(no subject)
Jul. 18th, 2009 01:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snowystingray- How was your morning? Mine involved maggots, possibly in punishment for oversleeping.
-![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
capslock_hood rewatch today! SO. EXCITED. I put my own Robin Hood rewatch on hold so I could jump on board with the capschat, so I think it's only going to overlap with what I've been watching by one episode (1.07, but I honestly do not mind watch that one as often as possible). Come join if you can!
- I lovebygonefashion.
- TV catch-up! Leverage just started back this season. Sometimes I feel like I'm watching this show for the wrong reasons -- I rarely connect with the victim plot of the week and tend to find them rather dull (I mean, I know the central conceit of the show is helping those who can't help themselves, but could we maybe have clients with even the teeniest amount of character agency?), and then I usually lose the con about halfway through -- but I just love the tone of the show and all of the hero characters so darn much. Like, honestly, I just want them to all sit around in that pub all day (random aside, but the Ashes to Ashes part of my brain is all like OMG IS IT SIGNIFICANT??? that Nate hangs out in a bar below street level and then lives in a rented room upstairs above it? How is this relevant to his psyche? Is he descending into his deepest primal urges every time he goes down and thinks about having a drink? Is the upstairs representative of his upper brain functions and the intricate planning of his cons and how he uses it to mask the ache of his recovering alcoholism? AM I POSSIBLY THINKING TOO MUCH ABOUT THIS??) and talk about, I don't know, the new episodes of Torchwood or the finer points of jumping out of a plane or something, and I would happily watch that for weeks on end. All of my favorite bits were just silly character moments -- Parker and the fingerquotes, Sophie's singing being not quite as good as her acting, the Eliot/Hardison exchange about Pakistan, Eliot busting through the wall with a chainsaw... oh, team! It's so nice to have everybody together again.
- I've also been keeping up with Royal Pains, which I don't actually think I've posted about since the first episode. Well. Hmmm. I think it underwent a growth period during the early episodes -- like Leverage, it does have a tendency to get rather heavy handed with it's moral righteousness (Royal Pains drinking game -- every time somebody complains vaguely about "the system," take a shot!) -- but it's matured quite nicely and I've been getting into the stories a lot more lately. I really enjoyed "No Man is an Island" (have I mentioned that the Evan/Hank dynamic is basically my favorite thing about the show? Because... it totally is), and then I thought this week's was good as well. Things that I find refreshing about the show:
1. I like that Hank is actually invested in his work now, instead of being the reluctant hero dragged around by Evan (see: the end of "No Man is an Island." GOOD CHOICE, HANK), and I like that it's progressed beyond the straightforward Robin Hood parallel -- i.e. he only treats rich people so he can take all their money and afford to treat those without resources. Rather, the show has established that he tries to find a way to help all of his patients, because there are problems in people's lives that aren't necessarily all about money, and if you think it's ridiculous to define people based purely on their income, then... maybe you shouldn't define people based purely on their income (which is more of what Jill tends to do)?
2. So relatedly, I like that there are a bunch of recurring characters and that we have a chance to see Hank develop a relationship with these people he's otherwise rather contemptuous of.
