Dec 4 2007 Five Unappetizing Minutes of 'The Golden Compass'!

Yahoo's preview of the first five minutes of The Golden Compass comes off like an appetizer sampler at Applebee's, a sad, unfulfilling attempt at whetting my appetite with blandness and some fancy garnish that somehow manages to be both not enough and too much, all at once.

Am I meant to be most impressed that it takes half the time to explain that, in this world, there's some kind of golden compass that does something very non-specific (finds hidden things?), that children speak through dull dialogue, or that dust there is very old? At least it gives a peak at the CGI animals that house the souls of the people of this world. With uncomfortably fluid movement, they still look worse than most of the dinosaurs from Jurassic Park, but remain passable enough that a new generation, unexposed to Beastmaster, will again be begging for pet ferrets.

The Golden Compass 5-Minute Preview [Yahoo!]

May 23 2007 The Golden Compass Trailer

Even if you don't care about extravagant fantasy epics, you'd better just go ahead and watch the trailer for The Golden Compass, the first chapter of the His Dark Materials series. It's bound to be the next Harry Potter/Lord of the Rings thing that everyone's raving about, so you're going to look like an asshole if you can't banter about how cool the talking polar bear is.

High quality versions here.