The Aerie
A blog in our local newspaper provided information about an odd promotion - go to Myspace.com and add their promotional page to your "friends" list, and you could go today to see a free preview of "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix." My wife was quite skeptical, but I drove over the next morning to find the line for the film already forming at 8:30.
With some assurance the offer was for real, we added the required friend-entry to our MySpace accounts (oddly enough only my youngest didn't have one yet,) and headed over to get in line around 3:00 pm, which turned out to be plenty of time. We waited for four hours, taking it in shifts to go get food. The weather was absolutely perfect: if you had to spend four hours sitting and standing on a sidewalk next to a movie theater, this was the day to do it. By 7:15 we were comfortably seated in the second row of the theater and ready for the show to start.
What follows is m lengthy stream-of-consciousness review, without much editing since I want to get to sleep. But I thought folks might find it interesting. I'll try to gussy it up with some images and links later, right now I'm too tired!
And of course, Beyond Here Be Spoilers!
About the Promotion
To begin with, I thought the marketing of this preview was interesting - apparently it was word-of-mouth? Certainly that's how I learned about it. The result was that while the theater was filled, it was just barely filled. I suppose that's actually an optimum outcome - you don't want to disgruntle a lot of fans by turning them away - but if I were the organizer I would have been pretty nervous until around 6 p.m.
There was not a lot of on-site promotion or cheerleading by the promotional firm. Prior movie previews that I've attended have included T-shirt giveaways and pre-film cheerleading to get the energy up. This firm (Black Curtain?) may have correctly decided such things were
superfluous in this case.
There was a odd giveaway/takeaway - a plastic popcorn box with the Black Curtain logo and movie title on it. A bit underwhelming, I suppose one could use it as a pencil holder.
One preview was shown - for a Christmas movie called "Fred Claus"
Again the word "underwhelming" comes to mind. "Meet Santa's dysfunctional family" must have been the sales pitch. Is this what the world wants to see at Christmas? Little-people jokes and Vince Vaughn beaning Santa with a snowball? I'll pass.
Finally, a couple of weary young women were waiting after the movie to pen comments on sheets of paper. This seemed a little useless, as they ended up with "Totally awesome!" written about 20 times in lavender pen with big baloony exclamation points. It would have been interesting to have been asked to fill out a questionnaire, or better yet been provided with a website to go to for opinions.
About the Movie
The film gets off to a fast start, with an accelerated version of the Harry/Dudley/Dementor scene from the novel. This is the first of many daring and I think effective edits. While the movie overall retains the somewhat choppy feel of Goblet of Fire, with the sense that a lot of story is being jammed into the time available, OotP features a much more bold approach. Later we see entirely new dialog and storylines that diverge significantly from the novel, but I'd have to say that they are by and large quite effective and were well advised. We saw this in small ways in Goblet of Fire, where for example Neville was substituted for Dobby (as he is again in this film) and Barty Crouch Junior appeared in the initial dream sequence, but the changes in Order of the Phoenix are much more substantial.
While the initial scene mostly works, Kathryn Hunter as Arabella Figg does not, and the staging of Harry toting Dudley home looks awkward. Richard Griffiths as Vernon Dursley does not look at all healthy and I was really worried for the actor. I hope it's makeup, but Vernon Dursley looked like he was ready for the grave and it distracted from the scene.
The Order arrives to escort Harry to Grimmauld Place, and the emergence of the extra residence on the block does not do the book justice: if that's how they were going to do it, I'd've left it out. Natalia Tena as Nymphadora Tonks is very good: quirky and flirty and interesting despite very limited screen time. On the other hand George Harris as Shacklebolt didn't work for me.
The reunion between Harry, Ron and Hermione is well staged and has the tension I expected from the book, but Emma Watson's debut scenes in this film didn't raise my opinion of her acting. She does redeem herself a bit later on, but only a bit. Fred and George do rather well in the film, and the extendible ear scene was cute. Kreacher is too poorly rendered for me to fully respect the effort. He needed to be more crisply scruffy: at times his image looked blurry.
