No, Mayra Daemon, as in Mayra the Hare, because I’m apparently “modest, humble, spontaneous, inquisitive, and solitary.” (Well, they got the solitary part right.) Discover your daemon at the official Golden Compass movie site, which does a decent job of trying to explain the basics of Philip Pullman’s world to non-readers. (And, sorry, Mayra m’dear, but I’ve already got a power animal…no hard feelings.)
Tag: Sci-Fi/Fantasy Books
A Tale of the First Age.
As noted here last September, Christopher Tolkien has completed one of his father’s earliest works, The Children of Hurin, for publication — It comes out tomorrow. “Already told in fragmentary form in ‘The Silmarillion,’ which appeared in 1977, the new book is darker than ‘The Hobbit’ and ‘The Lord of the Rings,’ for which Tolkien is best known…The story is set long before ‘The Lord of the Rings’ in a part of Middle-earth that was drowned before Hobbits ever appeared, and tells the tragic tale of Turin and his sister Nienor who are cursed by Morgoth, the first Dark Lord.“
Update: “I came away from ‘The Children of Hurin’ with a renewed appreciation for the fact that Tolkien’s overarching narrative is much more ambiguous in tone than is generally noticed…What sits in the foreground is that persistent Tolkienian sense that good and evil are locked in an unresolved Manichaean struggle with amorphous boundaries, and that the world is a place of sadness and loss, whose human inhabitants are most often the agents of their own destruction.” Salon‘s Andrew O’Hehir favorably reviews Tolkien’s dark new tome.
Pink Robots and Deathly Hallows.
Her name is Yoshimi, she’s got a black belt in karaoke…Two choice links via Webgoddess. I thought for sure this was a Slings and Arrows-type April Fool’s joke at first, but no: The Flaming Lips’ Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots is coming to Broadway. “There’s the real world and then there’s this fantastical world. This girl, the Yoshimi character, is dying of something. And these two guys are battling to come visit her in the hospital. And as one of the boyfriends envisions trying to save the girl, he enters this other dimension where Yoshimi is this Japanese warrior and the pink robots are an incarnation of her disease. It’s almost like the disease has to win in order for her soul to survive. Or something like that.” And, weirder still, it’s apparently being written by Aaron Sorkin of The West Wing and Sports Night.
And, also via Kris, my old site The Leaky Cauldron has posted the cover art for the final Potter installment, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, which you can see at right. Clean, simple, I like it.
Venom and Stardust.
Venom (Topher Grace) comes to the fore in the final, very spoilerish, and Comcastic trailer for Sam Raimi’s Spiderman 3 — really, it seems like more of an executive summary than a preview. And, also up this weekend is the trailer for Matthew Vaughn’s version of Neil Gaiman’s Stardust, featuring, among others, Charlie Cox, Sienna Miller, Claire Danes, Michelle Pfeiffer, Robert De Niro, Ricky Gervais, Jason Flemyng, Rupert Everett, Ian McKellen, and Peter O’Toole. Not a bad cast, that, and with Layer Cake‘s Vaughn at the helm, I’ll go see it, even if this trailer is a mite underwhelming.
The Hallows of Death.
Year seven at Hogwarts gets its registration date: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows comes out July 21. Look for Berk and I in the midnight line.
The Seed on the Feed.
By way of Ed Rants, Sci-Fi and executive producer George Clooney are collaborating on a 6-hour TV version of Neal Stephenson’s Diamond Age. Not the most approachable of Stephenson‘s books offhand, so I’ll be curious to see what they do with it.
Compass Heading.
More images from The Golden Compass emerge online, including new looks at Lyra (Dakota Blue Richards), Lee Scoresby (Sam Elliot), Mrs. Coulter (Nicole Kidman), and Lord Asriel (Craig. Daniel Craig.) Also in the mix, Eva Green (as Serafina Pekkala) and Ian McShane (as the voice of Ragnar Sturlusson). [They’re also posted here.]
Hallows Be Thy Name.
Old news now, but it happened while on the track: Harry Potter’s final chapter gets a title: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
The Hobbit Nazguled?
“This outcome is not what we anticipated or wanted, but neither do we see any positive value in bitterness and rancor. We now have no choice but to let the idea of a film of The Hobbit go and move forward with other projects…We got to go there – but not back again…” In an e-mail to The One Ring, PJ and Fran say they’re off The Hobbit due to outstanding and unresolved matters regarding their lawsuit against New Line, who want to move on the project now before they lose the rights. MGM (who owns the distribution rights) says it ain’t over yet, but, my, it’s not looking good.
Phoenix Landing.
The new Fiennes-centric Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix teaser poster is now online. Look for new photos from the film here, for a very brief clip here, and for the teaser — if, like me, you’re not going to see Happy Feet — on Monday. Update: Here it is.