Meh

[desperance]

So I gave up the better part of a day's work, to see the new Harry Potter movie this morning. Shoulda known better, shouldn't I? I've read the book. Which was long and flabby and kinda drab, because everybody has to do their special dance, and by the time you've fitted in all those special dances there's no hope of sustaining tension through all the thumpety-thumpety-thumpety plot points. And, guess what? The film is just the same. Long, flabby, drab. Except that the special dances are all the more pointed, because they're all special actors: so you get your two minutes of Richard Griffiths doing his thing, and your two minutes of Maggie Smith doing her thing, and and and. It's just ... not interesting, y'know? I was mildly bored throughout. Seldom even actively irritated, it doesn't stir up enough engagement for that.

Good kitty-plates, though. If you do go see it - and I just know that some of you will - then watch out for the kitty-plates. We wants them, we does.

And after the film there was lunchtime drinking, as there had to be, which is why it cost us the better part of a day's work, my precious; and now, well, bleah. I have to sign some bookplates for a bookshop in South Africa, and apart from that my time's my own, because I'm out to dinner again tonight, and I don't know what to do with it. Again.

Comments

Award yourself the CDM*

[gauroth.livejournal.com]

I admire anyone who can read an HP book all the way through. I think I managed to finish the first one, though I don't remember much beyond Owl Post and the Hogwarts Express.

*Please say you remember those adverts for Cadbury's Dairy Milk!

[(Anonymous)]

P*tter? PAP!
And Waterstone's have the effrontery to want more of the little b*gger.
http://www.waterstones.com/waterstonesweb/navigate.do?pPageID=1384
Slim
www.slimpalmer.com

[samarcand.livejournal.com]

You expected anything else? Actually, mild boredom over active irritation is probably a step over what I would have expected. But then maybe it'd be the other way around with the book. I think I've read this one and it's the one that really, really annoyed me for being so flabby and apparently appallingly edited but I remember nothing whatsoever about it. I will not, therefore, be seeing the film...

God I sound smug there, don't I?

[desperance.livejournal.com]

This is the first one I've seen since, oh, number two (having been Turned Away from the press show of number three, as Not A Proper Journalist, snarl...!), and I didn't have much in the way of expectation. I did read the book, and felt much the same as you did, but those faults needn't have been carried over. Unfortunately, they were.

Oh, and one massive continuity glitch that we all noticed. It might technically be an error; certainly I can think of one way to explain it away, but it's not explained and it comes across as an error. Which is just sloppy. Don't they proofread films...?

Being smug is better than being irritated, I think. Smug on. (But do try to see the kitty-plates; 'spect someone'll stick 'em up on YouTube or whatever...)

[samarcand.livejournal.com]

Go on, spoil it. What's the continuity error?

Can it be as major as suddenly switching from day to night as happened in X-Men 3 (and, of course, in Plan 9 From Outer Space...)

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Oh, there are these carriages that take the kids from the train to the school, and they appear to work themselves - but no! This time, Harry can see the strange winged creatures that pull them! A new girl (new to him, to us, ie) can see them too, tho' no one else can; she explains that you can only see them if you have seen death. (If that's an explanation. Um, why...?)

But! Half a movie later, they need transport to London! How to get there? On the flying creatures! Half a dozen of our heroes ride 'em skywards - and if anyone's actually died between (a) and (b), to allow this, I didn't notice it...

[(Anonymous)]

I vaguely recall something in the book about how these creatures could be touched (and sat on) by people that couldn't see them. However I can't explain why broom-based transport wasn't the obvious choice for our young wizards.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Would it be mean of me to wonder, then, how come none of the kids before Harry in the history of the school had ever touched one by accident, to realise that these carriages did not after all draw themselves? Or indeed how none of the kids ever in the history of the school had ever seen anybody die, because if one kid had ever seen or touched them that knowledge would have been passed into school lore for ever...