The Harry Potter Series. - Page 2

Billy Connolly was always in my head for Xeno Lovegood. But then 'til they cast Gleeson I also pictured him as Mad-Eye.

Yeah, Gambon's been hit or miss with me. He only has one moment in Azkaban where he really feels comfortable in the old wizard's shoes ("We did it!" "Did what? Good niiiight. *hums*"), and we don't see that Dumbledore again till Half-Blood Prince.

Thewlis was dead on performance wise but I still have trouble believing that guy would ever get to fuck Nymphadora Tonks.

Jason Isaacs has been this series underappreciated ace for me. Just an awesome, slippery performance from him every time he's onscreen. I'm just hoping they give him enough to do in Deathly Hallows to make that shift from Voldemort's right hand to concerned, frightened parent really sing.

I demand Branagh be added to that list immediately! (Talk about perfect casting.)

I've always preferred Gambon to Harris. Harris pulled off the whimsical aspect of the character quite well, but when it comes to the heavier scenes, Gambon absolutely owns the part.

Agreeing with the love for Thewlis. Every movie I wish he was given more to do.

No doubt, the AZKABAN score is the best, but I've enjoyed what Nicholas Hooper has done on the last two. Patrick Doyle's GOBLET OF FIRE score, however, is bland as bland can be.

Goddammit, Peter O'Toole would've outshone both of them.

Great scott! Why do I always forget about Lockheart?

They casted Tonks too cute. And too young looking. She gives Harry that look in Order like she is interested, and now she's with his dad's old friend?

Tonks is that young, though.

well, then it's just kind of creepy. Guess she's got the hairy fever. Pun intended.

There's a gigantic Gary Oldman-sized hole in that list.

I'm not particularly fond of Oldman as Sirius to be honest. I think a lot of actors could have done more with the role. Although my dislike of the performance might be due to how compromised Sirius is as a character in the films.

Gary Oldman gives one of the series' best performances in ORDER.

I was always bothered by Sirius as a character. He obviously has a lot of charisma, but we barely get to know him. For most of 3 he's supposedly evil, but as soon as we find out the truth Harry suddenly cottons to him. It makes sense considering Harry has never had real family, but then he only has one appearance in 4, and it's not a character building scene. In 5, his final appearance, he comes across as a selfish brat trying to relive his glory days (emphasis on the scene when he calls Harry "James").

I don't know. I know I like him, he just needed one more big scene, and Oldman does the best with what he's got.

There's a warmth to all of Oldman's scenes with Radcliffe that makes Sirius' death in Phoenix truly affecting.

EDIT:
That's an odd way to read that scene. I took it more that Harry just really reminded him of James, and that Sirius needed Harry as family as much as Harry needed Sirius.

I think the fact that he and Radcliffe play of each other really well helps a lot. That scene at Grimmauld place, in front of the Black family tree, is damn near perfect.

EDIT: Damn you, Dickson.

I thought the inference of Sirius reliving his glory days was pretty clear, given Molly's explicit statement to that effect earlier on in the film. In all honesty, I don't think anyone's given as strong a performance as Broadbent in HALF BLOOD PRINCE. Probably because he has the best dramatic arc of any of the guest teachers, and said arc is completed within the confines of a single film. The performances of Gambon, Rickman et al are great, but they won't feel complete until these last two films are done. Broadbent's Slughorn is already fully formed.

Book 5 really emphasizes how Sirius wants to get out and be apart of the action, but everyone keeps advising him to stay low. It's also implied that Snape provokes Sirius into action, ultimately leading him to his death.

That's one of the things missing from Goblet of Fire. In the book, Harry and Sirius' relationship grows through their correspondance. In the film he's just a head in a fire.

And not even a very good one.

I dunno, I liked GOBLET's head a lot better than OOTP's "Osama's face in the 9/11 smoke" approach.

Yeah that's right, some Sirius inconsistency on that.

I made a joke.

I didn't really like either fire head. Something between the two probably would have worked best.

But... Friel...

No love for Helena as Bellatrix?

Thewlis and Friel are a couple?!?!?!?!

SMASH CUT TO: My head exploding.

