[Sam Posten]

The Golden Compass BluRay

BluRay Title: The Golden Compass Rated: PG-13 Screen format: 1080P 2.35:1 High Definition Studio: Warner/New Line Cinema First theatrical release: December 7, 2007 Other releases of this film: Day and Date with Widescreen & Full screen DVDs Director: Chris Weisz Starring: Nicole Kidman, Dakota Blue Richards, Daniel Craig, Ben Walker, Eva Green, Freddie Highmore (Voice), Ian McKellan (Voice), Jim Carter, Tom Courtenay, Ian McShane (Voice), Sam Eliot, Christopher Lee, Kathy Bates (Voice) Sound Formats: DTS-HD Master Audio Length: 113 Minutes Subtitles: English, Spanish

Plot: 3/5
The Golden Compass is the theatrical adaptation of the first book in a series of fantasy novels by Phillip Pullman collectively known as “His Dark Materials”. This translation is not without its controversies, first the many changes to the material and reordering of the story have seen longtime fans of the series screaming, noting that this version seems to be heavily influenced by the Lord of the Rings and Narnia series adaptations more than remaining faithful to the spirit of the books. Additional criticism have come from religious quarters, who feel that the books and film are an assault on Christianity in particular, and that the subversive nature of its heroine and the use of ‘Daemons’ as a representative of people’s souls is an outrage. As I never read the book series and found the religious complaints to be questionable that’s all I will say on them, and will instead focus on the merits of the film and this BluRay edition alone.

Lyra (Richards) is an orphan under the care of a school that mirrors our Oxford in a parallel universe. In her world, a strange substance, Dust, threatens the authority of the ruling religious organization, the Magesterium. Lyra stumbles upon a quest to learn more about this Dust by an intrepid scholar, Lord Asriel (Craig) and saves him from doom at the hands of a Magesterial minister Farder Coram (Courtenay). After Asriel has left, a mysterious woman, Ms. Coulter (Kidman) appears at the school and befriends Lyra and dazzles her with the possibility of taking her to the north to find Asriel and the famed armored bears that live and fight in the region.

Lyra finds that she has been tricked by Coulter however, who has been playing Pygmalion with her, dressing her up and showing her off to high society rather than taking her on any adventures, and eventually Coulter discovers that Lyra is hiding something very important, she is entrusted with the care of a unique artifact, an Alitheometer, a golden compass that allows one who is skilled in its use to divine the true nature of things.

Lyra escapes and finds refuge in the care of a band of travelers who are secretly aiding the college and Asriel’s quest. Lyra vows to follow him north, but first she stumbles upon a fellow traveler, a wizened cowboy named Scoresby who advises her to seek the services of an outcast armored bear, Iorek Byrnison (McKellen), who is working for alcohol in town. Lyra helps Iorek to find his inner strength again and he swears allegiance to her.

If this sounds both a bit contrived and too much to follow for a film aimed mostly at children, you would be correct on both accounts. By turns very derivative and bewildering in the amount that is left unexplained, Compass is a bit of a mess from a story perspective, and we haven’t even mentioned the role that the Daemons play yet. In essence, in Lyra’s world peoples souls are physically manifest in animal forms that cannot be separated by any great distance from them (unless they are a witch, and we will talk about them in a moment). The essence of the story revolves around the role Dust plays between people and their Daemons and the conclusion revolves around a plot that schemes to outwit Dust by separating children from their Daemons before Dust can corrupt them. Add in an army of witches and an army of barbarians to this vast jumble and note that the order of exposition is changed drastically from the books, removing a lot of the mystery and sense of peeling back the layers of complexity in this world, leaving something that ends up ultimately less than satisfying.

The sad thing is that overall this is an absolutely beautifully crafted film, with no expense spared on the visual effects and an absolute roller coaster of sights and sounds. That all of this glitz ends up supporting a story that has been neutered of its original potency seems a bit of a shame but that’s today’s Hollywood for you. Give credit to the cast however for carrying this film more than the screenplay does, as they are uniformly excellent, especially the voice actors make the best they can of very plain dialogue. Richards in particular holds a presence that few child actors can, and her interaction with Craig is great. Kidman’s Coulter appears on the surface to be a bit one dimensional, but this is by design and I expect that should the planned sequels get made she will be able to drag more depth from the character now that her ruse has been revealed.

The question then becomes who is the real audience for this film? As the fans of the books feel a bit cheated they aren’t the rock on which to build a franchise. Given the controversies, the violence, and the confusing story children are going to struggle with the subject matter. Adults will eat up the battles and the audiovisual candy, but the story is going to leave a great many of them comparing this unkindly to other big fantasy franchises. Ultimately I have to say that there’s a whole lot of sizzle here but the steak underneath it was just too rare for me.


Sound Quality: 5/5
The only available audio track utilizes DTS-HD Master Audio. This is a bold choice given that many users will be unable to get the most from this, yet for those who are fully capable and correctly configured, this is a very dynamic and engaging mix. Bass is terrific especially in the battle scenes and those featuring Iorek on a rampage. Split surround effects are also used well, with sound crisscrossing around the room during the melees, and the whizzing of arrows and bullets is particularly fun to follow. Holding it all together is an orchestral arrangement by Alexandre Desplat which is frankly much better than the movie itself and holds its own against similar soundtracks from other fantasy films.

