And the world keeps moving

[oloriel]

and the Advent season is upon us and soon the year will be over. Felix keeps asking why the year went so fast. I don't think I ever felt that years were going by too fast when I was that young. Birthdays were over too fast, yes. Vacations were over too fast. But years were endless things, and I would not for the life of me have dreamt of feeling in November that the year had gone by too fast. (After all, still a whole month until Christmas! We'll never get there!)

As "getting into the spirit" goes, I suppose this weekend was a good start. On Friday, I actually went to the cinema with my old Ring*Con pal Judith and a couple of friends. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. In 2D (bless) and English (double bless). Which I quite enjoyed, despite having to spend 50 minutes for finding a parking lot (Friday evening in Cologne, I should have known). It turned out not to matter, because the movie started half an hour late. Also, something had gone wrong with the booking so instead of sitting in the penultimate row, we sat in the second row. Maybe that was why a lot of the camera movements were too fast for my brain to parse.

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Spoiler Alert
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- Honestly though, is it me or were some of the pans way too fast? Like in the beginning, when you see all the newspaper pages? Obviously, this is meant to set the scene and scatter bits of information that you can use later. Now, I like to pride myself on a pretty fast-moving brain and on quick reading comprehension skills, but I really came to my limit there. As soon as the camera had focused on a headline, it was already panning away again and I was mentally flailing at it to STOP I WANTED TO READ THAT BIT ABOUT SOCCER BEING THE NO-MAJ QUIDDITCH! HAHA, NO-MAJ. THAT'S SO 'MERICUN. OK, GIGGLEWATER IS HIP. I GOT IT. OH! GRINDELWALD! THIS IS IMPOR --- SCREW GIGGLEWATER, I WANTED TO KNOW WHAT GRINDELWALD IS UP TO! And if I, a quick reader and a pretty Harry Potter-savvy person, felt completely overwhelmed... how would someone with no background knowledge feel? If this was supposed to give people some context, it wasn't done very effectively. I don't even know what the Wizarding NYT is called, dammit. And I am still not certain whether Gigglewater is actually illegal or whether it's no big deal and just happened to be served in the Wizarding speak-easy.
And if it was just for funsies, it was too long.

- It was nice to have an ex-Hufflepuff protagonist. I didn't particularly care for Newt on the whole - didn't actively dislike him, but couldn't be bothered to like him, either - but yay for an underrepresented Hogwarts house.

- I enjoyed the movie, as a whole. It was awesome to explore Wizarding 1920s NYC. It was real fun to discover a new setting in the Potterverse, and historical spinoffs are my thing anyway. I would have liked more time to find out about background developments - I mean, the wizarding community must be seriously different from the no-maj community at the time, if they have a black Madam President - but I guess that's what fanfic is for. Jacob was great. And poor Credence. I would've liked to like Tina better, but somehow she seemed to be lacking in passion.

- Ironically, I didn't really care too much about the Fantastic Beasts. Some of them were cute enough, but on the whole, the Beasts plot seemed to distract from the interesting people and CAN I JUST EXPLORE THE SETTING IN PEACE, DAMNIT? The execution scene was cumbersome and ... I dunno, as fellow writers, do you know scenes that you just write in because something needs to happen to get the plot back on track and you don't really know how to pull it off, so you take the next best thing that comes to your head and drag it out until you somehow manage to stick it to the next piece of plot you feel comfortable with? That's what that felt like, to me.
Oh, I also completely wasn't sold on the Obscurus plot - that is, parts of it were promising, but that much raw magical power?! It just doesn't make sense. In a world where loads of children must have been forced to suppress their magical talent all across history, civilisation would long have ended if one single person can unleash that sort of destruction. I'm not sure whether this was a matter of the special effects running away with a plot point - "We can do it, so let's trash this city for all it's worth! We need to give the Avengers a run for their money!" - or whether it was written this way from the start. Either way, I was underwhelmed.

- It didn't help that some of the very quick pans and SFX made me a bit nauseous, but that's probably not the movie but the unfortunate seating arrangement.

- I do want to know what happened to the no-maj dude who was looking on with such wide-eyed amazement as the aurors sealed off the subway station. I mean, Jacob clearly retained some subconscious memory of the Beasts, so some other people (those susceptible to magic, or to grand dreams?) may also keep some memories? Maybe he'll be relevant in a sequel, I dunno. At any rate, I would've liked to know who that guy was and what he's going to do now.

- I would also like to comment on something that I read elsewhere, I forgot where: I didn't hear anywhere that there's only one single Wizarding school in all of America. (And even if there is: There is only one Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters either, isn't there?) Queenie said that her school - I forgot its name - is "like, the best in the whole world", but that doesn't mean it's the only one in America. There might be five, or a dozen. Presumably, every single one of them thinks it's the best in the whole world. Like.

