Post #2 of 7 documenting my first viewing of the Harry Potter movies…
Short recap; I’ve never seen the Harry Potter movies, I’ve agreed to watch them without my usual commentary during films I’m “forced” to watch, instead I kept notes for comic effect. These are the things I wrote down in the moment, they have not been edited for content or correctness after the fact:
Sunday, 1-1-12 4:40 pm
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
- Switching the DVDs, the “Year 1″ and “Year 2″ labels are barely visible on the sides. I rage about numbering movies again.
- WTF!? A “house elf”? Oh my god, kill it! KILL IT!!
- It’s like Rainman beating himself up. A severely autistic house elf. How is this funny?
- Somebody give this fucker a ring already and throw him into Mordor, I’m sick of this Smeagol wannabe.
- I take that back. Smeagol had a few endearing qualities. This fucker is Jar-Jar Binks.
- Flying motorcycle in the last movie, now I get a Chitty Chitty Bang Bang flying car…
- I waited that whole last movie to see if “diagonally” would pay off. They made me wait until the second movie for such a lame and transparent pun?
- Kenneth Branagh playing a celebrity fraud. The fucker’s got one hell of a sense of humour about himself. Love it!
- That dude was an elf in Lord of the Rings. Wasn’t he? Dad Malfoy, whatever his name is, he was a fucking elf, now they give him the same hairdo and say, “Go play a manipulative prick.” I’m having a hard time placing him, maybe he wasn’t in LotR but with that look, he should have been!
- Crashing into the wall at 9 3/4. Another gag I waited for all last movie.
- If you have an invisible cloak or invisible car, why turn off the invisible part when you only think you may be safe?
- If I can believe Charlie Brown had a kite-eating tree, I can believe HP’s got a car-eating tree.
- “I’m writing to both of your families”. If I were HP: “Like I give a shit, they suck! Fuck you and your empty threats old lady!” I would not last long at Hogwarts.
- That’s a LOT of blood for a single cat.
- I hate Herminy slightly less in this movie. I still want her to die, but she doesn’t have to die painfully anymore.
- Oh my god, ENOUGH with the podracing! Quidditch hasn’t moved the plot at all!
- And there we go, Luke Skywalker finally loses his hand.
- I know she’s supposed to portray the ass-kissing curve-blowing know-it-all but should she know more than her teachers?
- Dumbledore knows dick-all about photography. ”Let’s open the camera in broad daylight” fucktard wizard of shit.
- Moaning Mertyl has been on screen for ten seconds and I can already tell she’s going to piss me off with that whining bullshit.
- The moon-phase table covering in the fencing scene is pretty freaking sweet!
- Did I just hear that right? The secret password spell was “Lemon Sherbert”? I thought I’d get sick of the piglatin “word + icus” magic shit but they’ve done a pretty good job of keeping it toned down. Lemon Sherbert was the first time I’ve really snapped out of it.
- I thought Hogwarts in snow looked awesome. Hogwarts in snow with horse-drawn carriages is awesomer!
- Polyjuice. When they add the hair, all I can think of is Scott Tenorman’s pube chili.
- Harry, Ron, she’s not going with you. If I had just traded bodies with another woman, I’d stay in the stall all day long too!
- Ugh! I’ve never understood “furries”, it’s not my fetish. But seeing Herminy as a cat I’m safe to say I’ll never try that…
- That statue looks Boared. Fuck you JK. If I have to endure shit like Diagon Alley and Draco, Slithern, Snape, etc… I get to pull out fucked up wordplay too!
- It’s not his fault. Keanu Reeves ruined the word “whoa” for everyone that came after him.
- That scarf dude. Lose it. NOW!
- Agh, it’s a big scary spider! What do we do now Mister Frodo? Run Sam, run!
- The car can fly, spiders can’t. I think I see a way out of this fellas. How about we stop with the chase scene and get our asses in the air?
