Where are our lives?
If there is no dream
Where is our home?

We don’t know how
There will be a way
Out of the storm
We will find home
— Kate Bush, “Lyra,” The Golden Compass

We went to see The Golden Compass at the UA theater at the end of our street, which theater we never go to because it’s twenty years old, and doesn’t have stadium seating, but since we were away during most of the December movie watching period, and the alternative was to drive to a theater in Dallas, which neither of us was inclined to do since it wasn’t an IMAX movie, we chose this. When we got there, we were pleasantly surprised to find that all shows between 4 and 6 are only $4. So hey, cheap tickets, nearly empty auditorium, and clean bathrooms all added up to a decent experience.

The movie itself was…well…I didn’t hate it, but even though I’ve only read the first book in the series, and even though that was six months ago (it seems) I was a bit disoriented by the shuffling of scenes. As many other readers of the novels are, I’m also disappointed that the last part of the book was chopped off, leaving the movie feeling incomplete.

Editing issues aside, I don’t have a major issue with the composite characters replacing a few of the originals, and I like the casting and the CGI animals, but it drives me crazy when movies that really aren’t childish are packaged as childrens’ films. This could have been better done.

After the film, we made trips to Barnes and Nobel, where I got books two and three and some comforting TrekFic, and Taco Bell, for weekend junk food. We watched last night’s episode of Stargate Atlantis, and now, I’m curled up with dogs and pillows and cold medicine and a comfort book, and Fuzzy’s upstairs playing computer games, and while this isn’t a very exciting evening on the surface, it’s good that we both know where home is.