bad
Rusty raised a good point while we were trying to ignore the vicariously embarrassing spectacle on our TV screen, which is, man, is Hogwarts an unsafe school or what? Like, would you send your kids there? And this Tri Wizard Tournament, with the goal being to SURVIVE three challenges... call me namby-pamby, but isn't that the kind of thing you should clear with parents first?
We imagined the permission slip might look something like this:
Well, yeah, OF COURSE we signed. Do you think we want our kid to lose face in front of his friends? And also... dude, that's ETERNAL GLORY he's vying for. That's got to be worth something, don't you think?
16 comments:
Well there's also the monetary prize that they left out of the movie. And it did seem a lot safer in the books ...
yeah, how come you never hear about Cedric's father suing the school? I mean, Dumbledore certainly knew that Voldemort has been sniffing around Harry for years, there's no way that he could claim that the school didn't know about the risk.
I am such. a. geek.
But it's really your fault that I'm revealing it.
Sorry to nitpick ... but it really should say "vie" for glory on the permission slip.
I think the number of typos on letters from my son's school means I automatically go into proofread mode when faced with communication from a school, even an imaginary one.
Dang. I knew that word didn't look right when I typed it (I think I'm used to seeing it as "vying" and I made my assumption from that), but I was too lazy to look it up. And I kind of did rationalize it to myself that, even if it were wrong, it'd be just like a real typo-riddled school form. Weak, I know.
And never apologize for nitpicking! If we can't safely nitpick about spelling here, where can we?
But I want this movie to be good, seeing as I will have to watch it 20 or 30 times. So, yeah thanks snuffing out the flame of hope.
Especially since you need a permission slip to go to Hogsmeade on the weekend!
I guess maybe the Goblet is a kind of permission slip? Since it will only return a worthy champion?
Okay, I didn't think this movie was that bad . . . although I knit half a sock while watching it in the theater, so my attention was a little divided. Considering the size of the book they had to condense, I thought they did a decent enough job--although the part with the dragon was way, way overdone, to a ridiculous degree. But it could just be me! I do enjoy Harry Potter, so I could have just been excited by a new "fix" while waiting for Book 7.
Well, doppelganger, I imagine that your hatred of said film has to do with its lack of merits as an actual film rather than the adaptation of a book. For me, my anger (as my boyfriend will testify) is the messed-up Dumbledore (damn you Gambon!)and the number of things cut out (though some were understandable).
I have to do the requisite HP geek-out here and say that, technically, only students who are "of age" (in the magical world, 17+) were allowed to enter the TriWizard tournament. (Harry's name being spit out was due to [sepulchral whisper] daaark maaagic.) So I suppose those kids wouldn't need permission slips for anything, since they are considered adults.
I didn't hate the movie, but I was really disappointed in the Dumbledore portrayal, too.
I actually liked this movie more than the others (which isn't saying a whole lot - I almost gave up on the series entirely after seeing how craptacular the first two movies were). My biggest complaint was the fact they cut the Quidditch World Cup to the point of evisceration. But yeah, I don't like Gambon as Dumbledore either. I'm usually a fan of his work, but his take on the character seems too absent-minded. RIP Richard Harris...
Oh my god. Dumbledore (or as Rusty keeps accidentally calling him, "Dumbledorf") was the WORST. Jesus, I kept looking for chew marks on the scenery. The original Dumbledore was much better. He had a quiet dignity... I sort of thought of him as Gandalf Lite.
And yes, my complaint was with the movie, not the book. Watching it with Rusty, who's never read any of the books, revealed how shoddily put together this movie was. Rusty is a pretty on-the-ball movie viewer (unlike me, who, midway through any caper movie, has to have the plot recapped in full), and he couldn't follow half of the plot machinations.
And the EDITING. Oh my lord, some of the scene transitions were so terrible I kept thinking, I've seen student films better than this.
And the movie could have put less focus on all the hyper-irritating teen melodrama, mostly because it highlighted that this gang of kids CAN NOT act.
They acted fairly decently in the third one because they finally had a director who wanted more from them than reaction shots. I think Mike Newell just isn't a very good director. Yes, Donnie Brasco, but also Mona Lisa Smile. Bah.
It was an awful movie, this last one. I think it was also a weak book, but an even worse movie. It felt like they filmed the whole book and then just cut off the second half of every scene, so for example they GO to the World Cup, but we don't see it; Ron and Hermione have... some kind of tension, but it's not clear what; Harry is in need of help and he... well, let's cut to the exciting part, shall we?
I agree with you, you could wear out the A on the keyboard talking about how baaaaad that movie was, especially compared to what it could have been.
I keep watching the damn thing (I don't know why) and it just depresses me now. Between the anti-Dumbledore and the VW-sized plot holes, it's just frustrating for me. This book was the one that completely (sadly) reeled me in to the series. I'm weak.
Okay, I feel comfortable saying this since this is totally a booky site, we're all book nerds, I'm with my people here:
They appear to have gotten around the whole permission slip angle by restricting the contestants to age 17+, 17 being the cutoff for adulthood in the wizarding world.
Before you ask, why yes, I do know it's make-believe.
But the rest of you are right. Someone please bring Richard Harris back to life, because while I can see Gambon doing OOTP Dumbledore, he is not fit for the role in HBP. Stupid cancer. And I think they could have quit, like, ADDING crap like the Ron/Harry dragon warning convo and the extended dragon chase and touched on things that will inform the future films, like the twins' joke shop, Fleur's veela-ness, Rita's trickery, or at least shown the damn world cup.
It's still better than Crash.
Heh. Harry Potter is, in my heart, my boyfriend, so I feel as though I'm pre-programmed to love the movies as much as I love the books. I really didn't like the ending of this movie, though. It felt so...abrupt and unfinished or something.
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