The trial scene did nothing for me and I wish it could have been left out. I would be very surprised to learn that Michael Gambon had actually read any of the books, his Dumbledore just doesn't work for me - and it gets worse later. In the scene where he prevents Umbridge from turning out Trelawney, Dumbledore SNAPS AT THE STUDENTS, "Shouldn't you be studying?" If Dumbledore ever snapped at a student, it wouldn't be due to embarrassment caused by a public row.
Imelda Staunton will receive well-deserved rave reviews for her Dolores Umbridge. While it does not match my own idea of the character from the book 100% (she's too attractive for one thing - Umbridge is described by Rowling as looking like a toad) Staunton frosts her Umbridge with a fine layer of sheer madness that has to be appreciated. Her perfectly-timed half-giggles made all the difference between cliche-evil and whoa-evil.
Likewise Evanna Lynch as Luna Lovegood, whom we meet in the Hogwarts carriage, completely steals every scene in which she opens her mouth.
And speaking of scene stealers, it's really a pity that Alan Rickman is so good as Snape, because he really casts the other actors into shadow. His time on screen is limited, but the energy he exudes in every scene is irresistible. When the camera returns to other characters it's like that moment after your mom shuts you in the fridge when the light goes out.
If there's a consistent flaw to the film it's that many excellent lines are lost to mumbling and bad sound. A prime example has been seen in the previews: Hermione says, "Breaking the rules is exciting," and Ron issues the tired "Who are you and what have you done with Hermione" response. I only knew what he was saying because it IS such a cliche! Less cliche examples of poor voice capture were totally lost. A character would mumble a line and I would be completely stumped.
A related problem is the score by Nicholas Hooper. There were at least two instances when the score shifted and I suddenly found myself thinking "Star Wars?" I don't know if these were scenes using John William's "Hedwig's Theme," or totally new stuff by Hooper (I'll have to seen the film again to be sure) but it was very jarring.
A consistently strong point to this film was the visual staging and editing. There are many examples where a less deft director would have resorted to expository dialog - Yates confidently replaces such nonsense with fast 1-second reaction shots. There are better examples, but for one that isn't a spoiler, watch for the establishment of Ginny Weasley's attraction to Harry.
As with Kreacher, Grawp and the centaurs suffer from bad CGI work. Grawp is toned WAY down from the novel, but is used to good effect despite being a bad effect: more bold rewriting. And there are a couple of scenes about which I have strongly mixed feelings, one of which occurs when the centaurs carry away Umbridge: I don't want to spoil it, but while it works it is also "too Hollywood" for my tastes. Likewise when Sirius Black encounters Lucius Malfoy in the Ministry: entertaining, but way too "Hollywood."
When Harry and Hermione return from disposing of Umbridge, listen for another of those mumbled lines when the rest of the DA explain their escape from the Inquisitorial Squad. Couldn't make out a bloody word.
The flight to London on the thestrals completely misses the opportunity of showing how weird the experience would look from anyone but Harry and Luna's point of view. And there was some comic potential in the entire DA stuffing themselves into the phone booth, but the scene was not provided to us. It wouldn't surprise me if the director didn't want to inhibit dramatic tension, but they would have been fun scenes.
The battle in the Ministry had both its ups and downs. I could have used more Bellatrix LeStrange - Helena Bonham Carter is excellent but you see practically every scene that she is in as part the previews. And maybe it was just me but I always pronounced the name "Le-STRAH-nge" not Le-STRAY-nge"...
The "misting" effect used for the battle scenes did not work for me - it just blurred what was happening and seemed to be a directoral trick to avoid staging complicated actions. And Sirius' death was spoiled for me by having Bellatrix cry out "Avada Kedavra!" I guess it makes sense for the director to say "Sirius is dead!" to his audience, but I was always struck by the novel's wistful suggestion that his cousin simply shoved him through the archway with some otherwise trivial spell. The idea that he was already dead before falling into the arch kind of wastes the whole idea of the arch itself.
The battle between Dumbledore and Voldemort in the Ministry, while too claustrophobic to be absolutely fantastic, certainly demonstrated that the battle between Saruman and Gandalf in 'Lord of the Rings' was dreadfully under-done. I kept thinking "this would have looked better than two old men sliding around the floor."
