Crazy cat lady; Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince; Lost Boys: The Tribe
First, the matter of Friday's. I ended up doing nothing, and received in the mail $32 worth of coupons. Very nice. This is why I complain (with reason): most of the time you just get a letter of apology and meaningless ass-kissing. But sometimes you get a company that puts its money where its mouth is.
~*~
Neighbor troubles again, and this time I don't mean Tracey. The woman for whom I house-sat last year, the crazy one with five cats and highly dubious health standards in her home? She now has a sixth cat, a shy little girl, midnight black. That isn't the problem. The problem is she for god knows what reason is setting her sights on a puppy.
Her place is about the same size as ours. This is too many animals for a place that small. Who am I to point fingers? Well, the two ferrets in size and activity level equal just about one young cat. And one of our cats has three feet in the grave and essentially sleeps all day and night. Which just leaves the very manageable Kitten and the bird, who hangs out on the top of her cage. Six cats and a puppy is CRAZY TALK.
Again, really none of my business. Except she's a teacher with only about two weeks of vacation left to train this animal. And she asked me, because I work from home, if I would mind stopping in once a day to walk the puppy and play with it for 15 minutes. Of course I mind -- between working the hospital on the weekends and Tracey's fucking beasts, frankly I wouldn't mind never seeing another dog again as long as I live (except Babyface the greyhound. And Navi the I don't know what she is. And of course Beowulf).
But I didn't say that to her. I answered with a cheerful "Sure, no problem!" but I could feel my face telling a different story. Hopefully she read that story, or saw something shiny that took her mind off it, because it's been over a week and I haven't heard any more about it. It's enough to leave me in dread every time the doorbell rings though.
~*~
I finally saw Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Don't ever again say that I lack patience. Actually I was determined to see it in IMAX 3D, before realizing that meant waiting until July 29th. I can be patient, but I'm not SUPERHUMAN.
Especially considering how everyone in my HP circle was virtually fainting dead away at how Snape-centric the movie was. This surprised me -- I mean, Snape IS the Half-Blood Prince (see inside for my view on spoilers for this film), but I fully expected Warner Bros to gloss over this fact entirely in their ongoing campaign to ignore Rickman as long as possible.
So I compromised between going opening day and waiting until the 29th, and went Monday morning. Not a clever enough plan, it turns out, to avoid every asshole, but it could have been worse.
It started off quite promisingly, with Harry and Dumbledore's visit to re-enlist Slughorn, and then a very thrilling Death Eater attack on London's Wobbly Bridge (which I have crossed!)
Which brings me to my first positive remark on the movie: It seemed to try the hardest to incorporate as much of the book as possible while keeping the pace moving as steadily as possible. I should give up worrying about how well it translates to the non-faithful since I'll never really know (until I go to IMAX with my friend, the one who in the last film developed the unshakeable belief that Luna was Draco's sister and Mr. Weasley had died in Goblet of Fire. And who, incidentally, when I told her I couldn't wait for IMAX because of all the Snape rumors, said "Is Snape the one with long black hair?" *sob*).
There was certainly a LOT more Snape than normal. Before now I think his biggest role was probably the previous, Order of the Phoenix.
Which brings me to my first complaint: For the love of Pete. They can remove Ralph Fiennes' nose completely and give him snake nostrils. Why can't Snape have greasy hair? It seems to get poofier and more feathered and supermodel-like in every movie. It's been awhile since I've read an actual HP book, but I think the one defining trait they all agree on is that Snape is GREASY.
And my second complaint: There was more Snape in this movie than all others, but I think people who claimed he "owned" it were confusing him with Jim Broadbent (Slughorn). Who don't get me wrong did a really fabulous job of bringing the character to life -- just the right mix of humor and tragedy and terror. But he'll never be Rickman, will he?
A third complaint: Harry meets Slughorn, who was a big fan of the Black brothers in school. Mostly Regulus, but he would've liked to complete the set with Sirius. "Did you know Sirius? He just died a few weeks ago," Slughorn asks him. Which puts this movie almost immediately after the last. Then how do you explain Ron Weasley being a foot taller???
Fenrir Greyback in the book is the most vicious werewolf in the wizarding world, with a predilection for eating babies. In the movie he's just a creepy-looking Death Eater that keeps popping up but never actually does anything.
I know, I'm nitpicking. But you know how you hear about all the fans they're worried about making happy? I'm one of them.
