lol! As I just said elsewhere, I'm more ambivalent about Gilliam than most, but I think he's really good with characters who are paranoid and characters with their own peculiar internal value systems, and I think those are sort of the prerequisites for making HBP need to be about whatever it needs to be about (something no one will really be sure of until book 7, I suppose). So... hrrr. Maybe.
I'm keeping an open mind. Going back and watching the 4 that are out already I really think the 4th one is the most well-done. The first two felt too much like 'Home Alone', and the third one was a little jumpy and just wierd. I'm looking foward to the 5th, though.
The 4th is kind of fucked in the pacing, but it's unavoidable -- "and then we did this, and then this and then this" and is the best of the films, in spite of it all. I think the third has a really interesting vision, but as a film is pretty weak. Totally with you on the first two. Basically I feel like everything we've gotten so far has been fine, and that 5 and 6 are make it or break it. They are dark books, and the films have largely worked hard to keep the dark stuff in a little box only to be let out at the end. Everything is dark in 5 and 6, and I hope those helming them bloody get that.
Well, they really could've called the 4th movie "Harry Potter and Half the Book", but that really didn't bother me too much because had they followed it to the T, it would've been close to 4 hours more than likely. I'm looking foward to seeing what they do with the next 3 movies.
Yeah, I'm sort of crazed for the next batch. My only big peeve about the eidts out of movie 4 is that we didn't get the reassembling of the Order in it. I really, really wanted that scene in Dumbledore's office.
I'm quite interested to see what they do with the members of the Order. There's so many different dynamics in it. It could either be really awesome (hopefully), or it could self-destruct if the mix is wrong. Why, oh why, must hte movies only come out once a year?
Well, they didn't really try to be all Happy Super Funtime Lollipops with the 4th one, they just stated that everything was going to change in a series of lines worthy of Captain Obvious and his sidekick, General Observation.
I for one want to know who J.K. Rowling's planning on killing off in the 7th book.
I think a whole lot of people are going to be dead at the end of the 7th. I'm certan there will only be one person left from the Maurauder's era, which means Pettigrew and either Lupin or Snape will die. I imagine there will be Weasley death(s). And I imagine some professors we don't care about will die just to give the air of awfulness. In fact, the only person I'm really sure won't die in book 7 is Hermione, oddly enough. I think Draco stands a decent chance of survival too.
As to the ending of 4 -- sure they say everything is going to be different, but after all that spring fever crap in that film (which was done up hillariously) one hardly know if they are discussing Voldemort of puberty. Also, as someone who largely reads for the adult characters, it's hard for me to stop harping about the loss of the "Severus, if you are prepared" line.
Yeah, it would've been great to add that to the character. I enjoy Snape quite a bit.
The whole 'Ron likes it when they walk' thing tickled me, and I really, really hope they don't kill Lupin. He's too much of a nice guy but I know that's pretty much a giant target right there. Maybe they'll pick off Percy, the pretentious little prick...
I think who dies depends on how much JKR wants to redeem the darkness. there's poetry in the survival of the "wrong" people, i.e., Percy. I think Lupin's storyline is going to be utter heartbreak whether he lives or dies. That character's been done poorly by at every turn, and it's gotten very epic. I think there's some real narrative elegance to the possibility of Snape surviving, but I expect he won't and am just hoping for a good death. I love that character and whether he's good or evil, I just want it to make sense and have him not snivel in the end. I know the deaths in book 5 and 6 wrecked people, to the point that people I know were hestitant to start reading them because they knew what was coming. I sort of teased them about it, but I can feel that dread creeping into me with 7.
When I finally started reading the books (I was 20, a slow starter), I read one a day including the Manhattan phone book that is 4, and 5. When 6 came out I read it in 5 hours, so I think it's safe to say that I'm anxious for book 7 to come out. I'm just worried about it being an inappropriate ending. I think no matter what happens, there will be people upset, and there will be outrage. However, I also think the author knows her characters as well as her own children and she'll do them justice.
However, I did (and hold by this) think that the ending of 'Hannibal' (the book, not the monstrosity that was the movie) was the only way it could've ended.
For me I started when 4 came out, as my then parter had 4 delivered at midnight from UrbanFetch and said he wouldn't tlak to me until he was done reading it, and tossed me the first three. what's amusing is that he was never overfond of the deep sorts of companionships I always found in fiction, and it was right at the end, and it amuses me, that this of all things was the parting gift.
And yeah, her ability to do math aside, I do thnk JKR loves her characters, as evidenced by the backstories that keep emerging in the more recent books. People who don't care about their characters don't do this.
My roommate my sophomore year of college was a die-hard fan and one day they were playing Chamber of Secrets at our school's movie theatre. Since I'd dragged her to The Two Towers, she dragged me to Harry Potter and I was hooked. We were both reading book 5 at the same time ( I was re-reading it) and all you'd hear from our dorm from time to time was 'That HORRIBLE Delores Umbridge!'/
hillarious icon! And yeah, Umbridge is the worst worst worst. To the point that I can't bring myself to reread five. There's something about the nature of her cruelty that completely distresses me as perhaps nothing else in the series does.
