I wonder if he approved the use...

King Corn is the only thing this week I added to my Netflix queue. So I take it Golden Compass isn't worth even a rental?

Node32774: how can it be atheist fantasy? By definition, acknowledging that there is a god/God/dust/whatever to kill precludes it from being atheist.

You're right. Atheists wouldn't try to kill God. REALLY BAD CHRISTIANS would be the ones trying to kill God. Watch out for them!

I don't give a crap about Miley Cyrus but Disney, the media and assface housewives are all in a tizzy over a photograph which amounts to nothing. She's had to apologize to stem the backlash when deep down we all know she shouldn't have to apologize for a damn thing. Who cares? Kids in third world countries are dying due to food shortages as I type this and some asswipe Disney executive and right-wing idiot housewife are in a tizzy over a 15 year old girl's bare back? Have they not been down to a beach lately?

It sounds to me like Pullman was turned into an apologist as well for no other reason than he's shilling a product and he needs to keep his corporate backers happy.

Who from - the Gay Wizard brigade? Seriously, where was the the pressure coming from to make a fictional magical character gay? Did I miss out on some marches?

Anyway, so what if he was gay? His sexual preferences weren't relevant to the story at any point and therefore (correctly) went unmentioned. If you now re-read the stories (with this new knowledge) do they now become a tense thriller everytime Ron and Harry's get summoned to Dumbledore's office? Is their virtue in mortal danger?

Now if she'd said he was a Catholic Wizard....

In Pullman's Dark Materials, there's also God, and Heaven, and Hell, and angels. They just happen to be frauds, usurping God in the Battle that preceded Paradise Lost. Lyra and Will are the direct opposites of the Pevensies, and IIRC they end up "creating heaven on Earth" by having sex. Pullman by his own admission saw an untapped market - that being a kind of alternate childrens' fantasy not beholden to ooutdated Christian morality, and he was successful. In His Dark Materials, God exists, but he's a withered old man that his blown away (literally) by the real world, and the being that has usurped God gets eaten by ghosts. Oh, and don't forget the gay angels, and "The Serpent" being a woman who's simply had and enjoyed sex.

Look, I'm an atheist, and I thought a fair bit of what Pullman did was fun (and funny, see the gay angels bit) and I definitely sympathise with wanting to create a fantasy series that's not so overbearingly Moral (even Harry Potter fell to this a little in its final book), but the series really just turns to shit. It falls into all the same didactic traps that Lewis' Narnia did, and it's nowhere near as inventive as Narnia ever was. And the less said about the inane evolution Horse-Wheel subplot the better.

Onto Harry Potter. I think it would have been better leaving a hint or two in the books about Dumbledore's sexuality and then not saying anything, because at it stands now in the books it seems like he's just a flamboyant dresser who had an unusually strong friendship with the kid next next door, and Rowling's comments about him being gay make him seem either like a stereotype (the first thing the reader ever learns about him is that he's wearing a purple cape) or like she's changed it retroactively. That's not to say she's pandering to anyone, because in every other regard her own morality for the books shines through clearly, but she obviously knew the uproar that Dumbledore being gay would cause (hence she didn't include it in the books) so I think announcing it so publicly wasn't he way to go about releasing that information.

And I was really disappointed that Def Leppard lip sync'd Pour Some Sugar On Me.

Boring, trite, poorly written garbage with long convoluted sub-plots that add nothing to the story. It is honestly one of the worst books I've ever read.

And pullman is a compete shithead- as much as I want to agree with him.

it is pointless, pathetic and borderline homophobic to give a shit about this.

For the record I like both the Narnia and the DM books. Allegory and subtext (which I barely tend to notice) come second, by a long way, to a decent storyline and compelling characters. Although I will admit the 3rd DM book wandered a bit too much for its own good.

As for Pullman's extra cirricular activities I don't know much about them. I don't think I'd let them effect my opinion about his books though (unless of course I found out he'd joined the Gay Wizards Brigade).

lufty

I saw the movie 2 years ago, at the Maryland Film Festival and was quite impressed with it. Originally we just chose it because it fit a nice innocuous slot between two other movies, but it ended up being the best thing I saw there. It's a strange little film that follows a small community in rural P.A. after one of their own dissapears during a momentary reactor problem at Three Mile Island. It's a difficult film to explain, but for those who like combo descriptions , I'd say think Napoleon Dynamite meets The Twilight Zone. The cinematography and the very natural performance of the young girl who played Turkey Legs really sold the movie for me. Todd Rohal's odd humor and insight helped it along as well.

I'd highly reccomend it to anyone who loves odd cinema. It deserves to be a cult find, but right now it's relatively obscure. Check it out.