A few weeks ago, just after Prophecy 2007, I sent 40+ pages of my work to Zossima Press, and they have agreed to publish a book! More details will follow in the coming months, and the book should be on the shelves sometime next year. For now, I need time to write, so I have formed the Blogengamot (BLOGG-en-guh-mott), a council of incredibly talented, magical blogging brethren who will carry on the work of SoG in the coming months. I will continue with the weekly (hopefully) Hog’s Head PubCast, while the writing duties will be taken up by Matthew (Korg20000bc), Dave the Longwinded, and Johnny (Behold a Phoenix). Ben S is now our official Tech-Elf. Matthew is also the official moderator.
There are biographies of each on the About page, so take time to get to know the new bloggers here!
Once again, I need to thank all the readers and commenters here at SoG, without whose attention, insight, and encouragement I would not have maintained this site.
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Wow. Congratulations! You’ve always done excellent work here and no one deserves it more than you.
Yay for books! That’s awesome!
Congrats!
Congratulations, Travis! I look forward to buying your book whenever it comes out. Good luck & blessings on it.
Congratulations, Travis!
This is wonderful! Can you give us just a small hint what it will be about? Any idea how long before it will be done and published? I can’t help it — details, I want details!
I can’t wait to read it. Congratulations!
I can’t believe there’s any one out there reading Sabatini. What’s next, Baroness Orczy?
He’s great!
How can you not love an author who chooses to write in English because “all the best stories are written in English.”?
Matthew
I found Scaramouche in my high school library. I never saw it again. It was a happy day, a year or two ago, when I chanced upon an old copy in a used book store.
But you have to read The Scarlet Pimpernel.
I will!
I haven’t read it but I am a fan of the movie with Jane Seymour, Anthony Andrews and Ian McKellen. Ian McKellen must’ve hated it. He had to kiss Jane Seymour!
Scaramouch is a great book. My own preference is for Captain Blood and The Sea Hawk. Now there’s a book for the times. A Christian becomes a Mohammedean and fights against Christian/Catholic Europe. Quick, get a script together and pitch it.
Matthew
Don’t speak to me about Ian McKellen. Last night we watched The Fellowship of the Ring again. I listened to the lines:
Frodo (Wood): I wish the ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened
Gandalf (McKellen): So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.
I all but wept, thinking of how Ian McKellen would have spoken Dumbledore’s lines on the Astronomy Tower:
‘Severus … please.’
and his lines at King’s Cross:
‘There is no help possible.’
The only sliver of hope left to me is that Gambon hasn’t been signed up for HBP. Yet.
BTW, you also need to see Leslie Howard as Sir Percy Blakeney and Raymond Massey as Chauvelin.
He would have been great as Dumbledore but kind of type-casting himself if he did. Patrick Stewart would do a fine job. On IMDB Gambon doesn’t appear to have signed for it yet. Nor is there a director for DH. I have recently read that M. Night Shayamalan is interested in doing DH. That would be great! I heard heaps of negative stuff about the Lady in the Water but watched it and was very happily surprised. Anyone who appreciates myth would be pleased with it, I think. Signs and Unbreakable are two of my favourite movies.
Can you imagine a Mel Gibson directed DH?
Matthew
First of all, congratulations, Travis! That’s great news. (I tried to post this earlier, but my computer was being weird.) The spooky thing is that I thought (before I read this), after I listened to the pubcast–wouldn’t it be great if Travis wrote a book about all this? Hmmmmm.
No Mel Gibson, please–I hope you’re joking. He’s too enthralled with gore.
I still haven’t seen Lady in the Water, but I found Unbreakable sometimes hard to follow. And I didn’t finish watching Signs–I just kind of lost interest part way through it.
Yeah, I can’t imagine what any director, no matter who it is, will do to pull a decent performance out of Gambon if we are indeed stuck with him through the seventh movie. His part in HBP is huge, and so important. If they cut it way down, it’s going to be a 30 minute movie.
And even though his DH part is small, it’s crucial that the tone of his talk with Harry is done properly. They can’t just skip that part at King’s Cross, or severely condense it, like they’ve done with the other movies when Dumbledore talks to Harry at the end. I’m very worried about Dumbledore for the next two movies.
Sir Ian or Stewart would be great–really, just about anybody would be just fine. Anyone want to audition? After all, according to Gambon, all you have to do is put on the long white beard and the costume and you’re Dumbledore. Hmph.
