Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2

Directed by David Yates (2011) Starring: Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson

Getting ready for the final Harry Potter movie involved a lot more preparation than any other screening.  I re-read the seventh book the week before.  By Wednesday it seemed as though everyone was talking about Harry Potter.  That night was nostalgia overload– running around my house trying to put together a Luna costume for a friend’s party, hunting around in my attic for my old Hedwig stuffed owl, the first thing I remember saving up to buy.  Briefly, I remembered how different it was to watch the first movie, four weeks after it had been released.  I also remembered that I bought a Wizard Rock album by the Remus Lupins and listened to it in the car all day long.

I’d never been to a midnight screening before, but from hearsay I was prepared for the lines.  My friend Shannon and I got our round 3D glasses and stood amidst fellow Hogwarts students, Deatheaters, house elves, and already-tired parents.  Sometimes these groups meshed, like the father wearing a handmade Quidditch t-shirt and the slutty high schoolers wandering around with Slytherin green skirts and Bellatrix-styled bustiers.  We sat in the very back, surprisingly stuck between two groups of bros who seemed to have gone along for the hype.

And then, for the actual film.  I tried to describe the experience as much as possible, since I realized this week that part of what made Harry Potter so important was outside of the books and the movies.  All of the cultural zeitgeist effects were evident in how I prepped for the theater, how my friends talked about the movies.  We were the generation who had grown up with Harry Potter, more than any other.  I remember reluctantly picking up the first book when I was ten and quickly becoming addicted.  My interest fell off after the seventh book came out– well, even before that really.  The last movie I saw in theaters was the fifth.  I didn’t even bother to watch the sixth except as an after thought and 7.1 just never happened.  But since this was my childhood, it seemed like I should do it justice and watch it at midnight with my fellow generation-HP friends.

So where was I going with this?  Oh yeah, the film itself.  I’m gonna go ahead and say that the 3D experience was unimpressive.  The movie picks up at Shell Cottage, when Harry makes the important decision to go after the Horcruxes instead of beating Voldemort to the Elder Wand.  It all leads up to the Battle for Hogwarts, where things inevitably come to the end.

This interpretation was fairly strong, although it seemed iffy to break up the movies around Dobby’s death.  The first third or so about breaking into Gringotts was about as weirdly paced as it was in the books when you take into account that in the same day comes the big battle scene.  The film picks up when the Golden Trio are able to interact with some other characters, especially when Neville (Matthew Lewis) walks out of the tunnel in the Hog’s Head.  From then on out it became all of the scenes that had to happen, if adjusted slightly for the cinema.

The best parts were the crowd favorites, of course.  Harry using the Resurrection Stone, Molly shouting “Not my daughter you bitch!” and Neville killing Nagini.  Of course, there were weaker elements that seemed to string these great scenes together.  I will never understand the choice of having McGonagall say “I always wanted to do that spell,” when they’re in the middle of prepping for battle or Voldemort telling the Hogwarts students to come forward and join him.  The scene in the book had a little more impact, since it was Voldemort just taking power, going so far as to destroy the Sorting Hat and outlining his plan for a pure blood Hogwarts.

These are just nitpicks I’ve found in retrospect.  I shouldn’t have read the book again so soon before the movie came out, but it’s also the difference between mediums.  I liked the dreamy quality to Snape’s memories and how wonderfully Alan Rickman acted, but not the fact that they skipped over why Lily stopped associating with Severus.

But well, it’s the end of things.  Shannon kept repeating as we left the theater “Our childhood is over.”  That’s the case, although I wouldn’t think that it was so clear-cut.  With the release of Deathly Hallows Part 2, it is the end of the era of midnight releases and press hype,  but as JK Rowling said: ” Hogwarts will always be there to welcome you home.”

Ponyo

Directed by Hayao Miyazaki (2008) Starring: Noah Lindsey Cyrus, Liam Neeson, Tina Fey, Frankie Jonas

Oh, ouch Netflix Instant only had the dub on Instant Watch.  They really should give options for this sort of thing.  That said, the dubbing here certainly could have been worse.  What I can never understand with studios when doing vocal casting is the weird insistence on using child-actors for acting roles.  That has succeeded maybe once in the history of animation, and that was the Charlie Brown Christmas Special.  I also don’t really understand the need for celebrity casting at all in a film whose marketing is already limited with only select theaters getting it, but WHATEVER DISNEY!  Clearly, you do not have the best decision-making record in Hollywood.

