Sunday, July 15, 2007

"For neither can live while the other survives"

Went to watch Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix today with Zf, at Ang Mo Kio Hub Cathay. To start off with a rather vague non-spoilery assessment of the movie, I think I can say that I liked it somewhat - at least I didn't come out of the theatre hating the movie, like I did with Prisoner of Azkaban - but it just didn't quite blow me away. Three stars, lah.

[spoiler warnings]

It was exceedingly difficult to not compare every scene of the movie with how it was written in the book, and mentally start griping about how weird or just plain wrong the scene is; I've been doing this silly mental comparison with every movie since Prisoner of Azkaban because I have been re-reading the books before watching the movies, and it is undermining my enjoyment of the movies quite badly. Somehow I can never divorce the movie from the book and see it just by itself, as a movie. This is contributed to by the fact that the movies are such greatly condensed versions of the original novels that without the lengthier explanations of prose a lot of the things that happen in the movie will not make any sense to the uninitiated viewer.

I shall try not to make this a whole list of "What went wrong which I would have liked to be better" things.

The opening scene kind of spoilt my mood considerably, because Arabella Figg was so bizarrely calm when she casually strolled into the underpass and told Harry not to put away his wand; I was totally expecting the batty, hysterical-with-fear-and-outrage Mrs Figg from the book, because that was rather amusing. The movie Figg looked like she was under the Imperius curse or an overdose of Valium -__-;.

It doesn't really get better through the next 20 minutes. I thought the scene of them flying down the river (I assume it's the Thames) on broomsticks was another rather bizarre scene - what with Moody being all paranoid about being attacked, I would think flying this close to the ground, where any one of a gazillion Muggles wandering around London could see a half-dozen people zooming past on broomsticks, appears a rather dumb plan.

The capslocking that Harry went into after arriving at Grimmauld Place was taken out from the movie, and I personally thought it was a welcome change, because I would have died of agony if I had to hear Harry screaming through the movie. And was it only me who got the worst shock of my life when the Weasley twins Apparated behind Harry with sound effects remarkably reminiscent of a Japanese horror film? Hermione was rather disappointing in this scene also, because I expected her to be more 1000 words-a-minute about everything that's happened, considering she and Ron have been kept from telling Harry anything for an entire summer.

The Ministry scene was marvellous; I loved the way they visualised the Ministry and made it look much like a grand official place even though it's hidden underground. The fountain was also very nice. This is where I started getting a wee bit happier heh. Things started getting back on track after they got to Hogwarts and the entire Dolores Umbridge thingey started unfolding; this was greatly supported by the wickedly good acting of Imelda Staunton as Umbridge and also the assorted professors, but more on that later.

The DA scenes were also great enjoyment, not only because it's heartening to see the characters having fun learning practical magic (and having nice effects to showcase the magic) but also because Filch's attempts to catch the DA at their meetings was rather hilarious in a disastrous sort of way. I really didn't care much for the whole Cho Chang kisses Harry thing, and they didn't even bother to develop the backstory to that, so they just kept tossing looks at one another and later they're kissing, and after that they're laughing when they get back to school, and after Chang rats out the DA (apparently thanks to Veritaserum, but no spectacular purple pimples spelling SNEAK on her face, what's up with that??) Harry ignores her. It was so underdeveloped I wonder if it was essential to the movie very much. Oh well. {I'm probably just insanely jealous lol)

Let's fast-forward then to the Ministry of Magic showdown, since much of the rest is not very spectacular or horrible. I thought the scene was pretty good, could have been better but at least didn't disappoint me as I felt it was probably the most exciting scene in the book for me. The whole Death Eaters swirling around as black smoke, later countered by the Order as white smoke, was a pretty cool effect, though I wonder if it's Apparation or some other weird form of wizard transport. But when Sirius fell behind the veil, did Bellatrix actually use the Avada Kedavra on him? I seem to have heard her saying Avada Kedavra, and there was a flash of green light (which is what the Killing Curse is described as) before he fell into the doorway. That totally didn't happen in the book, and seems to discount the fact that Sirius died in a really lame manner (because if that stupid doorway hadn't been there, and Bellatrix had used the AK anyway, he would still be dead, whereas in the book he may have only been Stunned). Incidentally, the veil looked really awful. Worst interpretation ever.

The Dumbledore-Voldemort battle was uber-awesome, totally loved it as my favourite action scene in the entire movie. The way Voldemort holds his wand and flourishes it in that arrogant fashion of his is so amazingly Dark Lord-ish heh. The light effects with the spell lightning sort of reminded me of a lightsaber battle. It was so bloody amazing, I felt like the whole lousiness of other scenes were redeemed by this battle.

The Voldemort-possessing-Harry scene was pretty good too, because Daniel Radcliffe did a pretty excellent job of acting; I just didn't like the prolonged mental flashes of much the same thing that didn't seem to explain very much of how Voldemort was expelled from Harry because he felt love. In the book this part only lasted 5 paragraphs or so, thus making the length of the movie part rather excessive. They could have easily got Dumbledore to explain the whole thing about love and the prophecy, which was another part I didn't appreciate being cut out of the movie, because the whole thing is kind of crucial to the plot, isn't it? Well, Dumbledore did talk to Harry about the prophecy, but not enough!

