Mayor's Movies: His Dark Materials UPDATE!

So...for those of you who know me, you might know that Phillip Pullman's series has a special place on my shelf, right next to Tolkien's masterpieces, The Hobbit, and The Lord of the Rings. This being said, I'm glad that New Line Cinema's given both stories their opportunities to be seen on the big screen. I had my doubts that the immensity of The Lord of the Rings could be pulled off, but New Line astounded me by creating a fantasy worthy of the title Lord. Now, with The Golden Compass about to kick off the His Dark Materials trilogy, I'm ready and waiting...with reservation.

First off some SPOILERS are about to come forward in my post; I promise this will be the only paragraph, and if it's not, there'll be more spoiler warnings. DO NOT READ THIS IF YOU DON'T WANT THEMES FROM THE BOOK TRILOGY TO BE SPOILED. The nature of the trilogy is that Lyra's father, Lord Asriel, is fighting a war against god, lower case g. God, once again lower case, is an angel, the first, who has assumed power and the title of Lord. How, in our neo-conservative culture does one MAJOR SPOILER ABOUT TO DROP kill god on film? I'm worried about the integrity of the movie and what this means about the plot if, as I assume, this will be dropped. But that's two Christmas' from now (ironic) and I don't have to worry about that immediately.

This is the only thing that's bothered me about this film since I heard that the rights had been sold nearly four years ago.

Anyway, last night and this morning some most excellent news came across the web. Casting news.

First off, the already known cast:

Nicole Kidman - Ms. Coulter
Daniel Craig - Lord Asriel
Dakota Blue Richards - Lyra
Sam Elliott - Lee Scorsby (The only one better would've been Ian McKellen)
Eva Green

This cast is picture perfect. With the exception of Dakota, of whom I've never heard, this is the strongest cast I can imagine for this epic. The casting director deserves an Oscar now for pulling this off.


Secondly, the polar bears:

Ian McShane - Iofur Raknison, the un-justified King of the Panserbjørne (Armored Polar Bear Warriors)
Sir Ian McKellen - Iorek Byrnison, the true King

Whoa! Great, great news. These two will be great, battling for the power of the Polar Bears. Things seems to be shaping up as the names keep getting added to the list.

What's that? There's more?!

Thirdly, Daemon updates:

Kathy Bates - Hester, Lee Scoresby's hare daemon
Kristin Scott Thomas - as Lord Asriel's Snow Leopard Daemon

And FOURTH!!!!

There's a great new trailer over at Yahoo...check it out!

Thanks to JoBlo for keeping up to date on these things...you guys rock!