At any rate. This movie isn't without humor, but is easily the darkest of the series. The majority of the action surrounds the origins of Voldemort, the suspicious goings-on of Draco Malfoy, and Ron's sudden irresistibility to all the ladies. Which I won't lie, is lingered on enough to become quite tiresome.
Then there's Ginny's undisguised lust for Harry (and a bit of it back on his part). I hated this in the books (what do you expect? I think he belongs with Snape), but she looks at him like she wants to eat him alive. And the fact that she's about a half-inch taller? Kind of yummy.
Ron's new playboy persona means lots of angst for Hermione, which she does pretty well actually.
But generally speaking, the kids seem to be trying very hard to be very mature, and very serious, and hence very restrained and sort of emotionless.
Which brings me to by far my biggest complaint with the movie. And I hate to say it, but it's with Snape.
Snape kills Dumbledore (spoiler!! Look. If this is news to you four years after the book was published, you can't care that much about it. Honestly). Snape kills Dumbledore with a (in my opinion) rather half-hearted Avada Kedavra. As Bellatrix shrieked in the last film, "You have to mean it!"
Then, the climactic final scene. Snape flees Hogwarts with Draco (except when I say "flees" I mean "strolls leisurely away without a care in the world") and Harry chases, trying to engage in battle. Snape fends him off without doing any actual damage. Harry screams, "Fight back, you coward!" which seems to be the perfect set-up for the next logical line.
In the book, Snape screams back "DON'T CALL ME COWARD!!" Yes, it's even in all caps in the book. Also in the book, "his face was suddenly demented, inhuman, as if he was in as much pain as the yelping, howling dog stuck in the burning house behind them." (American edition, pg 604)
If you read Deathly Hallows and look back, this line gains an extra layer of poignancy and meaning that instantly fleshes Snape's character into three dimensions.
So it's inexplicable and a bit unforgivable to me that they chose to omit it entirely. No, instead Snape stalks leisurely over to Harry, mutters "How dare you use my own spells against me? I am the Half-Blood Prince" and then disappears. What? Are you KIDDING me? Where was JK Rowling during this fiasco? (it's the considered opinion of myself and kavieshana that she's too busy counting her millions of pounds to care about the movies anymore). The movie is 2-1/2 hours long. We couldn't spare 15 seconds to squeeze this one line in?
Then my final complaint is Dumbledore's death. No funeral, and really more time spent mourning Aragog the acromantula than Albus. I have no words.
And what became of Snape's line in the trailer "It's. Over."? The one that got us all excited (because the trailers were maddeningly stingy with Snape scenes)? Are they saving it for the next one?
It isn't all bad. I loved the darkness and moodiness. I loved all the Snape (although the makeup department is becoming hard-pressed to remove those years around the eyes). I loved the Inferi, who looked like really bad Gollum knock-offs in the trailer but were properly horrifying in the scene. I loved the Sectumsempra scene (although in the book Snape sings to Draco to heal him). I loved Tonks' sassy haircut. I even liked (not loved) Draco for the first time ever.
All I can say is, never has a movie series talked about a villain at such great length and shown him so little. Thank god I'm not a Ralph Fiennes fan (but his nephew Hero played a pretty spot-on young Tom Riddle).
The ending was a good setup to the final two films. It reminded me strongly of the end of Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring, sort of a "This was all well and good but we really need to start thinking about the next movie."
Despite going to a 10:30 a.m. showing (which still, with the help of 20 bloody minutes of trailers, consumed most of the day), I couldn't escape the assholes.
15 people in the theater, and a woman and her 20-something daughter (?) sat two seats away from me. Which wasn't a problem until we had barely arrived at Hogwarts and she flipped her phone open. She was trying to be discreet about it, shielding it in her purse, but that wasn't doing much to protect me from it.
I gamely gave her the few beats needed to check the time (but again, the movie had barely begun. If your schedule is this tight, what are you doing in a movie theater??) When she appeared to start scrolling through menus, etc. (just like the asshole in X-Men: Wolverine) I asked nicely, "Could you please not do that?" When she ignored me, I said louder, "You're being really rude."
At this her companion popped up on the other side of her and began whispering something angrily at me. I couldn't hear what she was saying, but I really wonder what argument she came up with that she thought would make me say, "Sorry, my bad, don't let the movie interrupt you checking your Facebook." I put up with the mouth breathing. I put up with the constant pawing at your popcorn. Please, lady, give me just one tiny fucking break.