To change gears and shift the focus over to the good things in Ponyo is enormously easy: Studio Ghibli has crafted another little beauty of a film, creating an especially gorgeous underwater world.  Sosuke (Jonas) [SIDEBAR: I'm sooo glad they made sure to pronounce the Japanese names right!] lives in a small seaside community, in a more-or-less self-sufficient house.  When he goes down to the water before school one day, he finds a goldfish and names her Ponyo (Cyrus).  However, by giving her human food and tasting human blood, via a small cut on Sosuke’s hand, Ponyo is able to develop human attributes.  After being re-captured by her father, Fujimoto (Neeson), Ponyo makes a break for it in order to become human, causing catastrophic weather along the coast.

Storywise, it’s certainly not one of Ghibli’s better fare, but since it was described to me as Super Environmentalist, I was pretty surprised to see how little environmentalism played into the plot.  If anything, it was much more subtle and kept in-theme with other products by Ghibli, and it melded nicely with the adaptation of The Little Mermaid fairytale.

It is cuter-than-cute and I was able to write off the weird inexplicable stuff as just that–weird and inexplicable.  Such as when the fish that should be long extinct have resurfaced with the high waters in the second half.  There isn’t really a point to it, besides to show how the waters have begun reclaiming the land.  The animation in those scenes is just so pristine that I didn’t care– leaves on the trees were as visible as the fish floating under them.

The real issue I had with Ponyo was the rushed resolution.  Well, more like all-over pacing issues.  While we’ve got a fairly slow introduction to the characters and the crazy weather inspires a really dramatic car ride, there’s a slow aftermath where not much happens.  They’re on a boat and greet others who are on boats, and it does not seem like the disaster it would be, THEN BAM RESOLUTION!

It’s fun and it’s pretty as hell, but it’s not the best Miyazaki film.

 

The Science of Sleep

Directed by Michel Gondry (2006) Starring: Gael Garcia Bernal, Charlotte Gainsborough, Alain Chabat, Miou-Miou

This was one of those movies that got hyped up a lot when I was in high school, but ended up on my list of Indie Disappointments.  Michel Gondry creates an interesting premise of a young man who gets his dreams and reality confused while he lives in France after his father’s death.

Gael Garcia Bernal plays Stephane in a tri-lingual role, which is impressive in itself, but he’s given pointedly childish material to work with.  While Stephane is stuck with a job he hates and reluctantly falls in love with his neighbor Stephanie (Gainsborough), he is extremely petulant.  His dreams take place in a TV studio, where he’s the host for a cooking or music or talk show.  He’ll venture into the office of his boss or explore the stop-motion animated world, which is at once a cave.

Gondry crafts the unreality of Stephane’s dreaming very well.  Set pieces tend to fold together while the dream logic is paramount, between what the water is made of (cellophane) and how the dream-characters act.  When Stephane begins to act outside of his dreams, such as leaving Stephanie a letter he wrote while asleep, he gets caught in problems.  Stephane is childish in everything: He hates his mother’s boyfriend and his boring coworkers.  He continues to sleep in his childhood bed even though he’s outgrown it.  Most notably, he keeps up the charade of not-being the neighbor of Stephanie, even after she’s found out.

What’s genuine are the scenes where Stephane and Stephanie share their imaginations.  They’re sweet little sets with a flexible reality as the characters come up with brilliant ideas.  However, these ideas never come to fruition, and it’s the fault of both characters.  Stephane won’t make a move, while Stephanie is reluctant to get hurt.

The dream sequences won me over, but they didn’t make up for the thin, character-driven plot in reality.

God is Brazilian

Deus e Brasileiro

Directed By Carlos Diegues (2003) Starring: Antonio Fagundes, Wagner Moura, Paloma Duarte

Taoca (Moura) has dreams that he is being hunted by a loan shark at Heaven’s gate.  One day, as he lays about in his boat, he runs into an old man, claiming to be God (Fagundes).  God is sick of dealing with the mistakes humans make on earth and is looking for a saint in Brazil while he takes a little vacation.  He’s chosen Quinca of the Mules, but the guy is hard to track down, so he enlists Taoca on a journey through the country.  On the way, they meet Mada (Duarte), a virtuous woman who became lost when her mother left for Sao Paulo.

