The Golden Compass

The Golden Compass is a forthcoming fantasy film based upon Northern Lights (titled The Golden Compass in the US), the first novel in Philip Pullman's trilogy His Dark Materials, slated for release on December 7, 2007 by New Line Cinema.[2] The story tells of Lyra's adventure to the far north in search of her friend. The project was announced in February 2002, following the success of other recent adaptations of fantasy epics, and at $205 million is expected to be New Line's biggest budget project ever after a series of box office disappointments in the past year.[3] In October 2007, the Catholic League called for a boycott of the film.[4]
Contents[hide]
1 Title
2 Cast
3 Development
4 Production
5 Controversies
6 Release dates
7 Sequels
8 References
9 External links
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[edit] Title
For some time during the pre-publication process, the series of novels was known as The Golden Compasses. The word Compasses referred to a pair of compasses—the circle-drawing instrument—rather than a navigational compass. Pullman then settled on Northern Lights as the title for the first book, and continued to refer to the trilogy as The Golden Compasses.[5]
In the US, in their discussions over the publication of the first book, the publishers Alfred A. Knopf had been calling it The Golden Compass (omitting the plural), which they mistakenly believed referred to Lyra's alethiometer, because the device resembles a navigational compass. Meanwhile, in the UK, Pullman had replaced The Golden Compasses with His Dark Materials (a title that Pullman had taken from a line in Paradise Lost) as the title of the trilogy. But according to Pullman, the publishers had become so attached to The Golden Compass that they insisted on publishing the US edition of the first book under that title, rather than Northern Lights, the title used in the UK.[5]
As the book was known as The Golden Compass in the US and Canada, New Line Cinema chose to use that title for the film adaptation.

[edit] Cast
New Line Cinema announced in June 2006 that 12-year-old Dakota Blue Richards will play the lead role of Lyra Belacqua, in what will be her first feature film.[6] Richards was picked from 10,000 girls who auditioned.[7] Nicole Kidman will play Mrs. Coulter,[8] as suggested by Phillip Pullman.[7] Daniel Craig has been cast in the role of Lord Asriel,[9] appearing as Lyra's uncle, a ruthless and mysterious adventurer.[10] Eva Green, reuniting with Casino Royale co-star Craig, will play Serafina Pekkala, a queen of the witches.[11] The armoured bear king Ragnar Sturlusson will be voiced by Ian McShane. Iofur's name has been changed to prevent confusion between him and Iorek.[12] Freddie Highmore will voice Pantalaimon, Lyra's dæmon.[13]. The Olivier Award-winning actress Claire Higgins will play Ma Costa.[14] In October 2007, it was announced that Kathy Bates will be voicing Hester, Lee Scoresby's daemon. It has also been revealed that Ian McKellen will be providing the voice for Iorek Byrnison, though early reports indicated that Nonso Anozie was due to voice the role.[15]
Dakota Blue Richards as Lyra Belacqua[6]
Nicole Kidman as Marisa Coulter[8]
Daniel Craig as Lord Asriel[16]
Jim Carter as John Faa[17]
Tom Courtenay as Farder Coram[17]
Eva Green as Serafina Pekkala[11]
Ben Walker as Roger Parslow[18]
Clare Higgins as Ma Costa
Jack Shepherd as Master of Jordan College[17]
Simon McBurney as Fra Pavel[17]
Ian McKellen as Iorek Byrnison (voice)[19]
Ian McShane as Ragnar Sturlusson (voice)[20]
Freddie Highmore as Pantalaimon (voice)
Magda Szubanski as Mrs. Lonsdale[21]
Kathy Bates as Hester (voice)
Kristen Scott Thomas as Stelmaria (voice)
Christopher Lee
Derek Jacobi

[edit] Development
On February 11, 2002, following the success of New Line's The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, the studio bought the rights to Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. Directors Brett Ratner and Sam Mendes expressed interest, and in July 2003 Tom Stoppard was commissioned to write the screenplay.[7]
A year later, Chris Weitz was hired to direct after approaching the studio with an unsolicited 40-page treatment.[22] He rejected Stoppard's script, preferring to adapt Pullman's work himself, and cited Barry Lyndon and Star Wars as stylistic influences on the film.[7] After having visited director Peter Jackson on the set of The Lord of the Rings,[23] on December 15, 2004, Weitz announced his resignation as director of the trilogy, citing the enormous technical challenges of the epic.[7] On August 9, 2005, it was announced that British director Anand Tucker would take over from Weitz. Tucker felt the film would thematically be about Lyra "looking for a family",[7] and Pullman agreed: "He has plenty of very good ideas, and he isn't daunted by the technical challenges. But the best thing from the point of view of all who care about the story is his awareness that it isn't about computer graphics; it isn't about fantastic adventures in amazing-looking worlds; it's about Lyra."[24] Tucker resigned on May 8, 2006, citing creative disagreements with New Line, and Weitz returned to direct.[7]. Weitz said "I'm both the first and third director on the film... But I did a lot of growing in the interim."[23] According to producer Deborah Forte, Tucker wanted to make a smaller, less exciting film than New Line wanted. New Line production president Toby Emmerich said of Weitz's return: "I think Chris realized that if he didn’t come back in and step up, maybe the movie wasn’t going to get made... We really didn’t have a Plan B at that point."[22]
On October 9, 2007, Weitz revealed that the final three chapters from The Golden Compass will be moved to The Subtle Knife to provide "the most promising conclusion to the first film and the best possible beginning to the second."[25] Author Pullman has publicly supported these changes saying that "every film has to make changes to the story that the original book tells - not to change the outcome, but to make it fit the dimensions and the medium of film."[26]

