Goblet of Fire film
Nov. 19th, 2005 07:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
owlI've just got back from seeing GoF. The stupid eejit on the ticket desk told us at first that it was sold out, and by the time we'd gone back to the car to have a council of war, the only tickets we could get were down in the front corner. Emma Watson looks rather lopsided or something when you aren't looking at her straight on.
Anyway, I took a notebook (much to my brothers' derision), so this is more or less point-by-point as it struck me.
The Riddle house looked wrong to me. It looked like the White Witch's castle, not an English house in the country. It was the same thing that bothered me about the chocolate factory; it looked cartoonish, especially when compared to real sets in the rest of the film.
It was a bit weird to have the build-up and the aftermath of the World Cup and not to see even one second of the actual playing. Krum doesn't look anywhere near eighteen, and he comes across as much more self-confident than in the book. Both of these things make his relationship with Hermione more creepy than it ought to be—it doesn't really seem like only a three-year age gap.
I liked the Weasley's tent and the girls running over it in excitement, but the wide view of the whole site seemed fake CG-ish, again. Compared with the Leaky Cauldron similar scene in PoA, it's pathetic. And no Percy being Weatherby'd by Mr Crouch! Boo.
Ginny's hanging around a good bit at the start, and I like to see her friendship with Hermione. The exchange of glances when Cedric drops out of the tree (what/ was he doing there anyway??)—it's obviously 'He's so fine'. The teenage romance bits come across more blatently on film; at this rate HBP is going to be pure Mills and Boon. I mean, you see Ron totally checking out the Beauxbatons girls' arses. I liked their blue capes and hats, but why were both the schools single-sex?
The Goblet itself didn't look like what I imagined it to be. Hermione sitting reading in the middle of the hoo-ha is perfect, but htey should have made her ssay 'Honestly!' at some point in that scene. The twins' beards were good; I like them better in the film than in the book, because they're much more innocous. WWW is going to come out of left field a bit whenever it's introduced in OotP.
Rita Skeeter looks just right, and she's incredibly bitchy, too; Harry feeling at home in a cupboard?! And the sneaky way she gets him to agree to the Quick-Quotes Quill. And she keeps calling him twelve. And she paws over Cedric and Fleur, yuck.
Sirius' face in the fire looks all wrong; it's meant to be a head in the fire. Note the 'Nobody stops being a Death Eater'—a reference to Regulus? Okay, what is going on with Ron and warning Harry about the dragons? I don't wonder Harry was confused; I am. And why is Harry alone with Neville instead of alone with Hermione? although gratuitous Neville is always great. And gratuitous Ginny, too. I love her furry boots.
Neville wading in the lake is very cute; I loved his wellingtons. His Herbology is really emphasised in this. But are we supposed to think it was Neville and not Dobby who took the Gillyweed from Snape's store? No way. Poor little Neville in DADA! It was so horrible of Crouch!Moody to haul him up in front of the class and Crucio the spider under his nose. Seemed OOC of Hermione not to pipe up about AK when she's been specifically asked by a teacher, even if she is bothered about Neville and Harry. And why does she get to be Exposition Fairy again? That's Ron's job. How is Hermione meant to know about the Dark Mark and about dress robes?
Ferret!Draco goes down Crabbe's trousers!!! That whole scene was hilarious. Cedric seems to have a little fan-club of his own, lying on that bench surrounded by a crowd containing a couple of girls :) It reminded me of Draco in the train in HBP; he is the same age as Cedric was in GoF.
Huh. Who said Krum's head was full of sawdust? Ggrr. The poor boy does get a rough ride in this.
How come they get all these snazzy uniforms for the tasks? I should have thought Harry and Cedric would have been wearing modified versions of their Quidditch gear or else ordinary clothes. Shock, horror, an actual first aid box. I loved Neville's earmuffs.
What is all this smashing up of Hogwarts' roof? It looks like an exercise of 'See how well we can do CG'. Again, I'd rather have the real sets of Hogwarts.