Taoca complains almost the entire time he is with God and God complains back, always harking back to his vacation and finding Quinca.  Taoca is responsible for lying, creating an alias for God as a Professor from Sao Paulo doing research.  Mada initially follows them in order to see where her mother escaped to, but she becomes devoted to the Professor as they make their way further into the interior.

Something I Really Appreciated: The film showed a lot of Brazil, from the tropical island where Taoca lives to deserts, forests, slums, and small towns.  Most films will focus just on one of the big coast cities, usually Rio, so seeing so much of Brazil’s landscape was pretty amazing. God insisted that he couldn’t do miracles without some kind of consequence, which I thought was an interesting spin and also complicated how they got from place to place.  Usually, they would conveniently be able  to earn money through “Magic Tricks”, which through a loophole, aren’t miracles or hitch rides.

While Taoca’s character was mostly annoying, he often had some great insights on the human condition, including his own critique of how God saw the world and humans, which was a nice counter to all of the negative viewpoints that God had.  That said, there was a lot of evil shown in the movie, which was usually pointed out by Mada.  Every character they meet usually has some flaw, whether big or small, but it usually stemmed from their conditions.

The movie is funny and unique with it’s twists on the God Coming to Earth theme, though it is very Catholic-centric, if that’s the sort of thing you worry about in a Religious film, from a Catholic country.  Lord knows, that was one of my biggest concerns.

 

Fairy Tale: A True Story

Directed by Charles Sturridge (1997) Starring: Elizabeth Earl, Florence Hoath, Paul McGann, Phoebe Nicholls,  Harvey Keitel, Peter O’Toole, Bill Nighy

I vaguely remember watching this movie when I was younger, and what stuck with me was: Verdant imagery and a soldier with scars on his face.  I couldn’t even remember the title, just a plot that was about fairies.  However, seeing the cover at a rental shop struck a chord… It was time for a re-watch.

Based on the Cottingley Fairies, Fairy Tale: A True Story is about Elsie Wright (Hoath) and her cousin Frances Griffiths (Earl) and the stir their photographs of fairies created in early 20th century Britain.

The story is structured very well, opening with with dueling scenes of Harry Houdini (Keitel) escaping from a strait-jacket before he meets Arthur Conan Doyle (O’Toole) and a production of Peter Pan.  Later, Frances arrives on a train taking wounded soldiers back home where she charms a Corporal with injuries to his face.  Her cousin’s family had recently experienced the death of their son, but he had left for Elsie a treasure trove of knowledge on fairies.  The mother, more in mourning than the rest of the family, convinces the girls to take the camera out to show her proof and give her hope.

These photographs ended up in the hands of Edward Gardener (Nighy), a spiritualist who gives lectures on the topics of fairies and angels.  He shows them to Conan Doyle, who is so attracted by the idea of the photographs that he writes an article about it for “The Strand”.

The movie does a lot of things well, including having the fairies be real.  While the photographs have been declared hoaxes, it’s a more interesting story to have the girls be lucky enough to attract fairies to them.  The fairies themselves are done right– intriguing, but mute, and not really participants in the story.

The interactions between Doyle and Houdini were apparently very true-to-reality: while Doyle was a firm spiritualist, part of Houdini’s act was disproving so-called psychics and mediums.  However, they still got along and discussed the paranormal, though usually through letters.

The movie is shot beautifully, with the right touch of nineties-soundtrack to set the mood.  I’m not surprised that I remembered it as so vividly green, with the rocks the girls play on covered in moss.  It seems as though Cottingley goes through an eternal spring almost.

Watching it as an adult, it still strikes me as a great film, and I can’t imagine why I didn’t watch it over and over again when I was younger.

 

 

 

Russian Ark

Russkiy Kovcheg, Directed by: Aleksandr Sokurov (2002) Starring: Sergei Donstov, Aleksandr Sokurov

Russian Ark is almost single-mindedly ambitious in it’s structure.  By using over three thousand actors and shutting down the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, two time travelers are able to experience roughly three hundred years of Russian history, all in a single take.

While the film opens to a black screen and an unseen protagonist, the camera adopts the narrator’s perspective as he follows soldiers into the museum.  He sees masked women and productions and guesses that he is watching some kind of theater, put on for him.  When he meets the European (Donstov), a mysterious man in black who is surprised that he is in Russia at all, the man refers to Russian history as theater.