3. To go back to the Jill-Hank relationship, then -- well, hmmm. I'm still uncertain about her character. Aside from the fact that she is the least believable hospital administrator ever (like, okay, I know that TV needs hotter and younger professionals than exist in real life, but it borders on ridiculous; IMDb doesn't list an age for the actress, but she doesn't look more than 30), she's kind of, well... boring and one-sided? To return to the Robin Hood parallel (because, obviously, everything can be reduced to that) it seemed like the show was setting up Hank as Hood and then Jill as Marian, his sort of go-to girl on the inside... but now it feels like it's flipped, and suddenly Hank is the one who gets to live both sides of working high society but also helping the poor, and dealing with the emotional issues of each, while Jill is stuck in the Bobbin mentality of "all rich people suck, let's throw rocks at them. Also, being smug and morally superior is clearly the best way to get people to like me." Okay, this is probably sounding a lot meaner than I meant it to because I don't completely hate her character, but she still hasn't fully grown on me. I do really like how her relationship with Hank has been developing, though. While I'm not usually a fan of "OMG THESE TWO CHARACTERS JUST MET BUT THEY ARE TOTALLY PERFECT FOR EACH OTHER. Like, look, they have matching cars and they look into each other soooouls and don't you just want them to get married and have beautiful babies? LOVE. PURE TRUE HOLY LOVE and they're hooking up, like, now," I get equally tired of, "OMG THESE TWO CHARACTERS JUST MET BUT THEY ARE TOTALLY PERFECT FOR EACH OTHER but they can never be together due to lame reasons that we are fabricating for drama, so enjoy the UST for the next five seasons but don't bank on anything." So I like that their romance has been rather straightforward -- they like each other, they have a lot in common, they each find the other attractive, neither has any other romantic obligations -- so they get together, like two normal, grown adults who want to have a normal, grown adult relationship, instead of mooning around about each other wangsting over "does he like like me or just like me??"
4. Not a praise, more of a nitpick -- dude. NEEDS MOAR DIVYA. She is so underused and, incidentally, so much more interesting than Jill (OMG the Robin Hood comparisons continue -- okay, so, Divya is like Djaq, right? Because she's snarky and good with medicine and just awesome in general. So then Evan is Allan, the loudmouth grifter... and now I can totally justify why I ship the two of them... Okay, I should stop before this parallel runs any deeper. Also, there is no Sheriff or Guy equivalent, which makes me sad).
Anyway, moving on to the last and most important point...
- HARRY POTTER. I actually made up a list of things I've been meaning to post about and accidentally put Harry Potter on it twice, ha. YES IT IS THAT IMPORTANT. Long story short -- I really really liked the film. I'm going to be lazy and basically C&P my initial thoughts from facebook, but... sorry. Please forgive the JKR blasphemy, but I think for the most part I actually liked it better than the book.
...Yeah. Uh? Oops? I don't know. It's been ages since I've read the book so I'm kind of curious to go back and see how I feel about it now, but I mostly remember being ho-hum about the majority of it and only really getting into the story in the last few chapters of awesome payoff. Incidentally the film completely reverses this, then -- I had already been spoiled for the fact that most of the Hogwarts battle bits were being cut, and I was rather upset because those were by far the sequences from the book that I enjoyed the most and in fact read going "oh mannnn I can't wait until they make this part into a movie!"; so my favorite parts from the book were missing, but then all of the parts that didn't quite work for me in the book were translated so beautifully in the movie that I'm almost (almost!! Not quite) ready to reconcile myself to the absence of FENRIR BEING TERRIFYING AND DISTURBING and SNAPE SHRIEKING "DON'T CALL ME A COWARD!!!" and the SEXTET OF AWESOME fighting off Death Eaters through the halls. ...Seriously. Guys. It would have been awesome. Who ever thought I'd find myself saying, "Wow, the action sequences are way more involved and exciting in the book than in the movie"? But I digress! Back to the stuff that was actually in the film!
I hated all of the romantic follies in the book, but, because the film has to pare down the storylines so much, I think it worked so much better here -- so those subplots were quick and cutting and funny instead of drawn out and grating. Lavender Brown was funny! Cormac McLaggen was funny! I was really surprised by how much of the movie I spent laughing -- hey, wait, isn't this the one with the disturbing backstories and zombie pits and character death? But it worked! (Also, we were sitting right in front of the biggest LOLer in the theatre, who would literally just bellow at any funny scenes, and somehow that made it about ten times more hilarious, ahaha.)