I include this particular (and not very good) image of Voldemort in the Ministry battle because of one thing: the damaged statue of the House-Elf behind Voldemort. This is the only indication I've seen that the fountain was damaged in the battle, and it flashes past unnoticed in the movie. It's not terribly important, but I felt that the novel's depiction of the destruction of that fountain foreshadowed the threat to the Wizarding way of life that Voldemort's return represented, so it seemed like a significant omission in the film.
One thing that DIDN'T work for me was Dumbledore protecting Harry by repeatedly shoving him back with magic (do not be too disappointed when I tell you that the fountain statues do not leap to life). Harry and the DA have spent the whole movie wanting to fight, yet here's Harry cowering in a corner while Dumbledore protects him. While true to the book, bringing it to film really made the contradiction stand out.
About Voldemort I have mixed opinions. When depicted in a black suit in Harry's dream sequence (if you didn't realize that the preview of Harry-seeing-Voldemort-at-King's Cross was a dream sequence I regret disillusioning you) I thought the character merely looked silly. However when swooping in from mist or breathing fire, He Who Must Not Be Named looked pretty frightening.
The sequence where Harry casts out Voldemort with the power of love was both rather dragged out, and also missed the opportunity to have him picture Ginny (I know he doesn't picture Ginny in the novel, but he also does not writhe around in powdered glass while Dumbledore kneels over him muttering New Agey advice, either).
I was very pleased to see that the scene between Luna and Harry following Sirius' death was almost completely intact. It's a charming scene in the book and it worked equally effectively here, including Luna skipping away at the end. Not only does Luna steal scenes, but the director was sly enough to imply an attraction between Harry and Luna. While it does not exist in the book, it comes across quite naturally in the movie.
Summary
While a number of individual bits didn't work for me, I thought the movie was entertaining and effective. I was impressed with the way the director took ownership of the story and made some big, bold, and risky changes to the plot - I thought the vast majority of these worked well.
One in particular was a new scene were Fred and George comfort a first-year who has had to do lines with Umbridge: this offered a caring look at the twins that not even the novel has provided.
The last two movies have suffered under the impossible burden of cramming 750 pages (okay, Maria, 870) of text into 2.5 hours of film, and -as movies- I don't think they are as good as the more leisurely first three. Where the first three movies could be watched by anyone, I think the last two could only be followed by someone who had read the books. Given those constraints however I thinkg OotP is considerably superior to Goblet of Fire. It's hard to compare it to the first three, but it is certainly an entertaining and worthwhile film.
Grade
If it weren't for the quality and nerve of the direction, I would give it a B+ - however I think Yate's command of the story bumps it up to an A- The biggest flaws were mumbled bits of dialog, bad CGI, and some substandard acting from what is admittedly a gigantic cast sharing a small window.
(If I were a complete Potter geek I would have given the movie an "O-" over an "E+," but as you can see I have refrained from doing so. There is hope for me yet!)
I am currently 66 in the queue. Down from an initial 74.
I have a few home clients who I support, in part simply to keep my hand in practice for simple desktop support. It just helps to know how to do basic things, such as fix and upgrade Norton Antivirus.
I am currently 58 in the queue.
My client initially installed Norton Antivirus 2006, on my recommendation (because Norton is SUCH a quality product) a couple of years ago. At that time the installation glitched somehow, because whenever the system booted Norton would say "Does not support the repair feature."
This was annoying, but not prohibitive. You hit return at boot time, and the window didn't reappear until the next reboot. I spent a while trying to fix it, uninstalled and reinstalled a couple of times, and then promised to come back when I had figured out the problem.
I am currently number 56 in the queue. By the way it's ten to eleven at night.
Well I went home, and researched... and couldn't find a fix. Instead it glitched the same way on my home computer. Eventually I forgot my promise to return, what with life and the fact that I never figured out what the hell was wrong.
I am currently number 46 in the queue.
Fast forward to today, my client asks me to return and check some stuff out. I fix the other stuff, then return to the ancient Norton problem. Visiting Symantec.com I find that Symantec says my client is eligible for an upgrade to
Norton AntiVirus 2007. Sure, I think, this will fix everything.
I am currently number 36 in the queue.
Of course that doesn't work. The new install gets to the Activation point, and says "An error has occurred during your activation." Thanks, really helpful.
I am currently number 32 in the queue.