Pat
The idea of Mel Gibson directing HBP and DH makes me smile – it’s straight out of Monty Python: the kids are attending class when suddenly limbs start getting lobbed off and the blood starts spurting. Not.
Shymalan? Well, he can do ominous unease and silences fraught with significance and build up of suspense better than most. But I don’t think that’s exactly the right tone for Harry Potter. What we need for the last book is a sense of confusion and desperation, a slowly growing sense of inexorable doom punctuated by heartbreaking loss, and the moment of epiphany, followed by an extended moment in which reality is suspended. And then the last battle, which at that point is a bit of an after-thought.
I think Peter Weir (Dead Poet’s Society, The Truman Show, Fearless, Master and Commander)would be one of my top choices for this. I loved what Cuaron did with PoA, and I think he’d do an excellent job with DH. People are saying that the director of Pan’s Labyrinth (Del Toro) would be good. And there’s nothing wrong with Yates.
Basically I think that with DH we’ll either get competent directing or inspired directing and either will be ok. Where I have real qualms is in the acting. Radcliffe is really going to have to step up: he’ll have to carry the walk in the forest on his (by then) 19 year old shoulders. And as for Dumbledore in the Astronomy Tower and King’s Cross scenes – well…
Well.
I lost faith in Shyamalan with Signs. He’s kind of fallen in love with a formula. But, I haven’t seen Lady in the Water and Unbreakable was really, really good.
Of the one’s mentioned by Reyhan above, Guillermo del Toro would have my vote. Pan’s Labyrinth is frightening, heartbreaking, visually stunning, and absolutely brilliant — a combination in movies I had not found before.
If Yates pulls off a success with HBP (like he did with OP, in my opinion), I’ll be quite happy with him doing DH.
Shyamalan isn’t a good fit for Potter, in my opinion. Signs had me up till near the end. I agree with Matthew – despite the criticisms, Lady in the Water was a great movie for myth-lovers and postmodernists. But I think he’d demand too many liberties with Potter, and it wouldn’t work.
Having recently seen Pan’s Labyrinth, I have to agree that Guillermo del Toro would do a fine job with a Potter movie – actually, I think he’d get the Cave scene in HBP perfect, were he directing that movie.
Travis, yep. When I first saw Pan’s Labyrinth, the cave scene in HBP immediately came to my mind. The wilderness scenes in DH also spring to mind.
Travis, this is wonderful news…i can’t wait to buy and read your work!
Yes. I was joking about Mel Gibson. Anyone for tennis?
Travis, I agree that Shayamalan would want to take too many liberties. I think his focus would be on the importance of keeping magic alive in the real world rather than Rowling’s story. But movies are always an adaptation of someone else’s story.
Unfortunately, I don’t think Radcliffe will be able to pull DH off satisfactory manner. Cuaron irked me with PoA. That final frame with Harry’s face smeared with the speed of his Firebolt really got up my nose…ruined the movie for me. It makes me shudder, and with my belly, that’s a lot of shuddering.
Matthew
Matthew, you put your finger on why Shyamalan (did I finally spell it right?) would probably not be a good match for Harry Potter. Movies are not always an adapatation of someone else’s story, but these movies are. And I don’t think he could successfully adapt someone else’s story.
He is both a director and a writer. I don’t think he’s ever directed anything he hasn’t written the script for. He would want control of the script, and ultimately, would want to change things to suit his vision, rather than JKR’s. At which point they’d have to fire him, and start over again, and the kids would be getting older and could hardly be called kids anymore.
And the kicker is, he is a fine director, but not as great a writer. I’ve read several times that Shyamalan the writer is a handicap for Shyamalan the director.
I read that he’s expressed interest in directing DH. Let’s hope they pass.
As for Radcliffe being able to pull off DH, which for me means chapters 34-36 above all, don’t give up on the kid yet. Give him good people to play off of, and he can do it. Remember that he’s very good with Thewlis (their scenes in PoA were excellent) and even better with Oldman, with whom he seems to have chemistry. So that covers off the walk in the forest. What we now need is a Dumbledore with whom he will have some emotional resonance.
How about Peter O’Toole, who was Richard Harris’ pick? He can relate to anyone – remember his scenes with Brad (the beautiful but brainless) Pitt in Troy?
I was oddly impressed with Radcliffe in OP, so I have hopes he’ll be able to pull it off.
Cuaron irked me with a lot of thinks, and yes, Matthew, that closing shot bothered me a lot. Even more, I was bothered by (a) overdoing the flying scene when he fell from his broom [OP was the first movie that didn't overdo the flying scenes; they were quite good], (b) the dropping of huge parts of the backstory, and (c) the talking heads.
