Silver screen Sunday

[sigma7]

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince bothers me. I haven't read the book -- really, none of the books save for the finalé -- but still, I got the idea that I was watching half of a really good movie. Even in a three-hour movie, how do you walk out wanting more? And worse, how do you walk out wanting less of the plot and more of the characters milling about in their natural environment? Weird, isn't it? There was no sense of wonder or intrigue in the plot, really, and maybe just a little sense of danger, heightened by one of the scenes (I understand) shoehorned in, not even in the original text. I don't know if Rowling or Yates fails here -- I'm putting more probability in the latter, though. Of all the scenes to omit, though, the end? Where's the closure, the curtain call for one of the mythology's iconic characters? Baffling. But by all means, let's see more Slughorn dinner parties. (Broadbent does a great job, even if I find his scenes a bit repetitive.) Maybe it's just me, but I walked out more than a little bit disappointed, despite the Hedwig content.

Speaking of disappointment, which sticks in your craw more: the idiot who brings his hyperactive and restless three-year-old to the movie, the child asking constant questions of the film's narrative in his outdoor voice and proceeds to run up and down the theater aisles when he gets restless -- or the idiot adult who, whenever he hears a funny line, while laughing, repeats what he thought he found funny to his companion? At least there was no instance of the obnoxious loud-talking frat boy with cell phone; thank God for summer matinees.

Upon reflection, I think I like Shaolin Soccer more than Kung Fu Hustle for just one reason: pacing. Soccer builds gradually, dialing up the, well, cinematic aspects slowly until reaching its peak in the film's climatic showdown with the Evil Team. I'm not sure Hustle has the same pace -- if Soccer dials up from 0 to 11, Hustle hits 11 at least an hour in, and keeps the throttle flooded for the rest of the film. And both films are fun -- it's just that Hustle's narrative arc doesn't keep pace with its audacity, and maybe that's what throws me off about it. Not that either film's worth missing -- they're live-action cartoons in the best way, ambitious and insane, and they know what they are and revel in it. Time well-spent.

Comments

[patchsassy.livejournal.com]

This was the best Potter yet, in my opinion. Was I annoyed by the fact that the filmmakers didn't want to overshadow the epic final battle, so they cut this battle and added an attack on the Burrow for no apparent reason except to make the watchers know the danger they all face? Yes.

Was I disappointed in the development of characterization, especially in the younger kids who change from movie to movie? Yes.

Was I really annoyed with the fact that they basically cut most of the information that Dumbledore gave Harry about what he's going to have to do to off Voldemort? Very much so.

However, I think it was the best dialogue for the movies thus far, gave a good sense of what was going on in the wizarding world without spending too much time on the gloom and doom and was hilariously funny at times.

I liked it, but I still had problems with it. However, I had fewer problems with this one than most of the other ones. I think the series as a whole would have been better if they had hired one director and held him to doing the entire series. There's a reason why the Lord of the Rings movies (and I'm sure the Hobbit will be as well) are so much superior to the HP movies - because Peter Jackson had a vision and didn't change everything around every movie.

[sigma7.livejournal.com]

I think you're absolutely right in terms of where the film's strengths lie, and that's almost counter-productive -- the plot becomes a distraction from the meat of the movie, these actors really making the characters their own. I remember being very uncertain about the plan to split Deathly Hallows into two films, but they should've split Prince as well...I don't think the films sustains its narrative enough in its current incarnation. Maybe that can change in the DVD release, but I don't think so -- I'm afraid that there's just too much going on.

But for me the fascinating thing is that we're going to get to the end and we're going to have eight films by different directors and, with only one prominent exception, the same cast all the way through. That's a continuity unprecedented in cinema and only rivaled in much earlier days of film-making -- I don't think we'll ever see its like again.