Never again

[kneasy]

I made a terrible mistake a couple of weeks ago.
I watched the PoA DVD.

If I'd actually paid for the damn thing I'd have demanded my 
money back. Fortunately I hadn't; it belonged to a so-called 
friend who should have known better than to inflict such 
rubbish on my delicate sensitivities.

Not being any more opinionated than the next cultural 
guerrilla, I have - well, let's call them rules of thumb. One is 
that a book expands your imagination and a film, no matter 
how good, is the depiction of somebody else's imagination, 
usually the director/producer's. And since these professions 
(when working for one of the large corporations) are expected
to be as interested in the bottom line as they are in producing
anything that might challenge the senses, it's the paying (or in
my case non-paying) customer that ends up feeling that it could
have been better. 

Consider; if the books didn't exist, who would have bothered to
go and watch that film? Damn few, I suspect. More likely it
would have been straight to video and you could have picked
up a  copy in a car boot sale before Christmas for a few pence.
And that tells you everything you need to know about the quality
of the film. It couldn't stand on it's own.

The customers only turned  up because they knew the book; the
film would have been a failure if it had had to stand on its own 
merits. Yet as it is  Warner Bros and the director bask in the warm
glow of the accountants' approval. They piggy-backed onto a 
much loved and successful book and vacuumed the fans pockets 
by associating themselves with a success.

One of the difficulties facing these filmic inadequates (who seem
to be totally deficient in their appreciation of the HP ethos) is that
they have been thrust in part-way through a contiguous series. 
Admittedly that doesn't make it any easier for them. Doesn't make 
it any easier for us either. PS was an enjoyable novelty; CoS - hmn,
maybe not quite as good. But at least there was some continuity
between the two. Not so with the third. It was the bastard off-spring 
of Gormenghast meets Malcolm in the Middle. Yuck.

It may be significant that they felt the necessity to recruit 'stars' for
what were quite minor roles. 'Cameo' appearances are usually a
warning that it's not being taken all that seriously as a project. The 
first two films had John Cleese (big mistake IMO); Alan Rickman (fun 
but not nasty enough); plus Richard Harris and Maggie Smith as 
internationally known actors to give it a bit of weight.  Good balance
between known and unknowns I'd think.

Now this latest effort. 
Who noticed (before the credits rolled) that Julie Christie was in it? 
I sure didn't. Emma Thomson. Why? What did she add to it? Lennie 
Henry as a shrunken head. Shrunken head? What the hell's that doing 
in there? Plus a handful of other Brit stalwarts apparently included to
up the "spot the 7th magnitude star" factor. Grrr.

Then there's Oldman and Thewlis. 
I have to admit that I'd never before heard of David Thewlis. Wish
I could still say so. Oozing ersatz concern like rancid cheese over
the screen with an impression reminiscient of a third rate geography
teacher who wants to be 'chums' with the students, the only thing
more wooden was the Forbidden Forest. What he turned into wasn't 
much cop, either. Werewolf? Looked more like the result of a failed
attempt to breed a comic-book killer by exposing Scooby-Doo to
high levels of mutagenic pollutants for a few generations. Nope,
doesn't hack it for me. Bring back Fluffy!

Then there's Gary Oldman. What can one say? Well, I'd be looking
forward to him getting killed in film 5 if I intended watching it - which
I don't. Which is the whole point of this blast of bile. Never again.
I'll happily part with hard cash for the books. JKR gets richer? Good. 
She deserves it. Not so the perpetrators of the travesty I  watched
a couple of weeks back. They'll not get a penny of mine from now on.
And it's bloody irritating that they won't even notice.

Kneasy