At Prophecy, Vander Ark kept picking on film 3 saying, “Who needs backstory? We want talking heads!” I really appreciated that.
That said, I still think Cuaron’s movie was the best visually, though not the best overall. I would not want to see him return for DH. I much prefer Yates.
Wow Travis. The visual aspect was one of the things that bugged me the most about Cuaron. He called it putting his stamp on the movie. I saw him putting a giant statue of the birds from the Mexican flag in the courtyard of a British school, and called it a director that had no business coming anywhere close to Harry Potter.
I’ve said elsewhere that there are 3 things they MUST DO for at least the last movie, to make it properly.
1. Hire the best director they can find, and especially one who has experience with big budget films. I think that was part of Cuaron’s problem. He never did anything bigger than a $10 million film and had no sense of how best to spend all that money. Get someone like Spielberg or bring back Chris Columbus, IMHO.
2. Hire a new Dumbledore. This is the most important one for the last two movies. Gambon must go. A trained monkey could be a better Dumbledore than him. They should get someone who will care about the role.
3. Pay whatever you need to, to get John Williams to score the movie. I have been listening to his HP scores and they are just light years beyond the two most recent scores. In my opinion, the score was the only thing that came close to saving PoA for me. If not Williams, at least get someone with experience on epic movies, not some TV jingle writer. Get Howard Shore, James Horner, Alan Silvestri, just about any of the big names in scores. Even Danny Elfman would be better than these last 2 guys, and frankly, would add a very interesting tone to the movies.
Here’s hoping someone takes my advice. Not likely. I thought OotP was better. At least the editing was far better than the chop job that was GoF. But you still need to have a director that is willing to make the story as it needs to be, and not say, like Yates did, that 2 hours is all you need for any of the movies.
Scott, wow, that’s the first time I’ve heard someone dislike the visuals in PoA! I’d like to hear more about why.
For me, Cuaron is brilliant at the visual aspect of films. Overall, I disliked the film Children of Men (disliked is probably not near a strong enough word), but there are several stunning, powerful visual images from that film imprinted on my mind.
Scott, I have to disagree on several counts.
First, I do think that Cuaron did an incredible job with PoA. There were many scenes which were compellingly visually constructed, but the best ones for me were the two “strands” of the time-turner sequence, basically the last third of the movie when we see the same events portrayed from two different perspectives. There is a sense of non-stop motion (embodied most of all by Watson who is at her best there), an actual sense of both sets of events happening simultaneously, and a sense which is difficult to describe of being there. Details – the pumpkins, MacNair’s leer, the sound of his axe coming down on what we believe is Buckbeak’s neck, the colour of Hermione’s sweat top, the conical shape of Hagrid’s hut, the shimmering light (soul) being sucked out of Sirius Black, Harry’s stubborn insistence that his “dad” will come – those details are sharply etched. The scenes between Thewlis and Radcliffe also work very well, especially the scene in Lupin’s study where Harry asks him about Dementors, and the scene on the bridge. It’s the acting, and the pace, and the lighting and set design. Remember the candles that Thewlis snuffs out? Remember what shape they were? Everything comes together to place these two people in a moment of stillness when one has something to learn from the other (would that the scenes with Gambon worked as well!) I am a sucker for scenes set in snow, but I think the scenes at Hogsmeade work especially well – the snow feels real, the footsteps are muffled, and once again you get a sense of actually being there. I have watched PoA many times, and I could keep on watching it, just like I could go back to a work of art.
I don’t think a big budget director would work best for HBP or DH. They are both set on a small scale, their heart is a series of conversations between the characters, there are no grand, large scale scenes, except for the two culminating battle scenes. And as for those battle scenes, well, I wouldn’t want to base the choice of directors on who can best film the battle of Hogwarts, especially since that is not the most important thing about the story.
I don’t think there is anything wrong with Christopher Columbus’ directing, but it’s not inspired. Certainly, I have no desire to watch the first two movies over and over again, although I do enjoy the Tom Riddle/Basilisk sequence in CoS. As for Steven Spielberg, well, Spielberg is a very talented director, and could do wonderful visuals and action scenes, but I fear that he might miss the mark with the essentials. HBP is about a series of conversations which circle ever closer around the truth. DH is about Harry’s internal journey towards the final truth. Not Spielberg territory, I think.
I do agree with you about John Williams. I missed his music in GoF and OotP. I wish they’d bring him and his music back, especially that poignant music-box version of the grand theme which moves the story from grand scale to human scale.
