chunky, scrumptious and slightly raggedy

Lyra's long coat
I'm sure that every knitter who blogs and saw The Golden Compass over the weekend is posting about Lyra's chunky knits, but I'm going to do it too because I can't help myself. Whoever costume designed this movie is either a knitter, or a knitted garment lover. Either way, he/she made me wish that I was tall & skinny enough to wear these clothes!

If only I had access to that Wonka stretching machine.

In addition to this long coat, Lyra had a great knitted hat (better than the one shown, above) and giant mittens.

Link to the book...

I wasn't going to launch into a review of the movie itself, but after thinking about it for a while, I've decided to say a couple of things (by the way, I'm a fan of the trilogy, His Dark Materials):

The movie was watchable and entertaining, but ultimately disappointing. Waaay better in terms of adaptation than the Harry Potter movies, but still disappointing. Since I'd read the book, my feeling was that the movie could have been longer because there were definitely nuances that should have been included, but weren't. Not to say that the movie should have been more faithful to the book, just that there could have been more nods to the trilogy's core themes. This adaptation is superfical and seems almost babyish at times whereas the book never feels that way.

One annoying thing: When people die, you see their daemons turn to dust. Why??? Dust can't be seen...do we really need that in the movie?

One bad thing: Everything came to unfold so simply that there wasn't much tension, fear, or darkness

One good thing: Mrs. Coulter's relationship with herself was well done through the depiction of her relationship with her daemon. At first, I felt like it was a bit ham-fisted, but after contemplation, I decided that it was graphically perverse in a good way—it reminded me of old-fashioned drama, of the Sunset Boulevard type.

One more good thing: The movie is very pretty.