This is the blog of Ian Rosales Casocot. Filipino writer. Sometime academic. Former backpacker. Twink bait. Hamster lover.
Heartbreak & Magic: Stories of Fantasy and Horror
Anvil, 2011
Old Movies and Other Stories
National Commission for Culture
and the Arts, 2006
FutureShock Prose: An Anthology of Young Writers and New Literatures
Sands and Coral, 2003
Nominated for Best Anthology
2004 National Book Awards
8:23 PM |
The Compass That Went Nowhere
The DVD of The Golden Compass is soon coming our way, and I think it's fair to say -- after all these months -- that when I saw the movie on the big screen last year, I tried to like it so much (because I love the book) but it kinda ... underwhelmed. It was boring, actually. I loved individual touches of it, but the whole thing just did not work. I remember leaving the theater in Greenbelt with Mark, and we were all so silent, trying hard to mask our disappointment. "It was okay," we said. Which is bad. I think the movie went wrong in pre-production when the makers tried to tailor it to follow all the marketing expectations of too many people, especially people they didn't want to offend, thereby pushing the entire story towards a territory where it would lose its bite, and its magic. They virtually did away with Philip Pullman's anti-Christianity angle, hoping the rabid Evangelicals would not picket, and still go ahead and see the movie. Hell, they still didn't go anyway, and the movie only earned $70 million in North America (but grossed more worldwide). I wish they went ahead and stayed true to the spirit of the book. It would have been a better movie. The rabid dogs would have howled, of course, but at least there would have have been something salvageable in the film.Labels: books, film, issues, religion
