Category: Movies

We went to see Pride and Prejudice last Saturday. Unfortunately it was at the local theater that makes my legs hurt! I wish the theater with the good seats would start getting the movies I want to see. Harry Potter, Star Wars, they’ve all been at the other theater. Argh. I need to write a letter.

But, that’s not what the blog is about. Here is wholly detailed commentary regarding the film, but let me add a few wrinkles:

• Keira Knightley’s smile is way to weird to have been in Edwardian England. She would have been burned as a witch or something
• The woman who played Jane is the same woman who played the blond double-agent in Die Another Day, and the closeups on her DARK brown eyebrows with the blond hair were very distracting
• There is a beautiful marble bust featured in the film (when Elizabeth is visting Darcy’s manor) which is a carving of a woman with a veil. It was difficult to tell if the veil was part of the carving or if it was actually a silk veil. Very neat
• Make sure you bring tissues to give to the woman next to you during this film. “Are you crying? There’s no crying in Jane Austen!”

SPOILERS

We saw Goblet of Fire last Friday night. My rating is B+. I thought that the first half of the movie was spectacular, and the last half of the movie was good.

I found this movie somewhat different from the previous Harry Potter movies because I knew going into the theater that they were going to have to cut a huge amount of material and make other adjustments to splice the story line together. A 730 page book does not fold into one feature length film without some serious pruing. With that attitude, I was not too worried when Krum turned out to be a muscle-bound pretty-boy and Fleur Delacour was a french-accented nothing.

I was exceptionally disappointed with the portrayal of Dumbledore, however. Dumbledore is supposed to be a highly skilled unflappable wizard who thinks deep thoughts and acts accordingly. Only once or twice in the entire book series do his emotions come to the fore. In this movie, Dumbledore is an excitable, emotional boob who shows little sign of refinment or unflappability. Alas, it was disappointing.

Don’t let that get you down though. The movie was a good one and I plan to see it again. I’m happy to report that the Gross Irregularity that was spotted in a publicity still was not present in the movie. I did confirm that the date of Voldemort’s father’s death was 1943, which I don’t believe quite jives with the book timeline, but I’m not prepared to swear to that and besides, it’s close.

For non Harry Potter book readers, I think they’ll find some scenes in the movie almost incomprehensible. There was little explanation of the pensieve and none concerning the actions of Harry’s and Voldemort’s wands in the duel. Personally, I believe that with the amount of pruning they did, they should have gone a bit further and eliminated the pensieve and Barty Crouch Sr. The story line only served to complicate the film and given the demise of Barty Crouch Sr. by the end of the story, it would be a non-item concerning the effects on later movies. The fact of Mad-Eye turning out to be a Voldemort infiltrator could have stood on its own without any of the backstory that got pruned so heavily anyway.

As I said, we’ll see it again, and maybe I’ll have more observations then.

For teen girl watchers, you’ll be happy to know that Daniel Radcliffe and Rupert Grint had obviously been working out between Azkaban and Goblet.