I just saw Harry Potter 6 yesterday. I must admit that I was pleasantly surprised by the movie. 4 and 5 were not great movies; the pacing was too fast and too much dialogue had been cut to make the movie fit the 2.5 hour format. With Harry Potter 6 they managed to redeem themselves and make the movie work.
There are a few notable plot changes in the movie; most crucially there was a battle inserted in the middle and one removed from somewhere else. Some minor details here and there were changed, sometimes in ways that seemed odd, and sometimes in ways that violate the canon of the story, but nothing truly important was tampered with. Most characters appear without introduction and if you didn't recognize them from the books or previous movies you won't be able to recognize them now either. But aside from that the movie progressed fairly well and in accordance with the original story.
This is perhaps the best instalment so far since the first movie, which was the most true to the book.
One thing that bothers me is that the Death Eaters seem to have the ability to fly. In the 7th book they point out that Voldemort can fly and everyone is surprised by that. Oh well, it's not an important detail.
One thing I found funny is that certain actors have aged A LOT since the first movie and others don't appear to. This makes Rupert Grint, who's 21, look really out of place in Hogwarts, where the incoming students are 11. And some of the teachers in the school have aged a lot and I worry that they won't be around to play their roles in book 7. Maybe the director will film the end of that book sooner, since the teachers play a bigger role at the end than at the beginning.
Anyway, overall I recommend this movie to all fans of the books or the movies. It won't really disappoint; as far as movie adaptations go it's one of the better ones.
Showing posts with label Movies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Movies. Show all posts
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
I just watched Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.
Spoilers for book/movie 5 follow
To recap the plot, the Ministry of Magic is trying to suppress any news that Voldemort is back, they are interfering with Hogwarts in the form of Dolores Umbridge, the new teacher of defence against the dark arts, and Voldemort is trying to do something nefarious yet clandestine.
This fifth instalment in the Harry Potter movie series was a faithful adaptation of the book but it failed to convey the emotions which form the basis of the fifth book's themes. The fifth book is probably the most frustrating book because Harry is an angry teenager, who feels that the adults are still treating him like a child, he doesn't know how to deal with girls, and also Dolores Umbridge is making Hogwarts living hell for the students. Of these themes, only Dolores Umbridge is properly portrayed by the movie; the other themes merely get their token scenes to placate the readers. For example, a significant portion of this book deals with Harry's relationship with girls, Cho Chang specifically. In the movie this is represented by a total of 4 scenes. More importantly, not enough time was spent dealing with Harry's relationship to Dumbledore and the rest of the Order of the Phoenix. Throughout the book Harry is constantly sidelined while the Order tells him to stay out of trouble, etc, and Dumbledore is absent or ignoring Harry. This isolation has significant consequences for Harry, but the movie doesn't explain this to the same extent as the book does. It's only because I read the book that I realized that Dumbledore was more absent than normal. As with Cho Chang, the Dumbledore storyline is shown with a scant handful of scenes that do not do justice to the story.
Granted: this book is one of the longest yet and thus is more challenging to filmmakers. Unlike the Goblet of Fire (which, I might add, also made a rushed and confusing movie) there is hardly any action, thus there is lots of dialogue and exposition that needs to be crammed into a few hours. The movie thus crops every sub-plot until it's recognizable only to those who've read the story. Anyone who hasn't seen the other movies or read the books won't know why that red-headed girl is following Harry around at the end (it's Ginny Weasley), nor who the man with the long white hair is that leads the Death Eaters (it's Lucius Malfoy). Now, these details aren't critical, but basically if you don't know the story already you'll be left to dangle along, unsure about what's happening and bored by the lack of excitement.
Spoilers for book/movie 5 follow
To recap the plot, the Ministry of Magic is trying to suppress any news that Voldemort is back, they are interfering with Hogwarts in the form of Dolores Umbridge, the new teacher of defence against the dark arts, and Voldemort is trying to do something nefarious yet clandestine.