Visual Quality: 4/5
Visually the film is fantastic where the CGI is concerned, with amazing detail paid to the Daemons. The children’s Daemons can transform from animal to animal at their whim and these morphs are well captured in this high definition transfer. I only have one complaint about the CGI and that is when it is used for the human/witch characters. There are a number of occasions where Lyra is replaced with a full CGI representation and she appears totally lifeless, as do the witches when they are up close. There is simply an emotional disconnect going on here. Unfortunately the facial details are an area where the adult human characters don’t hold up well in detail even when not done with CGI, with the exception of Scoresby who’s charismatic lines hold up great. Essentially there are moments of greatness interspersed in the transfer but it doesn’t hold throughout. Noise is however well contained, colors are very well captured, especially in the opening mud fight, and I didn’t ever note any edge enhancement tho I am notably un-susceptible to it.

Extra Features: 5/5

There are two disks on this set, the first of which is entirely given over to the film but also contains a feature length audio commentary with Director Weisz and also has embedded video ‘making of’ segments overlaid on top of it similar to how 300 was done. Both are excellent and while I do not make a habit of going through every commentary I was especially keen to hear Weisz talk about the difficulties this film presented in its translation from book to screen and the demands heaped upon it by fans, its author, and the studio, and wasn’t disappointed. It truly seems he did the best he could in what was an unwinnable battle.

Disk two has over two and a half hours worth of featurettes. I intended to go through them picking and choosing, but wound up selecting ‘Play all’ and sat through all of them as they pick apart both the visual effects and Pullman’s role in all of this. Both are captivating stories. If you can only spend a little bit of time with these features, then do NOT miss the segment on making the armored bears fight as it is hysterical on how it was originally marked out and fed to the effects company to transform. Also on disk tw are a collection of about 10 full high resolution art series including the posters and pre production artwork which are simply stunning, Rounding up the collection is two separate trailers which are a nice touch given how often they are forgotten these days. I’d wager there are some hidden easter eggs in there too but I haven’t found any, still this is a ton of content for something that is not marketed as any kind of special edition.

Overall: 4/5 (not an average) - Recommended

In the end I have to admit that the quality that this set exudes simply transcends my feelings about the film itself. The number of extras alone might be enough to earn this a ‘recommended’ but I really dug the sound track, the Daemons and the bear battle scenes, even if I found the rest mostly muddled. It was enough to get me to go buy the books and give them a spin as well, and that’s rare for me. It will be interesting to see if the rest of the series gets made, there is some question to how that will work itself out, and I suspect there is too much to risk to NOT see them made. I do suspect that they will make this introduction look like childs play if they do get made, and I look forward to seeing how Lyra’s story continues even if it wasn’t the best telling this round.

[Sam Posten]

The official HTF review of the 2 disk DVD can be found here:
http://www.hometheaterforum.com/htf/...um-series.html

[Eric F]

Sam, thanks for the review. With a recent firmware update the PS3 is now able to decode DTS-HR and MA internally, so most Blu-Ray owners will be able to take advantage of DTS-MA tracks.

[Yee-Ming]

Anything about the so-called international version? Or is that just a figment of our imagination?

[Sam Davatchi]

Just saw this on BD few days ago and I enjoyed it a lot. I enjoyed it more than Narnia and I’m more interested to see the rest of this trilogy. About the controversy, I understand that people could get mad, I completely see it in the movie and that’s why I enjoyed it more than Narnia!

I also enjoyed a lot the extras. I like extras like these where you can sit back and watch them from start to end like a movie, where they tell a story. I hate extras where you have to click a thousand times!

[Dave H]

[quote=Sam Davatchi]...I understand that people could get mad, I completely see it in the movie and that’s why I enjoyed it more than Narnia!

You mean you liked it because people got mad?

[Sam Posten]

Quote:

With a recent firmware update the PS3 is now able to decode DTS-HR and MA internally, so most Blu-Ray owners will be able to take advantage of DTS-MA tracks.

This is of course how I viewed it. However just about every OTHER BD deck out there is incapable of doing this, including my own Panasonic, and configuring the PS3 to make sure you have the PCM/bitstream flag set right is not trivial and something many people, including your intrepid reviewer, got wrong the first few times they tried.

Regarding the comparison to Narnia I really don't know what to say without starting a post that could be book lenght exhaustive, so the following should be considered an overly simplistic wrap up of how I feel on it: I have read both Narnia and LOTR straight through multiple times and even took a university class with a famed Tolkien Scholar (Dean Rutledge of GWU) that compared and contrasted the two styles. One thing that was critical to this comparison is that Lewis clearly embraced allegory and Tolkien vehemently rejected it. While I havent read the books that this film is based on I think that adding how it handles allegorical stances on modern religion and politics could be quite interesting when viewed against the poles of Lewis and Tolkien as a backdrop... I think Pullman found it FUN to poke and prod and tweak the nose of Christianity with this work but I havent really analyzed how serious about it he really is and I certainly wouldnt get all worked up over it if he was seriously making some kind of blatant message in all if it. It's a book, it's designed from the start to make us think, and you as a reader are free to agree or disagree after all.

[CoreyII]

Good Review Sam, very informative, thank you very much.

I thought Sam's review might prompt me to give this film a second chance, but I'll be skipping the Golden Compass altogether. I saw this film in the theaters and found it to be jumbled mess and Sam's review only re-confirmed my feelings towards this film.

I found The Golden Compass to be one of the worst films of the year and it shouldn't have won over the Transformers for the best visual effects Oscar.

[Sam Davatchi]

Quote:

You mean you liked it because people got mad?

No, I liked the story, the idea. The oppressive force who wants to keep the people from the truth.

[Lance Rumbolt]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sam Davatchi

No, I liked the story, the idea. The oppressive force who wants to keep the people from the truth.

Sam, Try reading the book you will love it if you thought this was good. The film is a major disappointment I hated it, don't get me wrong it looks lovely but the choices that were made to bring it to the big screen are horrendous really really bad choices. The film is a real dumbed down version with events placed in different orders and chracters with the life sucked ot of them. Really read the books they are so much better.