Of Mice, Men and Movies

[oloriel]

'náro and Darcy have just hunted their first mouse. Applause for the two hunters please.

I just lugged the last two or so steres of firewood off the paddock. With one wheelbarrow. Paddock is rather hilly (this is, after all, the Bergian county) and has a brook in the middle. Wheelbarrow keeled over once. Wood rolled into brook. Wheelbarrow full of wood darn hard to move uphill, I tell you. Back and legs hurt.

Soooo, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix!
It's good. For a movie. Especially for a Harry Potter movie. As usual I have several gripes with the things they changed from the books, but on the whole I manage to understand the points this time. Although I still think if you could keep yourself from extending certain scenes for the sake of showing off special effects you could without trouble keep one or two significant book scenes in. But on the whole, it works. Pacing is good too. Movie is gloriously dark. Definitely not a kids' movie anymore, but that's doing it a whole lot of good. Cinematography is shiny.



--- POTENTIAL SPOILERS AHEAD ---

Umbridge is wonderfully loathsome. Eww eww the kitten plates! The "You know you deserve punishment" speeches! (Yes, rahja, you will get your Umbridge-dominatrix comic.) The sickeningly sugary smiles!
Luna is awesome as well. I love her to pieces.
At first I really hated the thought of replacing Marietta (the DA sneak) with Cho, but of course if you have to cut down on the whole subplots it makes sense to make that the reason Harry and Cho don't end up a couple...
I'm glad they let Ginny throw some nasty looks Cho-wards whenever appropriate. So far it's always annoyed me that even though they knew what was ahead in movies to come - seeing how the books for the next movies have been out already - they didn't use that knowledge to let, say, Cedric appear somewhere in the background in a movie before GoF or Luna before OotP, or use some charm or trick before the book it gets really really relevant. So, yeah, definitely points for that.
It's a bit sad they left the whole St. Mungo thing out. Not that I don't see that they didn't have the time, but it would've been nice to see that. Fun for Gilderoy Lockhart and profound about the Longbottoms. They also seriously cut down on the ministry stuff - no baby-head, no tentacle-brain - but most of that wasn't strictly necessary anyway.
I would've liked some more Words on the Fountain of Magic Brethren or whatever it was called, although they basic message came across in Umbridge's words to the centaurs. Still.
The 1984-style poster of Fudge = GOLD.
OMG BELLATRIX AK'd SIRIUS! What did they go and do that for? Wasn't it only a stun spell in the book and it was the Veil that took him away? YES IT WAS. Why AK? In times when the screenplay writer has probably read book 7 already, this makes me very unhappy.
In times when the screenplay writer has probably read book 7 already, Luna's "I'm sorry about your godfather. My mother used to say we always get back what we lost. Just not necessarily in the way we expect it." makes me feel warm and tingly.

Now I go eat some pudding. >:D

--- END SPOILERS ---


We got the German trailers for Stardust and The Golden Compass before the movie. I find it slightly disturbing they pronounce "Lyra" the English way (/laıɹa/) instead of the German way (/lyʀa/). I normally wouldn't care, but in book 3 there's that Lyra/liar thing, and in German the only way that works is Lyra/Lügen - not nearly as close as the English anyway, but with the English pronunciation, the only German word it'd work with is something with Lei- (like Leier 'lyre' or Leiter 'leader/ladder' or something, none of which makes any sense in the context).
Also it sounds just plain weird.
Oh well, it's just the trailer dubbing, so the last word's not spoken yet.

Comments

[etoilepb.livejournal.com]

The 1984-style poster of Fudge = GOLD.

I LOVED that. I actually went, "AHAHA OH HO" out loud when we first saw it in the movie theater and Dan poked me and a whole theatre full of early teenagers (13-15 year olds) didn't get it at all. I thought that was utterly brilliant.

[rahja.livejournal.com]

Jaaaaaaaa. Danke ^^

Ich trage heute den ganzen tag voller stolz den Sirius lives Button!

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

It WAS! Fortunately, a lot more people got it here. But then, movie premieres here are usually full of students (the college/ university kind, not the school kind) and other grown-ups... that, and everyone has had some kind of touch with Third Reich imagery >_>

[cowboy-r.livejournal.com]

I'm glad I wasn't the only one who noticed the 1984 visual reference!

[ladyelleth.livejournal.com]

... Bellatrix did WHAT?!? &%$()=%§"$!!!

But you know, I kind of want to see that movie, and not only because of the Tall One in my head.

[hrymfaxe.livejournal.com]

Ooohh, I can't wait to go and see HP 5 now (but I promised a friend to wait until she comes back from Paris!!)

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

Oh, it's worth the watching. Not only because of the Tall One. ;)

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

How cruel, to wait so long! I'm really impatient about movies I want to see, I'd never be able to keep a promise like that...

[ladyelleth.livejournal.com]

*nodnods* I figured as much from reading your post. So I think I will. ^^

He's grumbling.

[hrymfaxe.livejournal.com]

Actually I have broken the self-same promise to her on the last two Harry Potter films, but she always catches me in my white lies! And that is quite embarassing... I'll see if I can do better this time. Only 7 days more to go. :s