[edit] Production

First still production of His Dark Materials : The Golden Compass showing Mrs. Coulter (Nicole Kidman) and Lyra Belacqua (Dakota Blue Richards)
Filming began at Shepperton Studios on September 4, 2006,[7] with additional sequences shot in Switzerland and Norway.[22] Filming also took place in Radcliffe Square, Oxford, on the 14th and 15th of June. Night filming took place in The Queen's College and Queen's Lane in Oxford on the 24th, 25th and 26th of June.
Rhythm and Hues Studios will create the main dæmons, and Framestore CFC will create all the bears.[27] British company Cinesite will create the secondary dæmons.[28] The film will be edited by Anne V. Coates, OBE.

[edit] Controversies
Several key themes of the novels, the rejection of organized religion and the abuse of power in a fictionalized Catholic Church, are to be diluted in the adaptation. Director Weitz said "in the books the Magisterium is a version of the Catholic Church gone wildly astray from its roots" but that the organization portrayed in his film would not directly match that of Pullman's books. In an attempt to avoid a religious backlash, the Magisterium will instead be a critique of all dogmatic organizations.[29] Weitz said that New Line Cinema had feared the story's anti-religious themes would make the film financially unviable in the US, and so religion and God will not be referenced directly. Attempting to reassure fans of the novels, Weitz said that religion would instead appear in euphemistic terms, yet the decision has been attacked by some fans,[30] anti-censorship groups, and the National Secular Society (of which Pullman is an honorary associate), which said "they are taking the heart out of it, losing the point of it, castrating it",[31] "this is part of a long-term problem over freedom of speech." The changes from the novel have been present since Tom Stoppard's rejected version of the script,[22] and Pullman himself believes the film will be "faithful."[29]
As part of a two-month protest campaign, the Catholic League has called for a boycott of the film. They believe that while the religious elements of the film will be "watered down" from the source novels, it will still encourage children to read the series, which League president William A. Donohue says "denigrates Christianity" and promotes "atheism for kids",[4][32] citing author Pullman as saying that he is "trying to undermine the basis of Christian belief."[33] It is the League's hope that "the film [will fail] to meet box office expectations and that [Pullman's] books attract few buyers."[34]
Director Weitz says that he believes His Dark Materials is "not an atheistic work, but a highly spiritual and reverent piece of writing",[30] and Nicole Kidman, a Catholic, has defended her decision to star in the film, saying that "the Catholic Church is part of my essence. I wouldn't be able to do this film if I thought it were at all anti-Catholic".[23]
Some commentators have indicated they believe both sides' criticism will prove ultimately "impotent" and that the negative publicity will prove a boon for the film's box office,[35][36] while other evangelical groups, such as The Christian Film and Television Commission, are adopting a "wait-and-see" approach to the film before deciding upon any action.[37]

[edit] Release dates
5 December 2007: Belgium, Finland, France, Spain[38]
6 December 2007: Argentina, Chile, Germany, Netherlands, Singapore, Portugal[38]
7 December 2007: Denmark, Norway, Russia, Turkey, United Kingdom, USA, Canada[38]
13 December 2007: Slovenia[38]
14 December 2007: Estonia, Italy[38]
20 December 2007: Hong Kong[38]
25 December 2007: Brazil[38]
26 December 2007: Australia,[39] Iceland[38]
16 January 2008: Egypt[38]
1 March 2008: Japan[38]

[edit] Sequels
New Line Cinema has commissioned screenwriter Hossein Amini to write a screenplay based on the second book in the trilogy, The Subtle Knife, potentially for release in late 2009; with the third book of the trilogy, The Amber Spyglass to follow. However, New Line president Toby Emmerich stresses that production of the second and third films is dependent on the financial success of The Golden Compass.[The Golden Compass is a forthcoming fantasy film based upon Northern Lights (titled The Golden Compass in the US), the first novel in Philip Pullman's trilogy His Dark Materials, slated for release on December 7, 2007 by New Line Cinema.[2] The story tells of Lyra's adventure to the far north in search of her friend. The project was announced in February 2002, following the success of other recent adaptations of fantasy epics, and at $205 million is expected to be New Line's biggest budget project ever after a series of box office disappointments in the past year.[3] In October 2007, the Catholic League called for a boycott of the film.[4]

To view trailers of this movie, go to:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0385752/trailers-screenplay-E32812-314

Let Us Not Forget Who We Are, The Declaration Of Independence

Yes! I have another shout to shout about.

