The Movielicious #5 – Harry Potter and the Ghastly Hormones
July 21, 2009 by Patrick
Filed under - The Movielicious, .Episodes
Alas! Just as Nicole is joined by special guest Eileen in an attempt to make The Movielicious a more gender balanced podcast, the Internet Gods decide to punish her with an outage in the middle of the show!
The irony? Her schedule was the reason why we delayed the show for a few days… Thankfully she has time to give her opinion about our main movie of the week: Harry Potter.
Turpster and myself are left with the wonderful Eileen to discuss the others:
- Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince
- Ice Age 3
- Sunshine Cleaning
- As well as Speed Racer, Rolemodels and In Bruges.
If you want to listen to Eileen’s excellent vampire centric show, it can be found right at The Bite Club Show.
And in the after show, we discussed a hilarious website where movies plots (and other things) are summed up in a 160 characters or less! The site is called Blippr.
Enjoy!
Listen to the show:
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Haha looking at the google ads now, I see “Send Harry Potter Potions” and “Human Growth Hormones”… Hmmm, actually maybe both do the same thing!
hehe Patrick you need to get lightbox on your site. I want to see a bigger image of your wonderful work! That totally made my day
I just noticed your Harry Potter graphic! Hilarious! Thanks again for having me on the show. Bite Club loves Movielicious
Hi guys,
Overall, good show again so keep up the good work
.
I too didn’t enjoy Ice age 3 (neither my US girlfriend btw). However I would disagree strongly with your review of HP & the Half-Blood Prince.
First let me say that I read all books to indicate where I come from. I enjoyed the first 2 movies of the series despite their childish atmosphere but don’t forget that the 1st 2 books were written for young kids in a quite childish style. As the books became more complicated (storyline, character development and complex emotions/behaviors that are usually seen in adults), I thought the movies (3,4,5) were not as enjoyable as the books despite some great improvements (darker stories, environment and backgrounds, seasoned actors like Gary Oldman).
That said, I was really excited about this latest movie because the corresponding book was one of my favorites. To be honest, I thought the last installment of HP movie series was so-so. Most of the information relative to the young Tom Riddle is presented to the viewer in an episodic manner and leads to overall confusion. A few good examples to my point are: 1) there was no explanation of what the ring (that turned Dumbledore’s hand black) represent to Tom Riddle, where it comes from, and how Dumbledore obtained it; 2) no explanation again about the cave (in which Dumbledore and Harry venture in at the end of the movie) represent to Tom Riddle and why. In my opinion, all the interest that the book had generated, i.e. knowing more about Voldemort and his past (which allows the viewer to understand his current state btw), was largely omitted in this movie adaptation. Maybe I should not expect movies adapted from books to closely follow the books as nicely as Peter Jackson transcribed for LotR, but nonetheless, I think this movie is a missed opportunity. Finally the last scene on the tower opposing Dumbledore and the Death Eaters as well as the revelation of who the Half-Blood Prince is were also poorly adapted. In the book, Death Eaters have to fight their way to the tower against Aurors. This specific passage leads the reader to a climactic ending and somehow is not present in the film.
That said, my girlfriend who hasn’t read the book enjoyed it, which leads me to my conclusion:
-IF you have read and enjoyed the book, my rating is So-So
-IF you have NOT read the book, rating is probably a Woot.
I think you summed up the general sentiment that you basically can’t put everything from the book in the movie… Lovers of the books should let it go in my opinion: they can’t make every movie 5 hours long, right?
I know you’re right Patrick… but I would have loved seeing a 3hr-long movie (+extended version for a DVD release) for Harry Potter movies. Peter Jackson did it and his success clearly showed that fans will go to the theater to see longer movies and even buy DVD!!…I can dream, can’t I?
Actually I agree in principle: I would have loved to see that too…
The way to do it, is cut the theatrical release to be a certain way then sell the extended director’s cut for more $$$ people will pay it and everyone ends up happy.
I can see why studio’s won’t release huge epic movies very often because not 100% of the audience are movie nerds/geeks/buffs/etc and would sit in a theatre for 4-5 hours
Though I’m sure Turpster would live in the theatre/cinema if they said they’d do a direct translation of the books.
Where are the pictures of Turpster dressed up as Harry!?!?!?
I know! I think he’s backing out because he’s ashamed, or scared, or both.
As far as reading the books, go for the UK versions. US version is just odd.
*can contain some degree of spoilers*
re: timing of conversations in the movies
I feel they’ve done a good job with that movie, it covers what they needed to get to the next book.
Some scenes in the movie (and in Order of the Phoenix) feel like they’ve tried to dump 6 different concepts into the mix and create a fluid conversation out of it. Which isn’t normal for any group of non-ADD people, I am so I can smile and laugh at the craziness.
examples:
– The common room discussion the HBP’s book (too many people in the conversation /w quick point blank lines, it leaves you with a quick scene that lightly skims over those part of the story they didn’t have time for)
- 1st visit to dumbeldore’s office (they toss in a bit of humourous dialogue about Harry/Hermione but then suddenly jump straight into the memories storyline though a lot of the dumbeldore/harry dialogue felt jumpy in places)
- Horace Slughorn’s ‘house’ (They introduce the character then leave quickly.)
They’ve done a really good job on other scenes however.
- Scene on stairs with Harry/Hermione (They introduce a lot of the harry/ginny stuff in a way that doesn’t hurt the story too badly.)
- Snape’s House (This scene was much better than the book IMO)
Of course there are more of scenes, I just hope they slow down the speed of some of the dialogue a tad. Delivery can just kill certain scenes. Scripting the conversation so they feel fluid, rather than jumpy, makes the movie more fun to watch.
Emma Watson and Tom Felton were great in this one though. Pulled off their characters better than ever. The way they rewrote Cormac McLaggen was awesome.
.. easier than trying to tweet that ^^ lol
Hey Patrick, Loved the show yet again, just thought I’d say that In Bruges is one of my favourite movies of all time!
Can’t wait for the next ep.
Bol.