As for the Harry romances, I loved him flirting with the cafe girl at the beginning, d'aww. Yes, Dumbledore does ask too much of Harry, damn him. And then Harry/Ginny was just so much better here. I remember having very mixed feelings while first reading the book -- I'd been one of those annoyingly sappy Harry/Ginny OBHWF shippers from basically the outset so a part of my couldn't help being THRILLED OMG VINDICATION, but a much bigger part of me was like... dude... that is somehow not what I'd envisioned at all and I don't really know how much I ship this any more. :/ It seemed like their relationship in the book was more predicated on Harry noticing this new fresh side to Ginny that is brash and sexy and outspoken and in fact rather unrelated to the rest of their interactions up to that point -- so I like that the movie had a balance of Ginny growing and becoming more comfortable with herself (developed nicely from the last film, I might add. SORRY BUT OMG I AM JUST REALLY IN LOVE WITH DAVID YATES RIGHT NOW, OKAY. If these last two movies are anything to judge by I'm so glad he's doing the rest of them as well), but that it also referenced the earlier relationship between Harry and Ginny. It felt a lot more natural to me, and not just Harry being gobsmacked by, "Whoa, I've ignored you for years but suddenly you're hot and datable so. Yeah." Character continuity FTW.
Actually, I think the continuity/references to earlier books was what helped me to enjoy this movie so much, because it felt much more a cohesive part of the series. Like, I know JKR tried to set up the folding parallelism with the books in pairing up 1-7, 2-6, 3-5, and then 4 as sort of the game-changing lynch-pin -- and I think it fit together really really really well in this film with all of the callbacks to Chamber of Secrets. Having Ginny and Harry's first kiss come after she helps him get rid of his own seductive-bad-influence book, just as he did for her in CoS -- ahh, beautiful. And then all of the Borgin and Burkes stuff, and the showdown in the toilets, and Aragog, and Fawkes flying off at the end... okay, so I guess all of that was in the book, but it felt more organized and developed as a thematic link in the film (again, it seems like Yates has really learned to benefit from the one "drawback" of the films in having to dump so much content -- it's so much easier to focus in on one important thematic thread that might otherwise get lost in the sprawling storytelling that JKR does).
Other things that were great -- JIM BROADBENT. Not that that should surprise me, seeing as, well, it's Jim Broadbent, but I'd always rather liked Slughorn in the books (so rarely do we get such ethically ambiguous "good" guys in the books; either they're a wise and/or loving mentor to Harry or a complete creep, and I love that Slughorn falls slap in the middle) and felt that he didn't always get quite a fair shake (in that it seemed like the book worked over to emphasize his shadier qualities), but I think he was portrayed much more... um... sympathetically? Not quite the word I'm looking for; but I think the film gives a better sense of showing that, although he culls students because he likes having friends in high places, he does on some level also have a deep fondness for and pride in those he grows close to, such as Lily; and that he hides the horcrux conversation not simply because he wants to avoid looking bad but because he's truly deeply fucking devastated by what came of it. So anyway, I think he did a great job of maneuvering through the callous and the caring parts of the character.
Draco... omggg... okay, actually, can I just take a step back and say how much I love how ALL of the kids have grown up? For child actors they're just all so lovely and well-adjusted and professional and d'awww. And, hey, some of them are actually really good actors, too! (Like... WOW. I was really impressed with DanRad in this one.) I thought Tom Felton was pretty darn great, actually -- after having basically nothing to do in the last film, he delivered big time in this one. Again, more parallels that struck me much more in the film than in the book -- obviously all of the "I'm the chosen one!" links between Harry and Draco, but then I like how it turned into some daddydrama, too -- Draco's just lost his father to Azkaban, and Harry's just lost his godfather to drapery (seriously, I thought the mourning-over-Sirius continuity played much better here as well; the only scene in the book that I remember really standing out to me on that front was Christmas at the Weasley's with Remus, but the residual angst seemed much more present to me in the film).
