Movie part 2

[cassandraclaire73 at yahoo.com]

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Ah, almost forgot. As Hermione heads up the stairs to the Sorting 
Hat, she mutters to herself under her breath to kleep herself from 
being frightened. Ron shakes his head at Harry. "Mental, that one 
is!" Once sorted, Hermione races to sit beside Percy.

After the sorting, we follow Percy (I have forever been cured of any 
inclinations towards Percy/Neville by this film...they look revolting 
together) and the Gryffindors through Hogwarts to the Gryffindor 
Tower. Hogwarts is .. huge. There's an overhead tracking shot of 
staircases that seem to spin up into infinity. The potraits do move, 
and there are dozens of them. The Gryffindor Common Room looks just 
right: all dark deep reds and golds, a fire in the grate, and 
decorated with the Unicorn Hunt tapestries. The password is "Corpus 
Draconis."

We then have a shot of Harry alone in the moonlight, sitting in the 
window of his dormitory. He looks wistful, even cautiously happy. 
(The keen eyed will notice a Chudley Cannons poster on the wall.) 
John Williams' "Harry Theme" plays under this scene which is, all in 
all, very moving.

The next day Harry and Ron are late for class, and McGonagall 
threatens to transfigure them into pocket watches so that they'll be 
on time. Draco looks pleased, and Hermione looks disgusted.

Cut to Potions Class. Snape has an excellent entrance -- the door 
slams open and he strides in at top speed, swishing black robes 
behind him. He gives his Potions speech and he and Draco make some 
meaningful eye contact. His ribbing of Harry is pretty excellent; too 
bad that's just about all we see of it for the whole film.

Seamus' character is never quite fleshed out. He seems to be terrible 
at spells -- he tries to turn his water (water?) into rum at the 
table at lunch, but blows off his eyebrows instead. Questions: 
alcohol? At his age? And water? What about pumpkin juice? Seamus 
seems to be around for comic relief, since he keeps blowing things 
up, but as Ashley pointed out, it wasn't very funny. Alas. In the 
same scene, Neville gets his remembrall, which looks like a clear 
Magic 8 ball with red mist inside.

And next we have flying lessons. The kids line up in rows facing each 
other while Madam Hooch gives orders. Her eyes are bright yellow with 
slitted cat pupils -- what's up with that? When she instructs them 
all to say "Up!" Harry's broom flies into his hands. So does Draco's. 
Everyone else is not so lucky. Hermione's does nothing, and Ron's 
flies up and cracks him a good one across the face. Harry laughs at 
Ron, who snaps "Shut UP, Harry!"

The midair fight between Harry and Draco is brilliant and I don't 
just say that because they're my favorite characters. When Draco 
rockets up into the air and Harry shoots up after him, you get a 
sense of the scope and power of flying. Draco does fly well, *very* 
well -- when Harry lunges at him he executes a spinning 360 around 
his broom, I was pleased to see. I always suspected he flew well in 
canon.  Harry's mad dash after the Remembrall is also fantastic. 
Hermione's pronouncement on Harry's antics: "What an idiot."

It's nice to see Oliver Wood in this scene, when McGonagall fetches 
him. Turns out he's Scottish. Sean Biggerstaff is quite cute, too. My 
notes say "gorgeous." Well well.

This is followed by a very interesting scene in the Hogwarts 
courtyard, in which Harry expressed to Ron his fear that he will not 
be a good seeker and will "make a fool of myself." Hermione, 
overhearing, comes bounding over. "Harry, you won't make a fool of 
yourself. You'll be great - it's in your blood." She leads him over 
to a glass trophy case, in which is a brass plaque engraved with 
JAMES POTTER GRYFFINDOR SEEKER 1972.

Seeker???????

I think this proves it is a big waste of time paying a lot of 
attention to chat scripts.

I was amused that Hermione seems to know this about Harry's dad. Must 
have been in Hogwarts A History.