And of course, I agree with you 100% about Gambon.
Final thought. I have read that John Williams wants to come back to score DH. I think that he’s thinking about writing the music for that walk in the forest. That would be a fine thing to do.
Well, I’ll start with the music first. I loved John Williams’s scores for the first three, but it’s the last two that I have on my mp3 player, and I find myself listening mostly to GOF, so I guess that means there is something that Doyle did with it that I must really have liked. So really, any of the three of them would be fine with me.
As for Cuaron, I watched POA in the theater 5 times. Yup, paid the price of a ticket. They made a lot of money off me on that one. However, the last scene (all of it, not just the freeze frame, which I thought was horrid) annoyed me then and even more every time I watch it. I always felt like they got past the Time Turner sequence and the Patronus scenes (which were very good), and Cuaron realized he needed to end it quickly to stay within that 2+ hour time frame. Oh, we have to give Harry his Firebolt and show that it was from Sirius. Bleah! My hubby, who doesn’t read the books, totally missed the significance of that scene and that the feather meant it was from Sirius. His reaction to the movie was that it was OK, but he liked the first one the best.
I thought Cuaron was going to get it right with the Shrieking Shack, but no. Only part of the scene was there, with no connection of why Snape hated James and Sirius, and Lupin by association. There’s no explanation about who the Marauders are (though I’ve read somewhere that they THINK they made that clear). Wrong again. Hubby didn’t get that either. So needless to say, people who don’t already know the story, can’t fill in the blanks, because there was too much left out. And what was the point of having Harry be the only one to attack Snape with Expelliarmus? In the book, it’s all three of them, and it’s one more example of how they work better together than alone.
One of my favorite scenes from the POA movie was the Harry/Lupin conversation on the bridge (I know,NOT in the book), and I liked that they added the part where Lupin acknowledges that he was friends with Harry’s parents–something I always thought was missing in the book, actually.
However, having that conversation there left out the whole thing of Snape bringing Lupin his potion (and of Snape seeing Lupin and Harry talking alone), which was the set-up needed for the Lupin/werewolf scene when they realize that Lupin hadn’t taken it–we don’t know that he was supposed to, or that Snape had gone looking for him because he knew Lupin hadn’t taken the stuff that would keep him safe.
Then there is the matter of the map itself. In the book, it’s all of 30 seconds for Harry to ask Lupin how he knows it’s a map. Not that Lupin gives him a useful answer, but that’s part of the set-up for finding out that Lupin was one of its creators, along with James, Sirius and Peter. Oh, wait–that doesn’t matter, because we never find that out either.
The scenes in the snow were good in the village, but I’ve never liked the crying scene when Harry tells Hermione and Ron what he overheard. It was much better that they all three heard the same thing in the Three Broomsticks–and could have, if Cuaron hadn’t once again decided to use the stupid talking heads to keep them out. (Needless to say, I found the shrunken head on the Knight Bus scene to be annoying as well.)
All the scenes with Thewlis were really good, and allowed them to cut out Gambon–at the end when Harry goes to say good-bye to Lupin, it’s just the two of them, and Lupin gets one of Gambon’s lines about “making all the difference”, though they didn’t have him say that it was Snape that let slip the info about Lupin being a werewolf.
So that kind of thing worked well, but it really downplays the importance of Dumbledore in Harry’s life and in Harry’s understanding of why things like this are happening. I think that choice–cutting down Dumbledore’s screen time, be it by the directors or the screen writers, or both, will make it very hard to pull off Dumbledore in the last two movies–even with a recasting of the part. (Which, I really, really wish they would do–Gambon is so clueless.)
With GOF, I found that I really liked parts of it, or really hated it. I think the things that Nichols got right were the atmosphere of the school, the Britishness of it. But he totally missed on the characterization of Barty, Jr., and there wasn’t enough done with the death of Barty, Sr., for that to make sense. One of the deleted scenes really should have been left in–where Harry overhears Snape and Karkaroff at the ball, but whatever.
I’ve finally, after the first two movies, got over the insistance that everything needs to be included in the same way as the books, but it’s when they completely leave out things that are going to be important later on. Dobby, for instance, is going to have to come back, along with Kreacher in HBP, or the importance of his death won’t make sense to people who haven’t read the book. And Percy–people who haven’t read the books aren’t going to care a bit about Percy coming back to his family, because that’s been left out of the story line.
