It's hard for me to believe that the population that has elevated Fox filth to a major entertainment would recoil from an anti-clerical fantasy. Most Americans are too illiterate to figure out that Narnia is a Christian allegory without somebody waving a sign at them, much less that The Golden Compass is an "atheist fantasy." And there is nothing blasphemous in the first Dark Materials book, so I think the fundie notion that they have scored another victory like the one they scored on the wonderful and very "blasphemous" Last Temptation is just a bit of that wishful thinking that characterizes a minority in decline, raging against the dying of the light they imagined. Hollywood, in spite of its dominance by Godless, high-minded, disdainful-of-Mammon-and-profit, anti-all-that-is-good, and thriving-somehow-in-spite-of-all-Good-Americans'-loathing-for-their-Evilness artists, intellectuals, and liberals (those figures of the loathsome and obscene Anti-trinity: Art, Science, and Community) is making money hand over fist, said money coming from the pockets of fallen Americans in such numbers that I suspect all the Godly will need for The Rapture is a Piper Cub.

Citing the "failure" of the film version of the only book to rival The Bible in sales (and with a much shorter printing history) as an example of Americans getting their religious knickers in a knot is pretty funny. What do you think people did with all those copies of the book that was #1 on every best seller list for four years? Read it and were aghast and therefore recommended it to their friends? How American! And why love the book and hate the movie in the Name of Baby Jesus? After all, the movie removed the part about how cool it would be to bonk the great granddaughter of Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene, and ole Mr. Langdon does, right after the last page. I guess the theory here is that atheists and the godless bought 10-100 copies each of The Da Vinci Code in their desire to create the illusion of success? A vast conspiracy, led no doubt by Saddam Hussein, the Democrats, and Jane Fonda.

I'm very disappointed that the GC film softened the ending. I'm guessing how; I will see it this weekend. (I'm planning to buy two tickets; one for myself and one in the name of my favorite theofascist; and maybe a few more. See above.) The original ending doesn't exactly make "the hero," for all his hatred of Yahwehism, very attractive, and it strikes me that the change was made not for any philosophical reason but for the amazingly inconsistent desire to not offend the preconceptions of the audience. (Heroes don't kill kids. I can say no more.)

As for Beowulf, I liked it (though I'm with the comment above: I loved Stardust, especially for its attack on religion!). For me, the value of the medium was expressed in a reported exchange between Gaiman and Zemeckis. Gaiman wanted to write a certain scene, and told Zemeckis it would be too expensive to film. Zemeckis said something to the effect that every minute of the film costs the same, regardless of what Gaiman wrote. So he wrote what he pleased. The freedom of the page, perhaps for the first time on film. The Beowulf film isn't perfect, but I enjoyed it because it captured the spirit of the original. For example, in the moment when Beowulf tells his men to "sing" and they respond by chanting dirty limericks about girls from Iceland, or when Wulfgar, Beowulf's closest friend, mutters to someone while Beowulf is describing his heroic battle with nine nickers, "Last time, it was three...." And if "I AM BEOWULF!" "YOU ARE BEOWULF!!" isn't Old English by way of the Green Bay Packers, what is?

And I liked it that Gaiman found a way to bring coherence and unity to what is essentially a handful of disconnected biographical details. A favorite example: We see Beowulf's battle with the nickers. In spite of the wisecrack of Wulfgar. I didn't count the monsters, but I did notice that Beowulf fails to mention in his retelling the final moment of the battle, which we see: The last nicker is a beautiful mermaid-like woman, seen briefly and quite possibly played by Jolie. She has a distinctive tail that we will see again, on the dragon child of Grendel's mother. And Beowulf fails, as he has apparently always failed, to tell this little detail of the story. The sea is his mother indeed.

Grendel's mother is a brilliant concept brilliantly executed, however much its origin is in John Boorman's interpretation of Morgaine and Modred (without Boorman's rightwing misogyny, homophobia, and fixation on incest). Her last two minutes on screen twist the story into a Gordian knot I'll never untangle. And the pathetic element of Grendel is as wonderful an idea as John Gardner's solidifying of the monster into an Existentialist without portfolio. I was reminded of the terrible photo I saw one day of the typical deformed and crippled white tiger that breeders get while they pursue the photogenic and unnatural 4-5%. And prolifers note: Breeding once with Angelina Jolie makes you sterile!!!

In other words, Beowulf works as a testosterone festival with some boring idea sections, and it works as an artistic and literary vision with some hysterical riffs on Jock Lit. Porter Scene, anyone? So it's fake. Right, and when Edgar pulls out Gloucester's eyes and steps on them, it's really sheep's eyes. Ooooooh, you ruined Lear for me!!! Frankly, all CGI looks fake because, live with it, it is fake. Those birds were never fooled by that Greek's grapes, we all knew Apollo was just a statue, the moviegoers were only startled by that first bullet because it was a new experience, and Grampa may look "so natural," but he's still dead. Film is fake, books are fake, people pretending to be Electra and MacBeth are fake, fake, fake.

Art is fake. As Defoe, that beacon of Puritan purity who denounced Homer as lies and made his living forging autobiographies (including one of a whore only a bit less candid than Fanny Hill -- Scholars note: The origins of Fox purotainment), has said, fiction is Godless lies! So tell me a good story and I promise not to whine because I can see the puppets' joints.