Always pictured Mel Smith as Slughorn.

I think Broadbent is in the top tier of the adult actors. You could hear a pin drop in the theater opening night during the scene in Hagrid's hut when he talks about Lily.

Broadbent made Slughorn into an actually likable character. Love that little skewed look he has on his face as he smiles at his Slug Club.

It's so easy to leave out an actor on this list. There's just so many. I had completely forgotten about Helena Bonham Carter as Bellatrix. She plays the part with such gusto, but is hampered by the fact that she has been given nothing to do so far (which goes along with them really shorting Neville's part in the whole story). I wonder if they'll let her play Tonks' mother...

I think people have forgotten to mention Ralph Fiennes as well. I think his portrayal of Voldemort comes across much more threatening than he does in the books. In the books, the only thing that actually makes Voldemort a viable threat is how the characters talk about him and how the magical world cowers at the thought of him. When it comes to him actually coming to the forefront in the story, I find him a pretty weak villain.

My problem that I've always had with Voldemort is that I've never found him to be frightening. Either he's already done something bad (killing Harry's folks) and we hear about it after the fact, or it's someone else doing the important bad stuff. Dumbledore is felled by Snape, not Voldemort. Sirius gets iced by Bellatrix, not Voldemort. Voldemort kills Cedric, but I wasn't invested in that character, so I didn't care. He's basically hiding in the shadows talking about all of the bad shit he's going to do NEXT TIME ON HARRY POTTER!, but I've seen everyone else doing far worse shit than him. He's had more than one occasion now where Harry is right there and could be easily killed, but he keeps fucking up. I really hope that Deathly Hallows allows me to view him as an immediate, horrifying threat, because the films so far have treated him as something of an afterthought most of the time. We have villains on-screen doing terrible things, so that's who the audience tends to focus on. Voldemort's hardly around, and they don't talk about him 24/7, so he slips my mind when I'm engrossed in the on-screen action. When they mention Voldemort, I think "Oh yeah, that guy", not "Holy shit, they are screwed".

Stacking his failures against his wins, he's really one of the worst villains ever. Dude can't do anything right!

I think it's Wormtail that kills Cedric. Heheh. So it's even worse than you think.

In the final book, Voldemort comes across awfully whiny. In his final duel with Harry, he comes across petulant and desperate. That's mostly the point by then, but still...

I like what I'm seeing in the trailer though. Mano a mano with Harry looking terribly strained.

Oh yeah, you're right! "Kill the spare"! Jeez, Voldie!

Voldemort's power comes from the hatred and darkness he inspires in people just as much as his own power. He's essentially a Hitler proxy.

Which is what makes him such a counterpoint to Harry. Rowling makes it a point throughout the series that Harry is not especially talented when it comes to actual magic, but the relationships he develops mean he's never lacking for advice or back up when things get dicey. Compare the Death Eaters reaction to Voldemort's "death" in the backstory to the Good Guys' to Harry's "death" in DH.

It's a more nuanced and grounded portrayal of the heavy-handed "love is the ultimate magic" stuff that is there from chapter one. Voldemort's problem is the inverse of that. If he'd only have watched Office Space he'd know that fear of losing one's job will only make someone work just hard enough not to get fired, but he didn't and so the whole iron fist thing inevitably backfires.

Nothing to add here, except that I giggled at the thought of "If only Voldemort had seen Office Space". And then, I giggled at the implicit Voldemort-as-Lumbergh parallel.

Hello, Draco, what's happening? Yeah listen, I'm gonna go ahead and need you to kill Dumbledore, OK? Thanks.

In terms of being the ubervillain that the reader should dread, I'd say that the former is all that his power comes from. His own power is supposed to be great and terrible, but he ends up looking pretty impotent since he gets foiled every time he has Harry in his sights (which is generally the only time we see the guy get his hands dirty).

He's like Wily E. Coyote, this guy!

Anyway, I bring this up only to praise Fiennes for being able to make the persona of Voldemort threatening (while being fun to watch).

See I think the most consistently strong adult through the whole series is Mark Williams as Mr Weasley. He feels the closet to the book version, and his fascination with muggles and warmth is so infectious and believable, it just goes by unnoticed at this point.