I was very worried about OP, because of all the left out bits, but I thought Yates did a great job of getting so much of it in there, in a very short time, with the newspaper clips. And he did a lot with the scenes at Grimmauld Place, with Harry greeting Sirius, there’s Lupin, standing behind them in the doorway, with a look of the caring brother, watching the two of them, without ever saying a word.
I was even OK with seeing less of the MOM, though I’d have liked it, but that part worked for me. And Yates had someone else saying some of Gambon’s lines that were important to the story. We did need more explanation at the end about the Prophecy, and here was the place we should have had the sad, old looking Dumbledore (not in GOF).
He got the point that this book was about all the internal struggles that Harry now faces. The scenes with Oldman were quite good, IMO–in fact, it made me care a lot more about Sirius than I had before. I thought it was interesting too, that he only has Harry really yelling once, and I thought that worked quite well in the movie. I’m not sure it would work to watch Harry yelling and tearing up Dumbledore’s office in the movie–somehow, seeing someone constantly throwing a tantrum is different than reading about it. And I think that’s because in reading it, we also were reading why Harry felt that way–that probably wouldn’t translate well to the screen.
So, Yates is doing HBP, and if he does as well with that as with OP, then I hope he does DH also. I know that Columbus really likes the books, but I don’t think he has the insight to direct a story like DH–it’s very internal, with a minimum of action, and I’m afraid that would be his focus.
One more thing about Cuaron–I’m currently reading Great Expectations, and now realize just how many liberties he took with that story. Dickens is probably turning over in his grave. Just having a movie be visually appealing is not enough when a director is working with someone else’s story. It’s the story that matters, not the creativity of the director. If he wants to do visually stunning, then he should write his own stories.
One more thing, I promise, and I’ll quit. It has to do with the look of the movies and the time frame. (They’ve got to get over that 2+ hour time thing for the HP movies–especially DH.) I’ve always said that the best book-to-movie, was “Gone with the Wind”. Yes, there were some changes–mainly, a few husbands and extraneous children were left out. But the main events are all there, the characters act like they did in the book, the lines are mostly taken from the book, and visually (especially considering it was done in 1939, without the benefit of all the cgi and special effects technology of today), it was stunning. That’s my standard/expectation of whether I like a book-to-movie, so maybe that’s the whole problem I have with all the HP movies–WB and the screen writers and directors seem to be afraid to stick to the books. Yet that was what made “Gone with the Wind”, as a movie, as successful as it was–and it’s still good 60+ years later.
Pat
I look at the talking heads as an assumable cost of hiring a genius to direct.
I always thought that the three kids overhearing a conversation was a bit too much, one makes more sense, and I liked the scene where Harry’s crying and Hermione finds him by following his foot-prints in the snow.
Pat, I agree about Oldman – his scenes with Radcliffe made me care more about him than from the books alone. There is a real bond there – you can see that Harry does care for him a lot.
I wouldn’t worry about the left-out bits and how they’ll affect the next two movies. The movies are supposed to stand on their own, as are the books, actually. A competent director and/or scriptwriter will provide enought context to make it all comprehensible.
Travis and Reyhan,
I think Eeyore hit most of the things I was going to say about Cuaron. It’s not so much that he has horrible visuals. It’s that they didn’t fit with this story. I know this is where I differ in opinion from a lot of people. What I liked about Columbus was that he got out of the way of the story. JKR has given us great stories. The director should just reproduce them on screen, in my opinion. You may have to change things here and there to make a huge book fit into a 2-3 hour movie, but I don’t want the director to put his “stamp” on the movie. I started reading the books because of the first two movies. They capture the essence of those books. Even re-reading the books now, I am stunned how close he came to the books. And Columbus established the look of a lot of things, most importantly Hogwarts. Cuaron comes along and changes the whole setting of the school. Suddenly they are perched on the side of a mountain and everything is very different from JKR’s descriptions in the books. She mentions many times in all the books that the kids leave the castle and go down a gently sloping lawn to get to Hagrid’s. Suddenly Cuaron has them going down this steep rocky trail like mountain goats. It just doesn’t fit. There’s the statue in the courtyard that I’ve mentioned. Even the inside of the school looks much more drab and menacing. I seem to remember reading or hearing somewhere that Cuaron did that to emphasize the feeling of danger for Harry, but he always felt like Hogwarts was a safe home. Doesn’t make sense.
It all comes down to the fact that I want the books to reproduce the story as faithfully as possible and not interject any extra stuff that doesn’t belong. That’s why I liked Chris Columbus and not Cuaron.
