Obligatory GoF review

[gwendolyngrace]

So Bert, liamstliam, etakyma, and I went to the sneak preview of GoF tonight. We wound up getting dinner at Chili's, which was fine, except slow. Amy and I threw cash down and went ahead while the boys graciously stayed to settle the bill, and we walked into the theatre just in time for me to answer a trivia question and win a box set of the first 5 books in paperback. Sweet! Will probably donate to HPEF either as auction or library item.

When I went up to the radio guy to collect my doorprize, I announced that I had magnets and bookmarks. I was flooded by small children. Gave away all the magnets and many, many FA business cards and a few Lumos bookmarks. Heh. It was good work for about five minutes.

Bert and Bill arrived and we settled in. I'll tell you the absolute worst thing about the film, no spoiler required: The Audio and Visual got out of synch right around the time they pull the names out of the goblet. For some unknown reason, the video apparently skipped a chapter. So we were getting the sound of Dumbledore pulling the names from the goblet, but the visual of Harry walking into the room with the other three champions and the professors all having conniptions. The guy in the booth fiddled with it, couldn't get it fixed, and eventually got the audio to skip forward, so that we got back on track during Harry and Ron's spat. But they never rolled it back to pick up the scenes the right way. Bummer.

I definitely want to see this again, though I can wait for DVD if necesary. I warned the guys that I would be on extreme sides of the dial all night: either LOVING or HATING, no real in-between. I apologize again, gents, for being a fangirl during the movie.

Okay, on with the skinny. This is going to be jumbled and a bit cranky, so reader beware.

Good: Voldemort. I loved the look, I liked the way he moved (the gliding thing, but Ralph had good physicalization, too), and he really was a lot creepier than I've imagined him in the books, not cartoon-evil at all.

Neville. How much Neville love do I have? So much! I just love the way he was used in this episode, cutting out Dobby as the middle-elf. I love him practising dancing and having a blast at the ball. Hee! Neville is so wooby. I knew he'd grow up to be a ladies' man, once he got past being gawky.

The Twins: Fred and George positively rock my world in this movie. Yep. They were awesome. "Say that five times fast." "Bottoms up."

Moaning Myrtle! That scene in the tub, yee-haw.

Cho's dress robes were gorgeous. And her accent? Cute as a button.


The Bad: What always happens when Kloves gets hold of the script. There is no backstory; there is no tying of loose ends. Pointless contradictions with book canon (Hello? Why does Snape guard Crouch at the end? Okay for now, but with no Dementor's Kiss? Yo, how are they going to clear that up?) Snape's store cupboard is in the middle of a hallway nowhere near the potions dungeon? Gah.

Oh, and yo, Snape? If three drops are enough to have even Voldemort spilling his closest secrets, then don't be pouring the whole damn bottle into fake-Moody's throat. Kaythxbye.

Okay, people who've already seen it: The "Graveyard" error everyone's talking about is the fact that there are two Tom Riddles inscribed on the stone, and the one that flashes would have been Voldemort's grandfather, not his father, right? Cause it sure the hell bothered me.

Lucius Malfoy: Sorry, Heidi, but Jason played it way too vicious for my taste. I don't think Lucius is really that openly sadistic in front of witnesses. And what was up with removing the damn masks? Though I did like that they were bones - that was a cool choice. Overall he and Draco came off pretty lame in this one.

Ditch Flitwick and the Hogwarts Band. Ditto the track suits. Track suits? Did WB and Hot Topic just decide they had too much merchandise that wasn't moving, or what?

No blasting students out of rosebushes? Hmph. OTOH, blasting away the ENTIRE FUCKING QWC campground? Hyperbolic damage in order to hammer home the point much, or what? No scene in the woods, either, which means no Mudblood debate. The DE's are unnuanced followers of Voldykins. Oh, well.

Um. Okay, so people under the influence of the Imperius curse have glazed over eyes like they've got a full set of cataracts. Why wasn't this mentioned in the DADA class? Why don't aurors use that vital little piece of information when trying to detect Imperius'd people?

I don't care what Bill Weasley thinks; I still don't like Fleur. (I did warm to Krum a little though. "We don't talk much." Smirk.)