This fifth instalment in the Harry Potter movie series was a faithful adaptation of the book but it failed to convey the emotions which form the basis of the fifth book's themes. The fifth book is probably the most frustrating book because Harry is an angry teenager, who feels that the adults are still treating him like a child, he doesn't know how to deal with girls, and also Dolores Umbridge is making Hogwarts living hell for the students. Of these themes, only Dolores Umbridge is properly portrayed by the movie; the other themes merely get their token scenes to placate the readers. For example, a significant portion of this book deals with Harry's relationship with girls, Cho Chang specifically. In the movie this is represented by a total of 4 scenes. More importantly, not enough time was spent dealing with Harry's relationship to Dumbledore and the rest of the Order of the Phoenix. Throughout the book Harry is constantly sidelined while the Order tells him to stay out of trouble, etc, and Dumbledore is absent or ignoring Harry. This isolation has significant consequences for Harry, but the movie doesn't explain this to the same extent as the book does. It's only because I read the book that I realized that Dumbledore was more absent than normal. As with Cho Chang, the Dumbledore storyline is shown with a scant handful of scenes that do not do justice to the story.
Granted: this book is one of the longest yet and thus is more challenging to filmmakers. Unlike the Goblet of Fire (which, I might add, also made a rushed and confusing movie) there is hardly any action, thus there is lots of dialogue and exposition that needs to be crammed into a few hours. The movie thus crops every sub-plot until it's recognizable only to those who've read the story. Anyone who hasn't seen the other movies or read the books won't know why that red-headed girl is following Harry around at the end (it's Ginny Weasley), nor who the man with the long white hair is that leads the Death Eaters (it's Lucius Malfoy). Now, these details aren't critical, but basically if you don't know the story already you'll be left to dangle along, unsure about what's happening and bored by the lack of excitement.
Shrek and McDonalds: evil unmasked
This letter to the editor of an Australian paper, says it all:
As a parent and school teacher, I appeal to companies like McDonald's to stop using Shrek in their promotions.First, I'd have to say that children DO find Shrek appealing.... maybe this teacher isn't in the target audience for the movie? Shrek's definitely crude: he's an ogre for crying out loud. That's the whole point, and the movie definitely contains fart jokes. But fart jokes are not a new danger to children, and there is more to Shrek than stinky bubbles in the swamp. Shrek tells a story of love despite appearances and fighting even when the fight seems lost. Ms Bond just doesn't get it. It's too bad that teachers aren't taking the time to watch children's movies so that they can form intelligent opinions about them before writing angry letters, however since this teacher doesn't seem to understand that children can tell the difference between fiction and reality, the only thing that surprises me is how such a person gets to be a teacher in the first place. Must be a shortage, I guess.
Shrek is an unappealing character, teaches unfaithfulness, immorality, has low, coarse crude humour, promotes homosexuality, cross dressing and divination (super-natural means).
By allowing these influences, McDonald's is numbing the hearts and minds of children.---Judith Bond, Glen Alpine, NSW
Ocean's 13
I just saw Ocean's 13. The basic premise is that Danny Ocean and company want to get revenge on someone who did something bad to them. This someone (played by Al Pacino) is, naturally, a rich casino owner. Since this is a new movie, they can't re-use any stunts from the first two movies, so instead of a heist it's a scam they're trying to pull.
Minor Spoilers Follow
Overall the movie is pretty formulaic. There's the unbreakable security, which they break, using a combination of totally outlandish actions and magical technological ability. There's Danny's crew impersonating VIPs. There's the egomaniacal bad guy. Nothing is beyond infiltration; if they want to rig a craps game they infiltrate the dice factory, et cetera. What follows is a basic re-hash of the first movie, without the novelty or the excitement but with a slightly different story. The first movie was good because it seemed that what they were doing was impossible, yet they found a way to accomplish it. In this movie they do the same thing, but by the third time around it's just routine. They tell you the plan up front, then they do exactly what they told you they'd do. They turn supposed setbacks into victories by virtue of preexisting plans to deal specifically with those setbacks. There's nothing surprising anywhere in the movie, except perhaps the number of connections Ocean & Co. have: they know a guy at every company from the engineering firm that dug the Chunnel to the mobile phone division of Samsung. But even that seems mundane in this movie, as every character just plods along in his role. If you've never seen the first movie, you might enjoy this movie, but otherwise you won't find anything new and only a little entertainment.
