Showing posts with label Harry Potter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Harry Potter. Show all posts

Sunday 5 June 2016

Harry Potter and The Worlds of the Unbound ?: Some Tweets

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2016 (20 to 27 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


5 June






Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Thursday 27 February 2014

Borrowing, not stealing

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2013
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


27 February

This is a review of The Book Thief (2013)



John Williams famously gave us Hedwig’s theme, but he also scored The Book Thief (2013), and, at the opening, it almost seemed like The Hogwarts Express, snorting its way through snowy countryside, that we saw and felt. Airy solo flute, floating solo clarinet, and the ensemble as the whole, did not seem best intended for Germany of the time, for it felt a little too safe (although, in the screening, not everyone would have been conscious that the mood of the music seemed an uneasy fit), even as we made our way down one of its carriages, and – under the direction of the narrator – wondered : whose life was going to be affected ?



Perhaps, by this means, too, we wanted to be distanced from a brother’s death and burial in a foreign land, and reminded of the context of everyone’s mortality, and so do not resist being cocooned from the worst of the Nazi regime until, as maybe those in Germany did we were embedded in it*. Wrongly, arguably, Roberto Benigni was criticized for bringing humour to a father’s treatment of the horror of life in a concentration camp in Life is Beautiful (La vita è bella) (1997), but it is a more obvious example of what this film does.

For we are bedding ourselves down with the domestic arrangements of Liesel’s new home, Hans (Geoffrey Rush) welcoming, and Rosa (Emily Watson) decidedly ungemütlich, for quite a while, and even having the shock of having the camera draw back whilst the choir that she is in sings of how it will not be friends with the Jew.




Liesel’s (Sophie Nélisse’s) friend Rudy Steiner (Nico Liersch) provokes more than paternal condemnation with his desire to be another Jesse Owens, but it is with Kristallnacht that the outrage of the Nazi reign comes to the fore, with its consequences for Liesel’s family. Then the full love of both Hans and Rosa come out, and the film focuses tightly on the things that matter : love, friendship, and trust. From that core of values comes all that follows, and, whilst we see just and unjust fall alike, it also shows the good done from following one’s convictions.

There are a few quibbles with the world that we are shown and hear, but they are minor ones**. Otherwise, the film may feel a little overlong, partly because of the time until the story proper begins. However, it catches all the emotion that has built up in its course and brings it out from the tensions of betrayal, feared discovery, the accidents of war, and renewed beginnings, not just speaking to a younger audience, but to those with a more mature appreciation of the background.

It is testament to the film, and no doubt to Markus Zusak’s novel, that it can stand alongside a more bloody account of the effects of the war in Lore (2012) and, not seeming in its shadow, be a complementary account of a youngster in the midst of it.



Post-script

Robbie Collin, writing a review in The Daily Telegraph, decided to be very rude about the film - is he right ?


End-notes

* Even then, it must be said that, probably seeking a certificate such as 12A, the ferocity and frenzy of Kristallnacht are underplayed.

** It probably reminds us that we are in Germany, to have (after some initial German with subtitles) English spoken with a German inflection, but it seems curious never to have no or yes, always ja or nein, and the Bürgermeister, in which he is not alone, just sounds British, e.g. when he says What is the meaning of this ?.

Also, with language, the idea of the dictionary on the walls lets us overlook the fact that these words are in English, but it seems to go too far to show Liesel finding the word ‘jellyfish’ in a text that is obviously in English, when we know that it is meant to be in German. And, finally, in proportion to the size of the school, either because period locations were scarce or it is a set and not an extensive one, the town does not have the feel of one that could fill it.




Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Sunday 24 June 2012

Odd words (1)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


24 June

I happened to be thinking about Harry Potter, trying to remember the exact name of the listening-devices tellingly used by Hermione, Ron and him, and I ended up thinking about the word 'sneak' and 'to sneak':

As in 'sneaking a look', what the trio of friends do is to eavesdrop (another interesting word, I suspect) on what they should not be hearing. Likewise, creeping in somewhere, in the hope that others will be unaware, is 'sneaking in'*.

All well and good. If we turn to a person who tells others' misdeeds to those in authority, i.e. 'sneak' as a noun (also called a tell-tale), the illicit act is not (necessarily) finding out the information covertly, but in revealing what those people intended to be secret.

