All over central Oxford are vans, guards, and heaps of lighting equipment. They are working on the film adaptation of Philip Pullman’s The Golden Compass. As a great appreciator of the book, I am rather nervous about the film. So much of what makes the book special turns around how the characters are presented, and there is the danger that an actor’s interpretation will overwrite whatever conception you had developed on your own. That said, it will probably feature some stunning cinematography from around Oxford. They have been cutting bicycles off fences and railings in places like Radcliffe Square for several days now.
It’s weird how the film adaptation has Daniel Craig as Lord Asriel and Eva Green as Serafina Pekkala. People might find themselves making strange associations with Casino Royale.
Dakota Blue Richards really doesn’t look how I imagine Lyra looking. She is too cute, and not fierce looking enough.
I agree. Lyra is meant to be a ‘barbarian.’
In many ways Lyra was a barbarian. What she liked the best was clambering over the College roofs with Roger, the kitchen boy who was her particular friend, to spit plum stones on the heads of passing Scholars or to hoot like owls outside a window where a tutorial was going on, or racing through the narrow streets, or stealing apples from the market, or waging war. Just as she was unaware of the hidden currents of politics running below the surface of College affairs, so the Scholars, for their part, would have been unable to see the rich seething stew of alliances and enmities and feuds and treaties which was a child’s life in Oxford. Children playing together: how pleasant to see! What could be more innocent and charming?
This week’s issue of The Economist has an interesting article on The Sopranos.