You don't want to get on the wrong side of the Vatican – not only does it have the power to send you to hell, but it can also deliver quite a nasty movie review, as The Golden Compass is discovering.
The Vatican newspaper l'Osservatore Romano has launched a scathing attack aimed at The Golden Compass, and what it calls the movie's "cold and hopeless world." Quite what the Vatican's problem is with The Golden Compass, a movie about shifty-eyed bishops trying to kill children that may as well be called All Catholics Smell Of Bumholes, we don't know. But when you go and see The Golden Compass, just you remember that it isn't really the Pope's cup of tea. He much prefers Piss Crazy Lesbian Sluts 2, you see, and says it's a high watermark of the piss crazy lesbian slut genre. Or something. Possibly.
Pick a failed film. Any failed film. At random, let's choose Catwoman. Catwoman failed abysmally, and you know why? Because at no point did Halle Berry hawk up a furball shaped like a crucifix or look directly at the camera and say, "Bishops. Now they're a bunch of wankers."
Because if she had, The Vatican would have laid into Catwoman and given it enough extra publicity to make it a success. It has a history of that, you see – when the Vatican got angry at Madonna for crucifying herself in a concert, the tour went on to earn more money than any female tour before it. The Vatican tutted when Kanye West dressed up as Jesus, and he's now one of the biggest stars on the planet. And then the Vatican laid into Harry Potter, only to create such a success that people actually paid to see Harry Potter get naked and stab a load of horses in the eyes with a big metal spike.
The point is that whenever the Vatican gets on its high horse about something, it just makes people want to see it more. It even made a commercial success of The Da Vinci Code with its bitching, and anything that can make people watch a film starring a man with a haircut that dire deserves some kind of awe at least.
And now the Vatican has turned its sights onto The Golden Compass, the new movie starring Nicole Kidman as a woman whose soul has taken the form of Donald Trump's haircut. Based on the first book of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, The Golden Compass is about a world ruled by evil bishopy people and polar bears that punch each others' jaws off. It's probably the bishop bit that the Vatican didn't enjoy so much, in honesty.
Perhaps fearful that the movie will encourage youngsters to read the more explicitly anti-Catholic book that it's based on, the Vatican newspaper l'Osservatore Romano has waded in and criticised The Golden Compass to kingdom come. According to the paper:
"It's a film that leaves one cold, because it brings with it the coldness and the desperation of rebellion, solitude and individualism… In the world of Pullman, hope simply doesn't exist, in part because there is no salvation but only personal, individualistic capacity to control the situation and dominate events… The spectator of this film, if he is honest and gifted with a critical spirit, will feel no particular emotion, except for a great coldness — which is not only due to the polar scenes."
That's where the Vatican is wrong, though. We left The Golden Compass with quite a strong emotion, actually – we were a bit narked that we'd paid to see a film that didn't even have a proper ending.
But anyway, now that the Pope and his mates have waded in with their opinion it's inevitable that more and more people will end up going to see The Golden Compass. Maybe even enough of them to convince producers to turn the other two books into movies as well. You know, including the one where the main characters go up to heaven and actually kill God.
Read more:
Vatican blasts "Golden Compass" as Godless and hopeless – Reuters
Eric Idle says
Damn it!! I’m tired of hearing about Britney. Fine – she’s pregnant by Kevin Federline. So what??