Saturday, December 08, 2007

His Dark Materials

The Golden Compass
I enjoyed it. It's a movie about costume design, collars in particular (I'll give ye no spoilers here.)

OK, so it's beautiful but flawed. The problem is that they tried to make a feature out of a novel and included almost every dang scene in it, while keeping the picture to under 2 hours. You only get one or the other of them things baby.
I'd say the biggest fault was that the movie went "And then this happened, and then this happened, and then this happened..." There was a dramaturlogical issue that we couldn't effectively get from moment to moment properly because we were squeezed for time. We couldn't get into a scene, feel the big turn or decision, and then resolve it. We just keep smashing through. Honestly, another edit and an added 20 or 30 minutes would be all we'd need. But it sure was beautiful and, oddly, I'd say the screenplay was fine, it just needs a less tight edit.
Look, I know what I'm talking about here. I made an unwatchable movie based on Milton's Paradise Lost.
Went with Melissa, Laura, Maduka, and Lanie. Melissa hated this dress.

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