GOF was almost worse. At least Cuaron did try to make the story flow and do whatever he did with the visuals. GOF looked like they shot a 4 hour movie, then randomly chopped out stuff to make it 2 hours. It was the worst editing job I’ve ever seen in a movie.
The one scene I did really like in PoA was Harry riding on Buckbeak, and it was mostly because of the music right there. John Williams. What can you say.
So there, Travis, is why I didn’t like Cuaron for PoA. If I didn’t know the story at all, I might have liked it. But I do know the story, and he butchered it. It’s one thing if you are doing an original screenplay, or if you are doing a remake of something that already has a number of versions. Then you can get all kinds of creative and artsy. But this was a movie that really wanted the director to get out of the way and let JKR’s story come through more. I don’t think that happened. Of course, that’s just my opinion.
Scott, I quite agree with you that Columbus was far more faithful to the books, not adding his own vision but filming JKRs. And with what result? For me, SS/PS was flat and disappointing, and turned me off the next three movies. It was only after I bought the DVD’s and watched them that I realized what an incredible job Cuaron had done.
I don’t think this is because JKR’s vision is not a good or even a great one, it’s just that a writer’s vision is necessarily different from a director’s. What works in print doesn’t work on film. This is why we have screenplays; and writing a screenplay is not the same as writing a book; authors are not necessarily the best people to convert their books into screenplays.
I think that our main difference lies in our priorities. I don’t need the director/screen writer/ set designer to be faithful to the details of the books if they can bring off the tone, sense of time and place, and the emotional heart of the books.
Coincidentally, I watched GoF again tonight. It was competently done – I didn’t mind the editing as you did – but there was no vision, no compelling drive, nothing to take it out of the plebian except for acting of Brendan Gleeson.
I think Joss Whedon could do a good job of directing DH. I know, people would probably think they would be getting Buffy (not that there’s anything really wrong about that). But he’s an excellent story teller that would make sure the characters were treated fairly. I love Firefly and Serenity. If anyone could get the tent-sitting tedium to be meaningful on film it would be he.
Q- What were Harry, Ron and Hermione doing for much of Deathly Hallows?
A- Loitering within tent
ha ha…
Just had a weird thought.
Do you suppose all that tedious sitting about in tents was meant to reflect Moses’ 40 years in the desert?
Reyhan, if Alastair was right to parallel the Deathly Hallows to the three temptations of Christ, then we can certainly say that the tent period parallels Jesus’ 40 days in the wilderness, which is a parallel to Moses’ 40 years.
So, yes, I think it’s a good parallel.
I should know the answer to this question, but: who’s Alastair and where does he make the analogy to the 40 days in the wilderness?
I say I should know because it does ring a bell, dimly.
Louder, please.
Reyhan, here’s the post!
Reyhan, we’ll have to agree to disagree. I didn’t think the first two films were flat and disappointing. I thought they were magical. They brought the world of HP to life for me. And that is usually what I want from a movie of a book, especially a book I really like. It’s why I loved the LotR movies SOOOO much. It was like Peter Jackson was inside my head and made the movies so that it was like I was just reading the books. The books came alive on screen. I have no problem with a director taking an unknown story and putting his mark on it. But in my opinion, if you are making a movie from a very well-known and well-loved story, you need to be as faithful as possible to the story.
Let me put it this way. Imagine if Cuaron had made LotR. Say he decided to make Mt. Doom be actually a crack in a flat plain. Maybe he puts some symbols from the Mexican flag on Aragorn’s armor at the end, instead of the white tree of Gondor. And the elves have helms reminiscent of the Spanish conquistadors. Now, can you imagine what the Tolkien fans would do to him? He would seriously have to go into a witness protection program.
Same here. I get that he’s a very artsy Mexican director. I still question using someone who directed something like Y Tu Mama, which was only a small step up from soft porn. But when you are filming a movie about a very British school, in a very British location, and when that location has already been established in two previous movies, Why oh why do you need to put in all these non-British elements? It doesn’t make a lick of sense to me.
Again, that’s just my opinion. I tend to think a lot of people agree with me, since Cuaron’s movie made considerably less than any of the others. Still a lot, but over $100 million less than the next closest.
I did see the rumor on HPANA about John Williams possibly coming back for the last movie. I cheered when I heard that.
Scott, we’ll agree to disagree about the merits of PoA and its director.