If there are rules to following these travelers, they are loose.  While we open up sometime in nineteenth century, the narrator becomes witness to a scene with Peter the Great.  He follows the European through hallways and past stages, where they walk past a young Catherine the Great.  Later, they jump to present day, then back into the eighteenth or nineteenth century.  Briefly, they come across a man who is building his own coffin during World War II.

No one can see them, unless for some reason, the rules change and then they are suddenly apparent.  Often the European gets gestured off by annoyed servants.  The narrator follows, often drawing the European’s ire with his nationalism.  One part that made me smirk was when the narrator asks “Was that short fellow Pushkin?”  The European replies “Your nation’s poet? I read him once, in French.  Nothing special.” “Sir.”

The one-take action for Russian Ark is fairly incredible.  I wouldn’t believe that they could do it, except that the camera movement is fluid.  The costumes are sumptuous and treat the various time periods well.  The ending drags a little, whether from the long ball scene or the sudden push towards the doors at the end, though it provides a decent denouement for such a rambling film.

 

Six-String Samurai

Directed by Lance Mungia (1998) Starring: Jeffrey Falcon, Justin McGuire, Stephane Gauger

In the universe of Six-String Samurai, Russia launched an atomic bomb at the United States and conquered most of the country.  What was left became Lost Vegas, ruled by Elvis as its King.  However, the King is dead and Lost Vegas is looking for a new one.

Enter Buddy (Falcon), a traveling swordsman-rocker who is walking to Vegas to claim the throne.  While on his way there, he saves the Boy (McGuire) from a pack of modern cavemen, I suppose, and he reluctantly brings him along.

The film is episodic, with various battles cropping up for Buddy to defeat.  A weird culture has sprung up, created from a perverted sense of 1950s TV culture.  Wandering fighters abound with their guitars, often running into Death himself (Gauger) who is also seeking the throne.  Death is a masked, heavy-metal guy followed by his three archers while he goes around collected guitar picks from dead men.

The world in this post-apocalyptic movie is decidedly unnerving.  Here is the perfect TV family, who turn out to be crazy cannibals while an outpost of Russian soldiers continue to carry their guns around, even if they ran out of bullets in ’57.

The fight scenes are really awesome, in a classic martial arts film sense..  I was really impressed by the filming of those, which looked as if they relied on tradition fight-scene techniques created with lot’s of cuts and Falcon’s own bravado.  Buddy as a character comes off fairly aggravating when he isn’t fighting– maybe because he only has an annoying kid to interact with, besides the many villains?  Mostly the Boy cries or yells, and when he does talk, it’s about cars.  In that sense, he’s really useful, finding a car, motorbike, and bicycle so that Buddy can get to Vegas.

The music–provided by the Red Elvises, who appear as a Russian group with great shoes– is really fun while watching Buddy wander around the Wastelands.  A few of the villains created for this world are a little inexplicable– the Wind Farm people just show up for instance, and are… peculiar.  I can’t tell if these are people who were mutated by the atomic blast or were just so separate from society that they formed their own one.

Even though it has it’s faults, Six-String Samurai is so entertaining, I can forgive it.  The dialogue is catchy and the belief in a meandering bad-ass like Buddy becoming the next King makes him a hero I can root for.

Howl’s Moving Castle

dir. Hayao Miyazaki (2004) Produced by Studio Ghibli.  Voices of: Chieko Baisho, Takuya Kimura

When I think of anything Miyazaki, I think about that superb animation style.  It’s unique, even in the world of anime, and while there are scenes full of detail, we also have rather simple character design.  If there’s something wrong with Howl’s, it’s certainly not going to be how it looks on screen.

This was the first theatrical release by Miyazaki after he won the Oscar for Spirited Away.  It had very important vocal talents brought in for the English dub, although a relatively limited release compared to other Disney-related fare.

Probably the biggest Miyazaki friend I know, Angela, pointed out the clear weakness in Howl’s Moving Castle.  Which isn’t so much of a problem, as how you approached the story.  I had read the novel by Diana Wynne Jones, while she had seen the movie first, and I came to the conclusion that the book is much better since it has the chance to explain more of the plot and Howl’s character was more interesting and Sophie had her own magic powers.

Angela preferred the film because it’s still a Miyazaki movie and the visuals are beautiful.  The music is absolutely gorgeous!  The characters are more cute, etc etc.