The romance bit :) How come Ron can't recognise dress robes and Hermione can? And where are Harry's robes supposed to come from? I liked Ginny going, 'I'm not wearing that, it's ghastly'. That's my girl! I loved the dancing practice. McGonagal and Ron! He's meant to hold her what?! I didn't catch the joke Ron made that made her single him out; what was it? Neville practising up in the dorm—awwww! Harry and Ron are so nasty about Neville, assuming he'll never have a partner, and saying 'he can take himself'. I suppose it's a way of reminding the audience that Neville's not on the same level as the Trio friendship is. But he's growing up so sweet and handsome, I can't see why he should be picked on. I'd go with him, for sure. :)
Krum's fanclub have followed him down to the lake, and Hermione keeps glancing up from her book. She's not immune. Why on earth did Rita report the Hermione and Krum thing before the ball? It shouldn't have been hard for Ron to guess, in that case. Where are they all when Ron asks out Hermione to the Ball? Snape is ther and the twins, so obviously it's not in a class. Fred asking out Angelina was funny, and so was the way Snape kept shoving down Ron and Harry's heads to shut them up.
Cho is very pretty and sweet, and she has a Scottish accent too. You can really see that Harry fancies her, and why.
Ron's dress robe horror was great. 'I look like my Great Aunt Tessie *sniff* Smell like my Great Aunt Tessie too.' So is his shocked state after he asks out Fleur. I loved Ginny in this scene, and Hermione's reaction when she thinks for a second that Fleur accepted :D It's a shame that we didn't see Harry asking Parvati out. And why were both the Patels in Gryffindor?
The Ball was fun to watch. I loved Hermione's little nervous giggle, and Harry saying, 'Yes' that she was beautiful, when he was talking about Cho and Parvati was talking about Hermione. Filch dancing with Mrs Norris! Parvati putting Harry through his paces like a prize calf! Moody's party fake leg and his animal sporran! The Weird Sister were great, even if they were male. Poor Parvati and Padma didn't have much fun with those two idiots who took them. Neville and Ginny seemed to, though. Just what were they doing that Neville got in so late? I suppose they're foreshadowing Ginny's boy-magnet role in HBP.
I liked the scene on the bridge. Viktor the physical being!! And Hermione realising what she's just said :) It shows that Hermione's completely comfortable talking to Harry about her boyfriend—no interest in him that way.
Ok, Myrtle in the bathroom is just a bit squicky. The way she cosies up to Harry, and her obsession with loss of bubbles. Urgh. This is a 12A, you know, no necrophilia :-P
Neville and his gravity-free tree! You could really see Moody pushing the two of them together there. The moment when Neville thinks it's all gone horribly wrong, and he misses Harry's somersault. Aww, I want to hug him there. I liked Cedric reminding Harry of the time in the lake, seeing all the Gryffindors crowding around Harry giving him towels after the task. And the boys get a little kiss from Fleur.:D Didn't spot any glare of death from Hermione there, though.
I didn't like the look of the Pensieve; the memories looked to wispy and not liquid enough to me. Dumbledore knows too soon about Harry's dream with young Barty in it, coupled with the Polyjuice ingredients being missing from Snape's store, plus a new teacher who swigs from a hip flask every hour on the hour... I suppose it's the inevitable explanations for the film audience.
The maze in the third task is huge! Forget the Quidditch pitch, it takes up the whole glen! Fleur's third task outfit is a chav tracksuit, hee. And is her sister saying at Hogwarts during the whole tournament? Cedric and Harry helping each other out in the maze was good. But why were Krum's eyes all clouded? It makes it a bit too obvious that Imperius is going on. Couldn't he just have had a bit of a fixed stare or something?
The whole scene in the maze and the graveyard was building up to that 'Kill the spare' moment when you realise what's happened, which was the way it should be. It all seemed to pass very quickly after that. Voldemort was good; very scary, but you can see clearly that he's a few sandwiches short of a picnic. And when he kicked Cedric's face! Grr. There didn't seem to be enough Death Eaters in the graveyard; it looked like about eight, not even the thirty of the book. And Lucius Malfoy's hair was showing beneath his hood; bit of a dead give-away there. The DE's really got their masks on and got there in a hurry, too.
Why did Voldemort say what he did about foreseeing what Lily's sacrifice would do? i thought the whole point of it was that no-one could foresee it.
