Part 3

[cassandraclaire73 at yahoo.com]

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The scene in which Oliver teaches Harry about Quidditch is notable 
mainly for closeup looks at the Snitch and the Quidditch pitch, which 
is a little hard to make out exactly. You can see the hoops in the 
air and the obviously CGI'd tall, candy-colored towers that have 
replaced stadium seats. Harry also gives a Bludger a fair whack, and 
Oliver tells him that he would have made a good Beater.

In Flitwick's class, Seamus blows his feather up during 
the "wingardium leviosa" spell. Sigh. A nice moment for Emma Watson 
who shows off her levitating abilities in front of Ron, who later 
makes his "she's a nightmare" speech outside class. Hermione runs off 
in tears.

The scene in which Quirrel runs in to announce the troll attack is 
actually fairly funny. The troll fight follows canon fairly closely --
 Harry is the one to remind Ron that "Hermione doesn't know!" about 
the troll, and the boys go bolting back to engage in what is actually 
a pretty stirring battle sequence with a fairly unrealistic-looking 
troll. McGonagall has a very funny moment where she awards the boys 
100 points for "sheer, dumb luck."

When Harry's Nimbus 2000 arrives in the mail, McGonagall winks at 
him, making it clear that she is the one who gave it to him. 

And then we have Quidditch. I've heard the complaint that the 
Quidditch scenes seem CGI'd and they do, but given the state of 
current effects technology I doubt they could have done much better. 
The notable thing about the game is that it is *FAST*. The players 
whip past each other at unbelievable-looking speeds and the sound is 
*loud.* Maybe a little too loud; it's distracting. The Slytherin team 
seems to win by simply pounding the other team into unconsciousness --
 both Oliver and Angelina Johnson get knocked off their brooms and 
land on the sand-covered pitch. It leaves one to wonder why the 
refereers are not interfering. Lee Jordan's commentary is good, as is 
Hermione's little scene where she sets Snape's robes on fire. Marcus 
Flint has apparently never been to a dentist, although there is one 
cute Slytherin boy. And there is a girl on the Slytherin team -- I 
always thought it was all boys? 

Best of all is the moment where Harry catches the Snitch and wins the 
game - Daniel is excellent at looking insanely determined while he 
rides that broomstick for all it's worth. At the end, he actually 
stands up and SURFS his broomstick to victory! This will either annoy 
you or make you laugh; it made me laugh. When they win, Daniel 
manages to pull off excited delight without looking smug. Aw.

Christmas comes, and the castle is covered in snow. A nod to the 
location -- the castle makes a perfect Hogwarts. We have a Hermione 
POV shot as she walks into the Great Hall all packed for the holidays 
and sees Harry and Ron playing wizard chess, which involves the 
pieces smashing each other to dust. In case anyone is still wondering 
what the kids wear under their school robes, they are all very 
clearly clad almost full-time in Muggle clothes, unless they are in 
class in which case it's robes over Muggle clothes. The wizards' 
confusion at the Quidditch World Cup over how to wear Muggle outfits 
seems odd given that Ron spends most of his onscreen time in jeans, 
Harry in cords and a variety of dark-green and dark-red sweaters. 
Hermione tells them that they need to be looking up Nicholas Flamel 
over the holidays (Hagrid spilled the Flamel beans in an early, short 
scene with Ron and Harry) and she stomps off; Ron observes that he 
and Harry have "had a bad influence on her."

The Christmas Presents scene is actually very sweet. Harry looks 
delighted to have recieved any gifts at all, and Ron's maroon jumper 
is truly horrible -- it has a big red R across the front. The 
Invisibility Cloak looks like burnout velvet, multicolored. The cloak 
effect is well pulled off -- there's a slight shimmer when Harry 
pulls it on, then he vanishes. His excursion to the Restricted 
Section does bring us another Snape scene. Alan Rickman is a truly 
great Snape; alas, he is sadly underused in the film. We also have 
the Mirror of Erised scene, which is as charming as you might expect. 
Harry sees James and Lily in the mirror, but no other family members, 
just his parents. Rumors that Ron's mirror-gazing scene was cut are 
false. "It's me! I'm Head Boy! I look GOOD!"

As Ashley pointed out earlier, Dumbledore's scenes seem oddly 
lacking. The scene in which he explains to Harry what the Mirror does 
is full of Dumbledore's gravitas, but lacking any of his humor. 

The Norbert plotline is cut down to almost nothing, which in my 
opinion was no tragedy, but I suppose Hagrid and/or dragon fans might 
miss it. Draco turns Harry, Hermione and Ron in for being in Hagrid's 
hut (ie away from school) at night, and gets detention himself as a 
result. Hermione apparently has no idea who he is, when Harry and Ron 
moan that Malfoy's seen them, she says, "Oh, is that bad?" All the 
duelling business is gone. Worst of all, while points are taken from 
Gryffindor for H R and H's indescretion, we never see any of the 
other students react to this. Lacking the knowledge that Harry, Ron 
and Hermione are devastated over having failed their House, their 
later victory lacks resonance.