Which brings up a question about seeing the movie or reading the book first for adaptations?  I saw the trailer for Never Let Me Go today ignoring Keira Knightley and thought “That’s gorgeous! I should… read the book?”  Regardless of how many adaptations are made, I think the first time you come in contact with a story ends up being the yardstick all other adaptations get measured to, including the original material.

This review is inevitably tinged by the fact that I had decided to read the novel first, which is excellent.  Diana Wynne Jones is one of the master fantasy writers alive and the novel has some of the best subtle hints and build ups for the big reveal at the end.  It’s absolutely fantastic, but a lot of it I understand can’t be as well expressed through film.

So for the animation?  Superb.  Music?  Some of the best I’ve heard.  Actual Plot?  Stripped down from the original, unfortunately, which ends up feeling like they were cutting corners and characterizations.

The Princess Bride

Wow this um… might actually work better on TV than on the big screen?

Just a thought.  It might have something to do with the quality of the projector they were using at the Varsity.  I’m not sure if they are bothering to get 35mm film, the magnetic tape stuff, or just widening the image of a DVD (although I don’t think it’s that).  Something about the picture quality made it seem very much not-like-a-film, is what I’m saying, and more like a BBC special.

Oh, but I love The Princess Bride! Doesn’t everyone?  I remember seeing it for the first time when I was eight and thinking it was Zorro… good times.  Meanwhile, in the Actual Universe!  I think that, now, when we think of “Fairy Tale Movie”, it’s always going to be Disney, and then The Princess Bride. It stands up in a genre of its own, just because.

Buttercup, in love with Westley, though believing him dead agrees to marry Humperdinck, the prince.  And… hijinks ensue.  (C’mon y’all, do I really need to summarize this movie?)

While not as fan-active as the Pulp Fiction screening (no one behind us shouting out famous lines and/or laughing in anticipation of the jokes), it was really fun.  I think just about everyone was mouthing along with “Hello.  My name is Inigo Montoya.  You killed my father.  Prepare to die!”  The fight scene between Inigo and Count Reuben was probably the best scene to see on the big screen.  Other than that, watching the movie was a lot of “Spot the set!” game.  I love the sets in The Princess Bride, but huge and in front of you lessens the effect you would get from them on the TV.  I love how cheesy-beautiful this movie is.  It is a pulpy fantasy novel come to life, and makes me hope that the next time I’m sick, someone comes to read to me.

Alice in Wonderland

Tim Burton version y’all.

image from http://www.costumersguide.com/index.shtml

Weirdly enough (for me) I wasn’t too excited to see this movie. I didn’t grow up with Alice in Wonderland, neither through the Disney animated feature nor the actual books by Lewis Carroll. As more of the production stills came in, I still couldn’t muster much of anything resembling excitement.  The closer it got though, the greater it seemed like I was bound to see it, regardless of anything.

Alice Kingsley (Mia Wasikowska) runs away from her engagement party and returns to Wonder Underland with no memory of her previous adventures there.  She is recruited to defeat the Red Queen, agreeing only because she thinks the world is a dream.

It’s not a bad movie.  Not at all.  You can throw a lot of shit Burton’s way, but you cannot deny that the man knows how a story is supposed to be told.  It doesn’t seem like a rare gift to understand the art of storytelling until you realize just how often people mess it up.  Mostly, you have to let go whatever baggage you might be taking into the theater with you– whether you have something particular about Alice that needs to be just so or Burton-related prejudice or expectation.

There were a lot of interesting bits, mostly visually or through actors’ performances.  In general, the Mad Hatter kind of freaked me out, but I liked the dueling personalities once I got used to it.  I loved Anne Hathaway and Helena Bonham Carter as the White and Red Queens, respectively.  I’m not sure why, something about them… the fact that the White Queen was so ethereal in a slightly disturbing way while the Red Queen was really cartoony and obviously evil.  These characters all end up being fun to watch, moving the story along quite briskly.

I was talking with some friends today and they came up with, “It felt like fanfiction!” kind of tone.  Which is hard to argue with. I ended up thinking “Oh, Alice should be wearing longer skirts than THAT by now, if she’s 19,” and “At least the Hatter knows to hold a broad sword with both hands. Oh my GOD, is that a KILT?!”  The best way to describe it is that the entire package is really great, generally very shiny and fun, but a few minute pieces left me chagrined.

On another note entirely, I will probably see this again.  It takes me two watches to really like Burton films, but by the end of that second run-through, I love them.