Usually I leave blog posts of this nature to my esteemed colleague, Film Editor Erik Henriksen. However, he’s busy writing Kristen Bell fan fiction at the moment (it’s pretty good), so blogging about this particular bit of nerdery falls to me.

The website for the upcoming film The Golden Compass, based on the first book in Philip Pullman’s excellent His Dark Materials trilogy, has a test that you can take to find out what your daemon is! (If you haven’t read the books, I am NOT explaining this. And, you should read them.)

The test asks you to decide if you agree or disagree with statements like “You are not easily distracted,” and “You don’t leave the house without making sure you look good,” then it performs a complicated scientific analysis of your personality and reveals your daemon. Mine is a chimpanzee named Aesop!

I’m trying not to stay mad at Philip Pullman for plugging the movie even though the studio is taking all the religious themes out, and probably all the sex, too. (I recently saw The Dark is Rising: The Seeker, which totally blew—Susan Cooper gets props for publically stating that she didn’t OK the screen adaptation of her excellent YA series.)
This Guardian article has director Chris Weitz sounding like a big ol’ tool on the subject:

‘In the books the Magisterium is a version of the Catholic church gone wildly astray from its roots. If that’s what you want in the film, you’ll be disappointed,’ he admitted, but added: ‘We have expanded the range of meanings of what the Magisterium represents. Philip Pullman is against any kind of organised dogma whether it is church hierarchy or, say, a Soviet hierarchy.’

Oh, well, ok then. No deicide. Gay angels?