OH MAN HOW HAVE I NOT MENTIONED LUNA YET? Oh man, she is so great, and so reminding me of why I kind of shipped Harry/Luna through the book. The entire Christmas party scene was so perfect and, oh, costume geek-out, I LOVE LOVE LOVEDDDD LUNA'S DRESS.
NEEDS MORE NEVILLE. BAHHH.
...I've probably left off dozens of other things I wanted to touch on, but it looks like it might rain soon and I'd like to take the dogs out first. Oh, weather, thanks for cutting in to my Harry Potter rantings!! Sigh.
Oh, but quick vid flail -- so I've been going through all of my old Harry Potter links and such, and, okay, I'm willing to bet that you've already all seen it because 1) it's almost two years old and 2) IT'S KIND OF THE MOST AMAZING VID EVER, but even if it isn't new to you it certainly demands to be re-experienced: the first four Potter films to Snakes on a Plane. UGHHH HARRY POTTER WHY SO EPIC?
-
capslock_hood rewatch today! SO. EXCITED. I put my own Robin Hood rewatch on hold so I could jump on board with the capschat, so I think it's only going to overlap with what I've been watching by one episode (1.07, but I honestly do not mind watch that one as often as possible). Come join if you can!- I love
bygonefashion.- TV catch-up! Leverage just started back this season. Sometimes I feel like I'm watching this show for the wrong reasons -- I rarely connect with the victim plot of the week and tend to find them rather dull (I mean, I know the central conceit of the show is helping those who can't help themselves, but could we maybe have clients with even the teeniest amount of character agency?), and then I usually lose the con about halfway through -- but I just love the tone of the show and all of the hero characters so darn much. Like, honestly, I just want them to all sit around in that pub all day (random aside, but the Ashes to Ashes part of my brain is all like OMG IS IT SIGNIFICANT??? that Nate hangs out in a bar below street level and then lives in a rented room upstairs above it? How is this relevant to his psyche? Is he descending into his deepest primal urges every time he goes down and thinks about having a drink? Is the upstairs representative of his upper brain functions and the intricate planning of his cons and how he uses it to mask the ache of his recovering alcoholism? AM I POSSIBLY THINKING TOO MUCH ABOUT THIS??) and talk about, I don't know, the new episodes of Torchwood or the finer points of jumping out of a plane or something, and I would happily watch that for weeks on end. All of my favorite bits were just silly character moments -- Parker and the fingerquotes, Sophie's singing being not quite as good as her acting, the Eliot/Hardison exchange about Pakistan, Eliot busting through the wall with a chainsaw... oh, team! It's so nice to have everybody together again.
- I've also been keeping up with Royal Pains, which I don't actually think I've posted about since the first episode. Well. Hmmm. I think it underwent a growth period during the early episodes -- like Leverage, it does have a tendency to get rather heavy handed with it's moral righteousness (Royal Pains drinking game -- every time somebody complains vaguely about "the system," take a shot!) -- but it's matured quite nicely and I've been getting into the stories a lot more lately. I really enjoyed "No Man is an Island" (have I mentioned that the Evan/Hank dynamic is basically my favorite thing about the show? Because... it totally is), and then I thought this week's was good as well. Things that I find refreshing about the show:
1. I like that Hank is actually invested in his work now, instead of being the reluctant hero dragged around by Evan (see: the end of "No Man is an Island." GOOD CHOICE, HANK), and I like that it's progressed beyond the straightforward Robin Hood parallel -- i.e. he only treats rich people so he can take all their money and afford to treat those without resources. Rather, the show has established that he tries to find a way to help all of his patients, because there are problems in people's lives that aren't necessarily all about money, and if you think it's ridiculous to define people based purely on their income, then... maybe you shouldn't define people based purely on their income (which is more of what Jill tends to do)?
2. So relatedly, I like that there are a bunch of recurring characters and that we have a chance to see Hank develop a relationship with these people he's otherwise rather contemptuous of.
