Holy crap. It rained today. In fact, it didn’t just rain, it thunderstormed. It’s the beginning of January, it’s not supposed to be raining, it’s supposed to be snowing!! Anyway, Kat and I went out and filmed a lot of it for you and I also made a vlog. Both are uploading to YouTube now. Check back soon! =}

**SPOILER WARNING**

So, let me start by saying I’m not one of those anal individuals who has the audacity to believe that everything written in a book can successfully be squeezed into a film. So when I watch a movie based of a book I’ve previously read, I watch it as it is: A movie based on a book. And usually, I’m pretty grateful that they saw in the book what I saw- a good enough story to make a film. And I realize that Hollywood is out to make money, not tell a good story, so probably what they’re thinking- is that it’s a big enough book to make into a film. Either way, I’m usually very grateful to see something I loved big enough and influencing enough people to make it into a film. And when I saw them making Lord of the Rings into a movie, I was waiting for His Dark Materials. The first series I cried reading. What I read in seventh grade.

Lord of the Rings was excellent; sure there were some differences from the book to film, as there always are. The same was true for Harry Potter. But it’s the little details that tend to get under my skin. Why would you change Harry’s scar from the middle of his forehead to the side? Why? What’s the point?

As an actress and director I understand the necessities that are pace, clarity, and conciseness. I can understand cutting scenes from the book that just can’t make it into the movie for sake of making the pace bearable. But changing a character’s name? What is the point of that? Switching entire scenes around? No. There are crucial parts that were left out of the movie and when later events occur- it doesn’t manage to miraculously make sense without them.

Now, when I watched the Golden Compass, there were those little things, like normal, that got under my skin. And I was completely fine with all those things, I was enjoying the movie. I clapped when they kept a scene that I didn’t expect them to keep.

I heard from someone, “They cut the last the last part of the book out and removed all the religious connotation.’” And since I’d actually read the book, and realized there wasn’t any real religious connotation at the end of The Golden Compass, I passed the person’s word off as something they overheard from someone else. An uneducated hearsay.

Yet at a certain part I leaned over to Cole and said, “Wouldn’t it be funny if the credits started rolling right now?”

Cole: Yeah, right. They can’t do that or there is no second movie.
Me: Yeah, that’s such a detrimental part of the book, but… the music’s kind of swelling…
Cole: No way…
*THE SCREEN GOES BLACK*
Cole: WHAT?
(It was the midnight show, there wasn’t anyone in the theater but us and some friends.)
Me: *laughing, desperately begging that it’s some sort of fake cut scene*
Cole: Did that just happen?!
*THE CREDITS ROLL*
Cole: THAT DID NOT JUST FUCKING HAPPEN.

And yeah. It did.

I’ve never been so sad over a paper to film adaptation. I cannot believe they did this to my favorite story. They are making a second film from what I hear, but they already fired the guy who did this one and hired someone new for the adaptation. Hopefully they’ll put the end of the first book into the second movie. You couldn’t ASK for a more climactic ending then what Pullman pulled in the first book. It was handed to them on a silver platter. But no, they botched it up.

For those of you that have never read the book, enjoy the film. It’s exciting and fantastic eye candy. For those of you that, like I, cherished His Dark Materials as one of your favorite trilogies of all time- don’t. It will break your heart.

EDIT: Now that I’ve had time to recover I guess I should talk about all the things I loved about the movie.
• Seraphina. OMG.
• The Daemons. LOVED them.
• The armored bears, with the exception of renaming Iofur and the scrapping the whole arena and forgetting to mention that the bears can’t be tricked so when Iorek names her “Silvertongue” it doesn’t make much sense. Yes that was a run-on sentence.
• Lee Scoresby. FUCK YES. Double fuck yes.
• Daniel Craig managed to pull it off (with the exception of the begging line)
• LYRA and her imperfect teeth.
• The entire beginning.
• PAN. OMG SO FUCKING CUTE I WANT ONE MORE THAN EVER NOW. (I seriously carried Morn and Pumpkin around the house going, “Would you like to be my Daemon?!”)
• Mrs. Coulter’s daemon. CREEPY. (Though when she pulled the whole, “Luke, I am your father” bit, that was unacceptable.)

And last but certainly not least:

• Iorek still ripped Iofur’s (though he was renamed to something silly) jaw off. It bounced across the snow. HA. Yeah.

So I guess there were a lot of things I liked, in fact, like I said: I was enjoying the movie until the very end. I was just disheartened to see they didn’t actually end it the way I’d always dreamed they would. Bummer.

So Jei and I have been enjoying “Dexter”, thanks to a good friend’s suggestion, and Kat and I “Pushing Daises”. It’s probably the only show that I’m pretty much smiling all the way through. It has a very obvious inspiration from Amelie, which makes it just that much more enjoyable, from the camera angles, quirkiness, music, to the style of narration and storytelling. For those Amelie fans out there, you may want to give this show a look-see. It’s got just the right amount of nerdiness for me. =)

Oh, and I’m doing my cards today, which is going to be a lot of fun. Also we’ll be attending the sneak preview show of “The Golden Compass”, though I’m kind of wishing I’d re-read the book before seeing it since the last time I read it I was thirteen years old. Maybe I’ll spend a few hours today and read it before the show.

PS: Love exists

Song of the Lakes : Man in the Mirror

Last night Kelly, Tom, and I went to Song of the Lakes, and I enjoyed myself quite a bit. We danced, we jigged, we jived, and we tried to have cake that was all too tough for us to eat without stabbing it forcefully several times with our forks.

And we sat by Jeniel who I haven’t seen since high school! She was an exchange student to Japan for a year and apparently she just got back from studying abroad in China! Wow! On a sidenote, Kelly is the one who told me how to cut my fringe, but I still can’t get them to look like that and so I’m not sure I did it right. But oh well. =D I hope everyone had a safe and wonderful time yesterday.

Oh, and then Jei and I cuddled close and watched The Boondock Saints. It was mad glorious.

I am totally going to start wearing bloomers like this. That has nothing to do with the remainder of this entry. In other news, last night Rue was very excited to show the entire house something special he had been shown the night previous. (Thanks you Jade, because of you I had a heads up!) He got his computer all set up in the living room, made Jei come down and have us all squeeze on the couch, cover our eyes and watch… Metalocalypse, which is an animated cartoon from the creator of Home Movies about a godly death metal band. (Those of you that know these boys probably saw that coming, or aren’t surprised after finding out. =D)

Anyway, it was fun, and afterward we watched Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, and that was pretty interesting. (Tyler had to write a paper on it.) And I want to take a moment to plug Mallory’s gorgeous vintage design. Really. It’s great. But really I am excited for tomorrow for two reasons- Riley and I are going to see The Full Monty and then at 12:15am we are all going to see 3oo. It looks so good.