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filkertomWe're going to see it tomorrow afternoon. Any thoughts, reviews, etc., just go riiiight here. Two ground rules:
(1) For the courtesy of others, please clearly mark any spoilers.
(2) Price of admission is one house-elf joke. Example: What's a house-elf's favorite way to be beaten up? A sock in the jaw.
(1) For the courtesy of others, please clearly mark any spoilers.
(2) Price of admission is one house-elf joke. Example: What's a house-elf's favorite way to be beaten up? A sock in the jaw.
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(no subject)
Date: 2004-06-04 07:58 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-06-04 08:15 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-06-04 12:12 pm (UTC)"Sock it to me, sock it to me, sock it to me..."
*running for cover before Tom hits him with the cane again*
(no subject)
Date: 2004-06-04 12:29 pm (UTC)What do house elves mockingly call the poor girl after they've hoodwinked her out of her socks and she's standing there shivering?
"Chilly Conned" Carne.
A house elf's sockratic discourse
Date: 2004-06-04 12:25 pm (UTC)Weasley Fu. Hippogriff Fu. School Choir Fu - of course, Music must be covered in a Magic School, where was it hiding all this time?
The kids are getting older. Rupert Grint is getting worry lines. If they don't recast by Film #5, they will have to use CGI to blank them out.
Re: A house elf's sockratic discourse
Date: 2004-06-04 04:18 pm (UTC)Remember that two of our three young heroes live in the Muggle world, and the third has a parent who remains singularly fascinated by Muggles. Granted, this doesn't explain away the rest of the school, but I also doubt that the three of them are the only students with Muggle-influenced lives.
Emma Thompson rocks as the un-glamorous Trelawney. Serious waste of Gary Oldman though.
Agreed on both counts.
The kids are getting older. Rupert Grint is getting worry lines. If they don't recast by Film #5, they will have to use CGI to blank them out.
Yes, Daniel and Rupert and Emma and the rest of the kids are growing up - but so are their characters. And while JKR may not be managing to crank out a book a year any longer, I really don't believe that the disparity between the characters' and actors' ages is going to be that drastic an issue. Puberty hits different people in different ways. I've known 11-year-olds who had to shave. I've known 30-year-olds who still got carded regularly. (My husband was picked up by a truancy patrol while he was on active duty in the US Army.)
Re: A house elf's sockratic discourse
Date: 2004-06-04 04:40 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-06-04 02:33 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-06-04 03:33 pm (UTC)What do you get when you cross a house elf and a stand-up comedian?
A pixie-schtick!
(no subject)
Date: 2004-06-04 03:38 pm (UTC)Dude, you asked for it....
Date: 2004-06-04 04:23 pm (UTC)A note of warning...
Date: 2004-06-04 04:24 pm (UTC)Re: A note of warning...
Date: 2004-06-04 04:41 pm (UTC)Re: A note of warning...
Date: 2004-06-04 04:58 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-06-05 08:52 am (UTC)We're going to be going to see it with the whole Sanctuary crew later on today.
Not sure if the below counts as spoilers or not, thou hast been warned.
The hippogriff was lovely. The movements, the sounds, everything. I spent most of the movie truly believing that they'd gotten their hands on an honest to gods hippogriff somehow. I find myself really curious as to where J.K.R. is going with the relationship between Harry, Ron, and Hermione, because there were some real interesting bits along those lines throughout the movie.
All in all, when the end credits started rolling, I found myself saying "Daaammmnn", over and over again. In a good way.
What happens when a house-elf has too much to drink?
Date: 2004-06-05 09:36 am (UTC)Ok. so the whole movie was worth it for imploding bluebirds, and the tap-dancing spiders lines.
What's A House-Elf's Favorite Automobile Part? The Muffler
Date: 2004-06-05 03:20 pm (UTC)Wow.
I mean, wow.
More later.
Tom's Review of Prisoner of Azkaban (Mostly Spoiler-Free)
Date: 2004-06-08 05:30 am (UTC)The vitriol being slung at Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (hereafter PoA) is amazing. I won't go into detail here -- you can go check it out yourself (http://movies.yahoo.com/shop?d=hv&cf=info&id=1808404334) if you like -- but the gist of it is, "This is a TERRIBLE movie! The students are wearing STREET CLOTHES! Draco's HAIR isn't slicked back! The grounds of Hogwarts have been moved around!
"They don't have THIS beloved detail from the book!"
I'd almost forgotten how amusing such nit-picking can be.
See, we went through a lot of this with The Lord of the Rings. "Aiee! No Bombadil! No Scouring of the Shire! Where are the Beornlings!? What's with that staircase sequence in Moria? Why was Shelob in the third movie rather than the second? Why wasn't Narsil reforged before they left Rivendell? Where's Bill Ferny? Where's Glorfindel? Where's Fill-In-The-Blank? Aiee!" And so on.
There has never been, and there never will be, a perfect adaptation of a book to film. That's the nature of the beasts. They are different media. And to make things fit into a movie of a suitable length and scope for your average afternoon of movie-going, some things are going to be changed, twisted, or straight-up removed.
That said, I'm really looking forward to the DVD of PoA, because there are going to be a few scenes, cut for time, that I think will push it over the top from "really, really good movie" to "great movie".
Short form: Darn good flick. Three stars, easy. If you like the books, you'll love the movie. If you don't like the books, you still might love the movie.