- I honestly wouldn't have recognised Johnny Depp if it hadn't been in the credits. And he didn't look at all like I would've imagined Grindelwald. I was surprisingly impressed by Colin Farrell though. He actually did a good job in this movie! I found Graves intriguing throughout (And in a positive way at first, what's more! Completely tricked me, the bastard!). And some things suddenly got a lot more meaning in retrospect. "What did this Albus Dumbledore see in you?" OH HOH!

- So, yeah. It was fun, but more because of the setting than because of the story. I enjoyed it, anyway!
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END OF SPOILERS
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On Sunday, Felix' Kindergarten had a stall on the tiny local Christmas market and I spent two hours helping to sell stuff. (After first having spent an hour searching for my parents. Oh well.) Personally, I think it showed that we only learned about the stall, like, three weeks prior to the fact (which was, in fact, when the decision was made) so there was no unifying theme to what we were selling. So people were maybe drawn closer by the large folded paper stars, and then discovered that there were no small paper decorations. Or they were attracted by the knitted plushies, and then found that we didn't have other knitted things. Or they saw the cuddly pillows and then saw that we didn't have other retro sewn things. In the two hours in which I was there, we made maybe a hundred bucks.
But as all the things we sold were donations, and the stall was free for charitable institutions, I suppose it was enough of a success to repeat it next year, with maybe a better plan and more time to prepare. At any rate, it gave me a reason to go to the very picturesque and sweet Christmas market in Lüttringhausen, where, in spite of growing up one village over, I had never been before.

After last week's temperatures moved around 10°C, this morning's -2,5°C came as a bit of a surprise and the car was completely frozen. Time to clear the barn enough to use it as a garage again. (At the moment, the driveway is full of firewood that has yet to be chopped.) I still haven't managed to prepare the garden for winter, there's still stuff that needs to be sown and beds to be covered and stuff. But, yeah. I had to do a lot of writing last week (not NaNo-related, alas, but money-related) so I couldn't use the mild weather. And I'll return to that writing now, too. No rest for the wicked...

Hope the 'mericuns (no-maj or otherwise ;)) had a good Thanksgiving weekend. Also hope you'll get your electional eff-ups figured out and sorted... :/

Comments

[satismagic.livejournal.com]

Probably the seating. We saw it in 3D with very good seats, and I found it very comfortable to watch, even in 3D.

HH and I both loved it to bits, the story, the mood, the cinematography. But my favourite bits were actually the fantastic beasts -- I would have been happy without any story or persons, just watching the pretty monsters! LOL.

IDK, but in retrospect it kind of feels as if Eddie Redmayne was close to overacting... Someone said that it looked to them as if he tried to play Newt as a person on the Autism/Asperger's spectrum, so maybe that's the explanation. It will be interesting to see it again, if that changes my impression.

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

Heh, just the beasts without plot would have been fine too. Just one distracting from the other was the problem! XD But yes, the mood worked really great. And the visuals that weren't making me feel dizzy were very neat. As usual, I don't mention the good bits as much as the bad. ;)

That would make sense, I suppose. I certainly got the impression that Newt was supposed to be very much Not A People Person, though I wouldn't dare to judge how accurate his depiction of someone on the spectrum was.

[independence1776]

I hear you on the newspapers! I was trying to read them myself and couldn't. Just a few more seconds would have made all the difference.

The beasts felt similar to me: that they were put in for plot purposes. It rather reminded me of the Miss Peculiar's Children books, which has old photos interspersed in the text, with the photos driving the story. I could always tell when a new photo was coming because the descriptions in the prose became oddly specific. That's what the beasts felt like to me. The two plots really didn't mesh all that well.

The single wizarding school thing comes from Pottermore; there's apparently only eleven wizarding schools in the world and Ilvermorny is North America's.

…I didn't realize Depp was Grindelwald until you said that. I literally had to go on IMDB to check because I hadn't recognized him at all. The reveal was a surprise to me, too.

Enjoyable is a great word for the movie: not great cinema but fun.

[dawn_felagund]

I agree 100% with your review of Magical Beasts. I didn't mention the beasts in my own review, but I found the fact that they all seemed to make cute little peeping noises--even the insects!--extremely annoying. Probably because I think it would have been much more interesting if all the beasts weren't benevolent and grateful but, like real wild animals kept in captivity, even if bred there, maintained some of their danger.

I also found that opening scene too fast and thought it was just me. (Although I am also a fast reader.) And then I felt a bit derailed because the Grindelwald what-I-thought-was-a-subplot-slash-backstory turned out to be really important to the movie, and I felt rather lost. (Again, I blamed myself, since I have no brain for plot and forget what happens in my own stories if I don't reread them.)

I don't remember time going fast when I was Felix's age either. If anything, the year felt TOO long because so much of it was spent in school!

Also hope you'll get your electional eff-ups figured out and sorted... :/

*lolsnortcry*