While so many are in the business of hating liberals and progressives, remember the following. This appears to apply to more than the King. Others who bear the name of George might visit our National Archives and read this.

IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

The Declaration Of Independence

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only. He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures. He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent: For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offencesFor abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people. He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands. He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
The 56 signatures on the Declaration appear in the positions indicated:

Column 1Georgia: Button Gwinnett Lyman Hall George Walton

Column 2North Carolina: William Hooper Joseph Hewes John PennSouth Carolina: Edward Rutledge Thomas Heyward, Jr. Thomas Lynch, Jr. Arthur Middleton

Column 3Massachusetts:John HancockMaryland:Samuel ChaseWilliam PacaThomas StoneCharles Carroll of CarrolltonVirginia:George WytheRichard Henry LeeThomas JeffersonBenjamin HarrisonThomas Nelson, Jr.Francis Lightfoot LeeCarter Braxton

Column 4Pennsylvania: Robert Morris Benjamin Rush Benjamin Franklin John Morton George Clymer James Smith George Taylor James Wilson George RossDelaware: Caesar Rodney George Read Thomas McKean

Column 5New York: William Floyd Philip Livingston Francis Lewis Lewis MorrisNew Jersey: Richard Stockton John Witherspoon Francis Hopkinson John Hart Abraham Clark

Column 6New Hampshire: Josiah Bartlett William WhippleMassachusetts: Samuel Adams John Adams Robert Treat Paine Elbridge GerryRhode Island: Stephen Hopkins William ElleryConnecticut: Roger Sherman Samuel Huntington William Williams Oliver WolcottNew Hampshire: Matthew Thornton

To see the Constitution Of The United States Of America and The Bill Of Rights, go to: http://www.philatlarge.blogspot.com/

Valerie Plame Wilson, Betrayed By Administration

The following article was enough to send me over the edge. I am only comforted by the fact that the Wilsons now have the oportunity to tell at least part of their story. Many details that we would love to know are for now unatainable, as Valerie Plame and the CIA must restrict some information for the benefit of national security. Too bad this current administration had the same amount of respect for national security as well as the constitution of the United States Of America.

By Alan Coopermansenior editor for non-fiction at Book World Monday, October 22, 2007; Page C01
FAIR GAME
My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House