3. To go back to the Jill-Hank relationship, then -- well, hmmm. I'm still uncertain about her character. Aside from the fact that she is the least believable hospital administrator ever (like, okay, I know that TV needs hotter and younger professionals than exist in real life, but it borders on ridiculous; IMDb doesn't list an age for the actress, but she doesn't look more than 30), she's kind of, well... boring and one-sided? To return to the Robin Hood parallel (because, obviously, everything can be reduced to that) it seemed like the show was setting up Hank as Hood and then Jill as Marian, his sort of go-to girl on the inside... but now it feels like it's flipped, and suddenly Hank is the one who gets to live both sides of working high society but also helping the poor, and dealing with the emotional issues of each, while Jill is stuck in the Bobbin mentality of "all rich people suck, let's throw rocks at them. Also, being smug and morally superior is clearly the best way to get people to like me." Okay, this is probably sounding a lot meaner than I meant it to because I don't completely hate her character, but she still hasn't fully grown on me. I do really like how her relationship with Hank has been developing, though. While I'm not usually a fan of "OMG THESE TWO CHARACTERS JUST MET BUT THEY ARE TOTALLY PERFECT FOR EACH OTHER. Like, look, they have matching cars and they look into each other soooouls and don't you just want them to get married and have beautiful babies? LOVE. PURE TRUE HOLY LOVE and they're hooking up, like, now," I get equally tired of, "OMG THESE TWO CHARACTERS JUST MET BUT THEY ARE TOTALLY PERFECT FOR EACH OTHER but they can never be together due to lame reasons that we are fabricating for drama, so enjoy the UST for the next five seasons but don't bank on anything." So I like that their romance has been rather straightforward -- they like each other, they have a lot in common, they each find the other attractive, neither has any other romantic obligations -- so they get together, like two normal, grown adults who want to have a normal, grown adult relationship, instead of mooning around about each other wangsting over "does he like like me or just like me??"
4. Not a praise, more of a nitpick -- dude. NEEDS MOAR DIVYA. She is so underused and, incidentally, so much more interesting than Jill (OMG the Robin Hood comparisons continue -- okay, so, Divya is like Djaq, right? Because she's snarky and good with medicine and just awesome in general. So then Evan is Allan, the loudmouth grifter... and now I can totally justify why I ship the two of them... Okay, I should stop before this parallel runs any deeper. Also, there is no Sheriff or Guy equivalent, which makes me sad).
Anyway, moving on to the last and most important point...
- HARRY POTTER. I actually made up a list of things I've been meaning to post about and accidentally put Harry Potter on it twice, ha. YES IT IS THAT IMPORTANT. Long story short -- I really really liked the film. I'm going to be lazy and basically C&P my initial thoughts from facebook, but... sorry. Please forgive the JKR blasphemy, but I think for the most part I actually liked it better than the book.
...Yeah. Uh? Oops? I don't know. It's been ages since I've read the book so I'm kind of curious to go back and see how I feel about it now, but I mostly remember being ho-hum about the majority of it and only really getting into the story in the last few chapters of awesome payoff. Incidentally the film completely reverses this, then -- I had already been spoiled for the fact that most of the Hogwarts battle bits were being cut, and I was rather upset because those were by far the sequences from the book that I enjoyed the most and in fact read going "oh mannnn I can't wait until they make this part into a movie!"; so my favorite parts from the book were missing, but then all of the parts that didn't quite work for me in the book were translated so beautifully in the movie that I'm almost (almost!! Not quite) ready to reconcile myself to the absence of FENRIR BEING TERRIFYING AND DISTURBING and SNAPE SHRIEKING "DON'T CALL ME A COWARD!!!" and the SEXTET OF AWESOME fighting off Death Eaters through the halls. ...Seriously. Guys. It would have been awesome. Who ever thought I'd find myself saying, "Wow, the action sequences are way more involved and exciting in the book than in the movie"? But I digress! Back to the stuff that was actually in the film!
