First Equus review!!!!!!! - Casting Dan

[Steve]

---  "Fiona" <fionap19 at ...> wrote:
>
> > bboyminn:
> > 
> > A lot of people complain that Dan and the other actors
> > are a bit 'wooden' in the HP preformances. I am quick
> > to point out to them that the actors can never be
> > better than what they are given to work with. 

> Fiona Potter:
> 
> Steve:  I agree that this comment is made about Dan's
> portrayal of Harry all too often.  It's my opinion that
> Dan deliberately has chosen to make Harry a very 
> circumspect and closed-off individual.  ...

bboyminn:

Actually I agree with that evaluation completely. Harry
and Dan's portrayal are of a very circumspect closed-off
individual and rightly so, but I still blame the lack of
depth of any single character and of the movies as a 
whole on the director and the producer. 

For the audience to feel any emotion or sympathy for the
characters, the characters have to be deleloped, we have
to get to know them. To do that we have to spend time
with them, and in a movie, time is the enemy. As I said,
in nearly all the movies, the extra 15 minutes of scenes
that give the characters and stories depth, meaning, and
continuity are left out. 

Consequently, we simply have a movie that jumps from 
scene to sence from line to line with no continuity segue,
no character or plot development. These movies get by
because the story is so well known, but the movies 
themselves are very shallow, and that shallowness is
reflected in the actors. 

Yet, that superfical shallowness and wooden performance 
is not a true indicator of any individual actors talent.
Tom Felton must be a very talented actor to have had a 
major role in a big budget hollywood production of 'Anna
and the Kind/The King and I'. Last night I was watching 
YouTube clips of Dan as David Cooperfield, and he was 
actually quite good, especially for someone so very young.
He is most convincing in the scenes with his step-father.
The other actors who work with Rupert Grint say he is a
naturally gifted comedian with perfect timing, yet where
does that ever shine through in the movies? It is 
certainly there in the books, but not in the movies where
Ron's part has been gutted, his best lines either given
away or left out. The potential is there, without a doubt,
but the movie producers seem in too much of a hurry to 
allow that talent to shine.

Let me give you an example, I think this might be in
'Chamber of Secrets'. There is a scene near the middle 
of the movie where there is a sudden cut to horse drawn
slieghs riding across the lake while HP-Jingle Bells 
music plays in the background. It is a pretty scene
but seems to simply appear out of nowhere. It seems
to simply be a transition scene between two segements of
the story and nothing more. But if the deleted scenes
that should have occurred just before that were in the
movie, you would know that the horse drawn sleighs are
taking the students across the lake so they can catch
the train for Christmas Holiday break. Why keep the 
scene in if you are not going to set it up properly?

By failing to add depth and continuity to the movie, 
they have made the actors come off as lacking depth. 
Every actor including Dan has been underutilized 
because Warner is dead set on an absolute time deadline. 

Setting up a scene not only give a movie continuity, but
helps set the mood. Once the mood is set, both the actors
and the scene have far more emotional impact even if the
lines are exactly the same. If the continuity and the 
mood are not set, then the lines have no context and
therefore little or no emotional impact.

Again, a perfect example. In GoF, when Dan returns to
the Quidditch pitch with Cedric's body and is saying,
'He's back, He's back', in the context of what happened
I found that very emotionally moving. But when I saw 
the clip as a stand alone without the setup and context,
I found it not so believable. My point is the exact
same performance can have complete different emotional
impact depending on whether the context has been allowed
to develope. 

I'm some what worried about the next two movie because 
they are movie with definite emotional impact. If the
relationship between Sirius and Harry is not allowed
to develope, then why should I care about Sirius dying,
and more importantly, why should Harry care to the 
degree which the actor will likely be compelled to 
portray the scene back in Dumbledore's office. Without
the setup, there is no payoff, and the apparent blame
for that lack of emotions is going to fall on the
actor when in reality it should fall on the director 
and the producer. 

My central points is that Warner should get over it's
obssession with an absolute 2.5 hour time limit for
the movies. Let the movie take as long as it needs to 
get the job done properly. Better a long good movie
than a short mediocre one.

Pardon my rant.

Steve/bboyminn