Oh, god yes, I love Williams. He's fantastic.
Anyway, over the last couple days, watched 3, 4, and 5. Azkaban misses a few important details, but it doesn't seem so glaring because those details are really subtly implied. A lot of people dislike this because GAH NO THERE SHOULDN'T BE SUBTLETY IN A CHILDREN'S BOOK.
Anyway, Cuaron basically made a blockbuster into an auteur film, which is really impressive. There's an overall coherence to the world in Azkaban that you don't see quite as much in the other films (except, I would argue, HBP). There's some cool repeating images and themes, like the emphasis on clocks, times, and the passage of seasons.
Goblet of Fire is two thirds of a good movie. It had me up until it just went rapidly, BAM!, from task #2 to task #3. The film needed room to breathe there. Also, much of it played like an over-long episode of Scooby-Doo. And they wasted David Tennant, which is basically a crime. Still Gleason was good, and Neville, one of my favorites, got significantly more screentime.
Order of the Phoenix is too short. It works well, but it feels cut to the bone. But basically Imelda Staunton makes the movie. In a way that almost none of the other actors do, she completely, totally embodies Umbridge. It's kind of weird, but Umbridge is infinitely more terrifying than Voldemort. I look forward to seeing the character get owned again in Deathly Hallows Part I. Also, Order is by necessity the most Neville-full. THEY HAD BETTER HAVE NEVILLE KILL THE SNAKE IN THE MOVIE.

Bob Snape: "Wormtail...what would you say you do here?"

I was gonna post this response to something Prankster linked to in the HP and the Golden Statue thread, but I'm moving it here so I don't derail.

My favorite parts of this review.

(SPOILERS, just so's ya know...)

Page 571: And Neville Longbottom finally shows up, with the crap thoroughly and comprehensively kicked out of him. Seems with Harry gone, he’s decided that someone has to be the guy who stands up to the forces of evil and injustice, and is getting the shit whaled out of him for doing it. Neville Longbottom is fucking hardcore.

Page 577: Neville also figured out how to use the Room of Requirement as a headquarters for his secret army and how to keep the bad guys from finding it and how to use it as an entrance and exit to Hogwarts that they don’t know about. Why isn’t this guy the hero of the books again?

"Neville got The Buuuug, man! Neville got the BUG!"

Page 587: The Ravenclaw password isn’t a catchphrase but rather takes the form of answering a riddle, which is a very nice touch. (Presumably the Hufflepuff method of entrance to their common room is desperately begging to be let in, or pretending that you’re as good as the other wizards are rather than being a lump of useless baggage.)

Hahahah... pooooor Hufflepuff.

Reading this reminded me of just how much I hope they don't shaft Neville in these last films. There's BTS video of him holding the sword of Gryffindor, so hopefully he gets his due.

Agreed, though I thought they did a stellar job padding his role out in Goblet. I wish they expanded on it later, but even the subtle nod to St. Mungo's was just perfect.

There's a shot in the trailer that makes me worried that this is not the case. Watch it again; you'll see what I'm talking about. Although I suppose it could match another scene from the book. (Doesn't the snake attack Harry, Ron and Hermione in a house at some point? I only half-remember those boring early sections.)

More fanwank about Neville in the movie... heeheh.

It'd be so great if they could get Alfonso Cuaron to direct a short-film about The Rebellious Exploits of Neville Longbottom that could play right before the 2nd part of The Deathly Hallows started up. Kinda like what the Wachowskis did with The Final Flight of the Osiris for Reloaded, I guess. I'd love to see Cuaron bring his more free-wheeling sensibility to tell that bit of Neville's story.

I remember when I first saw The Prisoner of Azkaban, the thrill I felt when Harry first opened the door for his aunt. HANDHELD!? IN A HARRY POTTER MOVIE!? WOW!

I want to feel that again! Hahah.

I wish they'd figured a way to get Stephen Fry into these. I wanted him for Slughorn, but Broadbent really nailed that. But he could have been Xeno.

