Order of the OMG cool wizard battles!
I woke up randomly at 5.30am yesterday, and couldn't get back to sleep, which means I staggered into Order of the Phoenix last night fighting off great waves of tiredness and expecting to fall gently asleep halfway through. In the event this was a foolish expectation, as (a) the film moves at breakneck speed which makes its two-and-a-half whizz past on amphetamines, and (b) there's no way anyone could sleep through all that breaking glass.
The film promotes interesting meditation on narrative. (Although in my case most things promote interesting meditations on narrative... darn all this academia). It's a fascinating process, watching Rowling's comfy, well-padded story, rife with scarves, hats, capes, bits of string, random bits of weird jewellery and the occasional extra appendage, being scientifically stripped to lean muscle and bone by the scalpel-wielding scriptwriter. You end up a bit sad to lose a particularly well-loved dangly accessory, but the aesthetic pleasures of the emerging svelte form are more than consolatory. The only problem is that Rowling's writing style, which is very much geared towards building up the whole out of buckets of trivia, doesn't always respond well to accessory-stripping, in the sense that sometimes the removal of a scarf or bit of string reveals the missing chunk of bone in the underlying limb. Some of that extraneous detail actually isn't extraneous at all.
Things I Liked About Order of the Phoenix:
For a far more entertaining take on the film, mistful does Emo!Harry and, predictably enough, mega homoerotic subtext. Memo to self: desperately require LOL-Dementor icon with "CAN HAS SOULZ" motif.
(p.s. did anyone else catch Jessica Stevenson in the Ministry of Magic hearing scene? She's listed in the film credits, but not on IMDB, which is weird. Plays Mafalda Hopkirk.)
In other news, the Friendly Psychologist insists that I note dreams on this blog, on the grounds that she enjoys reading them. Who am I to disobey instructions from a professional?
Last Night I Dreamed that jo came to visit, bringing with her about seven or eight more-or-less interchangeable ten-year-old girls - mostly blonde. They were very well-behaved, filing into the house in a long line and accepting in a polite chorus when I offered them tea.
The film promotes interesting meditation on narrative. (Although in my case most things promote interesting meditations on narrative... darn all this academia). It's a fascinating process, watching Rowling's comfy, well-padded story, rife with scarves, hats, capes, bits of string, random bits of weird jewellery and the occasional extra appendage, being scientifically stripped to lean muscle and bone by the scalpel-wielding scriptwriter. You end up a bit sad to lose a particularly well-loved dangly accessory, but the aesthetic pleasures of the emerging svelte form are more than consolatory. The only problem is that Rowling's writing style, which is very much geared towards building up the whole out of buckets of trivia, doesn't always respond well to accessory-stripping, in the sense that sometimes the removal of a scarf or bit of string reveals the missing chunk of bone in the underlying limb. Some of that extraneous detail actually isn't extraneous at all.
Things I Liked About Order of the Phoenix:
- As a watching experience it's bloody good fun, nicely paced, well scripted and acted and reasonably coherent in plot, other than the occasional splinted limb. The montages to suggest time and detail - specifically, Umbridge's increasing grip on the school, and the improvement in the DA students - were very nicely done.
- The visual set-pieces - wizard battles and Weasley firework orgies - are stunning - that final battle is breathlessly exciting and engenders in me a fierce desire to acquire the DVD posthaste so I can slow it down and appreciate the detail. The early scene with Harry and the Order swooping into London on broomsticks over the Thames actually made me sniffle.
- Those kids are really learning to act. Harry in the movie is about three thousand percent more convincing than Harry in the book.
- Luna Lovegood and Dolores Umbridge were genius casting, as was Bellatrix Lestrange.
- So were the thestrals.
- Mmmm, Snape. Also, cool I'm-in-ur-brain flashback sequences.
- WWII-style inspirational Fudge posters. And a Ministry of Magic in deeply sexy black glass tile.
- The silly traily smoke effects whenever Death Eaters apparate. That's not how apparating works, goddamit. I diagnose too much Nightcrawler love on the part of the effects team.
- Character starvation. Ron and Hermione are becoming caricatured gestures rather than actual people. Sirius's dangerous frustrations were basically written out, as was his horrible old harridan of a mother.
- Certain surgical incisions detracted too badly from the sense. I mourn the loss of the Quibbler revelation sub-plot, since the Azkaban outbreak is really not enough to account for public Harry-hatred doing that about-face, and besides, it's a fun anti-fascist media moment. The Cho Chang romance basically fizzled, with no real sense of why it broke up (there was a neat economy of concept in having her inadvertently betray the DA, but it was insufficiently developed).
- Aaargh, dissing of schooling AGAIN! One of the strengths of the book is the way in which it puts the wold-shaking cosmic battles against the backdrop of passing important exams, thereby rendering both more piquant. The movie apparently feels that the Weasly twins can randomly - and with typical insensitivity - disrupt an OWL exam session without incurring consequence or comment.
- Gawp was lame.
- No Quidditch! I appreciate the artistic necessity of its omission, but I'm a slut for Quidditch.
For a far more entertaining take on the film, mistful does Emo!Harry and, predictably enough, mega homoerotic subtext. Memo to self: desperately require LOL-Dementor icon with "CAN HAS SOULZ" motif.
(p.s. did anyone else catch Jessica Stevenson in the Ministry of Magic hearing scene? She's listed in the film credits, but not on IMDB, which is weird. Plays Mafalda Hopkirk.)
In other news, the Friendly Psychologist insists that I note dreams on this blog, on the grounds that she enjoys reading them. Who am I to disobey instructions from a professional?
Last Night I Dreamed that jo came to visit, bringing with her about seven or eight more-or-less interchangeable ten-year-old girls - mostly blonde. They were very well-behaved, filing into the house in a long line and accepting in a polite chorus when I offered them tea.