I'm getting to the point where I can see a future of avoiding movie theaters entirely. The stress of expectantly waiting for my fellow audience to become bored and restless is starting to outweigh any actual enjoyment of the movie. It makes me a little sad, because everyone should know by now that movies are my biggest joy in life. But the only solution that I can think of is to confiscate all phones at the door, and I don't see THAT going over well with everyone else.
Not that renting a movie at home is any guarantee of pleasure. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Lost Boys: The Tribe: It's immediately apparent this isn't your 80's era Lost Boys. There had to be 15 F-bombs in the first minute of dialogue. These vamps do drugs and skateboard and play violent PS3 games on their big screen plasma TV.
Other than that, not too much has changed. There's a fat, half-naked saxophone player gyrating on the street corner that might be the same guy from the original. The head vamp is played by Kiefer's half-brother Angus. Corey Feldman fortunately still doesn't have much of a career, hence available (there are many references to "losing family to the dark side" to explain the absence of his brother).
Just like in S. Darko, this movie just seems to be the original with a cheap, slightly botched facelift. In this one the hero's sister is seduced into Turning (tricked by drinking out of a flask -- when will people learn not to imbibe unknown substances out of concealed bottles from strangers??) and he has to enlist Edgar Frog to get her back. Edgar even repeats, verbatim, his line (coincidentally my favorite from the original) "Some vamps yell and scream, some go quietly. Some explode, some implode. But ALL will try to take you with them." Except he rattles it off quickly, almost like he's embarrassed to have to say it again.
The vamps are slick young daredevils who taunt local police -- and they seem to have been redesigned by fans of 30 Days of Night. There's a lot more gore and sex, but otherwise the plot seems identical. Including the denouement with brother and sister padding exhaustedly to the fridge for a cold one after their ordeal, only to have their aunt fling open the door for the big twist: you think she's going to reveal that she's fully aware of the vampire subculture, but actually she chastises the kids for doing drugs. Hah! Gotcha!
There's one moment when the aunt suggests watching a rented DVD of The Goonies, a little wink to the Feldman fans. Another is the sudden appearance of Corey Haim reprising his role after the credits, returning as a vamp. I probably wouldn't have even recognized him if I hadn't seen his name in the credits and said, "Corey Haim? Where the hell was Corey Haim?"
Not as terrible as you'd expect. Not as good as you'd hope. Probably better than the Lost Boys 3 that's threatened on IMDb.
~*~
Neighbor troubles again, and this time I don't mean Tracey. The woman for whom I house-sat last year, the crazy one with five cats and highly dubious health standards in her home? She now has a sixth cat, a shy little girl, midnight black. That isn't the problem. The problem is she for god knows what reason is setting her sights on a puppy.
Her place is about the same size as ours. This is too many animals for a place that small. Who am I to point fingers? Well, the two ferrets in size and activity level equal just about one young cat. And one of our cats has three feet in the grave and essentially sleeps all day and night. Which just leaves the very manageable Kitten and the bird, who hangs out on the top of her cage. Six cats and a puppy is CRAZY TALK.
Again, really none of my business. Except she's a teacher with only about two weeks of vacation left to train this animal. And she asked me, because I work from home, if I would mind stopping in once a day to walk the puppy and play with it for 15 minutes. Of course I mind -- between working the hospital on the weekends and Tracey's fucking beasts, frankly I wouldn't mind never seeing another dog again as long as I live (except Babyface the greyhound. And Navi the I don't know what she is. And of course Beowulf).
But I didn't say that to her. I answered with a cheerful "Sure, no problem!" but I could feel my face telling a different story. Hopefully she read that story, or saw something shiny that took her mind off it, because it's been over a week and I haven't heard any more about it. It's enough to leave me in dread every time the doorbell rings though.
~*~
I finally saw Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Don't ever again say that I lack patience. Actually I was determined to see it in IMAX 3D, before realizing that meant waiting until July 29th. I can be patient, but I'm not SUPERHUMAN.
Especially considering how everyone in my HP circle was virtually fainting dead away at how Snape-centric the movie was. This surprised me -- I mean, Snape IS the Half-Blood Prince (see inside for my view on spoilers for this film), but I fully expected Warner Bros to gloss over this fact entirely in their ongoing campaign to ignore Rickman as long as possible.
So I compromised between going opening day and waiting until the 29th, and went Monday morning. Not a clever enough plan, it turns out, to avoid every asshole, but it could have been worse.
