A few things on the "Anti-Catholic" spew: Phillip Pullman is an honorary member of the Agnostics League. He isn't against religion or Christianity, he is against organised religion.

As for why the Catholics banned this movie (though ironically, the actress who played Ms. Coulter is a Catholic), the book presents an extremely negative, repressive Catholic church and veiw of God, which Lyra's world calls the "Authority"-with good reason. It can be assumed that the Church of this world never lost it's authority and that as it's power grew, so did the abuses. Church assassins are seen among other things.

...but what may bother them most is what Lyra's "uncle" sets out to do: wage a second war against God and in the end, succeeds, due to innocently done actions.

As for the separated children, I have heard that the Intercision scenes are freaky at the very least and you get no doubt that what is happening is extremely wrong. It also mentions Castrati along with Intercision, interestingly enough. I hope it does well enough so that The Subtle Knife is released. I wanna see Citagazzete and Will!

On that note, I wonder who will play Kirjava.......