Diversions: Home runs and Harry Potter
Jul. 27th, 2009 07:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nebroadweAll right: I'm now one for three in ball games attended, my team having beaten the everlasting aspirations out of their opponent on Saturday afternoon. (A huge black and pale blue butterfly flew right past me just as I was resuming my seat after the national anthem. I admit that my first thought was "Yûko?" but my second, hard on its heels, was, "Wow, good omen." :-) I got to sit in the shade this time, too. And late in the game a hawk came and perched on one of the stanchions behind right field, which seemed fitting, since my team was playing one of the non-bird-of-prey-themed major league squads. Heh. Oddly enough, there were an awful lot of birds flying around the stadium, more than I'd ever seen, which may have been what attracted the hawk. A rather stupid pigeon landed on the stanchion next to it -- you could almost hear it thinking, "Duuude -- is that a hawk? I've, like, never seen one this close before! This is totally awesome -- I have SO got to tell the guys about this! Hey, guys! Come and see the hawk!"
Its friends were a lot smarter -- they kept their distance.
On Sunday, a friend took me to see Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince as a belated birthday present. (Thanks, Sue!) My impressions were ... mixed. On the one hand, the story seemed a bit loose and floppy. Part of that can be laid at the feet of the source material -- though, again, screenwriter Steve Kloves cut the narrative to the bone (occasionally losing valuable connective tissue along the way: the cut to Harry's second session in the Pensieve was particularly jarring, as was Snape's admission that he was the Half-Blood Prince, to cite the most glaring examples). Still, Kloves and director David Yates did a decent job of identifying the Harry/Dumbledore interactions over the memories as the narrative's main through-line, but Daniel Radcliffe and Michael Gambon had absolutely no chemistry I could detect, which made it difficult for me to invest in their scenes as anything other than clue-dropping. I mean, Gambon and Alan Rickman's Snape had more oomph together in their twenty seconds' worth of exchanged glances on the tower at the end (so, for that matter, did Rickman and Radcliffe in the five seconds they had immediately prior to that). Must've just been one of those things.
Still in all, I was entertained. I liked the fact that the Death Eater attack on Diagon Alley before they take out the Millennium Bridge resulted in Ollivander's capture and wasn't just action for action's sake. I giggled my way through all the silly bits among the young leads and their various loves and would-be loves (but I swear they could have cut a minute or two out of Ron's love-charm induced haze to mention, frex, that Dumbledore had returned to Hogwarts before landing Harry in his office that second time). Shippers be confunded, I liked Bonnie Wright's Ginny (and the whole "Shoelace" thing rang nicely with Ron's repeated "You've got something on your ..." to Hermione. Affection expressed with a washcloth -- clearly something they learned from their mother. :-) And I thoroughly enjoyed Jim Broadbent as Slughorn -- as many reviewers have noted, he really is note-perfect in his portrayal. I also thought they did a good job with Tom Felton as Draco Malfoy: he wasn't asked to register much beyond angst and revulsion, but he was clearly up to the task, and they sprinkled his work with the Vanishing Cabinet nicely through the film. IMO, this aspect of the plot was an improvement on the book, where Harry's obsession with Draco makes him look rather dumb. Here, we're given enough hints that he's up to something that Harry comes off more as someone theorizing ahead of his data than as someone afflicted with an idée fixe.
I guess my main impression was that this film suffered from middle-child syndrome -- it felt more like a two-and-a-half-hour trailer for the next one than anything else, because its own main narrative thread lacked the strength to balance all the strong but not quite as relevant side-plotting. If the Dumbledore/Harry relationship had been more real to me, I don't think I would have been bothered by the way Hermione, Ron, Ginny and even Slughorn dropped out of sight during the climax -- they don't have a place there, but their scenes with Harry were so much more alive that I couldn't help but notice how relatively deadened the film was without them. Ah, well. Better luck next time, gents!
Its friends were a lot smarter -- they kept their distance.
On Sunday, a friend took me to see Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince as a belated birthday present. (Thanks, Sue!) My impressions were ... mixed. On the one hand, the story seemed a bit loose and floppy. Part of that can be laid at the feet of the source material -- though, again, screenwriter Steve Kloves cut the narrative to the bone (occasionally losing valuable connective tissue along the way: the cut to Harry's second session in the Pensieve was particularly jarring, as was Snape's admission that he was the Half-Blood Prince, to cite the most glaring examples). Still, Kloves and director David Yates did a decent job of identifying the Harry/Dumbledore interactions over the memories as the narrative's main through-line, but Daniel Radcliffe and Michael Gambon had absolutely no chemistry I could detect, which made it difficult for me to invest in their scenes as anything other than clue-dropping. I mean, Gambon and Alan Rickman's Snape had more oomph together in their twenty seconds' worth of exchanged glances on the tower at the end (so, for that matter, did Rickman and Radcliffe in the five seconds they had immediately prior to that). Must've just been one of those things.
Still in all, I was entertained. I liked the fact that the Death Eater attack on Diagon Alley before they take out the Millennium Bridge resulted in Ollivander's capture and wasn't just action for action's sake. I giggled my way through all the silly bits among the young leads and their various loves and would-be loves (but I swear they could have cut a minute or two out of Ron's love-charm induced haze to mention, frex, that Dumbledore had returned to Hogwarts before landing Harry in his office that second time). Shippers be confunded, I liked Bonnie Wright's Ginny (and the whole "Shoelace" thing rang nicely with Ron's repeated "You've got something on your ..." to Hermione. Affection expressed with a washcloth -- clearly something they learned from their mother. :-) And I thoroughly enjoyed Jim Broadbent as Slughorn -- as many reviewers have noted, he really is note-perfect in his portrayal. I also thought they did a good job with Tom Felton as Draco Malfoy: he wasn't asked to register much beyond angst and revulsion, but he was clearly up to the task, and they sprinkled his work with the Vanishing Cabinet nicely through the film. IMO, this aspect of the plot was an improvement on the book, where Harry's obsession with Draco makes him look rather dumb. Here, we're given enough hints that he's up to something that Harry comes off more as someone theorizing ahead of his data than as someone afflicted with an idée fixe.
I guess my main impression was that this film suffered from middle-child syndrome -- it felt more like a two-and-a-half-hour trailer for the next one than anything else, because its own main narrative thread lacked the strength to balance all the strong but not quite as relevant side-plotting. If the Dumbledore/Harry relationship had been more real to me, I don't think I would have been bothered by the way Hermione, Ron, Ginny and even Slughorn dropped out of sight during the climax -- they don't have a place there, but their scenes with Harry were so much more alive that I couldn't help but notice how relatively deadened the film was without them. Ah, well. Better luck next time, gents!
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Date: 2009-07-27 11:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-28 11:44 pm (UTC)