something to read (i.e. His Dark Materials)

[Tim Regan]

Hi All,

I love them too. Do check out the unabridged audio versions as well. They 
are read by a cast (including several actors from BBC Radio 4's long running 
farm soap opera "The Archers"), and are narated by Pullman himself. Really 
wonderful.

I have to say that I preffer the American title (though I'm a Brit). It 
seems more coherent to have each book of the trilogy named after a device 
created by man.

I saw Part I of the play last Friday, and I'll be seeing Part II this 
Friday, but I didn't enjoy it. When I get time I'll post my disapointments 
to http://www.bridgetothestars.net/forum/ but in the meantime here they are:
1) Too fast. It was paced solely as an adventure, which is only one level 
the books work on.
2) Puppets unbelievable. I love puppet shows, but it takes me 5-10 minutes 
before I find I'm immersed and not noticing that they are puppets. Since the 
dialogue between the actors and their daemons (i.e. the puppets) were so 
short, I never got a chance to get far enough to suspend disbelief. The 
lights in their eyes didn't help. They reminded me too much of Christmas 
decorations from Habitat. Timothy Dalton (Lord Asreil) acted with such 
intensity when interacting with his daemon, that I did find her believable.
3) Mrs Coulter wasn't sexy. Mrs Coulter has real power in the books, and a 
lot of it comes from her sensuality. Patrica Hodge is a great actress, but 
she didn't do sexy.
4) The withches. I imagine them as a proud Northern race. Instead they were 
like African S&M fetishists, extras from the Matrix.
5) The armoured bears. Aren't they supposed to be huge. The only thing that 
made them remotely believable (for me) was Lyra's reactions to them.
6) The leader of the Consitorial Court of discipline is a young scots man. 
But in the play they've dumped half a ton of talc on his hair. And his 
accent was from ... well who knows. (Still I shouldn't complain, mine when 
I'm reading Hagrid drifts all over the place).

I'm not including the comic treatment of the Gyptians, or the omission of my 
favourite character (Mary Malone), or the ludicrous final motivation for 
Lord Asreil & Mrs Coulter, since I'd read the script beforehand so wasn't 
disapointed afresh.

Cheers,

Dumbledad.

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