Deux Choses...

First, The Golden Compass is good. Yes, it's frantically-paced, yes, they had to cram a lot of exposition into a short space, and yes, the ending is kind of abrupt and cuts off before the climactic moment that the actual novel ends at. That said, it's visually successful, the girl who plays Lyra is good, and they managed to translate all of the important plot elements from the book. I was especially glad to see the atheistic message survive despite the howling and protests of church groups.

Second, a personal/professional note: I'm now planning on taking my qualifying exams in May. Since I was originally going to take them in September, this is a pretty ambitious undertaking and I'm kind of woozy with terror. For the non-academics in the audience, once you take your qualifying exams (or comprehensive exams, or defense, or you literally jump through a big hoop, depending on the university), you're "all but dissertation." You can teach classes and, in some cases, you can get even get hired full-time so long as you finish your dissertation in a reasonable amount of time. Your turnaround from QE to PHD just depends on how fast you can do your research and write your dissertation. Since my abiding superpower is neither insight, nor language skills, nor thoroughness, but speed, I'm hoping to be done with this whole damn thing within two years.

Like Louis XIV liked to say, we'll see....