I hated all of the romantic follies in the book, but, because the film has to pare down the storylines so much, I think it worked so much better here -- so those subplots were quick and cutting and funny instead of drawn out and grating. Lavender Brown was funny! Cormac McLaggen was funny! I was really surprised by how much of the movie I spent laughing -- hey, wait, isn't this the one with the disturbing backstories and zombie pits and character death? But it worked! (Also, we were sitting right in front of the biggest LOLer in the theatre, who would literally just bellow at any funny scenes, and somehow that made it about ten times more hilarious, ahaha.)
As for the Harry romances, I loved him flirting with the cafe girl at the beginning, d'aww. Yes, Dumbledore does ask too much of Harry, damn him. And then Harry/Ginny was just so much better here. I remember having very mixed feelings while first reading the book -- I'd been one of those annoyingly sappy Harry/Ginny OBHWF shippers from basically the outset so a part of my couldn't help being THRILLED OMG VINDICATION, but a much bigger part of me was like... dude... that is somehow not what I'd envisioned at all and I don't really know how much I ship this any more. :/ It seemed like their relationship in the book was more predicated on Harry noticing this new fresh side to Ginny that is brash and sexy and outspoken and in fact rather unrelated to the rest of their interactions up to that point -- so I like that the movie had a balance of Ginny growing and becoming more comfortable with herself (developed nicely from the last film, I might add. SORRY BUT OMG I AM JUST REALLY IN LOVE WITH DAVID YATES RIGHT NOW, OKAY. If these last two movies are anything to judge by I'm so glad he's doing the rest of them as well), but that it also referenced the earlier relationship between Harry and Ginny. It felt a lot more natural to me, and not just Harry being gobsmacked by, "Whoa, I've ignored you for years but suddenly you're hot and datable so. Yeah." Character continuity FTW.
Actually, I think the continuity/references to earlier books was what helped me to enjoy this movie so much, because it felt much more a cohesive part of the series. Like, I know JKR tried to set up the folding parallelism with the books in pairing up 1-7, 2-6, 3-5, and then 4 as sort of the game-changing lynch-pin -- and I think it fit together really really really well in this film with all of the callbacks to Chamber of Secrets. Having Ginny and Harry's first kiss come after she helps him get rid of his own seductive-bad-influence book, just as he did for her in CoS -- ahh, beautiful. And then all of the Borgin and Burkes stuff, and the showdown in the toilets, and Aragog, and Fawkes flying off at the end... okay, so I guess all of that was in the book, but it felt more organized and developed as a thematic link in the film (again, it seems like Yates has really learned to benefit from the one "drawback" of the films in having to dump so much content -- it's so much easier to focus in on one important thematic thread that might otherwise get lost in the sprawling storytelling that JKR does).
Other things that were great -- JIM BROADBENT. Not that that should surprise me, seeing as, well, it's Jim Broadbent, but I'd always rather liked Slughorn in the books (so rarely do we get such ethically ambiguous "good" guys in the books; either they're a wise and/or loving mentor to Harry or a complete creep, and I love that Slughorn falls slap in the middle) and felt that he didn't always get quite a fair shake (in that it seemed like the book worked over to emphasize his shadier qualities), but I think he was portrayed much more... um... sympathetically? Not quite the word I'm looking for; but I think the film gives a better sense of showing that, although he culls students because he likes having friends in high places, he does on some level also have a deep fondness for and pride in those he grows close to, such as Lily; and that he hides the horcrux conversation not simply because he wants to avoid looking bad but because he's truly deeply fucking devastated by what came of it. So anyway, I think he did a great job of maneuvering through the callous and the caring parts of the character.