So, I have little to no doubt they'll nail the big moments in Deathly Hallows. The source material is too good and Yates is too competant to fuck it up too badly. But if I may put on my Enormous Dork hat, the moment I'm wondering about is Hermione kissing Ron when he says something nice about house elves. It's a small moment in some ways, but it's also a perfect culmination of seven books worth of relationship woes. If they do it the same way in the film, I think it'll feel off, because they've rightly downplayed the importance of house elves. But if they change it, can they match its dramatic weight?

Yeah, Nagini drapes herself in a dead woman's corpse as a trap, IIRC.

I think that would be the best place to end the first movie. It's the perfect cliffhanger

I just rewatched. There is a shot of the snake going after Harry in a house. But then it's immediately followed by this:



That's Nagini there at the bottom. Hmm ...

EDIT: That photo originated with USA TODAY. This was their caption:

Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint) destroys a Horcrux, a piece of Voldemort's soul, with the Sword of Gryffindor. "This is quite a physical film," Heyman says. The teenage trio of wizards Harry, Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint) and Hermione Granger (Emma Watson) do a lot of stunt work, he says, "running through the forest, avoiding explosions, riding dragons."

Damn.

I don't think they'll change it much. They haven't talked a lot about house elves, but we know and like Dobby. The significance of the comment all hinges on how Emma plays Hermione's reaction to his fate. If she swings for the fences, it won't feel too off.

So based mostly on this thread I decided I had to see what this Harry Potter thing was all about. I had never watch any of these or really even given them a second thought so I watched all 6 of them in a weird 4 in one week 2 in the next Netflix marathon. Overall I enjoyed the series but a couple very minor things did bother me.

Aunt,uncle and chubby cousin fuck with Harry, Harry uses his powers to get them back. At a certain point don't you think they MIGHT knock it off given they know he has incirdible magic powers? Especially the scene in Pheonix where he is sitting on a swing and fat cousin is going on and on about his mother.

I have the same problem to a lesser extent with Malfoy. It's the same tired formula. Malfoy fucks with Harry and then somehow gets humiliated. But at least it works better given that there are times he bests Harry and they are building him up for almost killing Dumbldore.

My biggest issue is with Prisoner of Azkaban. Not really the film itself but the time travel stuff. One of the things I like about the series is that stakes are real. When you die you die more or less. Yes there are ghosts and yeah Voldemort was aable to keep himself alive with dark magic he used before he was killed. But in the end Harry couldn't just conjure his parents back up and have a chat. Giving Hermione (a child) the ability to go back and change events kind of fucks with that. I mean why not go back and warn Harry's parents? Why not travel back to a place where they know Voldemort was and grab him? Now I haven't read any of the books including that last one so maybe there are some rules that I don't know about. However one thing is clear you can at least go back a few hours and you can change major events as long as you don't see yourself. It bothers me now because everytime someone dies, Sirius(second time) or Dumbldore I can't help but wonder why they don't just use Herm's time piece thing.

1. Harry's Aunt knows that Wizards can not use their powers out in the muggle world. It would cause Harry to be kicked out of school

Dumbledore says that everything happens for a reason. If they were to go back and kill Voldemort someone worse might have came along.

1.Right except there is always some kind of work around. Plus I imagine theres a reason he got that bigger room upstairs. As a matter of fact it's still unclear for me why he didn't just stay with Ron's family during the summer. He eventually did anyway. Hell he could even give them rent from that stash of gold his parents left him.

2.Right everything happens for a reason except you can save the lives of 2 beings. As a matter of fact it's kinda uncelar why to even bother saving Sirius. He lives and then the next time we see him in the flesh he gets knocked off in 2 seconds. So you can save him and not Harry's parents? And really what coulds be worse than Voldemort? And even if changing these things could possibly make things worse don't you think people would still try? Like say a 13 year old girl who cares deeply about her friends? I thought maybe in the books there was some explaination that this couldn't be done all the time or maybe you could only go back so far but I guess not. Hell if they went back and saved Harry's parents not only could they live but they could also capture Voldemort. And Harry's life would be about the same only better. He would still grgow up to be a powerful wizard, go to the same school and meet the same people. Only this time his family life would actually be good. See why I hate time travel?