- That doctor must have graduated at the bottom of his class. ”Just throw her in one of the beds, she’ll be okay.” No examination took place or maybe he would have found that gigantic note in her freaking hand!
- Reflection, water, mirror, through a vapor… Harry Potter is an honorary Hardy Boy.
- I want a door like that snake vault in my den!
- What kind of wizard, 12 years old or not, would DROP HIS WAND!? No excuse for that. He’s a Dipshit.
- No, she’s only mostly dead. There’s a big difference between mostly dead and all dead…
- I expected “Tom Riddle” to be an anagram. When they showed the middle name had a “V” in it I expected it to involve ValDeMorte. But that was just fucking stupid. I will not allow that to pass, that was just fucking stupid.
- Harry is a typical 12 year old boy. He just throws shit on the ground when he’s done with it. The invisibility cloak, his wand, now this hat… WTF?
- When the basilisk bared his teeth to Harry, I saw Ripley in Aliens.
- A five foot sword in a hat. Bullshit. Magic or not, everyone knows you can NOT put bladed objects in a bag of holding!
- A Basilisk tooth, gotta be worth something on e-Bay.
- This kid is not so much “The boy who lived”. He’s the boy who wouldn’t fucking die! We’re only two movies in and he’s had as many death/saves as Frodo in the entire Ring series.
- Kevin! The phoenix looks like Kevin from “Up”!
- Herminy is 50% less cunty in this movie. I’m not sure if it’s the actor or the character but she grew enough that I don’t mind of she lives.
- “…not our abilities that show who we are but our choices…” I’m liking this “Dumbledore wraps up the moral of the story” ending pattern…
This was slightly better. Not by much though. I would have cut and run after number one, this one made me think that I’ll be able to get through all of them. It’s going to be rough but I can make it. Especially if they improve. At the current rate of improvement, by number five or six I’ll probably like them.
We immediately launched into the third movie, I will write it up in a separate post…
January 3rd, 2012 at 3:25 pm
Tom Riddles name won’t make “ValDeMorte” which makes your remark about the anagram seem kind of petty, rather than a smart critique of the film and story line. I get that these books and these movies are wildly popular, so you are predisposed to hate them passionately regardless of how well or poorly written, acted, and directed they are. There are many points to go after – she re-wove classical myth crudely in places, there are some internal world inconsistencies. Not trying to be an apologist, but, the first book was targeted at an age group that is at or near Harrys age, and so are each of the subsequent movies and books, them getting more mature as time goes on is a given. That said, she does a very good job of keeping the rules of the world consistent, even when the story line gets darker.
And no, his name is Jason Isaacs, and you’ve seen him in a supporting role or anotehr in a number of things, but he didn’t make it into LOTR. And, speaking of LOTR, Dobby smokes Gollum from a technical point of view, the character is smoother, more ‘real world’.
You are gonna absolutely LOVE #7, at least the first and last bits, it’s amazingly dark with all sorts of consequences and maybe #8 for some of the same reasons.
Though I don’t accept that there is a resemblance at all, Fawkes can’t look like Kevin…..It’d have to be the other way around – UP! was 2009, HP: Chamber of Secrets (which is where he first appeared, I think) was 2002, HP: Prisoner of Azkaban was 2004, and honestly, the movie whose name directly refers to him HP: Order of the Phoenix was 2007.
Michael Gambon, Richard Harris’s replacement, you’ve seen a ton of – he was in the Johnny Depp Sleepy Hollow as the Father, has a corner of the Top Gear racetrack named after him….. And yes, these movies are kinda of like “little Women” and “Gone With the Wind” for British actors…
January 3rd, 2012 at 3:53 pm
Um… I know you’re the expert and I’m the first time viewer but… I saw it spell his name. The used the middle name from the back of the book, Morvolo or something and he did it in the air in like orange fire letters or something. Maybe it didn’t spell out his name in the novel but I’m pretty sure I remember seeing it in the movie. I may not have spelled his name right but except for that one time, I can’t remember seeing his name written anywhere so I was just going with what I heard. Seemed like it would work.
