BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Film | God cut from Dark Materials film

God is to be cut from the film versions of His Dark Materials in case it upsets people. Seems a bit pointless as the whole trilogy is about an attack on the church and the way it tries to rule people's lives.

Weitz, who directed American Pie and About A Boy, said New Line feared that any anti-religiosity in the film would make the project 'unviable financially'.
He said: 'All my best efforts will be directed towards keeping the film as liberating and iconoclastic an experience as I can.
'But there may be some modification of terms.'
'Curtails freedom'
Weitz said he had visited Pullman, who had told him that the Authority could 'represent any arbitrary establishment that curtails the freedom of the individual, whether it be religious, political, totalitarian, fundamentalist, communist, what have you'.
He added: 'I have no desire to change the nature or intentions of the villains of the piece, but they may appear in more subtle guises.'
There are a number of Christian websites which attack the trilogy for their depiction of the church and of God, but Pullman has denied his books are anti-religious.
His agent told the Times newspaper that Pullman was happy with the adaptation so far.
'Of course New Line want to make money, but Mr Weitz is a wonderful director and Philip is very supportive.
'You have to recognise that it is a challenge in the climate of Bush's America.'

Thye bunny saves the world

081204
Originally uploaded by iGav.

Cool

There really was a madwoman in tha ttic

Charlotte Bonte wasn't completely making up the story of the first Mrs Rochester. It seems she based the story on a house she visited

Charlotte visited Norton Conyers in 1839 and knew the story of the mansion's 'madwoman' - probably epileptic or pregnant with an illegitimate child - who had been kept locked in an attic 60 years earlier.
The real and fictional halls are, in Bronte's words, 'three storeys high, of proportions not vast, though considerable, a gentleman's manor house, not a nobleman's seat'. Both have battlements, a rookery, sunken fence and wide main oak staircase. But until this month, only Thornfield had a hidden flight of stairs from near Mr Rochester's grand bedroom to his wife's miserable prison.

Economic `Armageddon' predicted

Over at the Boston herald there's an article in which they are talking about an inevitable uber-depression if the US continues to ignore its trade deficit.

So that imbecile hasn't even been re-inaugurated yet and already his country's imploding

Macworld UK - Rio outlines iPod attack plan

Creative try to detract from the success of the iPod by claiming to be taking some of Apple's market share. It's a bit of a non-story, really. though I do find it amusing that they are only now intending 'to design the right product' - what were they doing before, trying to design the wrong one?

Rio president Hugh Cooney told Business Week that his company intends to 'design the right product at the right value and then use any kind of buzz we can take advantage of.'
According to market researchers at NPD Group, the iPod accounts for 54.7 per cent of total digital-music-player units sold, while Rio accounts for just 8.9 per cent.
Vice-president for marketing Dan Torres believes that Rio is already taking away market share from Apple. He said: 'When we look at the entire space, Apple makes only a hard-disk player. We have a new hard-disk offering in the Carbon 5 gigabyte. It's a little hard for us to figure out what share we're taking from them, but we're competing with them directly. So far we think we're doing quite well, and we'll be taking share away from iPod mini.'

The Late, Great American Dollar :: AO

Is the dollar doomed??

Does George Bush care that he's wrecking the US economy? Probably not, so long as his greedy friends get richer

Two weeks ago, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan urged the Bush administration to reduce the budget deficit and encourage more personal saving here at home. He said foreign investors were not likely to finance America's huge and growing trade gap forever, and he implied that if current trends continued, the U.S. risked a currency crisis.

This is not the first time we've heard these warnings. But it is the first time we've heard them from Greenspan.

Be careful what you wish for

Is Bush's new term as President of the US off to a shaky start?

The article doesn't look at the masss resignations or the failing dollar - could be a case of Fasten your seat belt, it's gonna be a bumpy ride

The vaunted presidential juggernaut has cowed the Democrats but not his own party, at least in these early days. A lot of stuff happened this month that did not make the Republicans look good. Not all of it appears to have delighted the White House. And new polls suggest that Bush's victory was due more to his likability and military leadership than support for his dramatic domestic reforms in Social Security, Medicare, the tax system and conservative cultural positions.
That indicates political trouble ahead for Bush unless he can compromise with Democrats to win bipartisan support. But that's not his style.