Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (SPOILERS)
 

Saw it tonight. I liked it. As usual they cut a ton of the book out, but they did a great job conveying the story. The effects are beautiful. Luna was just as I imagined her as is Umbridge.

We just got home as well. (Tori is at the moment torturing everyone with her new light-up Hermione wand). I liked the movie very much- BTD is right about the cuts and some of the storyline veers uncomfortably from the actual book, but all in all a great movie. Luna was one of the best new characters to happen in a loooong while- she is adorably spacey and perfectly cast. I wasn't sure about their choice for Umbridge, but Imelda Staunton did a fabulous job- I wanted to kill her myself.


Those Weasley twins are getting cuter every year.

Crap, I somehow opened this thinking it was the speculative book thread... :)

I'll be seeing this tomorrow, I think.

Okay- spoiler time:

Well, I unabashedly loved it. I think I was just so relieved it had some directorial style, and managed to convey the story while obviously cutting out tons of stuff and changing things a bit.


Wow, the cast is getting big. Everyone in every Potter movie was in this one for at least a moment. Sheesh. On top of that, some great characters were added. Luna Lovegood = fabulous. Imelda Stuanton was, as I expected, perfect as Umbridge. And I want a spinoff series about Beatrix LaStrange!

Um, the Hogwarts kiddies are getting a little long in the tooth, though. It's looking a bit like those old (and alas, current) shows where 28 year-olds are playing high school students. Krikey, how much did Nevelle age! And, yeah, the twins are cute ... for 37-year-olds!


Emma and Rupert are looking mighty cute this time around, from a very gauky stage they were both in for the last film, imo. But, ugh, Daniel Radcliff seems to have long past his prime cuteness. He does a pretty good job as cranky Harry, though ... and I think it's a good thing the script toned down his grumpy prissyness from the book.


This is not you papa's Harry Potter ... the first truly dark and complely non-happy entry of the series. But on those terms, I thought it was a great movie, and it looked wonderful, and had some pinache to the proceedings.


Easily my second favorite Potter film (after the very stylish and decidely happy Prisoner of Azkaban.)


Bravo.



Now, if I can only brave the next book in 10 days. I was pleasantly surprised by the movie. Here's to hope that Rowling pulls off a similar nice surprise.

Wow. Did we see the same movie?

Granted, Book 5 IMHO was the absolute worst of the books. Long and boring; it was the first HP book that was a chore to get through. The ending, especially, felt forced and convoluted.

And that's basically how the movie was. It had good individual SCENES (Imelda Staunton completely stole the show here in every scene she was in) but the movie did not gel. Not at all. The chemistry of the Ron-Hermione-Harry friendship was not there at all. There was no sentiment to this picture. It was moviemaking (and scriptwriting) simply by the numbers. I'm surprised the producers didn't get Chris Columbus back if they wanted such rote directing.

The wonder of the world they are in has lost its wonder in this movie. And I'm not just talking about the fact that it was dark and depressing. The overarching story for book 5 is just.... dull and uninspired. It isn't really a set-up for anything in the same way that the 6th book was.



Anyway, my favorite of the movies was, oddly, book 4. It had an overarching story in and of itself, it was fun, and the relationships gelled. (My favorite of the books, however, was book 3).

Harry IS adorable though in Order of the Phoenix. All those sweaty Voldemort-dreams were funny... I turned to my friend and said, "wow they really DID up the adult-factor.... what's with all the masturbation scenes???" :evil:

Oh yeah, it's that book.

I actually thought, as far as urgent plot points and condensed pages conveyed, this was the strongest of the movies. One of the things I liked best about it was that the screenwriter got out of the way of JKR's dialogue (including the "teaspoon" line among others) whereas the previous screenwriter seemed to rewrite the dialogue in an unpleasing way every time.

It wasn't so terribly unhappy. The D.A. scenes were lovely (and, as in the book, for me, nearly made up for Harry's grumpiness.) I guess I was surprised because Phoenix is my least favorite book, and I enjoyed the movie so much. We speculated that this is because the book lends itself to massive cuts in length. While reading, it takes (at least two full) days to read Harry's ALL CAPS YELLING and Umbridge's cruelty and all the while, you feel as lost as Harry without Dumbledore's presence. But it can be more easily stomached in the short form.

What's more, it was joyous to watch Umbridge because Staunton (love her!) had a performance that was so much what I'd envisioned, from the "hem, hems" to the condescending classes to the horrifying detention "lines" scene. The abstract Umbridge was painful to read, but I loved-to-hate Umbridge-in-the-flesh.

This director certainly has a way with actors-- it seemed like everyone brought their A game. Including the recently LoT-maligned Rupert Grint, who had some incredibly natural scenes. No mugging in this one. Radcliffe (still cute, no matter what you say, iSm) gave a complex, real portrayal of Angry Young Man, and his work in the climax was, I thought, quite good. BTW, iSm, the kids were 16 when this was shot-- just a year older than they're supposed to be. I didn't think they looked too old; I thought that they well-represented what can only be expressed by behavior and complexity of each new novel: these are no longer children. They're nearly adults.

Hurrah for subtlety. Their handling of Ginny (her potential as an excellent witch and her future love) was subtle, just enough for those who know the next book. Even little things, like Neville using "petrificus totalus," had resonance.

My only gripe, really, was

All in all, a lovely cinematic outing, and served (as well as the re-read of Half-Blood Prince) as quite a build in excitement for next Friday. NEXT FRIDAY!!!

I kind of want to skip this one just because I hated the book so much. All of what Cherny is saying is how I felt about the book and just reading that made me remember how awful that experience was.

ETA- just read LSPE's post and it's made me feel a little better about it...

I like what I'm reading and I'm going, maybe Sunday night. Why wait? SF Silent Film Festival starts Friday and I'll be fully immersed in that all weekend, so if my tush is not permanently molded into a seat at the Castro.....Kabuki Theatre, here I come!

But Like LSPE, I'm waiting for the b-o-o-k