I didn't like the images of Cedric and the Potters that appeared under PI. They didn't look solid enough, just like Sirius in the fire. But Lilly called Harry 'sweetheart'! The poor little boy! And the way he cried and wouldn't let go of Cedric's body. I nearly cried there too, especially when poor Mr Diggory appeared.
The end scenes seemed to go over very quickly to me. I think they should either have stopped with the scene in the Great Hall, or else gone with the book's ending. The bit with them talking about having a quiet year for once seemed to ring a bit false. The last time they could have asked that was at the end of PoA.
The way they set us up to be sorry about Cedric's death was to have a sort of sixth-former cricket captain and our hero of the remove-type interaction going on, which seemed like a nod back to the school-story genre that HP fits into, among others. It worked well, I thought.
If I hadn't seen Casanova, I'd be in serious doubt about now whether David Tennant could play anything but crazy, in one way or another. Oh, hurry up, Christmas Invasion.
Overall, this film seemed visually darker than PoA did. There, a lot more of the action seemed to take place outside, or in the snow when it's bright, whereas in GoF it seemed more indoors and in the dark. A thing I like about the films is the way that you can see the whole wizarding world, instead of just focusing on whatever's happening to Harry at that point. You can see Ginny or Seamus or Draco's gang or a group in Ravenclaw scarves in the background.
Now I really, really want Book #7!
Anyway, I took a notebook (much to my brothers' derision), so this is more or less point-by-point as it struck me.
The Riddle house looked wrong to me. It looked like the White Witch's castle, not an English house in the country. It was the same thing that bothered me about the chocolate factory; it looked cartoonish, especially when compared to real sets in the rest of the film.
It was a bit weird to have the build-up and the aftermath of the World Cup and not to see even one second of the actual playing. Krum doesn't look anywhere near eighteen, and he comes across as much more self-confident than in the book. Both of these things make his relationship with Hermione more creepy than it ought to be—it doesn't really seem like only a three-year age gap.
I liked the Weasley's tent and the girls running over it in excitement, but the wide view of the whole site seemed fake CG-ish, again. Compared with the Leaky Cauldron similar scene in PoA, it's pathetic. And no Percy being Weatherby'd by Mr Crouch! Boo.
Ginny's hanging around a good bit at the start, and I like to see her friendship with Hermione. The exchange of glances when Cedric drops out of the tree (what/ was he doing there anyway??)—it's obviously 'He's so fine'. The teenage romance bits come across more blatently on film; at this rate HBP is going to be pure Mills and Boon. I mean, you see Ron totally checking out the Beauxbatons girls' arses. I liked their blue capes and hats, but why were both the schools single-sex?
The Goblet itself didn't look like what I imagined it to be. Hermione sitting reading in the middle of the hoo-ha is perfect, but htey should have made her ssay 'Honestly!' at some point in that scene. The twins' beards were good; I like them better in the film than in the book, because they're much more innocous. WWW is going to come out of left field a bit whenever it's introduced in OotP.
Rita Skeeter looks just right, and she's incredibly bitchy, too; Harry feeling at home in a cupboard?! And the sneaky way she gets him to agree to the Quick-Quotes Quill. And she keeps calling him twelve. And she paws over Cedric and Fleur, yuck.
Sirius' face in the fire looks all wrong; it's meant to be a head in the fire. Note the 'Nobody stops being a Death Eater'—a reference to Regulus? Okay, what is going on with Ron and warning Harry about the dragons? I don't wonder Harry was confused; I am. And why is Harry alone with Neville instead of alone with Hermione? although gratuitous Neville is always great. And gratuitous Ginny, too. I love her furry boots.
Neville wading in the lake is very cute; I loved his wellingtons. His Herbology is really emphasised in this. But are we supposed to think it was Neville and not Dobby who took the Gillyweed from Snape's store? No way. Poor little Neville in DADA! It was so horrible of Crouch!Moody to haul him up in front of the class and Crucio the spider under his nose. Seemed OOC of Hermione not to pipe up about AK when she's been specifically asked by a teacher, even if she is bothered about Neville and Harry. And why does she get to be Exposition Fairy again? That's Ron's job. How is Hermione meant to know about the Dark Mark and about dress robes?
