Harry Potter

[summercomfort]

Went to see Harry Potter today....
Spoiler Space


Some parts were disappointing. The movie was pretty long, but still didn't have time to actually sew the plot together. Anyone who hasn't read the book would be confused as to the competition between the houses, (or the fact that the houses were different). The Sorting Hat didn't sing his song! The winter holidays just... happened. The there seemed to be no immediate effect to the loss of 150 points b/c of Norbert! Snape's potion setup in the trapdoor was cancelled altoghether. Also, all of the peripheral characters were pretty much ignored. Malfoy didn't get enough screen time, and neither did Gred and Forge. Percy wasn't obnoxious, and Flitwick didn't fall off his books. Dumbledore didn't give his speech of "Nitwit, Blubber, Oddment, Tweak!", and there was no School Song. Dumbledore had a total of three parts. geh! On the other hand, Hagrid has been transferred to "Fatherly Figure of Harry", and made not as clumsy, and more fun. makes a few sentimental moments which should have been devoted to Dumbledore, imho.
There just wasn't ... atmosphere. Sure, the special effects are all really awesome, but the story seemed lopsided and one-dimensional, like a common action movie starring a couple of kid wizards. The actors were good, but didn't have time to flesh out the individual characters.

Okay, enough rant on the bad parts...
The good parts: Snape and McGonagal were great. Especially Snape with the billowy robes. ::pleasant shudder:: They're the only two who got a decent amount of screen time. The Quidditch game was amazing. *_*v except for the over-dramatic ending, but the flying, the shoving, the scoring... ingenious.... Voldemort's face, the screaming book, the Invisibility Cloak, the Mirror of Erised, Fluffy, Wizard's Chess, Halloween, Gringotts goblins, the moving pictures, owl post.... All beautifully rendered. The casting is great, and practically every character was very, well, in character.

All in all, a lot of beautiful eye-candy. Somewhat of a disappointment for HP fans, but understandable w/in time constraints. And for those who haven't read the book... they're just confused and wondering why all the hype over HP.

Comments

[conejita.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure if you've seen your rocky horror but snape looks a lot like riffraff (with hair died black) and has similar voice too, which brings all these bad connections with female actors playing rifraf.. apparently he's the same guy who is the voice of god at the beginning of Dogma.. the reason snape tried to protect harry was all together forgotten.. my god the whole denumount (sp?) was obliterated.. the ending went too slow, but that's just because I read faster at the end of books (no matter how I try to read black trillium the war at the end is one big enormous blur) they should have had the potions, but I think they dropped it because it wasn't as action intense, the quiditch games were combined, but then for good reason.. I agree there wasn't enough time to develop the characters.. and there wasn't a time in which all of griffindor was hating harry, hermione (now we know how to pronounce it), and ron. the dragon wasn't scary enough, voldemort's face was NOT scary enough!! (oh my god he was sooooo much scarier in my imagination, I swear he had a shrunken face) but then as my friend reminds me this IS a kids film 9_9.. the goblins were scarier than I imagined but they were sooo neato I didn't care. the wand guy didn't measure the distance between harry's nose and upper lip (etc) which for some reason I thought was important. but the costumes >DROOL< the costumes the costumes the costumes, those are the type of costumes i wanna be able to draw oro and hara in I wanna see the movie again just for the costumes. anyways I'm amazed the movie was so long.. the thing with movies is it takes time to show passage of time while in books you can just jump from time to time (not even linearly if you want) without much hassle.. oh well basically it means to me is my secret dream of making an animated version or black trillium is basically destroyed.. unless if you break it up into an ova series... then I can make it as long as I like ^_^ each chapter an episode?.. that would be a long oav series.. hehe >shhh to myself< such thoughts should be left til I have my own animation studio.. ok I was talking about harry potter, anyways my conclusion is well duh it isn't as good as the book but compared to any other movie made from a book it's really good (when I started reading HP I was instantly remined of the Rogh Dahl (don't even know how to sp) books like mathilda, and all the recently made RD books have turned out absolutely HORRIBLE so i was worried about HP and was pleasantly suprised. and note even if it wasn't as good as the book, it's better than monsters inc imho and a lot of other movies.. thinking of other movies: Lord of the Rings, why is Frodo cute? in the book he isn't cute (imagined hobbits as an entire species of ugly fat men) so yea I'm confused.. but gandalf.. we like gandalf.. why does the one with long white (ok grey whatever) hair have to die... which reminds me of dumbledorf, I agree with you completely.. we needed more of dumbledorf, we needed more of the train sceen.. ok I'd better be quiet.. I'll go try to write in novel which basically means I'm going to draw DNPTF now..

[summercomfort]

denumount? ::puzzled::
Hrrm. The thing is, the movie *did* jump time frames without even so much of a "by-your-leave". Like: ::great hall with pumpkins:: ::castle with snow:: ::castle without snow:: Or like the change from Pivet Drive to House on a Rock was barely explained. =.=

You know, I think the whole movie would have worked better with a narrator. Also some of the "passage of time" scenes, you know, a collage type of speeded-up actions, as well as better flashbacks and wide shots... you know, less focused on the main characters. I wanted to see Hogwarts, not just "the unconquerable three".... And the teachers should at least be explained. Like the fact that McGonagal teaches Transfiguration, Flitwick teaches Charms... it could be worked into the "passage of time" scene... like a cut screen of Harry & co. walking into/sitting in different classrooms... Everything was shortened. What happened to Dedalus Diggle, who kept coming back for more handshakes with Harry? What happened to the measuring and the naming of the wands in Ollivanders ("Holly, Phoenix feather, 9 in")?

Snape is cool. And the kids were great.

Yeah, Matilda was really messed up.

The LoR preview looked interesting, but yeah, hobbits are supposed to be half-people, aren't they? but it looks horribly more exciting than the book, so I'm tempted to skim the book then go see it.