an illustration of it, just the descriptions in the book.

Dex Sawash


Johnny Yesno

Quote from: touchingcloth on October 29, 2019, 08:20:41 AM
That's pretty much how it is in my mind, too. Interesting, as I'm not sure I've ever seen an illustration of it, just the descriptions in the book.

That is interesting as I'm just going from the descriptions too. Also, the scenes from the trailer for this look a lot more like how I imagined the first book than the film did.

touchingcloth

Quote from: Johnny Yesno on October 29, 2019, 09:34:44 PM
That is interesting as I'm just going from the descriptions too. Also, the scenes from the trailer for this look a lot more like how I imagined the first book than the film did.

Same here. It's one of those books where I have extremely vivid mental images of the places in spite of not having seen any artwork. That's in contrast to something like Tolkien's works where I've seen plenty of artworks but don't have many vivid mental images. Citàgazze is a very richly drawn empty city, same with how it seems at least three of us have vivid ideas of how the subtle knife might be depicted. Even compared with the spyglass and alethiometer, that's an even more compelling part of the books. The way he describes Will as needing to snag the tip on empty space has stuck with me for the longest time.

Shoulders?-Stomach!

That De Chirico was actually used on the front cover of some editions, and I think I brought that painting on here a few times.

It is a superbly fitting choice, and many other of his works have a similar quality, a hot sun drenched afternoon coming to an end, and a looming sense of dread.

touchingcloth

Love to see a Mulefa on them empty streets.

BritishHobo

Reading this for the first time (now about sixty pages into The Amber Spyglass) and fuck me, this really did get fucked by Harry Potter, didn't it? I'm aware I'm very late and this will all have been said countless times before, but this is real all-time classic stuff. It's genuinely hard to believe it's for kids - the language, the beauty of the various worldbuilding, the violence, the breathtaking depth and scope of the story and its themes - and the fact that it did so well is wonderful. Hopefully the new books and this show are giving it a new chance free of the shadow of the series that ended up becoming the iconic children's franchise of the nineties/noughties.

Just absolutely stunned by how good these are. I've had these books on my shelf for about fifteen years. Why did I wait so long?

ZoyzaSorris

Yeah I'd had Northern Lights on loan from my sis for years before having a kid gave me the perfect excuse to finally read it as a rather age inappropriate bedtime story (he was 3 but really enjoyed it.) The Subtle Knife was probably my favourite, just so beautifully strange. But enjoyed them all. The horrific grey place where all the dead go in the Amber Spyglass was brilliantly done I thought, very clever how he made death seem like a phenomenon to be welcomed by the end of it.
I don't think he specifically wrote them as kid's books originally did he, that was more how the publishers marketed them?

touchingcloth

Yeah, he wrote them as novels but they got positioned as Young Adult, which Pullman credits as meaning that adults read books in the fantasy genre.

peanutbutter

Quote from: BritishHobo on November 01, 2019, 09:13:18 PM
Reading this for the first time (now about sixty pages into The Amber Spyglass) and fuck me, this really did get fucked by Harry Potter, didn't it? I'm aware I'm very late and this will all have been said countless times before, but this is real all-time classic stuff. It's genuinely hard to believe it's for kids - the language, the beauty of the various worldbuilding, the violence, the breathtaking depth and scope of the story and its themes - and the fact that it did so well is wonderful. Hopefully the new books and this show are giving it a new chance free of the shadow of the series that ended up becoming the iconic children's franchise of the nineties/noughties.

Just absolutely stunned by how good these are. I've had these books on my shelf for about fifteen years. Why did I wait so long?
My memory of the Amber Spyglass is that it was a deranged mess.

First two were lightyears ahead of the other 10 books I had read at that time (HP and LOTR) in terms of atmosphere though

studpuppet

Quote from: touchingcloth on November 01, 2019, 10:10:10 PM
Yeah, he wrote them as novels but they got positioned as Young Adult, which Pullman credits as meaning that adults read books in the fantasy genre.

Speaking as the Children's Book Buyer for a large London bookshop at the time the first one was published, it was very definitely a YA Children's book published by Scholastic under their Point imprint. Scholastic don't publish adult titles, so at least at the point they were sold to the publisher, they were children's books.

Also, I liked the cover of the first book so much, I took a copy home, read it, and bought the others as they came out. Sold the trilogy at the peak of their value and they contributed to half of the deposit on my first home. Cheers Philip!

Twit 2

Great article by Katherine Rundell who is a true ambassador for the power of good children's books and a wonderful author in her own right (if you've got kids between the ages of 8-12, they are guaranteed to love her books; "The Explorer" is a thrilling adventure story and has some very profound and moving themes expertly woven in):

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/nov/01/how-philip-pullman-lyra-won-the-world

Mister Six

Tch, I feel like such a cunt for not being that impressed by the books when I read them, but I was also a teenager so probably actually was a cunt at the time, come to think of it (what's changed, eh readers? Chortle). I recall enjoying the first one, finding the second a bit meandering and then just being largely unmoved by the third, especially what felt like a very contrived, emotionally manipulative ending.

However I was also a thick cunt who didn't pick up on the themes or literary cleverness about God or whatever, so I should probably just shut the fuck up and read them properly now I'm a bit more grown up.

Fuck it, post.

Urinal Cake

I read the first book when it was being sold as the alt-Potter- I thought it was alright.

BritishHobo

Quote from: Mister Six on November 02, 2019, 06:35:23 AM
Tch, I feel like such a cunt for not being that impressed by the books when I read them, but I was also a teenager so probably actually was a cunt at the time, come to think of it (what's changed, eh readers? Chortle). I recall enjoying the first one, finding the second a bit meandering and then just being largely unmoved by the third, especially what felt like a very contrived, emotionally manipulative ending.

However I was also a thick cunt who didn't pick up on the themes or literary cleverness about God or whatever, so I should probably just shut the fuck up and read them properly now I'm a bit more grown up.

Fuck it, post.

I am thinking it's probably better I'm reading them for the first time now, as huge chunks of it would have gone straight over my head as a kid and I doubt I would have appreciated it anywhere near as much. I can remember nicking the first one off my brother and attempting the first chapter several times but being a bit bewildered by it and going no further.

touchingcloth

Quote from: BritishHobo on November 02, 2019, 09:36:06 AM
I am thinking it's probably better I'm reading them for the first time now, as huge chunks of it would have gone straight over my head as a kid and I doubt I would have appreciated it anywhere near as much. I can remember nicking the first one off my brother and attempting the first chapter several times but being a bit bewildered by it and going no further.

I agree with this. Like you I had the books on my shelves for an age - probably since I was 15 or so - and after an abortive go didn't read them fully until I was 25. I definitely got more out of them than I would have by reading them when I was the marketed age.

Ballad of Ballard Berkley

Just watched episode one, and it's a boring, muddled, sterile waste of time. I haven't read the books, but you can tell that Jack Thorne adapted them in a state of panic. He spends most of episode one struggling to establish this world and its mythology, so much so that you never have time to breathe and get to know or care about these characters. Very poor.

BlodwynPig

Looked like Harry Potter , awful cliched story and beige score. In summary, best bbc drama ever