We went to see the new Harry Potter movie last night. I liked it a lot. Oddly, I liked it as in, “I like this work of cinema,” not “Oh yes! More cheese in a genre that I like!”
The acting (by the adults) was superb. Snape’s relish at the opportunity to give Harry some private, nighttime lessons in resisting mind invasion was suitably disturbing … especially placing it back to back with the straight up reverse-emo torture of detention. The story was dark and rich, and it was well adapted to the screen. Little touches like physically isolating Harry in a corner of most of the frames built up the characters as much as anything the actors did. The director managed to reveal lots of important plot points just by where people were standing and who they chose to sit next to … which beats the pants off of hokey exposition any day. He also clearly edited it down from “way too long” to “acceptably long.” This meant leaving out lots of opportunities for CG quiddich … which is fine by me. He also removed a lot of extended dialogue that I liked in the book .. and replaced it with good staging. Again – this is what adapting a book to the screen is all about.
Oh yeah, and the fight at the end between Voldemort and Dumbledore (my favorite scene in the whole series so far) was everything I had hoped. There were some big fancy spells, but mostly it was just a magical arm-wrestling match. The sparks thrown off by the main event were enough to endanger Harry’s life, and the ground under the point where the magical beams met (Ghostbusters reference from the geek crowd in 3 … 2 …) was cracking and splitting from the intensity of the collision. That was a nice touch.
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