It started off quite promisingly, with Harry and Dumbledore's visit to re-enlist Slughorn, and then a very thrilling Death Eater attack on London's Wobbly Bridge (which I have crossed!)
Which brings me to my first positive remark on the movie: It seemed to try the hardest to incorporate as much of the book as possible while keeping the pace moving as steadily as possible. I should give up worrying about how well it translates to the non-faithful since I'll never really know (until I go to IMAX with my friend, the one who in the last film developed the unshakeable belief that Luna was Draco's sister and Mr. Weasley had died in Goblet of Fire. And who, incidentally, when I told her I couldn't wait for IMAX because of all the Snape rumors, said "Is Snape the one with long black hair?" *sob*).
There was certainly a LOT more Snape than normal. Before now I think his biggest role was probably the previous, Order of the Phoenix.
Which brings me to my first complaint: For the love of Pete. They can remove Ralph Fiennes' nose completely and give him snake nostrils. Why can't Snape have greasy hair? It seems to get poofier and more feathered and supermodel-like in every movie. It's been awhile since I've read an actual HP book, but I think the one defining trait they all agree on is that Snape is GREASY.
And my second complaint: There was more Snape in this movie than all others, but I think people who claimed he "owned" it were confusing him with Jim Broadbent (Slughorn). Who don't get me wrong did a really fabulous job of bringing the character to life -- just the right mix of humor and tragedy and terror. But he'll never be Rickman, will he?
A third complaint: Harry meets Slughorn, who was a big fan of the Black brothers in school. Mostly Regulus, but he would've liked to complete the set with Sirius. "Did you know Sirius? He just died a few weeks ago," Slughorn asks him. Which puts this movie almost immediately after the last. Then how do you explain Ron Weasley being a foot taller???
Fenrir Greyback in the book is the most vicious werewolf in the wizarding world, with a predilection for eating babies. In the movie he's just a creepy-looking Death Eater that keeps popping up but never actually does anything.
I know, I'm nitpicking. But you know how you hear about all the fans they're worried about making happy? I'm one of them.
At any rate. This movie isn't without humor, but is easily the darkest of the series. The majority of the action surrounds the origins of Voldemort, the suspicious goings-on of Draco Malfoy, and Ron's sudden irresistibility to all the ladies. Which I won't lie, is lingered on enough to become quite tiresome.
Then there's Ginny's undisguised lust for Harry (and a bit of it back on his part). I hated this in the books (what do you expect? I think he belongs with Snape), but she looks at him like she wants to eat him alive. And the fact that she's about a half-inch taller? Kind of yummy.
Ron's new playboy persona means lots of angst for Hermione, which she does pretty well actually.
But generally speaking, the kids seem to be trying very hard to be very mature, and very serious, and hence very restrained and sort of emotionless.
Which brings me to by far my biggest complaint with the movie. And I hate to say it, but it's with Snape.
Snape kills Dumbledore (spoiler!! Look. If this is news to you four years after the book was published, you can't care that much about it. Honestly). Snape kills Dumbledore with a (in my opinion) rather half-hearted Avada Kedavra. As Bellatrix shrieked in the last film, "You have to mean it!"
Then, the climactic final scene. Snape flees Hogwarts with Draco (except when I say "flees" I mean "strolls leisurely away without a care in the world") and Harry chases, trying to engage in battle. Snape fends him off without doing any actual damage. Harry screams, "Fight back, you coward!" which seems to be the perfect set-up for the next logical line.
In the book, Snape screams back "DON'T CALL ME COWARD!!" Yes, it's even in all caps in the book. Also in the book, "his face was suddenly demented, inhuman, as if he was in as much pain as the yelping, howling dog stuck in the burning house behind them." (American edition, pg 604)
If you read Deathly Hallows and look back, this line gains an extra layer of poignancy and meaning that instantly fleshes Snape's character into three dimensions.
So it's inexplicable and a bit unforgivable to me that they chose to omit it entirely. No, instead Snape stalks leisurely over to Harry, mutters "How dare you use my own spells against me? I am the Half-Blood Prince" and then disappears. What? Are you KIDDING me? Where was JK Rowling during this fiasco? (it's the considered opinion of myself and kavieshana that she's too busy counting her millions of pounds to care about the movies anymore). The movie is 2-1/2 hours long. We couldn't spare 15 seconds to squeeze this one line in?
Then my final complaint is Dumbledore's death. No funeral, and really more time spent mourning Aragog the acromantula than Albus. I have no words.
