(no subject)
I used to knock Stephen King -- having read only a few short stories -- until a friend challenged me to read one of his novels.
So a friend has asked me to watch the Harry Potter films. (I prefer to read first and allow my imagination free reign (sic), but I have so many more crucial works to read, I capitulated.)
The first three were very much "Gee, guys, let's solve the next puzzle!" runabouts and Gee-Whiz-Look-at-Quidditch! graphics nonsense.
That over, the fourth began to delve into the dark plot, and I prefer the dark and complex.
And you know I like it dark and complex.
So Voldemort killed Harry's parents. Not very evil on the evil scale, but he's ramping that up.
The palette of the film is getting darker, inkier, grittily-smokier: Dementors, the flight of Death Eaters -- good Lord, "Death Eaters" is so weenie-sounding -- the looking-at-memory sequences, the Deathly Hallows animation.
Helena Bonham Carter's Bellatrix is superb as in one works up an appetite to see how revenge will finally be served, with the same level of visceral power that one savours when Mifune's Isaburo Sasahara cuts down his oppressors in Kobayashi's Samurai Rebellion.
And it had better be good.
So a friend has asked me to watch the Harry Potter films. (I prefer to read first and allow my imagination free reign (sic), but I have so many more crucial works to read, I capitulated.)
The first three were very much "Gee, guys, let's solve the next puzzle!" runabouts and Gee-Whiz-Look-at-Quidditch! graphics nonsense.
That over, the fourth began to delve into the dark plot, and I prefer the dark and complex.
And you know I like it dark and complex.
So Voldemort killed Harry's parents. Not very evil on the evil scale, but he's ramping that up.
The palette of the film is getting darker, inkier, grittily-smokier: Dementors, the flight of Death Eaters -- good Lord, "Death Eaters" is so weenie-sounding -- the looking-at-memory sequences, the Deathly Hallows animation.
Helena Bonham Carter's Bellatrix is superb as in one works up an appetite to see how revenge will finally be served, with the same level of visceral power that one savours when Mifune's Isaburo Sasahara cuts down his oppressors in Kobayashi's Samurai Rebellion.
And it had better be good.