London calling... The second part of His Dark Materials managed to be just as inspired and moving as the first despite one of my favourite characters (and his heroic death) being completely removed. I was curious as to whether they'd try to recap the action from part one and was wondering how they'd pull off the "Previously on Buffy The Vampire Slayer..." in a stage setting . Well they did it exactly like that. A quick montage of the key sequences from the night before to bring everyone back up to speed and then they were off and running. There were a couple of misfires but they had more to do with the source material than the production as I do think that Pullman got a little overstretched with The Amber Spyglass by adding the Gallivespians (staged last night with the use of tiny marionettes) and the Mulefa (knowingly removed form the stageplay - probably from fear of the thing descending into Starlight Express). If the upcoming movies capture the interplay between Lyra and Pan half as well as this production has then I'll be more than happy. And for the record the ending was gut wrenching in a way that signaled that all involved had got it just right. Our next trip to the 'theatre' will be to see Henry Rollins at the end of the month. Now if we could get him and an armoured bear on the same stage... Moving on... It looks like I'll be blogging over on Londonist (part of the Gothamist city network) which I'm very happy about. It'll take a little while for me to get the login details sorted out so in the meantime Rob will be posting my entries for me Sorted. To kick things off I wrote a little something about Judy Dench and somehow managed to get an arse from Hollyoaks in the same entry. I am still waiting for a certain something else to launch but the issues with the website domain still haven't been sorted which is a tad frustrating. And now I'm all depressed after reading about this little guy: Connor was a US Marine mascot, a puppy found in Iraq and looked after by a soldier named Sara who managed to raise a heap of money to get him vaccinated and shipped to the States so he would avoid the puppy cull that the US Army is currently undertaking. Yes that's right. Bush and co are not happy with merely killing women and children so are going for as many puppies and kittens as they can get through before heading out to Iran. Connor, despite Sara's best efforts, was hunted down and killed just twelve hours before he was due to be put on a plane. She has a livejournal. The entry in which she speaks of Connor's death is here but recently she has turned her attention to all the idiots complaining that her grief is misplaced: For those who think that trying to get an animal home or the noble work of www.militarymascots.org is a frivolous or even useless venture, I ask you to think about your life. Take the most important thing you have right now, and destroy it. No, have it ripped from you. Let it be taken from the place of security you tried to create for it. Let strangers take it away under cover of darkness, give it a Final Injection. Let them put it in a plastic bag, and throw it in a burn pit before you even know what happened so you don't even get to say goodbye. Her current entry is here. Isn't it time someone just shot Bush in the face? I hear he's in Washington tomorrow... Mike is writing to Nick Cave