Thoughts on "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part the first"

Happy Cyber-Monday everyone! (Fffft-hahahahaha!!! [There is a pregnant pause.] Yeah, so Zazzle's has had some really good deals this weekend so if you want to buy a T-shirt...)

I just saw "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part One" over the holiday weekend, and I rapidly developed a... I mean, I got to experience first hand "Babbletrish and the Head Cold from Hell" the morning after. I apologize if this review is a little incoherent.

Well, it's just like the book.

No, I really mean that. "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part One" is darn near EXACTLY the movie I saw in my imagination as I was reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows on that lovely summer night, a few years ago.

I mean this for good and for ill. It says a lot that the kinds of changes I noticed were things like, "But Nagini's a Gaboon Viper, not an Anaconda!" and, "Wait, was Dobby in this scene?"

The mildest of spoilers: Basically, what you are going to see in this movie is Harry and Ron and Hemione's Bogus Camping Journey. You are going to see ALL of it. The fact that the Trio spend a lot of the book mucking around in the forest avoiding villains, fretting over where the horcruxes and Hallows are, and (to be honest, stupidly) taking turns wearing the Potterverse equivalent of the One Ring was a frequent criticism of the novel. Thing is, this is the kind of thing that works well in writing; you get to spend a lot of time in each character's head, and it builds the tension, raising the stakes so that the final conflict is that much more of an emotional payoff. But film, as it has been said so often, is a brutally literal medium. So what we see is three kids in the woods being emo at each-other.

But I know, from the book, that there's a bunch of exciting stuff to come. Other readers will as well. But what of the people who are only following the film series? From the reviews I have heard and read, they aren't very happy with "Part One"at all. Generally, I agree with them that I'd have been much, much happier with one really long movie. It should be pointed out that most of the most interesting scenes in the trailer are evidently from "Part 2".

On that note, I had been jokingly comparing "Deathly Hallows" parts one and two to "Matrix Reloaded" and "Revolutions", when it was announced that "Hallows" would be split into two films. But now I think my comparison is dead-on. Luckily, we were in a theater full of fans for both "Reloaded" and "Hallows", so I wasn't overhearing people asking, "what's going on?" "Who's that character?" "What did that important-looking guy say when I asked who that character was?"

I bring this up because, like the "Matrix" movies, "Hallows" does not waste one millisecond explaining the situation so far. This is not a movie to watch if you are merely curious about the Harry Potter phenomenon. New viewers will be completely and utterly locked out. If you never saw any of the other movies or read the books, too bad for you.

Now, honestly, I admire this kind of thing usually. But I know a lot of people are going to be very upset about it. Heck, there were times when I felt locked out myself! (I know I'm probably going to remember later, but couldn't they spare a quick line of dialogue to explain the piece of magic mirror Harry keeps around and the character whose face appears in it?)

The film ends so abruptly that I feel like I can't even rightly form an opinion of it until I can watch both halves together (absolutely the way to go if you have never watched the full "Matrix' trilogy, by the way). All in all, it is a very odd moviegoing experience indeed, especially since, for what it is, I enjoyed myself a lot. The Imax is gorgeous, the digital projection is phenomenal, and there's an animated sequence within the film that is absolutely brilliant and maybe the single best scene in any of the "Harry Potter" films.

An important word of warning for parents: If you take a very young child to see this instead of, say, "Tangled", you are a bad parent. The "Harry Potter" series effectively stopped being kid's films at the end of "Goblet of Fire". Readers: The Bathilda Bagshot scene is in the movie. I'm surprised too; I'd have bet that'd be the first thing to be cut. Everyone else: Errr... without spoiling things, there's a scene that will send herpetophobes into therapy for years. Also, there's a scene where two main characters make out in the nude (it's a hallucination brought on by an evil spirit but still...), a few naughty words, and a puppy dies in the end. OK, the last thing doesn't literally happen, but what does happen is close. No, this is not a movie you want to bring little kids to.

----

Sketch of the day! In honor of Leslie Nielsen, who was in some of the funniest movies ever made and who will be missed by multiple generations of fans, I give you kitties!

Four Weirder Nutcracker Films

This year's Obligatory Thanksgiving Weekend Holiday Film is something called "Nutcracker 3D". I first heard about it via my Holiday Movie Preview issue of Entertainment Weekly, and I assumed that it was going to be essentially exactly what it sounded like: a taping of the Nutcracker ballet but in (sigh) THREE-EFFIN'-D!!!

How wrong I was.



Gaze upon what "Alice in Wonderland" hath wrought, and shudder when you realize we are going to see more - a lot more - of these. (Nightmare Fuel warning, depending on whether it's creepy wooden doll-puppets or creepy made-up animal-people that scare you. Also, people of a certain age will have horrible Large Marge flashbacks.)

