Thoughts on SS, the Centaur
catorman
catherine at cator-manor.demon.co.uk
Sat Mar 9 22:54:16 UTC 2002
--- In HPFGU-Movie at y..., "ameliagoldfeesh" <ameliagoldfeesh at y...>
wrote:
> The only other way the film has influenced me is now in reading the
> book I can hear Harris as Dumbledore and Rickman as Snape- neither
of
> which I would consider a bad trade off at all. :)
I disagree with this, totally. Not with Alan Rickman, who I think
was perfect (before you jump on me, Amanda!), but Richard Harris was
terrible. No twinkling, no humour, no eccentricity. I would have
preferred Ian Richardson (House of Cards/Gormenghast) or Ian McKellen.
>
> John Walton (among others) complained of the "laughable special
> effects (e.g. centaur)" in the film.
>
> What do so many people have against the centaur? Why is the poor
> creature so maligned? I didn't find the special effects that bad,
> I've certainly seen worse in other big budget movies. To me he
didn't
> look especially fake-unlike the dying unicorn LV was drinking from.
> Is some of the dislike due to the fact that he wasn't the more
> typical "good-looking" centaur as is seen in fantasy such as Xena?
I totally agree with John on this. The centaur was totally lame.
The dialogue was stilted, wooden and cliched; it isn't the centaur
which is maligned but the way he was portrayed in the film. No
beauty, grace, majesty about him at all - in fact he looked quite
ugly and ineffective. It was also a very good example of Kloves
using dialogue from the book and taking it out of context. The
line "This is where I leave you" makes absolutely no sense in the
context of the film.
> When it comes to directors I thought Chris Columbus did a good job.
> I can imagine far worse directing of Harrry Potter than his.
I can imagine worse, but I can also imagine much, much better. I do
think that the children in particular needed more direction. They
are all obviously talented, but this wasn't as apparent as it could
have been - more subtlety was needed. At the end of the day, despite
the fact that the film was very pretty, it seemed flat to me, and
was very much a children's film, where as the books have never felt
to me as children's books.
Catherine (who probably hasn't posted on this list since the preview
weekend)
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