Draco... omggg... okay, actually, can I just take a step back and say how much I love how ALL of the kids have grown up? For child actors they're just all so lovely and well-adjusted and professional and d'awww. And, hey, some of them are actually really good actors, too! (Like... WOW. I was really impressed with DanRad in this one.) I thought Tom Felton was pretty darn great, actually -- after having basically nothing to do in the last film, he delivered big time in this one. Again, more parallels that struck me much more in the film than in the book -- obviously all of the "I'm the chosen one!" links between Harry and Draco, but then I like how it turned into some daddydrama, too -- Draco's just lost his father to Azkaban, and Harry's just lost his godfather to drapery (seriously, I thought the mourning-over-Sirius continuity played much better here as well; the only scene in the book that I remember really standing out to me on that front was Christmas at the Weasley's with Remus, but the residual angst seemed much more present to me in the film).
OH MAN HOW HAVE I NOT MENTIONED LUNA YET? Oh man, she is so great, and so reminding me of why I kind of shipped Harry/Luna through the book. The entire Christmas party scene was so perfect and, oh, costume geek-out, I LOVE LOVE LOVEDDDD LUNA'S DRESS.
NEEDS MORE NEVILLE. BAHHH.
...I've probably left off dozens of other things I wanted to touch on, but it looks like it might rain soon and I'd like to take the dogs out first. Oh, weather, thanks for cutting in to my Harry Potter rantings!! Sigh.
Oh, but quick vid flail -- so I've been going through all of my old Harry Potter links and such, and, okay, I'm willing to bet that you've already all seen it because 1) it's almost two years old and 2) IT'S KIND OF THE MOST AMAZING VID EVER, but even if it isn't new to you it certainly demands to be re-experienced: the first four Potter films to Snakes on a Plane. UGHHH HARRY POTTER WHY SO EPIC?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-07-18 05:20 pm (UTC)If the battle isn't in then my favourite scene out of the later books (Tonks telling Lupin why he's an idiot in the infirmary) wouldn't really have a place. But I would still love some content with them. Am I in luck? :)
no subject
Date: 2009-07-18 05:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-19 01:32 am (UTC)Slughorn's speech with the fish and the lily/Lily just broke my heart. I agree with you--it's good to have someone who's not EVIL but not perfect, either.
Seriously, Tom Felton. GOOD GOD, when he's all crying and saying that he has to kill Dumbledore or else Voldemort will kill him...I wanted to give him a hug, and I don't even LIKE Draco that much.
no subject
Date: 2009-07-19 12:52 pm (UTC)Me too! I'm not always hugely on board when the films add in fantastical whimsy tidbits that aren't in the books -- like, what, there wasn't enough MAGIC in the books for you that you had to make some up?? (this would be the talking heads in PoA, btw. Whhhhyyyy) -- but I thought that addition was so beautiful and so poignant. Ditto the hourglass in Slughorn's office. Basically, Sluggy = AWESOMEST EVER. (And, heeee I am so glad they left in the Slughorn-is-an-armchair bit. When he tries to shake Harry's hand with an armrest? Heh. Easily amused, that's me.)
Seriously, Tom Felton. GOOD GOD, when he's all crying and saying that he has to kill Dumbledore or else Voldemort will kill him...I wanted to give him a hug, and I don't even LIKE Draco that much.
While fandom has certainly had a lot of fun with Draco -- myself included -- in the early books he's kind of a lackluster bad guy because all he gets to do is run around a be a snot, but never actually do anything. For every time Harry thinks "Malfoy's behind it!!" it turns out that... actually, no. Draco can run off at the mouth but that's about it. So even while reading HBP I remember feeling so weirdly vindicated, for both Harry's and Draco's sake, that for once Draco was actually up to some deep dark shenanigans -- and that, rather than providing the opportunity for Draco to finally "become a man," his task just reveals him as a very scared, very much in-over-his-head boy trying to protect his family in the only twisted way he knows how. Ohhhh Draco. :(
Actually, as long as we're on the subject of Slytherins in bad situations -- okay, so the films have shown that they don't mind changing up a few things, sometimes even big storyline moments, so I have a request for the last film. When every single Slytherin bails at the end of Deathly Hallows from participating in the defense of Hogwarts? SORRY BUT I FUCKING LOATHE THAT MOMENT SO MUCH. Please please please David Yates be the champion of my heart and have some of them stay.
