Documentary: We Are Wizards
Another film I rented with an Amazon video certificate that came with something I bought. The movie was primarily about Harry Potter fan culture, and a substantial amount of it had to do with Wizard Rock.
The focus of the documentary really wasn't clear. It began with Caryl Matrisciana talking about how the series lures kids into the occult and the forces that will ultimately destroy society; there were a couple more longish segments with her later in the film. Occasionally the people who were talking to the camera in the other segments would address the anti-Potter crusade in general, but there was no systematic attempt to refute Matrisciana's arguments. Right after the comments by Matrisciana, they went to the first of a series of clips featuring Brad Neely (who does the alternate movie soundtrack known as "Wizard People"), although they didn't explain who he was or what he did until much later. He's very funny in small doses. We didn't get small doses. They also spent a fair amount of time (broken up into a number of short clips, as most of the guests were) with Melissa Anelli, who founded and runs the Leaky Cauldron website, and Heather Lawver, who led a battle against Warner Brothers' C&D approach to fan sites and won important concessions. They were both very interesting. There were some good brief clips of commentary from Henry Jenkins of Textual Poachers and Convergence Culture fame. It was hard to distinguish the thread that tied the various clips together, other than a general attempt to demonstrate various creative responses to the series. I suppose we can even include Matrisciana's anti-Potter documentary (from which a short segment was shown) under that umbrella.
And they had Wizard Rock! We got interviews, behind-the-scenes footage, and concert footage of Harry and the Potters, Draco and the Malfoys, the Whomping Willows, and the Hungarian Horntails. We also got glimpses of The Cedric Diggories and the Order of Merlin. It was great to have faces to put to the voices I've been hearing for so long!
For some reason, the people we seemed to get the most footage of were the Wilkins family: the dad is one of the members of the Cedric Diggories, and two of the kids (ages 7 and 4) make up the Hungarian Horntails. We got three songs by the Hungarian Horntails and lots of footage. The kids fighting in the back of the minivan on the way to a concert. ("Mom! Darious punched me!") The parents talking about how there are guitars in every room and only PBS on the TV and how brilliant and wonderful their children are. Darious Wilkins, who I have to admit is a remarkably poised and articulate 7-year-old, talking about his band, and showing us clips from his homemade horror movie about weather. We also got to see footage of the kids during other people's songs, when the filmmakers apparently thought we would get bored watching the Wizard Rock band that was actually performing. Enough already!!!! They could have taken half of that stuff out and shown other bands. They thanked a whole lot of other Wrock acts in the credits, like the Moaning Myrtles, Uncle Monsterface, and MC Kreacher, but apparently it was more important to watch Darious arguing with Holden (age 4) about who played the thunderstorm in his movie than to include Wrock performances by other musicians.
I'm still not sure what the point of the documentary was supposed to be; it began with a bang (with the occult rant) and then just seemed to bubble along in an ADD kind of way, sometimes fantastic, sometimes annoying. Worth seeing if you're interested in this kind of thing, but don't say I didn't warn you about the Hungarian Horntails.
The focus of the documentary really wasn't clear. It began with Caryl Matrisciana talking about how the series lures kids into the occult and the forces that will ultimately destroy society; there were a couple more longish segments with her later in the film. Occasionally the people who were talking to the camera in the other segments would address the anti-Potter crusade in general, but there was no systematic attempt to refute Matrisciana's arguments. Right after the comments by Matrisciana, they went to the first of a series of clips featuring Brad Neely (who does the alternate movie soundtrack known as "Wizard People"), although they didn't explain who he was or what he did until much later. He's very funny in small doses. We didn't get small doses. They also spent a fair amount of time (broken up into a number of short clips, as most of the guests were) with Melissa Anelli, who founded and runs the Leaky Cauldron website, and Heather Lawver, who led a battle against Warner Brothers' C&D approach to fan sites and won important concessions. They were both very interesting. There were some good brief clips of commentary from Henry Jenkins of Textual Poachers and Convergence Culture fame. It was hard to distinguish the thread that tied the various clips together, other than a general attempt to demonstrate various creative responses to the series. I suppose we can even include Matrisciana's anti-Potter documentary (from which a short segment was shown) under that umbrella.
And they had Wizard Rock! We got interviews, behind-the-scenes footage, and concert footage of Harry and the Potters, Draco and the Malfoys, the Whomping Willows, and the Hungarian Horntails. We also got glimpses of The Cedric Diggories and the Order of Merlin. It was great to have faces to put to the voices I've been hearing for so long!
For some reason, the people we seemed to get the most footage of were the Wilkins family: the dad is one of the members of the Cedric Diggories, and two of the kids (ages 7 and 4) make up the Hungarian Horntails. We got three songs by the Hungarian Horntails and lots of footage. The kids fighting in the back of the minivan on the way to a concert. ("Mom! Darious punched me!") The parents talking about how there are guitars in every room and only PBS on the TV and how brilliant and wonderful their children are. Darious Wilkins, who I have to admit is a remarkably poised and articulate 7-year-old, talking about his band, and showing us clips from his homemade horror movie about weather. We also got to see footage of the kids during other people's songs, when the filmmakers apparently thought we would get bored watching the Wizard Rock band that was actually performing. Enough already!!!! They could have taken half of that stuff out and shown other bands. They thanked a whole lot of other Wrock acts in the credits, like the Moaning Myrtles, Uncle Monsterface, and MC Kreacher, but apparently it was more important to watch Darious arguing with Holden (age 4) about who played the thunderstorm in his movie than to include Wrock performances by other musicians.
I'm still not sure what the point of the documentary was supposed to be; it began with a bang (with the occult rant) and then just seemed to bubble along in an ADD kind of way, sometimes fantastic, sometimes annoying. Worth seeing if you're interested in this kind of thing, but don't say I didn't warn you about the Hungarian Horntails.