If you absolutely adore and worship the books, you will either love the movie for its capturing of the spirit of the original, or despise the movie for everything left out.
My thought is that this is a great improvement. Chris Columbus, a director I never much cared for, turned in his best work with the first two films of the franchise, and I truly believe he was inspired by the material, and by wanting to do it right for his kids. No problems with the first two films. But... they were "set-up" films, burdened by the need to establish the world, the characters, and the rules.
PoA makes it all real.
The easiest way to explain it is to compare it to the original Star Wars. One of the best things about that movie was that the universe was lived in -- it wasn't all gleaming and shiny, with foil jumpsuits and well-polished spaceships. It was kinda grubby, actually. We first see the awesomeness that is the Millennium Falcon, and Luke's reaction is an open-mouthed "What a piece of junk!" Which only made us love the Falcon more.
In this movie, Director Alfonso Cuaron uses a scale, a scope, that Chris Columbus simply didn't have, to give us the depth and breadth of the wizarding world. It's no longer Six Flags Over Hogwarts, some huge set-piece stuck in the middle of nowhere -- it fits neatly into the rest of the world, yet also apart from it, because it is, after all, magical. The panoramic shots of the hills and valleys around Hogwarts and Hogsmeade are not only beautiful, but they are establishing shots in the truest sense of the phrase.
When I played RuneQuest, one of the concepts I loved best was "everyday magic" -- the little spells, the cantrips, the ones the common folks used the way they would use a wrench or a basket or a wheelbarrow, the small magic that made your life easier. There is everyday magic here, in abundance -- a lovely shot of a man reading Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time, while stirring his coffee with a spoon that he isn't actually holding, just directing with a finger. Candles being lit or chairs being set onto tables with a wave of the hand. Teens in their dorm room, having fun with candies that create special effects.
(To be continued....)
Re: Tom's Review of Prisoner of Azkaban (Mostly Spoiler-Free), Continued
Date: 2004-06-08 05:31 am (UTC)The special effects are also very well done, particularly Buckbeak the Hippogriff, the Dementors (especially the slow, awful roil of their robes on a too-gentle wind), and the machinery of the Clock Tower. The Whomping Willow is much more capricious and dangerous, and the various CGI beasties scary as all get-out. The Quidditch match, while brief, is very well done, and the sense of Harry's peril is brought home forcefully.
The acting is uniformly excellent. Daniel Radcliffe (I am reliably informed that some circles of HP fandom now refer to him as "D-Rad") spent a lot of time in the first two films looking awestruck; this
film requires him to step up to the plate, and he hits it out of the park. All of the joy and misery of a brooding angst-ridden teen is here, along with rage at injustice and determination to set things right. He's got a Frodo-Baggins-as-played-by-young-Tony-Curtis thing going on, and it works.
Emma Watson also has improved by leaps and bounds -- and she and Dan are so cute together that, even though they start dropping the Hermione/Ron hints, you can't help but think she's already stuck on Harry. Not that Rupert Grint is a let-down; he's also improved a lot over the course of the three films, and he and Radcliffe have great timing together.
The rest of the kids are pretty darn good, too, especially James and Oliver Phelps as the always dangerous Fred and George Weasley and Tom Felton as a snooty, arrogant, bullying Draco Malfoy. But the real surprise is that Matthew Lewis is turning into the Neville Longbottom that we're going to need for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. The kid's good, and I think he's only going to get better.
As for the adults -- well, Alan Rickman as Snape (mostly) gets about six great scenes, and pulls them off like the acting god he is. David Thewlis, as Lupin, is affable and supportive while obviously hiding a Big Dark Secret. Gary Oldman, as Sirius Snape, is just great. Robbie Coltrane, Maggie Smith, Julie Walters and Mark Williams as Mrs. and Mr. Weasley, the still-exquisite Julie Christie as Madame Rosmerta, Timothy Spall as the pathetic Peter.... The only problem I have at all with the acting isn't really the fault of Michael Gambon, whose Dumbledore has a couple of stilted oh-it's-such-a-magical-world lines. I also can't quite shake the feeling that he sounds more like Forrest Tucker than Richard Harris. (Which leads to the horrific possibility of the Hakawi tribe in the Forbidden Forest and Agarn helping Hagrid with his animals... but I digress.)
The script makes some relatively minor changes, omits several details and bits of by-play that purists will indeed miss, and I think I would've added about four lines of explanation to various parts of the
film, but for the most part it's a remarkably tight piece of work that neither glosses nor condescends. And some of the touches are brilliant, such as the students dressing like students -- in some cases, darn sloppily (check out the neckties during the Care of Magical Beasts class) -- and Lupin's teaching the Defense Against the Dark Arts class to some Louis Prima-style big band music on 78.
All in all, I think the film works wonderfully -- as in, filled with wonder. The first two films were warm-up, set-up; this is the first payoff, showing the potential in the world of Harry Potter, and I am now officially jacked for Goblet of Fire.
Oh, and, on the off-off-off-chance that some producer of the films is perusing reivews: Keep the kids. We're having a great time watching them grow up, and all the rumors about re-casting them because they "don't look the right age" or something in the later films are counter-productive. Besides, if Stockard Channing could play a teenager in Grease, Emma, Rupert, and D-Rad will be juuust fine.