Spoilers below. And blasphemy.

Mark was up last week as he says here, and delighted I am that he had a good time!

While he was up, he remarked that it was rumoured in some quarters that the upcoming Pullman adaptations have actually left in a good deal more critique of the Catholic church than they are letting on; slipping it in under the counter, so to speak. Nicole Kidman was dumb enough to marry insane midget Tom Cruise, so I guess she'll believe whatever she's told. I simply can't be bothered to search out the bit where she says she's a Catholic and so wouldn't be in a film which was against Catholicism, but it's out there somewhere.

I can't help thinking that there must be something to this. You can mess around with the trappings of the Magisterium in order to make the resemblance less obvious, by all means. But just how, exactly, do they propose to alter the later books, where God turns up and turns out to be a wretched fraudulent tosser, in order to pretend that this is not the assault on religion and hymn to skepticism that it is blatantly intended to be? It wouldn't be the first time Hollywood completely obliterated source material, of course, but Pullman's involved in this project, I believe, so here's hoping.

Music: Led Zeppelin - The Song Remains The Same (the new version, and it sounds awesome. The old version of this was rubbish. Amazing job.)