I do not see how his ethnic origin enters into it, however. Ang Lee, who was born in Taiwan, recently directed a movie about two American cowboys which was filmed in Canada. I don’t think that makes his movie less American. Milos Foreman, a Czech, directed One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest with Jack Nicholson. Ridley Scott, an Englishman, directed Black Hawk Down and Thelma and Louise, movies about America and Americans. Ismail Merchant, James Ivory, and their screenwriter, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, produced a long stream of quintessentially British movies: A Room with a View, Howard’s End, The Remains of the Day.
I also question your understanding of the word “British”. There were a lot of first, second and third generation immigrants in Great Britain, 8% of the population in fact, reflected in the composition of the student body at Hogwarts – Padma and Pavarti, Cho, and Dean Thomas are the named members of visible minorities I remember from the films, but I think JKR has included a greater ethnic mixture in the books. According to the 2001 census (as per Wikpedia) two percent of the population of Britain are black, and one percent are of Black Caribbean origin.
Hence the talking heads, which to me seem to be Caribbean voodoo origin, would not be out of place on a bus in London, which has a higher percentage of immigrants.
And as per PoA making less money than the others, well, are you really prepared to argue that popularity is an indicator of quality?
Reyhan, ethnic origins don’t have to enter into the discussion. That is, unless the director feels compelled to inject them himself. Sure, Ang Lee can certainly direct a movie about cowboys in America. But my point was that if Ang Lee suddenly started putting a bunch of Taiwanese symbolism into that cowboy story it would not work. It would pull you out of the much sought after “suspension of disbelief”. Certainly, you could have some famous Japanese director make the last HP film, but if he suddenly decided that the Sword of Gryffindor needed to be a samurai sword, don’t you think that might bug you a bit?
This was my point about PJ and the LotR movies. I’m quite certain PJ didn’t ever live in Middle Earth, for all that New Zealand looks like it is Middle Earth. I guess it comes down to maybe realism? I’ve seen Macbeth set in a post-apocolyptic wasteland, much similar to the Road Warrior movies. It was an artistic choice, and Shakespeare has certainly been done enough that people want to see different takes on it. But I personally didn’t like it, because the language and feel of Shakespeare doesn’t really fit in that setting. I felt the same way about that Romeo and Juliet movie with Leo Dicaprio.
As far as what is “British”, I know there are plenty of immigrants there. In a lot of cases they hold on to their unique cultures. However, JKR has, in my opinion, tried to make Hogwarts a very traditional British boarding school. It’s 1000 years old. Talk about some ingrained traditions. So sure the students who go there may have brought their cultural perspective to the place, but they didn’t design the statuary on the grounds. The location that is Hogwarts would not have influences that are more modern.
I did like the talking head on the bus. I thought it was very funny, and didn’t really take much extra time, so it didn’t steal screen time from important story elements.
So here’s a question. You talk about the percentages of various immigrant groups in Great Britain. I have no problem having black, Indian, or even Arab students. How many Mexicans live in Great Britain? There are probably a fair few Spaniards. But how many Mexicans? If you can show there is a significant Mexican population there, I will be happy to change my view on Cuaron injecting that element into the movie. But I seem to remember reading an interview with him where he talked about putting some of that stuff in the movie just to put his personal stamp on the movie. If I’m remembering that correctly, that’s where I have a problem with it.
No, I am not arguing that popularity is an indicator of quality. But unpopularity is also not an indicator of quality. There are lots of movies that Hollywood goes gaga over because they are such “deep art” or whatever. Most of them make almost nothing. I think a lot of people think they have the last word on what is good art, and they usually pan popular movies or whatever simply because the unwashed masses could not possibly know what is good. So you see movies win awards that the vast majority of the population think are completely boring. Art is subjective. You could argue that our society as a whole is diminishing in it’s artistic taste, and therefore wildly popular movies and music is not necessarily “quality”. I think that’s why movies like Superbad and pretty much all rap music make so much money. They aim for the lowest common denominator. On the other hand, when you talk specifically about the HP movies, you are talking about an audience that is largely made up of fans of the books. I would argue that if fans of the books don’t go back to see the movie multiple times, that says something about it.
Just my opinion.
Scott, I want to debate so many of your arguments but I am disarmed – and soothed – by your comment about DiCaprio, whom I detest.
The statue didn’t bother me, probably because I didn’t see it as Mexican but simply ancient, mysterious and menacing, all of which was good. A quick check (Google again!) tells me that the Mexican flag features an eagle eating a snake, which doesn’t seem completely removed from the symbolism in the stories (especially if we associate the eagle with Gryffindor rather than Ravenclaw, although that would work too). And it wouldn’t bother me overly if the Sword of Gryffindor was a samurai sword if the movie had the panache to carry it off – Quentin Tarantino could do it, I feel, although many of us might not survive that particular ride.