(And now I feel like I'm being terribly disloyal to JKR, with all of my "I love the movie more!" and "I can't wait for the movie to fix...!" I do love all of the books very very dearly, often far beyond what I would ever think my heart capable of feeling, but I can't help feeling that fandom sort of ruined the last few in that they just came out too fast to satisfy demand when they probably would have benefited from lengthier attention prior to publication. I feel like Yates has finally initiated the very necessary pruning process of going through the books, carefully selecting the very central elements of the most significant storylines, and finding clever and touching ways to connect each in a way that illuminates some greater theme of the book/film as a whole. And of course none of that could exist if it wasn't in the books in the first place, which is why JKR still has partial ownership of my brain, but it feels like only now are certain narratives bits really fitting together for me and making me "ohhhhh!" in wonder.)
no subject
Date: 2009-07-19 08:02 pm (UTC)Yeah, I'm a little unnecessarily mean to Draco. I think it's because I read the first 3-4 books without any fandom exposure (cause I was like 12), and then I didn't reread them for a while, and it seemed like everyone on the internets was ALLLL about Draco, so when I finally started re-reading, I was just like...seriously? This little brat? But now I'm starting to appreciate him for what he is, and I'm like obsessed with his family, so that helps. Poor kid
is what I would say if he weren't fictional.When every single Slytherin bails at the end of Deathly Hallows from participating in the defense of Hogwarts? SORRY BUT I FUCKING LOATHE THAT MOMENT SO MUCH.
UGH SERIOUSLY WHYYYY. LET'S SHOW SOME INTER-HOUSE UNITY, JO. It's like all the books kind of hinted that hey, maybe Slytherins aren't all bad, and it's our choices that define us, and YOU might have been a Slytherin, Harry! and then BAM NO THEY ALL SUCK THE END. To add to the movie wish list: Please let us see what's going down at Hogwarts while the Trio is camping. It killlled me not to know what was happening. There are times I hate the book's limited 3rd-person POV. THIS WAS ONE OF THOSE TIMES. I do like that about the movies, too--like being able to see Draco's cabinet experiments. Yeah, I love Jo, but sometimes the later books are too sprawling for their own good. I say this with all the love in my heart, but they could definitely have used some tightening up. I say this now, whereas before, when the books came out, I wanted them to go on FOREVER AND EVER.
(Also, if they cut out Hermione-as-Bellatrix, I will CUT A BITCH. I want to see HBC do that scene so badly.)
no subject
Date: 2009-07-19 03:49 am (UTC)Again, more parallels that struck me much more in the film than in the book -- obviously all of the "I'm the chosen one!" links between Harry and Draco, but then I like how it turned into some daddydrama, too -- Draco's just lost his father to Azkaban, and Harry's just lost his godfather to drapery
Word! I was also struck by the parallel of Draco being mentored by Snape while Harry is by Dumbledore, and it was so obvious to me as soon as I realized it that I couldn't believe I have apparently missed it all these years, well, it was still cool.
no subject
Date: 2009-07-19 01:20 pm (UTC)Yes! That was the exact feeling I had all through the movie! While I did actually like a lot of the changes made for the film, I think what I liked most about it was when it took things that were in fact in the book, that did in fact bother me in the book, and that instead in fact ROCKED MY FACE OFF in the film. As I just commented above to
Now if only they could fix that ending... (YES I must follow up every praise with some constant whining. WHY GUYS WHY, you did everything else so perfectly!??!!? I can only conjecture that they wanted to keep their PG rating? FENRIR CAN DO NOTHING PG.)