[the_old_crowd] Never again

[Steve Vander Ark]

And I absolutely loved the film. I have some complaints about it, but
overall I loved it. Rowling said she loved it too. So it's a matter of
opinion, obviously.

Steve 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: kneasy [mailto:arrowsmithbt at ...] 
> Sent: Thursday, December 02, 2004 11:47 AM
> To: the_old_crowd at yahoogroups.com
> Subject: [the_old_crowd] Never again
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 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
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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