Minor Spoilers Follow
Overall the movie is pretty formulaic. There's the unbreakable security, which they break, using a combination of totally outlandish actions and magical technological ability. There's Danny's crew impersonating VIPs. There's the egomaniacal bad guy. Nothing is beyond infiltration; if they want to rig a craps game they infiltrate the dice factory, et cetera. What follows is a basic re-hash of the first movie, without the novelty or the excitement but with a slightly different story. The first movie was good because it seemed that what they were doing was impossible, yet they found a way to accomplish it. In this movie they do the same thing, but by the third time around it's just routine. They tell you the plan up front, then they do exactly what they told you they'd do. They turn supposed setbacks into victories by virtue of preexisting plans to deal specifically with those setbacks. There's nothing surprising anywhere in the movie, except perhaps the number of connections Ocean & Co. have: they know a guy at every company from the engineering firm that dug the Chunnel to the mobile phone division of Samsung. But even that seems mundane in this movie, as every character just plods along in his role. If you've never seen the first movie, you might enjoy this movie, but otherwise you won't find anything new and only a little entertainment.
Zeitgeist the movie
Zeitgeist The Movie, really three movies, is a film that attempts to demonstrate that several widely-believed things are myths. The first film deals with Christianity. Broadly, it begins by claiming that Jesus is nothing more than a "Sun God" in new clothes, and presents lots of arguments to support this, and then ends with a brief sidebar about how Christianity, specifically the Catholic Church, was created through political motives at the Council of Nicea. While it's true that the Council of Nicea was likely put together for political motives, and it's also true that the Catholic Church has a several blotches on its permanent record, one can't claim, based on the evidence in the film, that Jesus is a Sun God and that Christianity is merely a re-packaging of old Egyptian beliefs.
The film presents many similarities between astrology, sun-worship, and Jesus. First, it identifies many deities who share similar characteristics with Jesus, namely a birthday on or near the winter solstice, various nicknames such as "Prince of Peace", death then resurrection, and other similarities. The film proceeds to discuss how many icons and themes associated with Jesus are reminiscent of astrology, such as Christian artwork showing a cross and halo behind Jesus's head resembles the zodiacal chart. There are, however, some flaws with these arguments.
First, artwork showing cross and halo behind Jesus's head, is said to resemble a pagan symbol of a cross inscribed in a circle.
This symbol is shorthand for the sun and 12 zodiacal signs. The problem with this argument is that a symbol can have different meanings in different contexts. For example, the word "cong" would be pronounced "kong" (or maybe "song") if it were an English word, but in Mandarin Pinyin it'd be pronounced "tsong". One can't claim that the "c" in that word has any special significance, or that it somehow connects English and Mandarin. What happened is the Pinyin co-opted the symbol but gave it a new meaning. This is co-opting is a common theme in early Christian history: the incorporation of old ideas re-interpreted in a new light was often used as a tool to make Christianity more palatable to the new converts. Furthermore Christ was crucified; it stands to reason that he might be depicted on a cross. Is the cross a pagan symbol? Certainly, but we need to be careful not to reason in a circle:
Do Catholics believe that Christ was crucified on a cross because crosses are an old symbol, re-used for a new story? Or was he crucified on a cross because the Romans used crosses, since crosses were already (astrologically) significant? Christ either died on the cross because that's a good way to tell the story, thus incorporating a pagan symbol (as the film says), or else Christ died on the cross because the symbol was important to his killers. The film itself claims that the cross was already important to the legions of sun worshippers; the fact that there is a similarity is not proof of a connection.
Another problem this film has is that it blindly accepts that Jesus was born on the 25th of December. Even the Catholic Church admits that they don't know when he was born. The early Church didn't even celebrate his birth but rather his conception. In the 4th century his conception was believed to be March 25th because the Church believed that he DIED on the 25th, and all prophets must live a whole number of years. The Bible doesn't tell us when Christ was born, the Church doesn't know, nobody knows. The Church claims that Christ's birthday was chosen to be on the same day as a pre-existing "Sun God" holiday, the feast of the Unconquered Sun. Again, this was done not because Jesus was a Sun god, but because the parallels made the new religion easier to accept for the new converts. Linking Christ's birth to the astronomical events (Sirius lining up with Orion's belt at the solstice) as is done in the film is circular reasoning: The film claims that Jesus is astrological because his birthday falls on an astrological day, however in reality the day was chosen to BECAUSE of the coincident, pre-existing astrological similarities. Jesus doesn't represent astrology: the astrology was co-opted to represent Jesus.
