exhaustedHere there is HP: Goblet of Fire.
The graveyard was a great place to start out. So delightfully morbid and creepy. I could imagine myself as a kid watching the opening and just freaking out. This is one that I'd want to watch with the lights on with anyone below the age of disconnect-from-film. It's not quite as bad as watching Gandalf get beat up (that disturbed the hell out of the LF, because Gandalf was omnipotent) but damme is it creepy.
I'd forgotten that it begins with the old man dying until I watched him starting to make his tea. Creepy, having a snake that can tell her master that there's someone watching. The old guy dies with a nice blast of green fire, and Harry wakes up in the Burrow with a shrieking nightmare sort of thing and Hermione is rousing everyone out of bed to go off somewhere unspecified.
The "unspecified" turns out to be the Quidditch World Cup. I have to echo what somebody-or-other was griping (was it Ange?) about all the wizard crowd scenes being dressed too normally. But since the reason for being incognito aren't discussed, it passes the movie continuity test. Lucius and Draco Malfoy are at the Cup, and The Pimp Cane is a dreadfully handy thing to have, now, isn't it! The arena is damn cool. OMG Krum. Krum is tasty. I recall him being written as far more thuggish in manner and countenance, but oh! With a face and body like that, I see why there are fangirls and fanboys running all after him! (From Fred & George's teasing, I predict a hot new bunch of Ron/Krum fic, and some Ron/Krum/Hermione angst love triangles, with more Ron/Krum than the books suggest.)
The Cup really gets a miss. There's rather little group fumbling around in the dark. Harry gets knocked out in a general stampede and comes to just about when Crouch Jr. is casting Mordesmordre, rather than the book's interlude involving House-Elves. Harry doesn't have his wand interrogated, which was vital foreshadowing for the end of the book, at least in my opinion. But eh. It was one of the things that could be shortened, though I want outtakes of the whole story. No Muggles inflated. No byplay with memory charms. No betting. No leprechaun gold. No Veela. I don't even remember if I saw Narcissa. Surely I would have remembered her.
There's a short interlude on the train, and Cho Chang is decorative. Potter gets tongue-tied. Everything up until the introduction of the Beauxbatons and Durmstrang students gets either elided or compressed. Beauxbatons marches in with unnecessary flair and "oo", but pretty butterflies! Durmstrang's march in is gorgeous, with sparking staffplay. May I have one of those for second-best, please? The Triwizard is introduced, and the Goblet of Fire is revealed. I tried to read the runes around the rim, but there wasn't enough time. Freeze-frame time!
Fred & George pull their age-enhancing stunt to try and apply; they wind up be-geezered and fighting each other, to great laughter. Got snaps of that, plus some Moody. I appreciate the way Fleur's application was folded.
The way Dumbledore pulls memories out of his head, I wonder if that isn't adding to his general confusion. He might not act half as senile as he does if he left some memories in that wrinkled old pate instead of in a glorified birdbath.
The demonstration of the Unforgivable Curses on the spider was well-done, but the rest of the Imperius with the class, and especially the Imperius on Harry and Harry's ability to shake it off, was not included. Neville's reaction to the torture of the spider was beautiful, and the stained glass crying was one of the refinements that makes me love this movie best of all of them so far. If Barty Crouch Jr. was the one who tortured Neville's parents (was he?) it is absolutely dreadful that pseudo-Moody had Neville in his office for tea over that selfsame subject. Dreadful and perfect.
I loved the Potter Stinks! badges. There was not enough Draco. There was a ferret, though! FERRET IN PANTS!!!!!!! Howling with laughter.
Ron and Harry's conflict was also decently-orchestrated. I'm one of those who don't believe that Ron is inherently a dreadfully jealous person. Sure, the trigger was Harry's leap in fame, but I think the real big thing was that Ron believed that there was a plot, and that he was left out of it: the exclusion, rather than the disparity in fame. Ron strikes me as the Loneliest Weasley. Ginny is the baby and the pet, even though she doesn't have a special friend in the family. Fred & George have each other. Percy seems to have been a bookish loner. Bill & Charlie had each other, and they're adults. But Ron's gregarious, and really needs an intimate, and he seems to have found that in Harry. To have Harry reject him feels to him like if Fred were to suddenly leave George out of something. Ron was a perfect beast to Harry, and Harry was beastly right back. Fire!Sirius was such a nice clever bit of CG! I tried to snag an image of that one, but not sure where it went.