Ferret!Draco goes down Crabbe's trousers!!! That whole scene was hilarious. Cedric seems to have a little fan-club of his own, lying on that bench surrounded by a crowd containing a couple of girls :) It reminded me of Draco in the train in HBP; he is the same age as Cedric was in GoF.
Huh. Who said Krum's head was full of sawdust? Ggrr. The poor boy does get a rough ride in this.
How come they get all these snazzy uniforms for the tasks? I should have thought Harry and Cedric would have been wearing modified versions of their Quidditch gear or else ordinary clothes. Shock, horror, an actual first aid box. I loved Neville's earmuffs.
What is all this smashing up of Hogwarts' roof? It looks like an exercise of 'See how well we can do CG'. Again, I'd rather have the real sets of Hogwarts.
The romance bit :) How come Ron can't recognise dress robes and Hermione can? And where are Harry's robes supposed to come from? I liked Ginny going, 'I'm not wearing that, it's ghastly'. That's my girl! I loved the dancing practice. McGonagal and Ron! He's meant to hold her what?! I didn't catch the joke Ron made that made her single him out; what was it? Neville practising up in the dorm—awwww! Harry and Ron are so nasty about Neville, assuming he'll never have a partner, and saying 'he can take himself'. I suppose it's a way of reminding the audience that Neville's not on the same level as the Trio friendship is. But he's growing up so sweet and handsome, I can't see why he should be picked on. I'd go with him, for sure. :)
Krum's fanclub have followed him down to the lake, and Hermione keeps glancing up from her book. She's not immune. Why on earth did Rita report the Hermione and Krum thing before the ball? It shouldn't have been hard for Ron to guess, in that case. Where are they all when Ron asks out Hermione to the Ball? Snape is ther and the twins, so obviously it's not in a class. Fred asking out Angelina was funny, and so was the way Snape kept shoving down Ron and Harry's heads to shut them up.
Cho is very pretty and sweet, and she has a Scottish accent too. You can really see that Harry fancies her, and why.
Ron's dress robe horror was great. 'I look like my Great Aunt Tessie *sniff* Smell like my Great Aunt Tessie too.' So is his shocked state after he asks out Fleur. I loved Ginny in this scene, and Hermione's reaction when she thinks for a second that Fleur accepted :D It's a shame that we didn't see Harry asking Parvati out. And why were both the Patels in Gryffindor?
The Ball was fun to watch. I loved Hermione's little nervous giggle, and Harry saying, 'Yes' that she was beautiful, when he was talking about Cho and Parvati was talking about Hermione. Filch dancing with Mrs Norris! Parvati putting Harry through his paces like a prize calf! Moody's party fake leg and his animal sporran! The Weird Sister were great, even if they were male. Poor Parvati and Padma didn't have much fun with those two idiots who took them. Neville and Ginny seemed to, though. Just what were they doing that Neville got in so late? I suppose they're foreshadowing Ginny's boy-magnet role in HBP.
I liked the scene on the bridge. Viktor the physical being!! And Hermione realising what she's just said :) It shows that Hermione's completely comfortable talking to Harry about her boyfriend—no interest in him that way.
Ok, Myrtle in the bathroom is just a bit squicky. The way she cosies up to Harry, and her obsession with loss of bubbles. Urgh. This is a 12A, you know, no necrophilia :-P
Neville and his gravity-free tree! You could really see Moody pushing the two of them together there. The moment when Neville thinks it's all gone horribly wrong, and he misses Harry's somersault. Aww, I want to hug him there. I liked Cedric reminding Harry of the time in the lake, seeing all the Gryffindors crowding around Harry giving him towels after the task. And the boys get a little kiss from Fleur.:D Didn't spot any glare of death from Hermione there, though.
I didn't like the look of the Pensieve; the memories looked to wispy and not liquid enough to me. Dumbledore knows too soon about Harry's dream with young Barty in it, coupled with the Polyjuice ingredients being missing from Snape's store, plus a new teacher who swigs from a hip flask every hour on the hour... I suppose it's the inevitable explanations for the film audience.