Now, at first, I was going to be all like, "This holiday season, give your family nightmares!" But then I thought about it and realized that this isn't the first Nightmare Fuel-errific film adaptation of E.T.A. Hoffman's The Nutcracker, nor is it the strangest.

Let's get the Nightmare Fuel out of the way. Back in the 1980's, the Pacific Northwest Ballet allowed our old friend Maurice Sendak to put his own spin on the Nutcracker ballet. The result was filmed by Carroll Ballard (better known for outdoorsy epics like "The Black Stallion" and "Never Cry Wolf"), and released to theaters as "Nutcracker: The Motion Picture". Now, for those of you who thought "Where the Wild Things Are" was too psychological and/or weird for children, I invite you to enjoy the most normal scene from "Nutcracker". (Why did you turn Uncle Drosselmeier into a creepy uncle, Maurice? Why? )

On the surface, Mark Morris' "The Hard Nut" seems like it would be stranger than Maurice Sendak's version -- but it turns out it's actually one of the better adaptations of Hoffman's original, printed-page Nutcracker. It's still very weird; check out Charles Burns' character designs. After all this, "The Nutcracker Prince" is going to look really dull. Ah well. Now, I wanted to finish this post with something special, but sadly all footage of one particular "Nutcracker" adaptation has been pulled from the internet (except for this one Spanish scene and this one English scene. Go figure.) It's a version that is available on DVD, even though it's very obscure, and for whatever reason I loved it as a child. It's "The Care Bears Nutcracker Suite". And yeah, it's weirder than you'd expect. ---- Sketch of the Day! Got something ambitious planned for Thanksgiving morning's post. We'll just have to see if I can pull it off...

So, let's talk about that "Fantastic Mr. Fox" trailer.

For those who have not seen it:



My quick thoughts:

1) Yay stop-motion!!!
I like how we're seeing more and more stop-motion these days. Seems that many animated films are avoiding the whole "hand-drawn vs. CGI" debate (which, in case I haven't mentioned it yet, is stupid; especially when it is erroneously called "2D vs. 3D") by taking a third option. So far, they've inadvertently proved that normal people (by which I mean people who are not themselves animators or animation fans) don't care what kind of animation you use as long as the characters are interesting and the story doesn't suck.
And I like how the animation in this movie looks a lot like Ray Harryhausen's stop-motion (go add "Jason and the Argonauts" to your queue if you don't know who Harryhausen is). It's hard to explain; I'm old-fashioned and I really like old-school animation techniques, especially their low-tech hallmarks. (And I'd love to do stop-motion animation myself; sadly God did not see fit to bless me with the 3D design talent, but that is a tale of woe for another day.) The fur on the Furries is messed-up slightly in each frame and it looks all the more awesome for that.
What I'd really love to see at this point is a big, mainstream summer action movie done in live-action/stop-motion a la Harryhausen. (A few years ago, there was a rumor of a "Sinbad" movie with animation by Harryhausen himself... but... yeah...)

2) With all this in mind, however, it makes me very, very sad to see many comments already online to the effect of, "NOT ANOTHER CGI AMINAL MOOVEE!!! >:( "
Sometimes, I hate people.

3) Open letter to people in charge of making trailers for animated movies: Unless, say, George Clooney sculpted the little wire skeletons or manned the camera or sewed the intricate little costumes or, you know, animated the movie himself, he has no business being listed in the credits. (More of my thoughts on the "Will Smith is a fish and he quotes old movie lines LOL" school of animated film voice casting are here.)

My thoughts on Comicon are coming later.

On a much, much happier note, after quite a long time in development limbo, we're finally getting Spike Jones' "Where the Wild Things Are" film. And if the "Labyrinth"-ish trailer is any indication, we get to look forward to...
...well, basically what a Spike Jones adaptation of a psychologically dense Maurice Sendak picture book should look like. It's not news by now that book adaptations trigger my "prepare to hate it" response, but this looks like it'll be amazing.
By the way, as an illustrator who wrote a thesis on Sendak and his art, it amuses me to no end that the studio executives were having such a hard time with... um, issues that were in the book (and apparently bothering nobody -- but it's a movie now so we can panic now!) for the past forty-six years.😒

(See also the uproar over: "Euw the big blue guy's naked!" "OMG, there's like fifty different endings why didn't the just pick one?" "The Martians are killed by germs? That's stupid! You're stupid!" And on and on. You wonder, sometimes, if people even know what a book *is*.)

Addendum: Read this interview and prepare to be twice as excited. We're finally getting a new children's film that is about something.

St. Patrick's Day -and- "Wait, what did she mean, 'Poor Deadpool'?"

Happy Stereotype Enforcement Day! I can't outdo Cap'n Wacky or The Worst Cartoons Ever, though I do have relevant reviews at Nessie's Realm here and here.

Now the points I was trying to make in that rambling, incoherent Watchmen post last week were simply these:

* - Reading is really, really important to me. The film adaptations of the books (not to mention other media) I love the most have, in the past, been disappointing at best and terrible at worst. Therefore, any new adaptation of something I love I will meet with apprehension.

