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he would deserve Best Director for directing a Quidditch match that didn't suck
Well, which scored about six million points for being about three minutes long. Quidditch is an enormous pod race - the technology exists to stretch it out for ten minutes, but not to tell a director that it's a fucking stupid idea.
Cuaron's approach was always going to be different - a lot less faithful, whereas the Columbus pictures seemed to be pretty much scene-by-scene, with the only excitement being about what had been left out. Cuaron did seem to be trying to work out what worked as a movie, and go with that; the film seemed to be better paced than previosu efforts, for this reason.
So, pros. Better sense of what makes a film, more time spent on other characters, better line readings from Radcliffe, Malfoy's porno-level acting put to better effect - although he's one of those characters hat I'd *like* to see displaying hidden depths, which this very one-dimensional reading is sort of closing down). Hermione once again demonstrates why she shoudl be the star of the fims. Thewlis is *great*; he's so comfy and lovely, although admittedly the country walks and the tendency to give Harry chocolate do make his scenes intermittently and disturbingly like a Werther's original advert.
Cons: Not enough Snape. At all. Not enough *anyone*, in a way - I'd have cut down massively on the Trelawney stuff, once the Grim bit had been flagged up, and spent the time on some other characters - like Fudge, say, or Snapesnapesnape. Sirius Black nerver really threatened - he was too hammy, and then the ending seemed rushed. It also seemed, thanks to Timothy Spall, like somebody had videoed bits of an experimental theatre treatment of Wind in the Willows over some of the dialogue, but there you go...
Also, there was no sense of there having been an actual *term*, which is good, in the sense that the director was not slaving everything to the Malory Towers structure of the books, but made it seem a bit unreal as a a school story.
Oh, and the dementors? Not scary. Which is a problem. |
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