I wasn’t allowed to stop the movie to actually try to figure out the anagram, I just thought it was obvious with the last name and all. It looked like there were plenty enough letters to get the name out with a few left over, I didn’t have time to figure out the proper spelling or what the anagram might be. The idea of using an anagram wasn’t a critique, it was the “I am…” that just seemed so silly and self-serving.
But, these were just meant to be “as they happen” comments, I thought it might be funny. Maybe I was wrong.
January 3rd, 2012 at 4:04 pm
I was editing my comment – you might want to go back and see my revision – or I could delete my revision and post it new….. LOL – this exchange might look silly if I did, though. I’m FAR from an expert – I only have the advantage of having read the lot and watched the lot…..
January 3rd, 2012 at 4:11 pm
it was “I Am Lord Voldemort” and, like all the other names in this series, it’s well thought out and important Vol De Morte is french for “Flee From Death”
January 3rd, 2012 at 5:23 pm
Yeah, I see you’ve made some edits, your original comment was a little more… chiding?
And as much as you know about the franchise, you are the foremost expert that I interact with. I’m still coming at this new, I know nothing other than what I’ve seen and small glimpses into the world gleaned through pop-culture.
The names are the thing I’m tripping up over the most. You say they are well thought out, I say they’re too simple. I have a man who can turn into a dog, I’ll call him “dog” but in another language. I have a man who can turn into a wolf, I’ll call him “wolf” but in another language. “Morte” meaning death did not escape me, she hit me in the head with it as if it were a brick. Subtlety is not her forte.
I’m just having fun making silly little comments during the movies, I’m not writing an in-depth essay on the literary value of the biggest pop-culture phenomenon since Britney Spears. And for movies that I am “predisposed to hate”, I think I’m being pretty complimentary at times. I like the Lord of the Rings but I’ll always rip up the elf-surfing scene. Doesn’t mean I hate the movie…
January 3rd, 2012 at 5:25 pm
Not sure I like him compared to Richard Harris. I’m feeling all 1985 New Coke… But, I’ve only seen the one movie with him so far, I’ll give him a chance.
January 3rd, 2012 at 5:35 pm
Yup, first edit was not at all what I intended, so I edited it, was, apparently editing it when you responded to it…
“Sirius” isn’t “Dog” by the way. It’s in Canus Major, and is commonly called the Dog star because it’s the brightest star in the constellation, but it actually means “Shining” which reflects an undercurrent of meaning thats a bit harder to get, but is in the movies as well as the written works.
January 4th, 2012 at 7:55 am
(Because there is no “asshole font” I’ll need to note here that I’m just having fun at you…)
I saw “Up” in 2009, I saw “HP” in 2012. Fawkes looks like Kevin. Yes, because you were mean to me, I’m going to play the kid who is surprised to find out Paul McCartney was in a band before Wings… pllllll
And I think you’re thinking about it much deeper than the author did. Or maybe she went too deep on her own, but either way, Sirius brings up “dog” in my head. The “dog” star, in “Canis” Major… how is this not “dog”? Also, if you’re invoking the “she’s way into mythology” ploy, Seirios was the dog of either Icarus or Orion. (Of course I’m not implying the relation of Orion and Canis Major is news to you) If I had looked any of this up as I were writing out these observations, I would have remembered that Sirius is a Binary Star, lending even more influence to my thought that SeriousB and Lupin were “in” together. But that’s just being silly now…
So anyway you play it, even if I’m technically wrong about the origins of the name, I was right about what it meant. The character name gave away who he was. If his name was Robert Green, I wouldn’t have guessed it so easily.
January 4th, 2012 at 9:48 am
LOL – no, I agree with you in the Dog reference, I was pointing out that there was another, deeper meaning for you to look for in the coming films.