Rehydrating

I’ll be brief, mostly because I’m dead dog tired and need to finish my latest round of geo lecture discussion before bed.

Last night was Nissa’s going-away party…much debauchery commenced and there are photos to prove it. Unfortunately, I’m not doing much more than uploading them to Yahoo! tonight for Nissa and her friends to view. But here’s a little sumpin’-sumpin’ to whet your whistle:
Oh how my mother would be proud. I’ll let you know if she is…I just sent her the link to the Yahoo album.

I’ll expound more on Nissa’s party later. Just wanted to at least touch bases with y’all. Give you a smidge to ogle.

Oh. Word of advice. Do not end your evening of drinking with a shot of tequila. It can only lead to very very bad things. Very. Bad. Things.

Saw the new Harry Potter flick the other day. Sorely disappointed. I’m not a huge fan of Goblet of Fire by any means. I think it is the least interesting book of the series, and has thusly become the least interesting film in the series. The problem I found with the book is that it tried to carry too many plots and subplots at once, and essentially the book just became the vessel by which Voldemort traveled to this mortal coil. It’s still a very well-written tome and for the most part is entertaining. But I think what needed to be said could have been said in less pages with just as much effectiveness.

The film suffers from the inability to effectively translate a 700+ page novel to the screen with a running time of less than ten hours. I don’t fault the director, nor the screenwriter. They were given a difficult task to tackle and they did it the best they could. I don’t know that anyone could have made a better film with the obstacles in their way. That being said, I just am unable to use my warm-n-fuzzy feelings for the talent behind the film to leverage the film’s quality at all. Even if the task is difficult, the film itself felt very disjointed with what it was presenting. There lacked a serious focus on certain elements, montages were suddenly all the rage (I hate montages, by the way; they’re the artistic equivalent of a slideshow of the family trip to the Grand Canyon), and you really didn’t feel like you connected at all with the plight of teenagers coming of age. Mostly because you weren’t given enough to give a shit about in the first place. Plus I felt the editing itself was a bit…meh. I questioned the art direction in several places. Loved the cinematography overall though. It’s nice to see the cinematography evolving with the darkening undertones of the series.

At first I thought maybe people who have never read the books would enjoy the film because they wouldn’t know what was lacking. But I’ve spoken with several people who’ve never read the books who said they felt the film was slip-shod and hurried. Shot my theory all to hell. Oh well. C’est la vie, n’est pas? At any rate, I know Order of the Phoenix should for all intents and purposes be a very intense, excellent film in the franchise. I just really hope they don’t fuck up that free lunch like they did with Goblet of Fire. I think the material in Phoenix is too important to simply gloss over with pretty montages and shallow plotlines.

I give Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire a B-. And that’s pretty generous, considering I really really feel it deserves a C. But Mike Newell deserves applause for helping to bring our beloved Potter in a new direction, and I think the actors are just superb (can I be Dame Maggie Smith when I grow up? I mean, honestly…it’s a crime that one woman can be THAT MUCH AWESOME). I just hope that the series finds its footing again with the next installment. Otherwise this is going to get just plain ugly.