Dragons! Whee! The Hungarian Horntail was all spiky. I was reminded of how watch-whers are chained up. Dragon chasing kid on broomstick. Dragon clawing across rooftop to get at kid. Dragon busting up the faculty stands and the cheer when it knocks over Snape! Hee! The chase almost makes up for the lack of pro Quidditch shown. Almost.
Harry and Ron's reconciliation was nicely done. Ahh, boys. And just in time for the beginnings of the Mad Hot Ballroom material. I adored Filch's suspicious looks at the records, and the dreadful awkwardness of the dance lecture. I was squeeing all the way through this. The boys! Oh, those boys. And the girls, all ready to dance! Neville is becoming dreamy.
Cedric cannot sneak. He's decorative, though. I must admit that the scarf made me think of the "covered with bees" Rule about conduct at Hogwarts. That was beautifully done, with the mermaid and her hair covering the boobs. Myrtle vs. Harry was also howl-with-laughter territory. OMG fangirls. That is so a scary-stalker fangirl.
The second task was rather skimmed-over. My brain is starting to skip too, a little, but eh.
Yule Ball = nearly perfect. See above commentary on Ron/Krum/Hermione love triangle material. Snape shoving people around was perfect timing. The jerking up of the sleeves before shoving both Ron and Harry was classic. OMG I'm in love. Just the sort of punctuation that conversation needed.
IIRC, one of the Patil twins is a Ravenclaw. This is not shown in this movie. It seems as if they're both Gryffindors. Bad continuity. They're very cute, but ... but... but... Fred and George are enough twins for both in Gryffindor. Their speaking-at-the-same-time was perfect; the Patil twins seemed a little overdone on the twin thing. (They're gorgeous, though. I want to see more of them and their personalities as well as their looks.)
The Map scribed by Messrs. Padfoot, Prongs, Moony, and Wormtail was notable by its absence. No note that there was a Barty Crouch about. Snape lectured Harry about stealing from his stores, first about the Gillyweed (Neville's fault ... mostly), and then about Polyjuice ingredients. They did that last movie, so it might look at first like Snape was a little belated. Or was it movie before last? Snape waves about Veritaserum. Mmmm, delicious Snape. May I have one to go, please? No taming necessary or desirable. Barty Crouch Sr. shows up dead after a bunch of significant looks from his son-in-disguise, and a detour on the part of Harry to the past. Harry's bursting in on the meeting is reminiscent of the old guy busting in and getting killed, except that Harry doesn't die, he just gets left alone with a hostile candy dish and therefore the Pensieve. Rita Skeeter is there, too, and she is gorgeous, and clearly has more journalistic integrity then. I'm going to replace the base with something clearer when I find one, but until then, I have a little icon o'mine.
Cedric's death was so senseless and sudden. Voldemort kills like it's nothing. Voldemort is the anti-Gandalf. That was surprisingly few Death Eaters showing up. I haven't read the original in long enough to remember what was missing. This was where I missed the previous thing with Priori Incantatum and Harry shrugging off Imperio. Harry's mum showed up, at least.
I loved the contrast between the tense and tragic battle between Voldemort and Harry and the cheering of the crowd when Harry returned. It took a while for it to catch up that Harry was crying, and that it was a body there, and it was Cedric. Followed is a lot of confusion, and the eventual uncovering of the Moody as the Crouch. OMG pretty trunk. Whee!
The movie demonstrates that Dumbledore was, at least in movie-canon, a Gryffindor, or at least in that particular dorm enough to collect a hatred for the bed curtains, and to accidentally set them on fire.
Gone is Harry investing in the Wheezes with the Triwizard money.
I decided it was a perfect date movie, and I know a date I want to take to it. More watching-through will be needed before I can make a decision about it, but I was going squee over this more than the last one, despite not being keyed up beforehand so dreadfully much, and despite it not being a birthday present. (Last movie came out on my birthday, so it was like a present from JKR and Time-Warner just for me.) I know I'm getting this one on DVD, because I love it so much.