She gets me nice and fired up and at this time of year (impending finals of DOOM), and keeps me from crawling under the covers and reading nothing more imposing than SkyMall.
I can't wait until you do, because I think that's the point at which my crap about the series becomes clear. (5 it starts to; 6 had my jaw on the floor)
At the rate I'm going we'll both be waiting quite a while. I can't stand the suspense; at the rate of one HP book per school break, I'll be hitting 6 between the submission of my thesis and my final residency. How's THAT for timing.
This scant ten-day June break brings book 4. Hold me.
A Swiftly Tilting Planet continues to be the book I re-read from that series. Granted, it's the only one I currently have in my possession, but at almost-24, I could have any of them tomorrow.
ASTP just amazes me every time I read it. Whether or not I notice something new, the nuances and foreshadowings are fanatsic. IMO, it's L'Engle's best.
Maybe AWitD is the book she wrote for bio nerds, and ASTP is the one she wrote for English nerds?
See, I quit at AWTP because I got all bored when Meg and Calvin got together. Dating was so booooring (or so I thought then). But I think maybe I should read it now, because frankly I was, and am, a big ol' English nerd.
I think I identified my brother with Charles Wallace and myself with Meg and so AWitD was really really big for me. Plus the terrifying cherubim...I read that book many times.
See, while I've always loved Charles Wallace, he really shined for me in ASTP--ie, the book where was THE MAIN CHARACTER.
Sadly, other than the one about Sandy and Dennys which I never read, the books all seem to center around Meg and Calvin and their twoo wuv. At least in ASTP, Charles Wallace and Gaudior got the best snarky lines.
I just really love the tracking of history and the mutability of space-time in ASTP.
I have, although not since I was a child. I loved them a lot and always thought my best friend was very much the girl from them. I never identified with them really, alhough I did identify with their message. I just remember all those kids on the street, bouncing the balls until one drops his. I don't remember much else well, but I'll always remember that.
I was actually given a copy of the first four while pregnant and found myself copying out Patrick's Rune and the verse from Many Waters to chant protectively and with the idea of using them in the baby's room somehow.
People always seem to miss the whole other series about the Austin family and all the stand alones, which I happened across about six years after I read the usual ones.
That would be something. Not sure whether it would be a good something — I love Gilliam's work, and he's terrific with visuals, but he has problems sometimes with tone and pacing, and I just can't visualize how his work and Rowling's would intersect. I fear he'd throw in his own goofy and/or grotesque business just because he's so used to doing so, and I can't imagine what the results would be.
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I for one want to know who J.K. Rowling's planning on killing off in the 7th book.
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As to the ending of 4 -- sure they say everything is going to be different, but after all that spring fever crap in that film (which was done up hillariously) one hardly know if they are discussing Voldemort of puberty. Also, as someone who largely reads for the adult characters, it's hard for me to stop harping about the loss of the "Severus, if you are prepared" line.
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The whole 'Ron likes it when they walk' thing tickled me, and I really, really hope they don't kill Lupin. He's too much of a nice guy but I know that's pretty much a giant target right there. Maybe they'll pick off Percy, the pretentious little prick...
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However, I did (and hold by this) think that the ending of 'Hannibal' (the book, not the monstrosity that was the movie) was the only way it could've ended.
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And yeah, her ability to do math aside, I do thnk JKR loves her characters, as evidenced by the backstories that keep emerging in the more recent books. People who don't care about their characters don't do this.
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We're teh geek.
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She definetly has a Napoleon complex though.
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(Terry Gilliam!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
(and I haven't even read that book yet!)
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This scant ten-day June break brings book 4. Hold me.
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ASTP just amazes me every time I read it. Whether or not I notice something new, the nuances and foreshadowings are fanatsic. IMO, it's L'Engle's best.
Maybe AWitD is the book she wrote for bio nerds, and ASTP is the one she wrote for English nerds?
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I think I identified my brother with Charles Wallace and myself with Meg and so AWitD was really really big for me. Plus the terrifying cherubim...I read that book many times.
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Sadly, other than the one about Sandy and Dennys which I never read, the books all seem to center around Meg and Calvin and their twoo wuv. At least in ASTP, Charles Wallace and Gaudior got the best snarky lines.
I just really love the tracking of history and the mutability of space-time in ASTP.
God, I am such a nerd...
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People always seem to miss the whole other series about the Austin family and all the stand alones, which I happened across about six years after I read the usual ones.
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Oh WOW.
That would be something. Not sure whether it would be a good something — I love Gilliam's work, and he's terrific with visuals, but he has problems sometimes with tone and pacing, and I just can't visualize how his work and Rowling's would intersect. I fear he'd throw in his own goofy and/or grotesque business just because he's so used to doing so, and I can't imagine what the results would be.
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So, fyi, I bought two pairs of glasses -- the girl pair and the boy pair. Thank you for listening to my flailing.