And what became of Snape's line in the trailer "It's. Over."? The one that got us all excited (because the trailers were maddeningly stingy with Snape scenes)? Are they saving it for the next one?
It isn't all bad. I loved the darkness and moodiness. I loved all the Snape (although the makeup department is becoming hard-pressed to remove those years around the eyes). I loved the Inferi, who looked like really bad Gollum knock-offs in the trailer but were properly horrifying in the scene. I loved the Sectumsempra scene (although in the book Snape sings to Draco to heal him). I loved Tonks' sassy haircut. I even liked (not loved) Draco for the first time ever.
All I can say is, never has a movie series talked about a villain at such great length and shown him so little. Thank god I'm not a Ralph Fiennes fan (but his nephew Hero played a pretty spot-on young Tom Riddle).
The ending was a good setup to the final two films. It reminded me strongly of the end of Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring, sort of a "This was all well and good but we really need to start thinking about the next movie."
Despite going to a 10:30 a.m. showing (which still, with the help of 20 bloody minutes of trailers, consumed most of the day), I couldn't escape the assholes.
15 people in the theater, and a woman and her 20-something daughter (?) sat two seats away from me. Which wasn't a problem until we had barely arrived at Hogwarts and she flipped her phone open. She was trying to be discreet about it, shielding it in her purse, but that wasn't doing much to protect me from it.
I gamely gave her the few beats needed to check the time (but again, the movie had barely begun. If your schedule is this tight, what are you doing in a movie theater??) When she appeared to start scrolling through menus, etc. (just like the asshole in X-Men: Wolverine) I asked nicely, "Could you please not do that?" When she ignored me, I said louder, "You're being really rude."
At this her companion popped up on the other side of her and began whispering something angrily at me. I couldn't hear what she was saying, but I really wonder what argument she came up with that she thought would make me say, "Sorry, my bad, don't let the movie interrupt you checking your Facebook." I put up with the mouth breathing. I put up with the constant pawing at your popcorn. Please, lady, give me just one tiny fucking break.
I'm getting to the point where I can see a future of avoiding movie theaters entirely. The stress of expectantly waiting for my fellow audience to become bored and restless is starting to outweigh any actual enjoyment of the movie. It makes me a little sad, because everyone should know by now that movies are my biggest joy in life. But the only solution that I can think of is to confiscate all phones at the door, and I don't see THAT going over well with everyone else.
Not that renting a movie at home is any guarantee of pleasure. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Lost Boys: The Tribe: It's immediately apparent this isn't your 80's era Lost Boys. There had to be 15 F-bombs in the first minute of dialogue. These vamps do drugs and skateboard and play violent PS3 games on their big screen plasma TV.
Other than that, not too much has changed. There's a fat, half-naked saxophone player gyrating on the street corner that might be the same guy from the original. The head vamp is played by Kiefer's half-brother Angus. Corey Feldman fortunately still doesn't have much of a career, hence available (there are many references to "losing family to the dark side" to explain the absence of his brother).
Just like in S. Darko, this movie just seems to be the original with a cheap, slightly botched facelift. In this one the hero's sister is seduced into Turning (tricked by drinking out of a flask -- when will people learn not to imbibe unknown substances out of concealed bottles from strangers??) and he has to enlist Edgar Frog to get her back. Edgar even repeats, verbatim, his line (coincidentally my favorite from the original) "Some vamps yell and scream, some go quietly. Some explode, some implode. But ALL will try to take you with them." Except he rattles it off quickly, almost like he's embarrassed to have to say it again.
The vamps are slick young daredevils who taunt local police -- and they seem to have been redesigned by fans of 30 Days of Night. There's a lot more gore and sex, but otherwise the plot seems identical. Including the denouement with brother and sister padding exhaustedly to the fridge for a cold one after their ordeal, only to have their aunt fling open the door for the big twist: you think she's going to reveal that she's fully aware of the vampire subculture, but actually she chastises the kids for doing drugs. Hah! Gotcha!
There's one moment when the aunt suggests watching a rented DVD of The Goonies, a little wink to the Feldman fans. Another is the sudden appearance of Corey Haim reprising his role after the credits, returning as a vamp. I probably wouldn't have even recognized him if I hadn't seen his name in the credits and said, "Corey Haim? Where the hell was Corey Haim?"
Not as terrible as you'd expect. Not as good as you'd hope. Probably better than the Lost Boys 3 that's threatened on IMDb.