Amandageist's review

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

--- In the_old_crowd at yahoogroups.com, "Amanda Geist" <editor at t...> wrote:
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> Not to say it was *all* bad, but I certainly don't think it's the
> best one of them all. (snip)
> The pace was too fast. I felt bombarded. There was no time to digest
> anything, it was like eating a five-course meal in fifteen minutes.

I loved it. I said to Tim: "Third time's the charm; Steve Kloves has
*finally* learned how to write a script. Tim said: "I guess directors
do make a difference."

Pace is a personal preference; I feel bombarded by what Gen-X and
younger take as normal, but this pace was okay for me. 

Imagine how much worse it would have been if he had tried to squeeze
in even more of the book in the same amount of time ... vast amounts
of the books were left out altogether or replaced by a single sentence
of dialogue, which the result that the film is NOT true to 'history'
(don't answer in your History of Magic exam that Harry got the
Firebolt at the end of third year, after Sirius had been rescued!),
but did get the feelings across. At least to those who already know
the books (I cried at Sirius & Harry bonding because I  how it ends)
and I don't care whether people too foolish to have read the books get it.

I said to Tim: "My only complaint is he gave Sirius Dumbledore's line
about The dead we loved never really leave us; Sirius would be still
too messed up from Azkaban to say that. But that's just intellectual;
emotionally it worked."

I continued: "But the Rickman fans will be furious that they didn't
get to see Rickman do Snape's mad scene in the Shrieking Shack;
they've been saying ever since he was first cast that they can't wait
to see him chewing that scenery."

I know fans complain of Kloves putting in his own jokes when he
'didn't have time' to include JKR's jokes, but I loved three of them:
Snape: "Listen to them quarreling like an old married couple."
Harry: "Professor Lupin is having a bad night."
Sirius: "I'm usually quite well-behaved, as a dog; in fact, James
suggested that I stay one all the time. I could get used to the tail,
but the fleas!" *shudder*

 > I *love* book Lupin; I find him compassionate, sympathetic, warm, 
> sensitive.

Me, too.

> Which makes it so odd that I didn't warm to the movie Lupin at all; 
> he was not a sympathetic character for me, I didn't develop any
> attachment to him, there was no emotional response. 

Movie Lupin worked okay for me, altho' not matching my mind's image.
(Except for the non-canonical blue eyes.) I almost wish I were British
so I could analyse the accent ... less high-class than Harry's or
Sirius's.
 
> I had had my doubts about Gary Oldman's casting. No more. He was 
> superb.

Yes!

> Buckbeak is not a computer generated creature. No, they went out
> and found a hippogriff. That was *amazing.*

Yes, altho' book Harry decided that he didn't like riding a
hippogriff, and would have much preferred a broomstick. Btw, I
realised while watching that it's wrong to have Ron say "What is
that?!", as we know from FB and OoP that breeding (and presumably 
showing, at something like the Westminster Hippogriff Show) fancy
hippogriffs is a not-uncommon hobby for prosperous witches and wizards
... Ron should have seen pictures of them in the DAILY PROPHET.

For that matter, Draco should have known even without Hagrid's warning
not to insult a hippogriff, unless the Malfoys have specially subdued
(Imperius?) hippogriffs to give deference to Malfoy status. I mean,
*Draco* would have met hippogriffs before. 

Btw, Felton's new hairstyle is much closer to my mind's image of
Draco, but they needed to bleach his eyebrows to go along with his
hair; the extreme color contrast was jarring.

> I thought it was stupid beyond words to make Lupin's boggart the
> actual moon, behind clouds. Why not just tattoo "werewolf" on his
> forehead? I considered that change a bit insulting to the
> intelligence of the audience. (snip) I did love the deflating 
> balloon. 

To which Pippin replied: 

<< Erm, you mean the infinitesimal percentage of the audience that
doesn't already know Lupin is a werewolf? The filmmakers are
going to have a similar problem with OOP--everybody's going to
know that Sirius has a toe tag already...might as well run with it.
Pippin ... thinks canon!Lupin's boggart is a prophecy orb anyway >>

Tim pointed at Lupin's boggart and whispered: "Too obvious". I said:
"Making his boggart the moon and turning it into a balloon, which
makes a lot more sense than a cockroach, will deflate all those people
who think it's a Clue that his boggart really was a crystal ball and
it turned into a cockroach. After all, we have interviews stating that
Kloves and Cuaron ran a list of their changes past JKR for her to veto
any that damaged Clues."

This is as good a place as any to mention that if werewolves looked as
humanoid and bipedal as that, there would be more need for essays on
how to distinguish the werewolf from the true wolf.

> I do not understand why they didn't destroy the boggart instead of 
> just putting him back in the cupboard.

If it wasn't just part of a project of minimizing Neville (I objected
to movie Lupin saying: "You have horrors in your memory that none of
your classmates can even imagine": what about NEVILLE? I must check
whether book-Lupin said that), it was to save explaining where they
got another boggart for the Patronus lessons.

> but it's so out of character for Snape NOT to dock Gryffindor points
> for Harry being out of bed at night,

There were no House points anywhere in this movie, and no Quidditch
Cup (poor Noll Wood!) and no House Cup either. 

> Lastly, I didn't even realize that *was* Flitwick.

It WAS? I thought it was some new teacher! I noticed that in
Hogsmeade, the kids rushed past a group of very short adult Christmas
carollers, suggesting that Flitwick is one of many people that height
rather than sort of unique.