* - By far, the worst adaptations are the ones that fail spectacularly in understanding what I loved about the original.

That last bit is important. It's the reason why I said, "Poor Deadpool" earlier.
It's because this is happening. (Lots of swearing but you can't blame him.)
Now, having never read any comics where Deadpool is involved, I'm not so emotionally invested. But I do know that he is a popular character, he's very funny, and he is the favorite character of a significant number of people. So, simple question: Why in the world would you even bother using a fan-favorite character if you're just going to change everything about him?

The obligatory "ZOMG they actually made a _Watchmen_ movie and it actually came out within our lifetimes!?!" Post.

Happy Chuck Norris Day! As usual, art first. As always, click for the big version. This is Viserion from the "Song of Ice and Fire and Please Finish The Last Book Before my Dad Goes Bananas K Thnx" -um- trilogy. Meaning, of course, there's four of them. Like the earlier painting of Safira, he begs the question, I know this is a portrait of someone else's character, but is it still called fanart if (to my Dad's dismay incidentally) you tried to read the books and didn't like them?
Never mind that now. I really like the flatter look here. It's different.

Here Be Vague Spoilers! Also, rambling. Lots and lots of rambling.

Well.
I haven't seen the movie yet. Not at the time of writing anyway (last Friday). I've heard a lot of word-of-mouth of course. You probably have too, even if you never heard of the book before and really don't care one way or the other. It's been pretty inescapable.
And the thing is, honestly, I think I'd rather just read The Watchmen again. This'd be the fifth time, I think. I am sure there are still details I've missed on the previous go-rounds. This book is dense and intense and it still boggles me that a film actually exists now. (All that said, if my friends wanted to get a group together and see the movie, I wouldn't say "No".)
But the fact that I really have a craving to read the book actually worries me. I had that feeling before. I felt it strongest a couple of years ago when the "Golden Compass" movie came out. I went into the attic and read the whole trilogy in a couple of days - still one of the most intense reading experiences I've ever had. Thus, according to the reviews, I skipped seeing that most dreaded of film adaptations: the kind where the filmmakers just completely fail to get the book.
I realize that I'm starting to sound like One Of Those. The kind of fan that will b*tch about even the slightest little changes. ("Wahhh Wolverine is too tall WTF!") I'm not really One Of Those (usually), it's just that reading is SO important to me. Little changes irk me ("Prisoner of Azkaban" is easily the best "Harry Potter" movie, but would it have killed them to put in a quick line of dialogue to explain the significance of the deer?) But I can deal. It's big, "they just didn't get it" changes that stoke my Nerd Rage.
Let me put it this way: The fact that the long in development limbo "Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy" film wound up entering this world as a fun-for-the-whole-family Disney movie still makes me deeply sad in a way that's damn hard to put into words.
Mind you this applies mostly to movies where I read the book first. "Secret of N.I.M.H." is my favorite movie. (Um, I'm not One Of Those either. Ok, all my characters are animals, so technically I am -- but I'm not into the weird stuff!) It's the movie that made me want to learn how to draw and animate. But is it a good adaptation of Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of N.I.M.H.? Hell no! Likewise, Tim Burton's "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" is a better, closer adaptation of Roald "Most Impossibly Hard Name to Have to Try and Spell" Dahl's original, printed page Charlie -- but "Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" is a much better movie.
Really, my feelings on book-to-film adaptations are very ambiguous, even contradictory. But generally, if you alter the story ("Let's turn the whole epic 'Pheonix Saga' into a fourty minute long subplot in an already crammed movie!") or the characters (poor Deadpool) to the point where it's clear you didn't understand the source material at all, I will probably wind up hating your adaptation.

Which brings us, finally, to Squidgate.

The rumor making the rounds in Internet-land for the past few months is that the producers of the "Watchmen" movie have changed the ending. Somehow. Nobody seems to agree how. But it's different.
Note that the book's ending was one of the very few "shocking twist" endings that actually shocked me. You could have slapped me. It's heartbreaking and astonishing and ballsy and... damn. I'm not going to describe it. I don't want to ruin it for you. Suffice it to say, however, it is a horrifying atrocity in which a squid is involved (sort of).
Now I was going to go on an even longer ramble on how, if one of the rumored changes is true, it would completely alter the tone of the story at large. And, worse yet, it would also be a sad reminder of -really- how little executives think of us stupid viewers and what we can handle seeing onscreen. In a fantastic fiction film set in an alternate history crawling with costumed heroes and this one guy who can bend the forces of nature to his will. Yeah. >:(
This website beat me to it.
Wah. <:( Man, that was probably the worst post I've made so far. But I'd be remiss if I didn't include this perfect parody:

Hey I forgot Feederwatch Friday last week. As per usual, nothing interesting happened... but the birds are starting to sing...