Transfiguration here we come

[Barry Arrowsmith]

--- In the_old_crowd at yahoogroups.com, "Geoff Bannister" <gbannister10 at ...> wrote:
> 
> Geoff:
> That is, of course, a subjective view....
> 
> I think POA and GOF were far better than the first two. 
> But that is also a subjective view....
>

Ah! Geoff, old bean! Wondered where you'd got to.

'Course it's subjective, it's the personal prejudices and
individual assessments that add flavour to the daily round
and I for one wouldn't have it any other way. 
Where's the fun if everyone agrees?

Offhand, I can't think of a film adaptation of any book I've 
read that has managed to match the original printed word.
Um. Correction: Orson Wells' 'The Third Man', but I'm prejudiced
against Graham Greene, he's a twossock IMO, but almost 
no-one reads the book anyway.

The key word above is 'adaptation', 'cos that's what film
makers do, they adapt to suit their own vision, technical
limitations or the studio accountants expectations. So what 
we see is a sort of "son of..." or if they make a real pig's ear
of it, "a perversion of..." or if they're really desperate for a
hit, the latest hotty star gets totally miscast in a farrago
that should be consigned to blissful forgetfulness asap.

Not that the HP films I've seen quite plumb those depths,
though it might be significant that a whole bunch of UK
household-name second-rate 'entertainers' were roped in 
for the bit-parts in PoA, almost as if it was felt that the
minor characters had to be 'carried' otherwise the audience
might get bored. Perhaps the producer owed a lot of
favours.

Seem to recall that before dropping off tol, I had some
exchanges with a couple of 'fans' who were remarkably
ignorant of the detail of the books. Not just detail either,
but some fairly major plot twists. Transpired they
hadn't read the books, only watched the films. Is that the
target audience the studio is aiming at? - if you can't 
read without moving your lips, watch the film instead. 
I have my suspicions. 

>From now on I'll give the films a miss and stick with the 
books, thanks anyway. And I'll have plenty of time for 
reading, having slung out the TV. On occasion films can 
be bad, but compared to an average night on the goggle-
box they start to look like high culture.
Things have come to a pretty pass....

Kneasy