http://community.livejournal.com/jordancollege/96621.html#cutid1 Ahh, livejournal communities, what would I do without you
Initial reports are that Mrs. Coulter will be played by Nicole Kidman and Lord Asriel will be played by Paul Bettany.
Fans (including me) are pretty thrilled about Nicole Kidman. I love Nicole Kidman. I think she can be beautiful and treacherous and commanding and seductive and sweetly poisonous and cold and engaging and everything Mrs. Coulter is.
Since the only movie I’ve seen Paul Bettany in is “A Beautiful Mind,” I really can’t say much, but from that he is not at all what I imagined for Lord Asriel. I’d always imagined someone with less of a flighty presence–of course in “A Beautiful Mind” he was supposed to have a sort of shimmery “sort of not there” kind of presence but still… I feel like he’s too skinny and not leonine enough, you know? Too skinny–though a Lord Asriel would still have to be lean and graceful, but I don’t feel, like, fear when I look at him. Of course I haven’t seen, like, Master and Commander, nor have I seen the Da Vinci Code (in which he was supposedly “the only good thing” by some reports), and the character he plays in that I have always imagined to be stockier and scarier too, so who knows, it might turn out all right. It had better turn out all right! Fans had Jason Isaacs who I only know as Lucius Malfoy in mind. I can see that sort of, he’s a little more imposing, but you also have to love him… Other fans had been suggesting Alan Rickman which I could sort of see, not because of his turn as Snape but because of the red suit he wore in “sense and sensibility.” Ha ha ha ha
And Lyra was cast a while ago (she’s an unknown) but I don’t think there are any pictures of her yet. http://film.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,1809553,00.html
And yeah Tom Stoppard was writing the screenplay for a while but was replaced by director Chris Weitz, who then left and then came back. Ha ha ha. Who knows how much “God & religion” will get cut out of the book? /sigh
Anyway.
For your perusal:
http://www.hisdarkmaterials.org/
http://www.bridgetothestars.net/
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0385752/ (very incomplete, of course, since shooting has barely begun)
The imdb “trivia” reports that “Writer Philip Pullman wants Nicole Kidman to play Mrs. Coulter and has indicated that he would like Jason Isaacs to portray Lord Asriel. He has also indicated that he would like the part of Lee Scorsby to be played by Samuel L. Jackson.” HAHAHAHAHA SAMUEL L JACKSON AS LEE SCORESBY HAHAHAHAHAHA
Jason Isaacs would have been awesome. But Bettany definitely has more presence in Master and Commander, so yeah, it could work. I’m still skeptical.
this wasn’t that big a movie, but I thought Bettany’s coolest performance was when he played Geoffrey Chauncer (sp?) in “Knight’s Tale”… (not the first time he appears though)