Okay, so the real meat on the bones of this blog lies in the books and the novels and the literature. That was covered in one my first posts here, though said literary collection has grown since then. But for anyone who made it through my formidable The Golden Compass 2007 Retrospective - first off good job, and second off, you might be able to wring some enjoyment out of this as well.
Above is a nice 11x17 poster I secured on Amazon via a third party seller. I'm growing increasingly fond of 11x17 for film prints. But anyway, it was a great deal, came in mint condition, and also arrived considerably early. When I finally cobble together a full on His Dark Materials book shrine, I sensed this would be a solid edition. I would recommend without hesitation, to be purchased here.
And while I thought I had forever misplaced my series of TGC bookmarks that came out alongside the film - a couple of which I got on killer sales back when they had bookstores in malls - low and behold I did some serious holiday cleaning and they presented themselves in splendid fashion.
And if one simply has to have a Dakota-Blue-Richards-as-Lyra-Belacqua bookmark, well once again, Amazon comes to your aid here. I must say, it does work quite well in my multiple editions of The Golden Compass.
Next up is one of those wonderful little media tie-in books that are sadly being published less and less. Starting with Star Wars, I would always take a pilgrimage to the local bookstore and pick up any supplementary material for a movie I loved. While tooling about on Amazon not long ago, I found The World of the Golden Compass as seen below.
Originally I thought it was the same as a certain book that had been published in the U.S. at the time of the movie release, but no, this hails from Britain, and is actually quite neat.
The first thing that nabbed my attention was the intro page, which featured a wonderful little map of Lyra's alternate world, inspired by the one she saw at Mrs. Coulter's when she was dreaming of the North. Not sure how "canon" it is, but I haven't seen it many places, so this is cool.
The table of contents provides a good overview of the book for any interested parties, outlining all the different characters, places, institutions, and technology dominating the film.
This is the basic layout of the material, with the main characters and things like daemons and the alethiometer warranting a nice two page spread.
Curiously the World of the Golden Compass must have been planned and published well before release, because it niftily (and depressingly) ends with a little overview of the pivotal events to come in those final scenes that were ultimately cut.
The last pages feature concept art for a city, presumably the parallel one in the sky that Lyra would have travelled into for the sequel! Have I mentioned guillotining the ending was a really, really bad idea?
Lastly, well, I just thought this was really cool. It has several pages of stickers, and as the book is over a decade old, it is impressive they were all intact. I particularly like the one with a surly looking Lee Scorseby that advertises "Aeronaut for Hire."
While this is about ten dollars more than I remembered paying for my copy, it is still available for purchase on Amazon here.
And of course, we have to talk about the blu ray. To be honest, if anyone is interested in this film adaptation at all, at this point it would quite frankly be ludicrous not to go all out and purchase the two disc special edition. The film still looks good on a big TV screen, so let's get that out of the way. It will be curious to see if they ever release a 4K special edition or something - preferably with the notoriously aforementioned cut ending.
Not exactly likely, but we can hope.
I for one grew up gorging my senses on all the behind-the-scenes and making-of documentaries on such films (yet again, such as Star Wars), and that left me with a lifelong fascination concerning how films are made. And now such a fascination has long since been coupled with the creative process and storytelling in general.
As I frequently noted in my retrospective, writer-director Chris Weitz does a very admirable job on the full-length movie commentary. It would have been interesting to hear some of the other stars have their say - particularly Dakota Blue Richards - but he steers the ship very well through the oftentimes choppy waters of film narration.
Particularly back in the day, some directors would simply narrate Every Single Event for you as it played out on screen, leaving you with no insight or even charming anecdotes about the filming process. Not so here. It was invaluable for my retrospecive, and I feel proves that the man did truly care about this project.
But even better is all the truly cool and in-depth documentaries on display here. This is not a simple cut-and-paste job, nor is it just a fluff promo piece where all the actors get together and compliment each other. This is a full-on, in-depth examination of everything that went in to making this film. It had been years since I'd reviewed all of it, and I for one was wildly impressed with the quality of the material here.
The next round features fascinating looks at the more technical part of the production. The documentary on the alethiometer is inspiring, and each one features photo galleries one can surf through at their leisure. And just kudos in general for addressing the alethiometer as such, as opposed to a Golden Compass ...
It's always nice to learn about film scores, armored bears, and what the anticipation was like before the official release. However, the standout for me here was the featurette on Oxford, a place I grow increasingly eager to visit. Assuming things get back to normal. Actually, I will be doing a post on a potential Pullman-inspired pilgrimage to England later.
Hopefully all this has left one with a renewed enthusiasm or a possible interest in revisiting the film, as I have enjoyed getting all my own thoughts out there finally. I will leave on this note, as apparently at some point even play sets were produced based on the film, including this one I just happened across here. Who knew?
So thanks for reading -
And as Always
Stay Dusty My Friends
#TheGoldenCompass #PhilipPullman #ChrisWeitz #HisDark Materials
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