By Valerie Plame Wilson
Simon & Schuster. 411 pp. $26
Mothers who are spies, it turns out, face the same juggling act as other working moms.
After a year at home following the birth of twins, Valerie Plame Wilson returned to work in April 2001 in the Iraq branch of the CIA's Counterproliferation Division. "When I had to deal with pressing operational issues I had no choice but to bring the toddlers into my office on a Saturday," she writes in her memoir, published this week. "Making decisions on how much money to offer a potential asset while handing crayons to my daughter who sat under my desk was strange indeed, but not without humor."
Since senior administration officials whispered "Valerie Plame" and "CIA" in the same breath to half a dozen journalists in 2003, some people have not very subtly suggested that her work couldn't really have been all that hush-hush if she had an office job, not to mention blond hair and little kids. "She was not involved in clandestine activities," Robert D. Novak, the syndicated columnist who first published her name, wrote earlier this year in his dueling memoir. "Instead, each day she went to CIA headquarters in Langley where she worked on arms proliferation."
There are lots of she said-he said moments in the Plame affair, matters on which an impartial observer can only conclude that, well, both sides have a point. But this is not one of them.
Before her retirement in 2006, Wilson spent more than 20 years in the CIA, including six years, one month and 29 days of overseas service. We know this because the agency, in a bureaucratic blunder, put it in an unclassified letter about her pension eligibility that it later tried desperately to recall, and that she has included as an appendix to "Fair Game."
We also know that she worked on the operations side, the part of the CIA that runs agents and covert activities, rather than on the analytical side, which tries to make sense of all the information flowing in. From her former CIA "classmates," we know that she went through the agency's elite Career Trainee program, including paramilitary training at the classified location known as the Farm, and was one of just three in her class of 50 who were chosen to be NOCs (pronounced "knocks"), or non-official cover officers, the most clandestine in the agency. And from her memoir, we now know how deeply secrecy was ingrained in her.
Imagine when, in her mid-20s, after a first CIA tour in Greece under diplomatic cover as a junior State Department official, she gave up her diplomatic passport and any public affiliation with the U.S. government and switched to being a NOC. Part of the transition involved coming home to the United States, ostensibly jobless, and moving back into her parents' house while studying French. How many 20-somethings still living with Mom and Dad fantasize about saying, "Actually, I work for the CIA"? In young Valerie Plame's case, it was true -- and she apparently didn't tell a soul. When she became famous a decade later, her dearest friends were stunned, and she feared they might not forgive her for all those years of lying.
True, the CIA recalled her from Europe in 1997, fearing that her name might have been passed to the Russians by the mole Aldrich Ames. But, she writes, she still took different routes to work each day, "traveled domestically and abroad using a variety of aliases" and continued to hope for another foreign posting.
There is no reason to doubt that Wilson wrote "Fair Game" herself. To put it kindly, the memoir lacks the sheen of a ghostwriter's work and has the voice of an ordinary person caught up in extraordinary events. It doesn't help that the CIA redacted the manuscript heavily before approving it for publication. Each time she is about to launch into a juicy anecdote, it seems, lines are blacked out, sometimes for pages on end.
The book is, however, greatly assisted by an afterword by Laura Rozen, a reporter for the American Prospect. Rozen faithfully echoes Wilson's point of view but fills in many of the censored dates, places and other details from published sources. Readers would be smart to turn to the afterword first, before tackling Wilson's disjointed narrative.
The outlines of the story are familiar: In 2002, the CIA sent her husband, former U.S. ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, on an unpaid, eight-day fact-finding trip to Niger. Within hours of his return, he told eager CIA debriefers (while Valerie Wilson was ordering takeout Chinese food for them) that there was no evidence that Iraq had tried to buy yellowcake uranium from the African nation.
When President Bush nevertheless included the uranium allegation in a State of the Union address, Joe Wilson wrote an op-ed for the New York Times accusing the administration of misleading the American people. Both of the Wilsons firmly believe that she was outed, in retaliation, by White House officials who sought to discredit him by telling reporters that his trip was arranged by his wife, who worked for the CIA. Tapped to investigate the leak of her name, special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald put that theory before a jury, which never got to the heart of the matter but did convict the vice president's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, of perjury and obstruction of justice. Bush then commuted Libby's 30-month prison sentence.
The question remains: Was she behind her husband's trip to Niger? "Fair Game" gives a nuanced answer that is largely, but not entirely, in her favor.
She says that when the vice president's office asked the CIA about the uranium allegation, a "midlevel reports officer" suggested in a hallway conversation that the agency could send Joe Wilson to investigate. The suggestion made sense because Wilson had served as an ambassador in Africa, was the top Africa expert on the National Security Council in the Clinton administration and made a previous trip to Niger at the CIA's request in 1999. She and the midlevel officer brought the idea to their boss, who liked it and asked her to send an e-mail up the chain of command. "My husband has good relations with both the PM [prime minister] and the former Minister of Mines (not to mention lots of French contacts), both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity," she wrote.
Thus, by her own account, Valerie Wilson neither came up with the idea nor approved it. But she did participate in the process and flogged her husband's credentials. When Joe Wilson learned about her e-mail years later, she says, he was "too upset to listen" to her explanations.
"Fair Game" reveals some intimate details of the Wilsons' lives, including her battle with postpartum depression. Sudden fame and withering political attacks made Washington so "toxic" to them that they began fantasizing about moving to New Zealand and ultimately decamped to New Mexico. Relatives came forward, and, like Madeleine Albright, Valerie Wilson discovered she was part Jewish. But the book is less forthcoming about her politics; she does not mention, for example, that she made a $1,000 contribution to Al Gore's campaign in 1999.
One other matter begs clarification. As Rozen notes in the afterword, there is "an undeniable irony to Valerie Wilson later being exposed by the White House in a subterranean tussle" over prewar intelligence because "Valerie was not one of the intelligence community dissidents arguing against the threat posed by Saddam Hussein."
Quite the contrary: Wilson makes clear in "Fair Game" that she and her colleagues in the Counterproliferation Division were very worried that Iraq would use chemical or biological weapons on U.S. forces. They were dumbfounded when no weapons of mass destruction were found, and, in a telling passage, she says their spirits were "briefly buoyed" when coalition forces in northern Iraq discovered curious flatbed trailers that the CIA thought, at first, might be mobile bio-weapons labs.
Yet, in one of the memoir's deeper insights, "Fair Game" suggests that if you knew what she knew at the time, you would have feared both that Saddam Hussein had WMDs and that the Bush administration was overstating the case for war. In the bowels of the CIA, she and her colleagues clustered around a TV as Secretary of State Colin Powell laid the evidence before the United Nations on Feb. 5, 2003. "It was a powerful presentation," she writes, "but I knew key parts of it were wrong."