There are several other arguments in the film that also rely on convenient coincidences or circular reasoning. One that springs to mind is the argument that Moses's anger
toward Jews worshipping a bull idol (when he returned from the mountain) was because, astrologically, a new age was beginning and the new age (Aries, the ram) was replacing the old (Taurus, the bull). The film claims that this is why Jews blow into a ram's horn. A simpler explanation is that the Hebrew people farmed sheep, and thus would be quite familiar with rams horns and use what's at hand.
Overall the film is entertaining and highlights some amusing similarities between Christianity and Astrology. But since the only evidence in the film is circular, this film falls short of being a documentary or research paper, and instead is merely sensationalist and reminiscent of a conspiracy theory.
The film presents many similarities between astrology, sun-worship, and Jesus. First, it identifies many deities who share similar characteristics with Jesus, namely a birthday on or near the winter solstice, various nicknames such as "Prince of Peace", death then resurrection, and other similarities. The film proceeds to discuss how many icons and themes associated with Jesus are reminiscent of astrology, such as Christian artwork showing a cross and halo behind Jesus's head resembles the zodiacal chart. There are, however, some flaws with these arguments.
First, artwork showing cross and halo behind Jesus's head, is said to resemble a pagan symbol of a cross inscribed in a circle.
This symbol is shorthand for the sun and 12 zodiacal signs. The problem with this argument is that a symbol can have different meanings in different contexts. For example, the word "cong" would be pronounced "kong" (or maybe "song") if it were an English word, but in Mandarin Pinyin it'd be pronounced "tsong". One can't claim that the "c" in that word has any special significance, or that it somehow connects English and Mandarin. What happened is the Pinyin co-opted the symbol but gave it a new meaning. This is co-opting is a common theme in early Christian history: the incorporation of old ideas re-interpreted in a new light was often used as a tool to make Christianity more palatable to the new converts. Furthermore Christ was crucified; it stands to reason that he might be depicted on a cross. Is the cross a pagan symbol? Certainly, but we need to be careful not to reason in a circle:
Do Catholics believe that Christ was crucified on a cross because crosses are an old symbol, re-used for a new story? Or was he crucified on a cross because the Romans used crosses, since crosses were already (astrologically) significant? Christ either died on the cross because that's a good way to tell the story, thus incorporating a pagan symbol (as the film says), or else Christ died on the cross because the symbol was important to his killers. The film itself claims that the cross was already important to the legions of sun worshippers; the fact that there is a similarity is not proof of a connection.Another problem this film has is that it blindly accepts that Jesus was born on the 25th of December. Even the Catholic Church admits that they don't know when he was born. The early Church didn't even celebrate his birth but rather his conception. In the 4th century his conception was believed to be March 25th because the Church believed that he DIED on the 25th, and all prophets must live a whole number of years. The Bible doesn't tell us when Christ was born, the Church doesn't know, nobody knows. The Church claims that Christ's birthday was chosen to be on the same day as a pre-existing "Sun God" holiday, the feast of the Unconquered Sun. Again, this was done not because Jesus was a Sun god, but because the parallels made the new religion easier to accept for the new converts. Linking Christ's birth to the astronomical events (Sirius lining up with Orion's belt at the solstice) as is done in the film is circular reasoning: The film claims that Jesus is astrological because his birthday falls on an astrological day, however in reality the day was chosen to BECAUSE of the coincident, pre-existing astrological similarities. Jesus doesn't represent astrology: the astrology was co-opted to represent Jesus.
There are several other arguments in the film that also rely on convenient coincidences or circular reasoning. One that springs to mind is the argument that Moses's anger
toward Jews worshipping a bull idol (when he returned from the mountain) was because, astrologically, a new age was beginning and the new age (Aries, the ram) was replacing the old (Taurus, the bull). The film claims that this is why Jews blow into a ram's horn. A simpler explanation is that the Hebrew people farmed sheep, and thus would be quite familiar with rams horns and use what's at hand.Overall the film is entertaining and highlights some amusing similarities between Christianity and Astrology. But since the only evidence in the film is circular, this film falls short of being a documentary or research paper, and instead is merely sensationalist and reminiscent of a conspiracy theory.
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