Thoughts incl. Damage, Boggart, Time, Creatures, Prongs perspective, and Latin

[carin_in_oh]

Well, I've finally seen POA and can't resist sharing my thoughts,
even if they are a bit 
belated. In the last couple of weeks I did a POA re-read, so some of
these things are 
thoughts I had on rereading that were reinforced by the movie. Here
they are, 
randomly generated by my brain but ordered more or less by occurrence
in the 
movie:

Question: Could anyone see what book the wizard who was stirring his
cup in the 
Leaky Cauldron was reading?

Thought: I was struck anew, especially after seeing David Thewlis's
Lupin, at how 
_damaged_ – ravaged, even – the Marauders are – the ones
that aren't dead, that is. 
Sirius's damaged-ness is much-discussed, but Lupin's really brought
home to me the 
poignancy of the whole situation of the characters who are Harry's
parents' age. I 
know Lupin's physical scars and his threadbareness come from his
lycanthropy, but 
they speak so eloquently of what it means to be a survivor of the
first Voldemort era. 
And these guys are only in their mid-thirties! My age or a little
younger, and I'm the 
same age as JKR. (Sobering thought on both counts.) Anyway, it made
me reconsider 
how the adult perspective – ours and the characters' –
operates in POA and later 
books.

Thought: In Lupin's Boggart lesson, I really liked the bit where
Lupin wasn't looking 
and suddenly turned around to find Harry at the front of the line.
But didn't it deflate 
things a bit that the Boggart!Dementor was already up and hovering in
front of  
everyone in the class before Lupin noticed? It rather undoes his
contention that he 
was afraid the class would see Voldemort.

Thought: I have believed since the first time I read the time turner
scene where DD is 
in Hagrid's hut, stalling for time, that DD is in a different
relationship to time than the 
other characters, time-turned or otherwise. Now, I've read many
splendidly logical 
explanations about how DD could/must have known what HH were up to
without 
having time-traveled himself, but I think the _literary_ impression
that DD has access 
to knowledge of a kind not available to any other character is
strongly reinforced by 
the screenplay. I was reminded of DD telling Harry "I don't need a
cloak to be 
invisible": there is a lot we don't know yet about DD's powers to
move in time and 
space. Will have to mull this some more.

Question: A movie-only thing: Lots of reviews have remarked on this,
but _how_ 
exactly did they manage to make the werewolf look so cheesy when they
did such a 
good job with Buckbeak?! About the latter, I agree with whoever said
it here: I _want_ 
one! I love the way he lies in the pumpkin patch with his front claws
crossed.

Thought: As others have noted, Harry's patronus appears as a stag
only from the 
perspective of the Harry who's being saved, not the Harry who's
casting it (which is a 
switch in emphasis from the book, where Harry is clearer about what
the patronus 
was when it gallops back to him after he's cast it). While I prefer
the book version, the 
film version is an interesting choice, as it seems to suggest
something about Harry's 
fantasy of being rescued by his dad. I haven't worked out the
nuances; it just seems 
to me that Cuaron made quite a deliberate choice of how to understand
how Harry 
understands the patronus. It's all complicated, of course by the
omission of the 
Prongs identification from the movie. 

Observation: I sat through to the very end of the credits, going
crosseyed trying to 
read the text on the Map. The recurring phrase used as filler for the
buildings all over 
the map is "Maraudere est audere omnibus": "to maraud is to be bold
in all things"! 
Words to live by. (Or die by, if you're Sirius.)

Carin