At least I don't wear pink

Went to the movies last night, for the first time in ages. Lytteltonwitch had won a couple of free tickets, so she suggested MrPloppy and I could go with her, and just pay for the one extra ticket. So last night we went and saw the latest Harry Potter.

I wasn’t as impressed by it as I have been by the previous films – it felt to me like they hadn’t put as much effort into it as previously. The effects weren’t quite so good, the CGI wasn’t quite as good, some of the acting wasn’t quite as good… none of it was actually *bad*, but I kept feeling like the director had said “oh, I can’t be bothered with another take, that’ll do”. Add to that some major departures from the book (I expected some differences from the book – it is a *very* long book, after all, and I knew they’d have to cut a lot out – but some of the changes didn’t seem strictly necessary and I think detracted from the story), and I was left feeling a bit unsatisfied.

Which is not to say I didn’t enjoy the film – it was fun and suitably exciting, and if I hadn’t seen the others or read the book, I would have said it was great. It’s just it wasn’t quite as good as it could have been.

There were some great bits, too, which almost made up for any deficiencies. Umbridge was wonderful – exactly how I’d envisioned her (hmm, do you get the feeling JK Rowling doesn’t like cats much? First Crookshanks, who while he turns out not to be as evil as he first seems, is still pretty nasty, then Mrs Norris, who is just evil, and now a really horrible character who decorates her office with cats… (MrPloppy and lytteltonwitch were joking that I’m in danger of turning into Umbridge, but I think I’m safe – I may have lots of cat artwork and cat mugs and cat earrings and cat everything else around the house, but at least I don’t wear pink! ;-))) And Helena Bonham-Carter makes a fabulous Bellatrix – she does do deranged wonderfully well.

I released a couple of books in the cinema entrance (well, it was the *Reading* cinema we were at!) – both movie tie-in editions: Rounders by Kevin Canty and The Shining by Stephen King. The one I released on the way in was gone when we came back out, so hopefully that means it was caught by someone and not just put in lost property by a cleaner (I did think about releasing one of the books inside the theatre itself, but then I remembered the quick race-through-throwing-everything-in-the-bin cleaning most cinemas do after each screening, and thought it was probably safer not to).

Gave a few books to lytteltonwitch, too: The Cat Who Sang for the Birds by Lilian Jackson Braun, Salem Falls by Jodi Picoult, and Company by Max Barry. I do so enjoy adding to other people’s TBR piles 🙂


Currently reading: Somehow Form a Family by Tony Earley and a couple of textbooks
Currently listening to: Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy

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3 Comments

  1. Rowling did admit in an interview to not being fond of cats. I was glad to see a relatively positive (or at least neutral) mention of cats in Book 7.

    It takes me forever to walk up and down to the cafe, with all the cats I’m friends with along the way 🙂

  2. I thought Bonham-Carter would have been perfect as Merope until I saw her as Bellatrix. Now I’m sold on that casting choice. I’m interested to see who they cast as Scrimgeour. My vote goes out for Billy Connolly.

    I had been looking forward to them including the interview with Rita Skeeter, and was disappointed that was left out. Ah well, I guess they had to hack and slash the story to keep it under 7 hours for the movie.

    Alli

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