The Ugly: The ball scenes were just painful. I started laughing very inappropriately because as they took the floor I thought, "Now, the champions will be judged on two scales: Technical Difficulty and Artistic Merit...." Hermione = Cinderella (complete with removing one shoe on the staircase!) -- or if you prefer, Sleeping Beauty ("Make it Blue!). The fight at the end of the ball was terrible - Rupert was okay, but Emma was awful. In general, Emma is going through an awkward stage, I think, but still, all her huffing and sighing doesn't help the character.

I also thought the "dress robes" all looked too prom-like and modern, with a few exceptions (like Cho's).

What the hell kind of exam are they all taking together that Snape would be proctoring? I mean, sure, it gave Alan a great moment, but... huh? Can I just say WTF?

Okay, so Harry finds Crouch dead in the forest (when he knows Damn Well that Crouch was last seen walking off with Moody) and goes running up to Dumbledore's Office... and doesn't tell Dumbledore that Crouch is dead? Did I miss something there?

And WHAT THE HELL is up with the iron maiden in the Wizengamot?

We also now have a problem, because Rita Skeeter was NOT at the Wizengamot for Karkaroff's trial (and Snape's "outing" and subsequent defense by Dumbledore); she was only present in the memory of Barty Crouch, Jr's and the Lestranges' trial.

Barty's little lip-licking tic? Dis-TURB-ing. And way too obvious. Except that the actors didn't do it the same (the actor playing Moody flicked left; the actor playing Barty flicked right).

Oh, and by the way, I've been in productions where you only have as many chorus members as you have people with lines/names. But this is a major motion picture. You'd think they'd have a budget for some more Death Eaters besides Malfoy, Crabbe, Goyle, and two others.

ETA: What this film absolutely *didn't* do was any of the "Parting of the Ways" action - there is NO setup for Order of the Phoenix, either the actual Order or the antipathy between Hogwarts and the Ministry that's about to occur in the next year's events. This is what I mean by tying up loose ends (or lack thereof) - the movie just ends, without putting anything in the context of the bigger picture.

I'm sure I have a ton of other complaints, some more minor than others, just as I'm sure I have a bunch more squees to issue. Nargh. It was like for every thing they did very well, they made just weird-ass choices for so much else. That's always how it is, I know, but then, I knew it would be mixed. On the whole, I think I liked this more than PoA, though. At least I'm looking forward to seeing it again, which I really didn't feel about the others so much.

I have a new theory, though, based on four movies now. If you want to know what's important, pay attention to the films. No, really. If the information didn't make it into the Cliff's Notes version, if it wasn't a vital plot point, then it probably ultimately doesn't matter to the overall arc.

Well. I'm really glad I didn't have to pay for it, anyway.

Comments

[hedwig-snowy.livejournal.com]

Haven't read your 'cut' review as I'm going to see it tomorrow. :) Went to PoA with a bunch of locals who were involved with TWH. We drove up to Orlando and the whole way I was thinking to myself, "This is going to suck". Not that I really thought it would, but that I wanted to get into the frame of mind that even if it was just ok...I would have an enjoyable time. Now, I'm sure I'll do the same thing tomorrow morning. Guess I'm just odd (like you didn't know that :-)), but once the movies start, I don't notice a great many of the flaws. I get too involved and can only remember one thing in PoA that stood out as being odd to me. Then, I get home and look at the reviews and they all nit-pick the film to death and I say, "Yeah, I remember that", but I didn't notice it while I was intially watching the film because I was looking at the film and comparing it directly to the book...at least at the moment I was watching it.

And I do agree that some of the actors are given instruction to portray their characters a certain way because of the way they'll end up at the end of the books. Makes me extremely scared for Hagrid. :(

[chrystie69.livejournal.com]

I'm so jealous you got to see it! I wanna see it this weekend but it's a bummer to go to something like that alone :( oh well...

[hedwig-snowy.livejournal.com]

Ok, I went to see it so I looked at your comments. Hmmmm...

My fave moment: Hermione pumping her fist when Harry flew over the stadium in Task 1.
Saddest: Cedric and the crowd shots after HP brought him back.

Your's:
Moaning Myrtle was bit Mae West for my taste.
Liked Hermione on the stairs after the ball.
Rupert was, well, Rupert. Needs to go try something else and come back with a slightly different tude.
Liked HP in this one. Liked that the Twins and Neville were more prominent.
Disliked the tongue thing that gave away Moody too early.
The 3 tasks were cool. Especially that they let the Horntail loose.

