SS/PS MOVIE DISCUSSION

[Carol]

zanooda wrote:
> 
> They found Snape's riddle not cinematographic enough, I guess :-).

Carol responds:
Probably. Too cerebral, I guess, or too Hermione-focused. I wonder if
any filmgoers thought about it afterward and wondered why, if Snape
was one of the teachers guarding the Stone (as Film!Hagrid says he
is), Snape's protection isn't shown. the knocke-out Troll isn't shown,
either--no loss). But it's easy enough for anyone who thinks about it
to associate Devil's snapre with Madam Sprout, the chess game with
McGonagall, and the flying keys with Flitwick. where's snape? He's not
there. And yet the riddle shows him as more than a potion-maker. He's
logical and he can create curtains of different-colored fire that
require a specific potion to pass through unscathed. It's our first
sign of Snape's great abilities, and the filmmakers just dismiss it. Sigh!

Carol earlier:
> 
> > I'm trying to think of CGI scenes in SS/PS specifically (other
than McGonagall's transformation from cat to woman, which was just
done with shadows)
> 
zanooda:
> 
> But later she transformed again in class, this time without any shadows.

Carol again:
I was thinking that scene was in another film. funny--it doesn't
happen in the books till PoA, IIRC. (They've just come from their
first class with Trelawney, and the students are too full of the
prediction of Harry's death to be suitably impressed by McGonagall's
Animagus Transfiguration.)
 
Carol earlier:
> 
> > The troll was okay (didn't LOTR borrow bits of that scene a few 
years later?)
 
> zanooda:
> 
> Nah, LOTR troll was scarier and much less human-like :-). 

Carol responds:
I meant that the part about Harry on the Troll's shoulders was
borrowed, with both the terrified Hobbits and Hero!Legolas somehow
ending up there. Nothing of the sort occurs in the book, IIRC. (I
agree that the Troll himself was differently animated and the LOTR
version was much more terrifying, but, then the SS/PS scene is geared
to children and is partly comic (scary/funny).
> 
> 
> > Carol wrote:
> 
> > Firenze and Quirrell!mort, as I've already said, not so good.
 
> zanooda:
> 
> Agreed, but I must say that I find non-CG LV in makeup not much
better than Quirrell!Mort :-).

Carol again:
I was thinking of the Quirrell!mort in the forest who drinks the
unicorn's blood and floats away like a Dementor. It should just be
Quirrell drinking the blood, but he's hooded and Harry can't see his
face (or turban) or Voldemort sticking out the back of his head. 

I can't tell whether you're referring to the Voldemort appearing out
the back of Harry's head (which, I agree, isn't sufficiently scary
because he doesn't look snakelike enough) or Ralph Fiennes in the
later films (whose nose has been removed through CGI but is otherwise
just made up and costumed. Or have they elongated his hands? The way
he holds his wand is weird and he appears to be left-handed, which
shouldn't be but is oddly distracting, at least for me.

What I did like about SS/PS and CoS is the school robes. No
uncanonical Muggle clothes like we start getting in PoA. And Flitwick
looks more or less like he's supposed to--none of this transformation
into a choir director in twentieth-century clothes!

Carol, who needs to spend less time on the computer and more time
rewatching the films