Nice work was done on the Forbidden Forest. It's dark and spooky and 
I personally loved the bit where Hagrid split them up and sent Harry 
and Draco off alone. We got Draco being Draco "This is servants' 
work! My father will be outraged when he hears about this! And this 
forest is full of werewolves!" (Remus!) One note: they call each 
other "Harry" and "Draco." Shouldn't they be calling each other 
Potter and Malfoy? Not that it matters all that much.

Was not impressed by the unicorn scene. The hooded figure is 
appropriately sinister but the unicorn looks like...well, nothing 
very impressive. The centaur is a truly terrible CGI creation. It is 
completely unconvincing. The scene is also chopped in such a way as 
to give the impression that Draco ran for help as opposed to running 
for his life. As a Draco fan I like this, but in the interests of 
character accuracy I felt it wasn't quite clear that he probably 
would have happily left Harry there to die. 

Kudos to Daniel for pulling off lines like, "But who would choose 
such a cursed life?"

Some discussion of Nicholas Flamel later (Hermione realizes that they 
have been looking in the wrong section of the library all this time; 
Ron tells her she is "Scary, brilliant but scary") and we have the 
movie's biggest set piece: the obstacles blocking the way to the 
Stone. Fluffy of course is first, and while he was pretty obviously 
CGI'd, it wasn't badly pulled off.

The Devil's Snare *looked* good. Apparently the secret here is that 
if you relax, the plant will let you go. Hermione and Harry are able 
to relax, but Ron has to be rescued by Hermione with a sunlight spell 
which is impressive looking, but lacks the humor of the original 
scene. "Are you a witch or not?" is gone; instead we have Ron 
saying, "Well, good thing I was relaxed!" Harry shoots him a 
glare. "No, good thing HERMIONE pays attention in Herbology class!"

The winged keys are a great effect, although in this version they've 
been turned into flying missiles that practically take Harry's head 
off while he's trying to catch the key.

Ron fans will love the chess scene. Heck, I liked it and I don't even 
care about Ron all that much. The chess set itself is a marvel of set 
design and the huge pieces are terrifying. Rupert chews up the 
scenery like there's no tomorrow. "Pawn to E5! Knight to C6!" while 
perched on the back of a stone knight's piece. He does need to work 
on his comic delivery a little but nobody's perfect. The scene where 
he sacrifices himself to win the game is great -- the Queen swings 
her stone arm down, smashing Ron's chess piece into smithereens and 
sending him crashing to the ground in a shower of stone splinters, 
looking very dead indeed. Harry shouts Ron's name but when Hermione 
almost steps off her square, he stops her. Unlike in canon, she does 
not scream.

Harry walks forward and makes the checkmate, which means a huge stone 
sword topples at his feet in a King Arthur moment. Then he bolts over 
to Ron and tells Hermione to see to Ron while he goes on alone. H/H 
fans will be glum at the fact that the hug is omitted; still, 
Hermione does deliver her entire "You're a great wizard, Harry...be 
careful!" speech over Ron's inert body. Well, one cannot have 
everything.  Hermione fans will be disappointed that her "logic 
puzzle" task is cut. It does make the later award of 50 points to 
Hermione for cool logic in the face of danger somewhat mysterious.

Harry's showdown with Voldemort is all that remains. Ian Hart is 
great at Quirrell, considering that he has to spend of a lot of time 
leering at Harry like he can't wait to choke him to death. Poor Harry 
is at this point covered in cuts and bruises, one of his hands is 
slashed up and drenched in blood. Makes Starling's "beat up Harry the 
hero" picture seem prescient. 

The CGI ing of Voldemort's face onto the back of Quirrel's head -- 
well, it looks unreal but then it's supposed to be magic so it works. 
Voldemort is one funny-looking guy. Again kudos to Daniel for lines 
like "I will never join you! Never!" Not everyone can pull off that 
kind of Stars Wars hooey. Daniel has charisma to burn, which is a 
good thing -- he'll be needing it.

In this version of events, Dumbledore does not save Harry. I will 
actually not spoiler this part since it is mildly surprising. Suffice 
it to say that it works well, and the scene ends with Harry toppling 
unconscious to the ground, the stone in his hand.

The Infirmary scene was shot at Oxford's Divinity School, IIRC, and 
it provides a great interior. This scene, however, is in my opinion 
the one that canon fans will have the hardest time with. Lily's 
sacrifice is inadequately explained, and there is *no mention of 
Snape at ALL* -- no mention of his connection with James, or why he 
might want to save Harry's life. If I were Alan Rickman I'd be 
annoyed about the fact that Snape's interestingness as a character is 
being sadly diluted.

When Harry emerges from the infirmary he sees Ron and Hermione in 
coversation at the top of the stairs. R/H fans will like this, since 
they actually seem to be liking talking to each other for a change. 

We are left with the Gryffindor-wins-the-House-Cup scene, which is 
notably close to canon and very cute. Daniel, Rupert and Emma are all 
adorable in this scene. Actually, so is Tom, who pulls off a pretty 
good shocked-and-devastated Draco. It'd be easier not to like him if 
he didn't resemble one of those Keane kids with the big eyes.

In the final scene, Hagrid gives Harry the photo album with his 
parents' pictures in it as the Hogwarts Express is leaving the 
station. The last shot is of Harry leaning out the train window, 
waving goodbye.


Cassie