The maze in the third task is huge! Forget the Quidditch pitch, it takes up the whole glen! Fleur's third task outfit is a chav tracksuit, hee. And is her sister saying at Hogwarts during the whole tournament? Cedric and Harry helping each other out in the maze was good. But why were Krum's eyes all clouded? It makes it a bit too obvious that Imperius is going on. Couldn't he just have had a bit of a fixed stare or something?
The whole scene in the maze and the graveyard was building up to that 'Kill the spare' moment when you realise what's happened, which was the way it should be. It all seemed to pass very quickly after that. Voldemort was good; very scary, but you can see clearly that he's a few sandwiches short of a picnic. And when he kicked Cedric's face! Grr. There didn't seem to be enough Death Eaters in the graveyard; it looked like about eight, not even the thirty of the book. And Lucius Malfoy's hair was showing beneath his hood; bit of a dead give-away there. The DE's really got their masks on and got there in a hurry, too.
Why did Voldemort say what he did about foreseeing what Lily's sacrifice would do? i thought the whole point of it was that no-one could foresee it.
I didn't like the images of Cedric and the Potters that appeared under PI. They didn't look solid enough, just like Sirius in the fire. But Lilly called Harry 'sweetheart'! The poor little boy! And the way he cried and wouldn't let go of Cedric's body. I nearly cried there too, especially when poor Mr Diggory appeared.
The end scenes seemed to go over very quickly to me. I think they should either have stopped with the scene in the Great Hall, or else gone with the book's ending. The bit with them talking about having a quiet year for once seemed to ring a bit false. The last time they could have asked that was at the end of PoA.
The way they set us up to be sorry about Cedric's death was to have a sort of sixth-former cricket captain and our hero of the remove-type interaction going on, which seemed like a nod back to the school-story genre that HP fits into, among others. It worked well, I thought.
If I hadn't seen Casanova, I'd be in serious doubt about now whether David Tennant could play anything but crazy, in one way or another. Oh, hurry up, Christmas Invasion.
Overall, this film seemed visually darker than PoA did. There, a lot more of the action seemed to take place outside, or in the snow when it's bright, whereas in GoF it seemed more indoors and in the dark. A thing I like about the films is the way that you can see the whole wizarding world, instead of just focusing on whatever's happening to Harry at that point. You can see Ginny or Seamus or Draco's gang or a group in Ravenclaw scarves in the background.
Now I really, really want Book #7!
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no subject
Date: 2005-11-19 11:36 pm (UTC)We could only get seats in the front row last night. There was a pre-show thing with Sarah Jessica Parker. Talk about not looking right when looking at her from that angle!
I had almost all the same thoughts as you did. Loved Neville and Ginny!
no subject
Date: 2005-11-21 09:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-11-20 12:06 am (UTC)I also wish we'd seen a little bit more of Cedric's Hufflepuff side. He's a genuinely nice, decent guy, and I didn't feel that at all until close to the end. Also, we missed out on Amos Diggory and his funny bragging about Cedric that makes Harry really, really uncomfortable. I love that bit in the book.
Mostly I guess they just had to cut it so short. I wish they'd kept Harry in the enclosure with the Hungarian Horntail instead of that long, drawn-out thing with the roof. Maybe they could have used the extra five minutes to make the beginning less choppy.
no subject
Date: 2005-11-21 09:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-11-20 12:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-11-21 09:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-11-20 09:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-11-21 09:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-11-21 10:51 am (UTC)Maybe I liked the movie so much because I hadn't read the book in awhile. But, correct me if I'm wrong, doesn't HERMIONE turn Draco into the ferret? If so, way not cool with the changing of that.
no subject
Date: 2005-11-22 09:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-11-23 10:05 pm (UTC)Along with more 'Honestly!' from Hermione, Moody should have said 'Constant vigilance!' at some point. I was waiting and waiting for it.
Oh, and I think the scene when Fred asks Angelina out was some kind of prep, with Snape supervising everyone. I liked that a lot - proper boarding school stuff, with people passing notes.
no subject
Date: 2005-11-24 08:59 am (UTC)