I am not a purist with regards to symbolism in the Harry Potter movies. However, I do have my own issues – hearing a note played differently from what I prefer in a beloved Mozart piano concerto ruins the music for me. So I can relate to your reaction with regards to the non-English-boarding-school elements, even if don’t share it.
Ha! Don’t get me started on Quentin Tarantino. If he never made another movie, I think the world would be a better place.
As I said before, Reyhan, I think we’ll have to agree to disagree on Cuaron. I think some of that comes down to different taste in movies, which is fine. I don’t ask everyone to like the same movies I do, not even my wife. Her best friend bought us Pride and Prejudice with Kiera Knightly because it was “the best movie ever made”. My wife liked it a lot. I thought it was the most boring movie I’ve ever seen. We also like a lot of the same movies, so it’s all good.
I do enjoy debating with you Reyhan.
You didn’t like the scene in Pride and Prejudice where Keira Knightly watches Matthew Macfadyen walk towards her across the moor at sunrise?
So totally Emily Bronte and not at all Jane Austen, but still.
Yes, I know: chick flick.
Hmph–and don’t get me started on the latest re-make of Pride and Prejudice. I don’t like that one, but I love the book, and the BBC/A&E version is fabulous. The characterizations are better, the story is more complete and ends like a Jane Austen novel should, not that silly one they had in the most recent movie. Maybe that’s the reason I didn’t like this most recent P&P–I really didn’t like Wuthering Heights, but I hadn’t made the connection. Thanks for pointing that out, reyhan.
Yes, I agree, sometimes we just have to realize that we all expect and like different things in our movies. If we all liked the same things and the same directors, we wouldn’t need so many choices, I suppose.
Pat
Cinematography aside, I just thought the story was completely boring. And talk about feminism! You have a whole house of girls who are sure that their only hope in life is to get married, and they parents are rotten little schemers to try to help that along. Oh, I know I’ll get flamed for that, because I obviously don’t understand the story properly. Ah well. As far as I could tell, even the heroine’s main goal was to get married to the right guy. But I might have missed some stuff when I dozed off…
Actually, you got the story very accurately. That is exactly the point: there is a houseful of girls whose only hope for any kind of financial independence of their own, no matter how constrained, is to get married. Otherwise, they are doomed to live as unwanted, despised drains on the income of first their father, and then whatever relative can be induced to take them on in exchange for unpaid household drudgery. The only point you missed was about the heroine. She (and perhaps her elder sister, but we don’t know this for sure) and she alone is the one who rejects the offer of status and financial security beyond the wildest dreams of anyone in her social circle because she thinks that the man who makes the offer is a yahoo who thinks she is way out of his league. The story then turns to how each realizes that she or he was wrong. Eliza realizes that Mr. Darcy is a compassionate and considerate man, and he in turn realizes that Eliza is a woman of integrity. (But he still marries her because he thinks she’s hot.)
Of course she’s hot. She’s Kiera Knightley.
That aside, if she was a true feminist, she would kick Mr. Darcy to the curb and go start her own business or army or something. Even if she marries the pauper for love, she still jumps into the idea that her value resides solely in being married.
OK, you sort of missed the point there. We’re not talking about where one’s value resides. We’re talking about economic survival. Food, shelter, clothes. The Bennett’s are on the lower rungs of the landed gentry. And land does not usually pass to women. That’s what the term “entailed” means: it goes to the oldest son. No oldest son, it goes to the nearest male relative. The only way a woman has money to live on is either by inherting it from her parents (obviously not the case here) or marrying it. Members of the landed gentry, especially the women, did not start their own business. That was another class altogether, called the trades. To become a tradesman, or even to marry one, would get you kicked out of your social class. Women did unofficially join the army in the early 19th century, but it was to provide a specific kind of service, not to fight.
It was not Elizabeth Bennett’s value which resided in her getting married, it was her survival. Hence her telling Mr. Darcy off was an unheard-of act of defiance of social custom and expectation.
A lady of principle, indeed.
But the status of women in the early 19th century is completely off topic.
Apologies to the Bolgengamot.
No apologies needed, Reyhan. We are at the point in HP discussion, now with a closed canon and all, that analysis can and must branch out to other literature and topics that inspired the HP content (and topics that derive from it).
This is good discussion. Keep it up.