I spin in place, trying to fix the problem for a while. One search turns up some stupid little SymKeydb.msi or something. I run that, it wants a reboot -everything frickin' wants a reboot. Doesn't work. So I go back to the page that gave the msi file to me, and click "that didn't work" and get handed to a chat page.
I enter the chat page and I'm number 35 in the queue.
i am currently number 29 in the queue.
So I wait... twenty minutes. I fix some of the other things wrong with the computer in the meantime - the client has deleted the Remote Desktop shortcut, for example, and is afraid the program must be reinstalled. For some reason the Remote Desktop application is called mstsc.exe or something. Thanks Microsoft, that was easy to find.
I am currently number 26 in the queue.
So by the time I finish that I'm at about number 10, so I wait. Eventually, like 25 minutes after I connected, I get some dope on the line. I can tell that he's working off a script - he asks a question and suddenly a three-line answer appears in the window. Cut. Paste. After discussion he insists the answer is to use the Norton Removal tool to remove everything, do a "clean boot" with msconfig, and install Norton again. He even provides a link: http://symantec.com/newnis
I am currently number 23 in the queue.
Of course, if you look really hard at this message, you'll see that my client had Norton Antivirus installed, and the link provided was to "NIS" which is Norton Internet Security. A different program. So I wipe Norton AV, reboot, install NIS, reboot, notice the problem when the application code comes back as "invalid." Remove Norton, reboot, download http://www.symantec.com/newnav, Reboot, and try again.
No dice.
I am currently number 19 in the queue.
Install the MSI file again
Nope. Same problem as the original.
So by this time it's over three hours since I started all this nonsense (Norton takes about 20 minutes just to install, about 20 minutes to download, about 20 minutes to erase, etc). And I'm faced with going back on the chat. I'm actually looking forward to it, as I want to just kick somebody's ass about having the wrong link to the wrong application provided to me. So I hook up to the Symantec chat thingy again... and where the first time it told me I was number 35 in the queue, this time it tells me I'm number 74.
I am currently number 16 in the queue.
Well of course now there's a problem. It's going to be, what, forty minutes at least until I talk to somebody? And it's about 10:30 p.m? My clients need to go to bed! Now, I'm not charging them for this time, because it was me recommended Norton and so I feel obligated to fix it, but still they're gonna need to get rid of me sometime. So I get into the queue, who knows, maybe it will go faster than I think. And I start to blog because I have nothing else to do.
I am currently number 13 in the queue.
Well the client just came in, and yes, he needs me to leave. So what do I do? I can leave him with a broken Norton install and no virus protection... but wait! I just realized! He also has SpySweeper, based on an 18 month old two year license I had him purchase... And Spysweeper recently added an antivirus service! We discuss it, and agree that this might just suffice.
I am currently number 10 in the queue.
So I look into it, and discover that you can add the antivirus to an existing Spysweeper installation for a mere $10. I ran the Norton Erase tool for the last time, and we upgrade SpySweeper to SpySweeper with antivirus. But now there's a problem.
I am currently number six in the queue.
You see, I wanted to get back on the chat, tell the engineer that his product and his support sucked, and that Norton had just lost two or more customers - I certainly won't be recommending Symantec to any more of my clients.
Unfortunately, I am currently number six in the queue.
So, well, I have to reboot - both Norton Remover and SpySweeper are blinking at me to do so. I guess Symantec will have to live without the benefit of my anger.... At least till I can get home and e-mail their support department...
I am currently number four in the queue.
Reboot!
Well it's been a quiet Father's Day around here, seeing as two of the three that I'm fathering are off in Boston. They're touring Unitarian Universalist religious centers in Boston, so the kids swam in Walden Pond and shopped in Quincy Market. We got an e-mail from our daughter who assures us that all is well and they're having a fun time.
As for me, I didn't do too much today. This morning I received many nice gifts: two polo shirts, a four-pack of Guinness, a bar of dark chocolate, and a gift certificate to Uncle Hugo's. Then we walked over to the Birchwood Cafe for a tasty but frightfully expensive breakfast (modest meals, $50 price tag for three people?) It was bloody hot walking to and from the cafe, but it was good to get a little stroll in.
