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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