Which brings us back to the verb, the Peeping Tom / Lady Godiva aspect, of what was being done or discussed privately (because confidential), though, of course, the lady's act of riding a horse was rather more public. And what a shame that we remember not her civil disobedience at her husband's cruel measures, but this prurient element. In fact, whatever myth there may be, do we even know whether her opposition bore any fruit (other than the unwitting, negative one of Tom's downfall)?


End-notes

* There is the US past tense 'snuck', for 'sneaked', that t.v. and film have given us.


Saturday 9 June 2012

More about zoo animals - Harry Potter and the serpent

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


9 June

On that date, when I began this posting as a reminder to myself, we could read (on MSN) the caption:

Visitors to Rotterdam Zoo capture amazing footage of a submerged polar bear attempting to shatter his glass enclosure with a rock


Presumably, the vertical image of such a bear, not clearly doing anything (it could have been standing at a counter, waiting to order a drink), was - or was meant to be - that bear.


If so, as I have suggested, the choice of what to show was a poor one, if it was meant to exemplify the 'amazing footage', i.e. nothing very amazing about it, and a picture barely worth 10 words (This is a polar bear upright in water in Rotterdam zoo).


What is more amazing is the cunning, maybe subconscious, use of the word capture, for no bear would - unless bred there, with parents from the wild (itself, an awkwardly poor way of describing The Animal Kingdom where it is meant to live) - be in the zoo without having been captured. Our Let's capture this on tape! has the same thrill of the early explorers, and, in common with them, makes the chase more valuable than the rights or liberty of the thing to be caught.

Any story where an animal supposedly safely, i.e. we are safe from it, in captivity does something violent or dangerous is apparently newsworthy. I believe that I made a posting a few months back about a giraffe being attacked, which I shall endeavour to locate. Yes, thanks to the tag (and not a giraffe as such): Escaped lion kills camel at zoo (according to AOL®).

Which is where I come in with Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Whether it is Tom Riddle's snake Nandini, the basilisk, or the one in the zoo, there is something thrilling about the fangs, the venom, the glass disappearing, or the serpent otherwise making an unfriendly house-call...


Tuesday 17 January 2012

Let me dress you like a Hero!

More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


18 January

Having sensed, not strongly, but sufficiently, that things punk are coming back in fashion, what with all that post-Potter Bonham Carter look, I have prepared and am about to announce my new Kleinzeit range of bondage gear.

Even lords and ladies will feel terribly out of place if they don't have one of my Hypotenuse corsets, to be worn over a suit, dress or separates, and, with every one purchased, there is a free five minutes' worth of ripping, slashing and general tugging at the seams of two garments.

Then with the Zonk hat, a ball-bearing the size of Sweden has to be carried around, so it needs to be screwed to the head in five places - get your co-ordination wrong, and the spring that houses the bearing might just behave unpredictably and smash you one in the face.

Those who like to keep things simple will adore the Plain Deal restrainers, lengths of pure Norwegian heartwood that are bolted from the back to halfway down the calf, rendering movement much more painful, if achievable at all - a whole new dimension on popping down to the shops, and cutting out all of that unnecessary sitting behind a steering-wheel.

The Glockenspiel manacles offer all the restriction, plus, of course, chafing that you would expect from a quality accessory, plus they give you a significant discount (we dare not say how much, as initial supply is likely to be outstripped by demand, as one would want with such bijou purchases) on the Nurse charging-unit .

On a rolled-steel harness, which is again guaranteed to dig and rub, and in a pure titanium housing, the unit is capable of delivering shocks of up to 100V at currents as high as 10A (thrilling, eh!), depending on where you are from A to B. Trigged by a special Swiss sensor, it detects any, even the smallest, deviation from Kantian moral principles and shocks you - and anyone nearby - into obedience. Strict doesn't come close to it!


And those are just a few of the most exciting articles in this extensive range, which personally excite me greatly and have given me pleasure to design.

(As I say, initial supply will be limited - just that little business of being sued about the Philosophical Investigations underwear, which I swear had nothing to do purchasers starting to issue instructions to others to pick up and move blocks of masonry...)