Following up on this post from earlier in the month, here's Gregg Easterbrook in TNR takes New Line to task for neuturing the His Dark Materials movie trilogy. He's also got a pretty good summary of what the books are all about:

But what do the kids and the professor find out as they travel to multiple realities? That God is a fraud. There exists a powerful ethereal creature, The Authority, who claims to be divine, but is a phony. The Authority was the first intelligent being to evolve to an advanced form. This being, now extremely ancient, realized he could masquerade as God, demanding worship by telling those who evolved after him that he created the firmament.

Next we learn that God is immensely evil--in fact, the very source of evil. The Authority wants people to suffer. All church structures, especially something extremely similar to the Roman Catholic Church, have been designed by The Authority to cause misery in life. The Vatican-like hierarchy casually engages in murder and torture, employing fanatic priests who kill with impunity. This includes murder and torture of children--scenes describe adults killing children or inflicting pain on them--and remember, the trilogy is marketed as children's literature.

Easterbrook also links to an interesting article from an angry Ursula K. Le Guin, about how the Sci Fi Channel botched their adaptation of her Earthsea books.

I can't wait till I'm famous enough to complain about the movies butchering my work.