The latest in the trend is The Golden Compass, a rather ambitious affair based on the literary works of Philip Pullman. On thing it immediately showed that it had going for it was a young lead actress that was NOT obnoxious or overly precocious. Newcomer Dakota Blue Richards does an exceptional job in the lead role of Lyra Belacqua, a young girl that becomes the focal point of a world-wide conflict in a universe that is similar to…but not quite like our own.

Imagine that things on earth progressed more or less the same up to the late 1800’s. But then, instead of an industrial revolution based on new technology, the newest advances were due to the harnessing of magic-like energies. “Primitive” cars and zeppelins roam the streets and skies of the cities while the elegant spires and ornate exteriors of the buildings make for a beautiful cityscape.

At the heart of the conflict is a mysterious device called a Golden Compass. There used to be several, but now there is only one. Young Lyra comes to be in possession of the device which is purported to be able to provide answers to any question posed to it. At roughly the same time, her uncle Asriel (Daniel Craig), a thorn in the side of the political leaders of the time, is captured and held prisoner in the far north. He believes that there are infinite parallel worlds to their own and they can be accessed via a special particle that is simply called ‘dust’. To the political establishment, however, these statements are pure heresy.

Lyra meets a beautiful but very cold woman named Marisa Coulter (Nicole Kidman) who, its later found, is working with the magistrate but who also has a secret much larger than that. Along the way, Lyra meets other groups and individuals, including Lee Scoresby (Sam Elliott), a Texan who happens to own a powered airship and Iorek Byrnison, a HUGE but alcoholic polar bear who works as a blacksmith in exchange for liquor. Then there is Serafina Pekkala (Eva Green), one of hundreds of witches who enter the conflict and John Faa (Jim Carter), the king of the Gyptians.

Needless to say, this is some high adventure. But despite some good (and sometimes brilliant) performances and a very cohesive vision of the world of Pullman’s imagination, it has its flaws. The biggest one is perhaps the film maker’s willingness to gloss over some fairly important material from the book. It’s not a fatal flaw, but had there been much more of it, then parts of the movie would have been incomprehensible. As it is, I’m left with the very distinct feeling that I am unaware of some vital information that would have been present in the book.

But all-in-all, this is a very good film that deserves a look if you get a chance. If nothing else, you’ll need to see this one in order to know whats going on in the sequels. What? You didn’t actually think they’d have a nice, tidy ending with everything resolved, did you?

What you have in this version is something that is a lot like a zombie movie except without all of the things that make a zombie movie fun to watch. They actually aren’t zombies, they are bodies that have been genetically reprogrammed, and now inhabited by, aliens. They get into your bloodstream and then reprogram your DNA during REM sleep. The whole “dont sleep!” thing happening on the screen is more likely there to plant a subliminal message to keep the audience awake.

The aliens don’t eat brains or anything cool like that. Instead they have desires to create this Hillary Clinton-esque world where individualism is totally dead. This means no war, no fights, no anything. In short, it sounds boring.

Nicole Kidman stars in a perfect role for her as she often gets to play an emotional character who cant show emotions. Daniel Craig is also in the movie. I would like to get my rope with the big knot in it to talk to him about better script selection.

This movie was shot in 2006 and in 2007 prior to release, the distribtor brought in the Wachowski Brothers from The Matrix to write some additional scenes and pnch the story up a little. Either they ruined or they couldn’t save it, take your choice. This puppy is 2 stars, skip it unless your other choice is an F-Troop marathon. No, I take that back….watch F-Troop, we love Larry Storch.

It was described as Top Gun with race cars when it was released and the description still fits. The movie reunites Top Gun director Tony Scott and star Tom Cruise. This time Tom is behind the wheel of a 700+ horse power Winston Cup car instead of a Tom Cat. And if all NASCAR races were like the ones in this movie, the Daytona 500 would be bigger than the Super Bowl.

This DVD is typical of older movies. There’s not alot of extras and the video quality is mediocre at best. However, the sound is very strong, and that may be an understatement. You’ll get alot of surround effects to give you the effect of being at the track, and if you listen to this movie at reference levels and have a subwoofer, you can expect any animals and small children you have in the house to run and hide under something the first time they fire up all of the engines at the same time.

If you’re a NASCAR fan, this movie definitely belongs in your collection. Likewise if you’re a Tom Cruise fan you should also probably have it. For everyone else, you wont find alot of substance in the story, but the racing sequences will test the limits of your home audio.