Oscars, HP Directors!

[naamagatus]

--- In HPFGU-Movie at y..., "caes56" <Caeser56 at s...> wrote:
> ---------Susan Wrote:-------------
> But why is easy equated with good? Accessible with excellent?
> 
> ----------------------------------
> 
>      It's a very simple premise that seems to be lost on a lot of 
> people who are either very educated or who read a LOT. See, when 
> people do a lot of one thing and start to gain "taste," as it were, 
> they tend to forget what exactly that thing is. Movies and books 
are 
> the two penultimate examples of this: Books are written for one of 
> two main purposes. The first is for Information and Learning. The 
> second, and more popular reason is simply entertainment. 

There are other purposes, you know. For instance, emotional release 
(which can be painful and not entertaining at all, but still be very 
valuable) or artistic pleasure which is again different from "pure" 
entertainment. And on a side note - Information and Learning can be a 
source of great pleasure also.


> LotR and HP
> are simply that- Entertainment. Why is easy equated with good? 
> Accessible with excellent? Simple. If a person with a job, with a 
> busy life, comes home from a long day at work, tired and exhausted, 
> do you really want to read a book about some world that you have to 
> get a dictionary out to understand? (I'm not saying it about any 
> book in specific) Movies also cause this phenomenon- they are also 
> written for information and learning or for entertainment. So why 
> exactly is it so bad when a movie, like Harry Potter, is made to 
> Entertain as opposed to being totally accurate? Why must it be a 
> science? Let's face it- most(but not all)critics of books and 
> movies, as well as most people at home, want to believe that they 
> are fullfilling some greater purpose than entertainment when they 
> read a book, or watch a movie. But simply put, that's all they are. 
> And a lot of people nowadays don't want to believe it.


But Susan didn't say (and I'm sure she doesn't think) that accessible 
and easy is *bad*; She asked why are accessible and easy equated with 
*good*. There's nothing wrong with a book or a movie being easy - 
entertaining as you call it - it's just that this quality shouldn't 
be confused with excellence. A book/movie can be easy and good, easy 
and bad, difficult and good or difficult and bad. The fact that HP is 
easy to watch has nothing to do with it's being good (in your 
opinion) or bad (in mine). 

>     This leads into my second point: While maybe the LotR movie was 
> enjoyable for people who read the novels first- and for that, I am 
> happy for all of you. 
<snip>
> See, my problem isn't that it's accurate to the books- from the 
> concensous(did I spell that right? I don't think so) of most people 
> I know they were. Rather, my problem is that the movie itself 
> doesn't do a moviegoer justice- someone who hasn't read the books. 
> It doesn't explain the movie well, nor the plot, nor the characters 
> out. 
<snip>
Movies aren't and should be a science; 
> you shouldn't have to go home and read a book as a prerequisite to 
> being able to understand a movie version of the same book. 
>       So, essentially, yes, it is a good thing to have 
> accessibility. 


I agree that if you don't get the plot of a movie then it's not 
accessible in a very basic way and that's definitely not a good 
thing. I have to say, though, that many people who have not read the 
book enjoyed the movie very much. I know it's the last thing you want 
to do, but maybe you should see it again? <g> 


> I didn't mean to offend anyone when I asked for people to be 
> objective; I wasn't speaking to anyone in particular. What I meant 
> was to ask you to stop and consider my points- the best method 
being 
> to try and see the movie while trying NOT to take anything you read 
> from the book and applying it to the movie. 

I'd love to have been able to do that! Just as I'd love to be able to 
read LOTR for the very first time again. However, once it's in your 
head, it's impossible to make it go away. I don't KNOW and can't know 
what's it like to see the movie without having first read the book. 
Again, I can only say that many enjoyed the movie who did not read 
the book.

<snip quite reasonable rant against Susan>

Another side note: one of the things I learnt from the HP and LOTR 
movies is that strict adherence to the book is not a guarantee of 
excellence. Of the two, HP follows the book much more closely and 
it's such an uninteresting movie, IMO. I came to understand that 
interpretive license is maybe necessary (or a symptom?) for 
inspiration.

Naama