A few things: DD was suspicious of Moody by the look he gave him as HP went into the maze and I wondered what the purpose of leaving Barty with Snape was as well? Did they discuss 'their' boss? LOL And I loved the look Harry gave Snape when Snape found out that Moody had been the one to get the polyjuice ingredients. Didn't Ray Fiennes become more human? Not just at the beginning of the scene, but everytime the camera went back to his face he looked more like the actor. By the end it was if he had very little makeup on at all. Like he was transforming all through it.

Actually, thought about your post (in general - in the back of my head - even though I hadn't read the review) for about the first 10 minutes of the film as I found myself picking up non-canon stuff or omissions. Nice that they actually played the World Cup eh? Nice that the MoM couldn't stop ~6 DE's from decimating the camp...huh? But then, I just went with it and the only really noticable thing (Wasn't caring much about the Pink Dress ;)) was the horntail flying. Lot's of non-canon, lot's of not completing plot points, putting in uneccessary stuff (what was the scene where Hermione says, "Dean told Seamus, Seamus told...? How many times do we have to see that HP and Ron are mad at each other? We got it when Ron told HP to piss off). I know people would be flipped off either way, but why even have the World Cup that way if you have to make the film that approximate time length? Just have them explain it in a converstion on the train and use the time to have longer scenes later that explain more.

Overall: B+ (Can't remember one note of the music and left the theater humming John Williams' music from the previous movies, and, of course, never enough Hermione!!! LOL)

[hedwig-snowy.livejournal.com]

As to why they had the Snape scene:

Much as he (Newell) admires the first two "Harry Potter" flicks crafted by U.S. filmmaker Chris Columbus and the one made by Mexican director Alfonso Cuaron, Newell felt he brought the one thing his predecessors lacked: Intimate knowledge about the quirks of a British education.

"It wasn't possible for them to get that right. They'd never been to such a school," Newell said. "English schools are very, very eccentric. They're not like any other. I know they've changed now, but when I was in school in the '50s, I was beaten with a cane, a rattan cane, as thick as my little finger.

"And that was a very common occurrence, and so they were kind of dangerous and violent places, but they also were very funny and anarchic places. I wanted to get the sense of the school as a character, having a character, so that the kind of crazinesses that she, Jo (Rowling) is so good at, I wanted to find an organization into which that kind of stuff could fit and bring the two things together. Bring the individuals and the institution together. So I think that's something I could bring in a major way to the table."

To that end, Newell rewrote a scene to add a glint of schoolboy mischievousness and the corporal punishment it provokes, in which dour Professor Snape (Alan Rickman) bonks Harry and Ron in the head with a book for goofing off during a study period.

Radcliffe notes it was the first time the filmmakers had slipped something into one of the movies that was not in the book.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051118/ap_en_mo/film_mike_newell

[gwendolyngrace.livejournal.com]

Mike, you misunderstand me. I'm not an idiot; the *why* of putting in the "violence" in the scene I understand perfectly. (Though Radcliffe's wrong about it being the first time they slipped in something that wasn't there.) That wasn't my question.

My question merely had to do with why they'd be in the situation in order to be abused. I didn't take it to be an actual "Study Hall" since a. we've never seen them have one and b. it's treated more like an exam than just "time to do your work." If it's just studying/doing homework in free time, then why does Snape have to proctor? (Waste of a teacher's time - use a prefect.) And if it's an actual exam of some kind (as suggested by the composition books and Hermione turning hers in), then why are multiple years all sitting the exam at the same time? (And if it *is* an exam, I'd think the punishment for talking would be more severe than a clap on the noggin.) *That's* what didn't make sense to me, not providing Snape an opportunity to boot them to the head.

[hedwig-snowy.livejournal.com]

Wow! I wasn't thinking that you were an idiot. :) I just saw that comment on the Newell article and thought it related to the reasons he had it in the movie. :) I see the difference in what you were asking now. My bad. :)

Yes, they have added alot of stuff that wasn't in the books.

My first impression was that it was some type of study hall. True, it is unlikely that Snape would have been so easy on them if they were taking a test and talking, but then Hermione handed Snape a 'lab' book with her work in it. I saw that as more of a journal that you hand in occasionally in school for the teacher to review, but why it was in that setting with Snape overseeing it? No clue, except for Newell's explanation...and to get Rickman more screen time. :)