Shakespeare and Potter
Jul. 14th, 2007 10:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
plumtreeblossomBecause of Commonwealth Shakespeare's very abridged season this year (not their fault; the city forced it), I'm not going to be organizing my traditional big Shakespeare picnic where I go down very early to secure front and center blanket space. The only night I can go is July 29, and I will probably be toast from the T@F run ending the night before. So if I do manage to go, I'll just be sneaking down with any stragglers I can find and squeezing into the crowd.
What I do want to do is see The Publick Theatre's Romeo and Juliet, which runs from July 26 through mid-September. Tickets are $32, but it's well worth it for spending the evening in their beautiful outdoor theatre. I've missed them for the last few seasons and I'd love to see what they do with R&J.
*****
Last night I didn't have any plans, so on the spur of the moment I went after work to see Order of The Phoenix...
A problem with all Potter movies is how much has to be left out. While Goblet of Fire is my so-far favorite of the books, it is my so-far least favorite of the movies because of its total lack of character development of the very important Cedric, Fleur, and Viktor. So I knew going in to OotP that things would be missing. Still, I found it to be the best of the series to date.
It is wonderfully dark and edgy. Certain points are genuinely frightening, for the first time in the series. Daniel Radcliffe is shaping into an excellent young adult actor. Imelda Staunton as Dolores Umbridge deserves a Best Supporting Actress nod. Someone(s) deserves every award in the world for the set design of Umbridge's office.
There was nothing stopping them from making this a 3 hour movie, and I would have happily sat through it. OotP was Percy Weasley's big book, and I'd hoped to see this authoritarian black sheep of the free-spirited Weasley family get some screen development. A viewer would definitely need to have read the book to recognize that the red-haired, lineless young man showing up as Fudge's toady is Percy Weasley, now working for The Man. But at this point it's pretty safe to assume that most viewers have read the book.
Over all though, I enjoyed it very much, and I want to see it again (maybe in IMAX) since I was stuck in a bad seat way up front this time. I give it best-of-series-so far, with my only wish being for more. And that's not a bad thing.
What I do want to do is see The Publick Theatre's Romeo and Juliet, which runs from July 26 through mid-September. Tickets are $32, but it's well worth it for spending the evening in their beautiful outdoor theatre. I've missed them for the last few seasons and I'd love to see what they do with R&J.
*****
Last night I didn't have any plans, so on the spur of the moment I went after work to see Order of The Phoenix...
A problem with all Potter movies is how much has to be left out. While Goblet of Fire is my so-far favorite of the books, it is my so-far least favorite of the movies because of its total lack of character development of the very important Cedric, Fleur, and Viktor. So I knew going in to OotP that things would be missing. Still, I found it to be the best of the series to date.
It is wonderfully dark and edgy. Certain points are genuinely frightening, for the first time in the series. Daniel Radcliffe is shaping into an excellent young adult actor. Imelda Staunton as Dolores Umbridge deserves a Best Supporting Actress nod. Someone(s) deserves every award in the world for the set design of Umbridge's office.
There was nothing stopping them from making this a 3 hour movie, and I would have happily sat through it. OotP was Percy Weasley's big book, and I'd hoped to see this authoritarian black sheep of the free-spirited Weasley family get some screen development. A viewer would definitely need to have read the book to recognize that the red-haired, lineless young man showing up as Fudge's toady is Percy Weasley, now working for The Man. But at this point it's pretty safe to assume that most viewers have read the book.
Over all though, I enjoyed it very much, and I want to see it again (maybe in IMAX) since I was stuck in a bad seat way up front this time. I give it best-of-series-so far, with my only wish being for more. And that's not a bad thing.