(Untitled)

[missizzy]

Just got back from seeing OotP, and it looks like my favourite of the books may also become my favourite of the films. After Christopher Columbus made a pair of products, Alfonso Cuaron made a weird piece of art, and poor Mike Newell just tried to make sense of it all, David Yates shrugged all that off and made a good movie.

Comments

[peak_in_darien]

[missizzy]

To me, Rowling reached her best with Pheonix.

Females as male surrogates

[misssylviadrake]

One problem with the non-Harry Potter movies I've seen you go to over the summer (like the fantastic one earlier this summer whose title I forget but it had a girl in the center going through a Dantesque landscape)is the women are presented as males in all but bodies. It's as if you put a female in the center of an action adventure or thriller and pretended she experienced life as a male.

That's Helen Mirren as Jane Tennison, hard-boiled detective.

Only it's not so. I footnote this reply by suggesting what I wrote to Laura applies to the way you often talk about the Harry Potter books.

Sylvia

oh yes, and hi

[uilliam]

1) Excellent commentary, both on the HP films overall, and OOTP specifically.
2) David Yates was tapped for this film specifically because of his ability to maneuver politics into films w/o making them politics films. I highly recommend catching his The Girl in the Café.
3) I believe Daniel Radcliffe finished OOTP before doing Equus, but he definitely matured a lot as an actor. I was rewatching OOTP (found a copy online) last night, and remarking how (from the shakey fuzzy handheld camera hidden in the theater perspective) during the trial he appeared to be a 30ish actor.
4) OOTP is simultaneously my favorite, as well as least favorite, HP book. Most of it is Outstanding, but some seemed Poor to Acceptable - the Dementor attack (unnecessary), the trial (unnecessary) at the ministry of magic (contrived), and Grawp (which was redeemed on film, from Poor to Outstanding.)