Wednesday, March 22, 2006
BU's Thoughts While Watching Harry Potter 4: Harry Potter and the Temple of Doom
Thank God, finally a DVD that features no unskippable movie trailers for movies that came out last year or that horribly retarded "Downloading IS BAD: Rated I for Illegal" trailer with the ridiculously atrocious electronic musician's nightmare for a soundtrack. Do people NOT in college seriously devote much of their lives to downloading movies off the Internet? For me, four bucks and the huge television with multiple speakers easily trumps finding a tiny torrent in Yugoslavia so I can watch the same movie in a 320x200 window at my desk.The first twenty minutes of this movie were completely useless and served only to remind people that the studio had some stock Quidditch footage left on the cutting room floor from previous movies. The action was needless, frenetic, and not particularly relevant to the plot, exactly like the first twenty minutes of Moulin Rouge which seemed to be like an MTV music video on acid before calming down into an interesting movie.
Holy cow, these kids are old. It's about time for Draco Malfoy to star in some Van Wilderesque college movie rather than sit in a tree pretending to be a thirteen-year-old. I wonder how many times the director told Ron to slouch so he would look less like Crabbe and Goyle and more like a Weasley.Holy cow, these kids are still bad actors. Ron is the worst, followed by Harry and then Hermione. Hermione is saved on the virtue of being cute, and actually gets better as the movie progresses. Her eyebrows are still 50% of her acting vocabulary though -- I thought they were going to wiggle off her forehead and cha-cha.There seem to be an awful lot of minority wizards in Harry's fourth year at Hogwarts. I think the producers edited out many scenes in the third movie of the minority Muggles protesting on the street corners about how unfair it was that they did not get to do any magic. Their efforts paid off, because there are more indigenous wizards than ever in every scene of Potter 4. Hogwarts: An Equal Opportunity Magic School.Damn this movie is long. It's time to put a Totino's in the oven.
What the heck was up with the entrance of the French chicks? I can't decide if it was horribly campy or fiercely inspired. Plus I thought Fleur was supposed to be enchantingly seductive, and not just pretty.John Williams needs to have a life-altering experience. Every time I heard trumpets, it sounded like the credits for Star Wars was about to roll. Plus, every single wave of the hand or flick of the wrist on screen does not need to have an orchestral gesture to highlight it. Sometimes people just do stuff!I liked the original Dumbledore so much better -- this one seems to get all his authority from having a loud baritone voice (see Sauron) rather than just having a commanding presence (see Gandalf). Also, Dumbledore's office in the movie was much colder and impersonal than I pictured it from the books.Since when do dragons CLIMB on buildings? Flap your wings and burn Harry Potter to a crisp, you dumbass.There is a scene where the students are at a formal ball waltzing, and then suddenly they cut away to a wizard frat rock band playing music sounding suspiciously like Hoobastank. I initially groaned, and then ended up thinking it was kind of cool.Is this movie still running? The box says 2:37? There is absolutely no reason for a movie to be longer than two hours unless it's a serious drama of Oscar-proportions. If the story doesn't lend itself to the shorter frame of a movie, either rewrite the story, split it into parts, or realize, "Hey, maybe this shouldn't be a movie!".I like this movie now but I'm so tired of sitting still. That Totino's pizza was good though. I wish this movie were more ADHD-friendly.There were lots of characters that had screen time only because they were in the books (Rita Skeeter? What was the point?). Most of them could have been cut or relegated to the multiple crowd shots with student extras peering out windows or cheering. Were the Weasley twins girls or boys?
If you've never seen it, you should watch the SNL parody of Hermione's boobies: 
.Overall, a pretty good movie if you're a book fan and can fill in all the story holes from memory, but not a lot to offer otherwise. I didn't like it much in the beginning but it grew on me as it went on. Not quite as good as the previous movie.And on. And on. And on.Happy Birthday Aaron Ulm and Jen Graves!
New LOST tonight!
Tax rebel sends threatened gnomes into hiding Chef gets a South Park send-off tonight Setting good habits from an early age
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