Harry Scary
I've been without internets at my house for about a week so just getting around to posting some new...
Me and some friends saw Harry Potter yesterday with the masses. Don't know why exactly, it just sounded like a perfect hangover thing to do.
We wanted to make the 3:30 but it was sold out so we walked around The Beigeway like pathetic mall rats until the 5:00 show which turned out to be the perfect amount of time to visit the Apple store that secretly opened here over the weekend.
It's not terribly big or anything, but it's great that we have one now. A couple of rent-a-cops greeted us at the door and next thing you know we're being run over by crazed mac addicts, their eyes glazed over, all chanting "iPod, iPod, iPod"! Far too much of the general public for my limited coping skills.
I have to say that I really enjoyed the The Goblet of Fire. I'm not a huge Potter fan. I have seen one and a half movies thus far and haven't read any of the books. My friends say the movie didn't do the 600 page book justice but it was certainly long enough for me and I enjoyed every minute of it on the big screen.
Much of the early part of the film is set-up for an upcoming Tri-Wizard competion which involves two other rival magician schools coming to visit. One is a group of well mannered french madelines and the other, a band of eastern bloc boy hotties including one Viktor Krum, a student wizard and "quidditch expert from Durmstrang".
It's the Bulgarian born Stanislav Ianevski's first appearance in a feature film after having been scouted at an international school in London and...
...needless to say, his non-speaking role added to the film on many levels for me personally.
The direction was tight, many of the scenes were extremely funny and the story was so well written that you didn't care about the overblown use of CGI too much. I also think the dark tone of the film spoke eloquently about the world we are living in today. I was actually scared towards the end and couldn't even watch the screen when a particular midget sized, fetus-esque being uh... grows... into the "Dark Lord", played brilliantly by Ralph Fiennes.
An earlier scene sees the fire bombing of a tent city where people from all over, including Harry and his friends have traveled to attend a world wide sporting event. Something about the way the scene played out had me thinking what it must be like when American troops shock and awe small countries with less than a 10th of our military. Images for thought.
Anyways, go see it, It's fantastic on a big movie screen. Just leave the young kids at home.