Ian McShane is voicing Iorek, fuck yes!

1- someone hears that there might be in some allegorical subtle way a slight questioning of the dominant religion in our culture included somewhere in the plot of this book for kids.

2- Said person asks completely non-linear (in my opinion) query: "Would he point his poison prick at the Muslims?" Or something to that effect.

Now, the whininess, as far as I understand it is this- that your own faith and/or tribal loyalty to your own group is so weak that any percieved slight, no matter how mild, is considered a looming threat and therefore must be attacked... but this still doesn't explain why Muslims are used as the example. Do you think the author is secretly a Muslim? Do you think that the alleged anti-religious message is a part of some insidious Islamic conspiracry to corrupt good Christian youth? I doubt it. I think you're just not too bright, and to you the world is one big black and white cartoon. Christians good, Muslims bad. If Pullman is against the Christians (jury's still out, btw), He must be FOR the Muslims!

Hell, why even bother. I lost him at the first word with more than two syllables.

To everyone else, I'm halfway through the first book of this series, and I am damn impressed with the topics dealt within what is considered a young adult book. Milton, dark matter physics, bizarre ideas of quantum mechanics, etc. If anything is going to bog this one down in the box office, it's intellectualism, not anti-Christianity.

This movie will do fine. If there's any controversy to speak of, it'll just fuel the hype.

Time for Man to grow up and stop being afraid of the night, then we can get rid of these childish notions.

Might as well believe that your going to get taken to the planet Blisstonia.

Assuming this is true, I always assumed that the Naria movie makers wanted to get Polar Bears involved to steal some of HDM's thunder. It always made sense to me that they knew that HDM was in pre-production and that the first book was very polar-bear-centric (Iorek is such an amazing and important character in the Golden Compass), so they just threw them in and put them smack in the middle of their movie poster so people might confuse the two when HDM finally came out. Sure enough, half the talkbackers here immediately brought up Narnia when this poster came out.

Am I crazy? Should I take off my tin foil hat?

I honestly believe that people say they love it because of the end- The rest of it is dire beyond belief.

Other things I hate about it- the piss poor wheel people shit that is totally unnecessary and seems to take up half the book, the lack of subtlety, annoying gay angels, Will's dad, The female professor,

As someone said above, just stop at the 2nd.

The wheel people blow because they are mind-numbingly tedious, and the sequences that they are in- which take up a ridiculous portion of the novel- are nothing more than an addendum to the story (and the development of the actual themes). You could very easily remove all the sequences with the construction of the spyglass itself and not lose anything from the book, aside from the title. You may even improve it as a novel.

An awful, awful book and a complete let down to the series. Furthermore, argument about thematic issues is not proof of success- people will argue over bloody anything.

Why does the fact that it was written for children excuse the fact that it isn't very good?

Where's all the defensiveness come from?

News at eleven.

It isn't particularly surprising as Pullman is (obviously) not a muslim, so when he is being critical of religion it is only natural that it is the christian religion he was raised with that bears the brunt.

We weren't arguing about book 1. That is a good book, it is The Amber Spyglass that isn't.

"It's a surprise!"

"Smurfette the choice is clear, the Smurf of your dreams is here..." as sung by Will Ferrell as Hefty? BO GOLD.

Like I said before, the real Chrsitians I know have no problem with folks taking a poke at them now and then, their faith can handle it. The anti-intellectual whiners who freak out over this kind of stuff need to grow up.

I sincerely doubt it can be any worse than TLTWaTW... Hurrah, you didn't really do much, now you can be our Monarchs! WTF?

The problem with The Amber Spyglass, are that it doesn't sit consistently with the first two books. Our main characters go on a vast and rather plodding meander through some literary homages to Milton and others, which is second only to Goethe's 2nd part of Faust in utter incomprehensible pointlessness. He spends a good 1/3 of the book following a subsidiary character (Professor Maternal Plot-device and her WheElephAntelopes) which adds pages to the novel and LITTLE MORE. He then has the gall to omit giving us the details of the outcome to the War for heaven in favour of following the kids around a corner where they accidentally leave the lid off The Authority and he goes flat.

And the mad Priest? What the hell was he to the plot other than a blatant last ditch attempt to throw some mud at the Church. He does NOTHING in the story and then is discarded as weakly as he appeared.

Don't even get me started on the ending......

The girls don't seem to do anything much at all.

Certainly we're given no reason to think anyone does anything more heroic than anyone else in that army. Yet at the end of it, Narnia is chopped into four, and they each get made a Monarch. WTF? Terrible ending. Really poorly thought out.

If anyone thinks TLTWATW is 'excellent', they have really low standards.

I've not read any of these Pullman books, but surely at least the first one is better than TLTWaTW.

It's water-cooler cinema!

Ahh discounting my argument out of hand, an uninspired choice of retort. But It does allow you to avoid trying, and failing, to refute my points.

I'd guess from you comment that you evidently have never read Goethe nor seen his work performed. If you had then you might just have had an incling as to the point I was making about Faust: part Two and have seen quite how apt the comparison was. For the record, I do enjoy Goethe, for the most part, I suggest you make attempts to understand his work and try gaining some experience of it before damning other people out of hand on the basis that they criticised a name you'd heard once in the English 101 course you probably failed.

I was attempting to point out the difference between quality and popularity- something you seem to be incapable of noticing.

Critics have been known to be wrong (frequently), so I wouldn't set so much store by that opinion.

About being rude- so far you are the only person to outright tell someone to fuck off- so how's about you climb off your high horse and lose the mock indignation?