This afternoon I read a little, caught a nap, and played a little Oblivion (which game should win the coveted "Biggest Time Sink in the Universe" award). Later we went and saw the "Silver Surfer" movie - it was okay, nothing to write home about. I didn't remember enough from the prior movie to understand why Dr. Doom was in it or what Dr. Doom could do, so that didn't help. And, I'm sorry, but Jessica Alba does nothing for me.
This evening my daughter called from Boston to let us know she's having a nice time, and it was so nice to hear from her. It's really not the same around the house without those twins!
But now Father's Day is done, inasmuch as I have to focus on getting some stuff done for tomorrow. I am teaching an online security course, and I have to find stuff for our refinancing, and I should really send out some hello's to some consulting firms with whom I've worked in the past to let them know I'm available.
All in all a nice quiet Father's Day.
Well I'm outta work again. I haven't blogged for a couple of weeks because that has been the central reality of my life, and I haven't been proud of it. I didn't want to hide it, but I didn't want to talk about it, so I just didn't write anything.
Six weeks ago I was the hero at my former client site, but four weeks later I was the goat. Basically I was let go because I was not a formally-trained project manager: in my defense, I stated clearly when I was brought on board that I was not a formally-trained project manager. However when I finished the first project six weeks ago, it was my technical skills that made me valuable: when they put me on a new project they now wanted me to follow their formal project management process. Unfortunately they had absolutely no documentation of their formal project management process. None.
One colleague was kind enough to scribble a page of notes on blue-lined notebook paper for me, and to be clear she was eager to help me out, but her support was not enough: I was on a VERY high-profile project, and my unfamiliarity with project management quickly became an embarassing liability for my manager, and I was out the door.
And the way I was dismissed was, well, not the best. I was traveling home from work at 5:15 and my contracting firm called me to tell me the client had canceled the contract. So my manager waited until she saw me leave the building, then called my contracting company and had them do her dirty work. Well, fine, but it's not like I didn't know I was likely to be let go: I would have preferred a professional face-to-face explanation that things weren't working out.
So anyway that was a week ago now, so it's time for me to get over it and get on with life.
Also gone are my twins, off to Boston for a six-night church trip. Exciting! I'm hopeful that they will be able to meet my half-sister while they are there. She's director of undergraduate admissions at a prestigious Boston college, a college that has a hefty scholarship for UU youth, so I wouldn't mind at all if one or both of them got the scholarship and decided to attend her school. Of course, it's a women's college, so my son would have to dress in drag for four years, but that's how Tom Hanks got HIS start...
So this Father's Day two of my kids won't be home, which is sad. Usually on Father's Day I like to have a family picnic at the beach, but this year I'll be lucky if my youngest isn't off playing video games at his friend's house. I guess it will give the spouse and I a chance to practice being Empty Nesters, which awaits us in, potentially, as few as six years. Wow, no job, no kids at home - it will be a taste of Retirement.
So that's the latest, and I've bared my breast of the whole embarrassing actually-got-let-go-for-a-reason thing (as opposed to the stupid "hat" incident at my previous client), so now we can put that behind us... and never speak of it again!
Man, is 2008 going to suck: specifically autumn of 2008. Never mind that the presidential campaigns will be in full swing: the campaigns never seemed to end after the last one anyway. No, that will be bad enough, but by autumn of 2008, they'll all be gone...
First, of course, the Harry Potter series. Well, okay, that's ending in just a couple of months: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows will be released on the 21st of July, and despite the lag in movies appearing, the story will be done. All that will be left will be a memory of a decade during which the story unfolded, book by book.
Second to go will be Doctor Who,, which loss will not be greatly softened by the appearance of Kylie Minogue on the program. The show has been toying with the affections of the gay community for a couple of years now, so this can only help boost viewership. Hopefully they won't do anything stupid with 'Torchwood,' the spinoff series set in Cardiff...
Finally and, to me at least, most dreadfully, Battlestar Galactica will wrap up at the end of the 2008 season. While I respect ending the program before it gets stale (some might argue 'stalER'), and I like that they will actually conclude the quest, still it's going suck losing the program.
Good science fiction and fantasy are hard to find: great SF&F is as rare as a unicorn. So to lose three exemplary works of science fiction and fantasy in a row like this... sigh. One can only hope that something fills the vacuum... maybe something I write!