Tangled!

Rapunzel tweaked! I’m looking forward to this because it has music by Alan Menken (The Little Mermaid), and voiced by Mandy Moore, Donna Murphy and Zachary Levi. Woot! Looks cool in 3D.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part 1

HP fans liked this movie (and I heard so did JK Rowling). Let me start with the stuff that I like first (spoiler alert):

• The scenes where the 3 protagonists have to deal with the pain of the quest’s effects on their families. Hermione’s were the most poignant of all, having to erase her existence from her parents’ minds to protect them. Harry’s solitude still has some sense of redemptive factor. No memories, just a lot of confusion, but less pain, and we know too well his angsts about having dead parents. Ron’s is a different kind of hardship, as he knows ALL of his family members are now in imminent danger because of their dedication to the Order and most especially because of their love for Harry. After the first scene with Scrimgeour (I kinda want to sing “Christmas is all around me…’ upon seeing Bill Nighy),  these scenes set the sad mood and dark tone of the film.
• Cinematography. London is not a boring, cold, lonely place after all. Shots of them walking along mountain terrains, a green field, on top of those cracked rocks, that gorgeous beach…wow.
• Dobby. Need I say more? Dobby + Kreacher is a good departure from the book, and it’s cute that they’re vying for Harry’s attention on that table.
• Digital effects. The 7 potters scene was funny! Notable also are the ghost-like patronus(es?) plus Umbridge’s cat, the locket ‘ghost’ of Voldemort, apparate and disapparate scenes.

Things I think the movie should not have glossed over:

• The reconciliation of Dudley & Harry.  It could’ve been a more dramatic touch if this was in the moving-out scene of the Dursleys. They should have at least shown what Harry deserved for the past 6 books: an apology was due! I feel that this is a bright point in the midst of the oppressive darkness in Potter’s life. Forgiveness should always be big in anyone’s life.
• Dobby dying at night, instead of daylight (and a bit far from shore). Maybe the producers didn’t want to add to the dreariness of the film, but I liked it better that Dobby died nighttime in the book. Harry should’ve looked more heartbroken, and should’ve had a passionately painful way of digging the grave (with Dobby wrapped in his jacket). I was wondering where the immaculately white cloth came from in the movie as wrap for the poor elf.
• Bellatrix was the one who touched the Dark Mark. Why Lucius?
• Harry wasn’t disguised during Bill and Fleur’s wedding. The disclosure of Dumbledore’s shady past by Aunt Muriel and Elphias Doge was easy because they didn’t know it was him.
• The concrete plans to find the last Horcruxes were overshadowed by the Hallows. They weren’t shown brainstorming their next steps, or maybe the film just wanted to emphasize how confused and lost they were with this quest with the addition of the Hallows.
• Potterwatch! Minor detail it may be, but the illegal radio broadcasts by the ‘rebel’ magical folk could really back up Harry in seeing the wide spectrum of people and their the fight against Voldermort and the Death Eaters.
• Peverell. In the film, Hermione just saw his grave. So what now?
• The taboo in saying Voldermort’s name. Luna’s dad gave the trail for the Death Eaters to track down the three by saying his name. It might not seem automatic for viewers to connect it during the film.

I did enjoy the film, and I do think it’s the best of the HP movies so far. Understandably, there were necessary omissions to make. Part II would have to make up for all of the lost details though, and let’s see how well they’ll manage to tie all the loose ends together…NEXT YEAR 🙂

Red Riding Hood movie

How do you feel about this trailer? Another attempt in spinning a new perspective on our beloved fairy tales.  Seems like a sexy, adult take on RRH’s character and an implied fascination with danger. Hmm.

 

Reader-response :)

“Once a little boy sent me a charming card with a little drawing on it. I loved it. I answer all my children’s letters—sometimes very hastily—but this one I lingered over. I sent him a card and I drew a picture of a Wild Thing on it. I wrote, “Dear Jim: I loved your card.”

Then I got a letter back from his mother and she said, “Jim loved your card so much he ate it.”

That to me was one of the highest compliments I’ve ever received. He didn’t care that it was an original Maurice Sendak drawing or anything. He saw it, he loved it, he ate it.”

– Maurice Sendak in Applause magazine

On writing

“If you want to write, if you want to create, you must be the most sublime fool that God ever turned out and sent rambling. You must write every single day of your life. You must read dreadful dumb books and glorious books, and let them wrestle in beautiful fights inside your head, vulgar one moment, brilliant the next. You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads. I wish you a wrestling match with your Creative Muse that will last a lifetime. I wish craziness and foolishness and madness upon you. May you live with hysteria, and out of it make fine stories — science fiction or otherwise. Which finally means, may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world.” – Ray Bradbury

Why?