Haha, that was long, and it was only about the movie scenes. On to the cast!

Daniel Radcliffe was really hot! XD What with the hair disasters of PoA and GoF, I really liked that he cut his hair short for this movie and looked quite smart and handsome heh. Not to mention he's becoming better at acting in each movie; he really managed the inner angst of Harry pretty well in this movie without looking like he's a pouty tantrum-throwing teenager. Yeah, there were the complimentary Cedric Diggory scenes thrown in for the Cedric fans, but somehow I didn't find him quite as cute as I used to. Hee.

Hermione is quite awful, because Emma Watson can't seem to act like Hermione much to save her life; she keeps posturing excessively and delivering her lines with ominous doom-like tones and having long pregnant pauses between her sentences. Is that supposed to show that she's a pompous know-it-all? It gives me the impression that she's been possessed by Sybill Trelawney. Bleah. She was most like Hermione in the scene by the fireplace where she started explaining the whole Cho situation to Harry, because she was saying 1000 words a minute and I could barely catch her, which is what I totally imagine Hermione doing all the time. That was my favourite non-action scene, because at least everyone seemed like themselves. And the sheer bizarre-ness of them all bursting into laughter out of nowhere was rather amusing.

Ron was sadly under-used, and well he's not all that good-looking anyway haha. I don't mind them cutting out the whole "Weasley is our King" part, because it wasn't all that spectacular a subplot. But oh! the forshadowing of Ron's love for Hermione shows all over the film, so cute! As was Ginny's secret infatuation for Harry, in one telling glance, heh.

Imelda Staunton as Umbridge was another one of the movie's saving graces. She totally lived up to the mental image of Umbridge that I had - actually she became Umbridge. She was so horrendously wicked and deliciously amusing at the same time. I would have appreciated more of the Weasley twins causing trouble for her and the professors not helping her out at all, because it amused me to no end in the book, but I accede that it would have been rather difficult to work that into the movie without a lot of time expended.

Evanna Lynch as Luna Lovegood is another pretty good addition to the cast; I enjoyed her rendition of Luna, mostly because her voice is airy enough and she really does have an aura of weirdness around her. And well, the rest of the characters need no special mention from me, Maggie Smith as McGonagall and Alan Rickman as Snape are magnificent, as always; I thought Emma Thompson's Trelawney was also pretty amusing in her sad attempt to impress Umbridge with an actual foretelling, though her breakdown at being made to leave could have been a bit more dramatic.

He's not really a cast member, but Kreacher was pretty fun to watch, for all his dark mutterings. I missed seeing Mrs Black in one of her furious rages cursing all the Mudbloods staining the purity of her house though, lol. Apparently when the director and scriptwriters for OotP consulted JK Rowling on the characters they wished to cut from the movie, there was one character whom she said cannot be cut because he or she will play a crucial role in the last book. I'm putting my bet on Kreacher, but then again it could be a lot more useless-looking characters in the movie, like Tonks (only 2 lines!) and Kingsley Shacklebolt.

I guess, in all, the movie was rather more streamlined than the book and ran with more fluidity, and they did cut out a lot of stuff that didn't need to be around. Could have been just a wee bit better though, it's like the difference between eating nice sponge cake and eating sponge cake with chocolate mousse on top. Haha. It was saved by Imelda Staunton, is the truth.

I think I've about reached the end of my exceedingly long review. It's at times like this I wish Blogger had a cut function like LiveJournal.

[end of spoilers]


Anyway I was watching a movie on a Sunday because I used the M1 Movie Sundays offer for the first time in my life - you can get two tickets on Sunday with 50% off the second ticket as long as you show your handphone with the M1-GSM thingey, so the ticket price works out to only 7.15 per person or so, much like weekday prices. The offer's been around for the longest time but I've never thought of using it. All the times I could have watched movies on Sundays while paying weekday prices..

AMK Hub is a pretty nice place with lots of shops and eating places, which also makes it very crowded because it's like the one-stop shop for people living in the area. And the NTUC Extra hypermart also attracts hordes of heartlanders to buy groceries and stuff. The Cathay cineplex there is also quite comfortable and spacious; the front row is already quite some distance from the screen so I guess it's not that bad even if you have to get front row seats. I actually bought a couple seat (i.e. two seats without the armrest in the middle) for the two of us without knowing it heh, mainly because all the good seats were taken (even though I was buying the tickets 5 hours in advance!). But it was okay la, not too uncomfortable :P.


Paeds posting is okay so far but rather extremely stressful because I've really forgotten all my paeds in the 1.5 years since my posting, and it's rather sad to gape at your tutor idiotically when he or she is asking questions - totally feels like my M3 paeds posting all over again, with Dr N going "WHAT?!?" at every answer we give haha. I'm trying hard to read up, but 2 weeks is really too short to get into the hang of being familiar with the way to approach paeds, because I'm only starting to warm up and there's only 1 week left. Sigh.

Avaris / 7/15/2007 11:23:00 PM

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