Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows part one.

[starlady]

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part I. Dir. David Yates, 2010.

As has become tradition, I went to see this with my dad and my sister on Christmas Eve. What a happy holiday movie! Or NOT.

I liked the movie, bleak though it was; I've enjoyed the later movies for the way they imbricate Harry and his friends in the Muggle world as thoroughly as they do in the magical, and the way the movies overlay those two worlds on each other much more closely than the books can or do. This movie isn't immune to the essential plotting problems that make the first half of the seventh book such a slog, but it does manage to move things along slightly quicker, which is good, because there's horrible things to see and favorite characters to be killed off, damn it! (As time goes on I get less reconciled to many of JKR's decisions in these last three books, I have to admit.)

I sort of found myself annoyed that, because of time constraints in earlier movies, a lot of characters whom we already know from way back had to be introduced for the first time at the beginning of this movie, but I was glad to see them, and I thought this movie did really well at conveying a strong emotional tone, strong enough to carry us across the six month gap until the next and final film. It ends at basically the lowest point possible, which is a good spot, because at least there's nowhere to go but up.

And, yeah, Harry and Ron wouldn't last two days without Hermione: Ron's always right when he's being sarcastic. Whoever called this movie Hermione Granger and the Two Boys She Saves Repeatedly was totally right. 

Comments

[recessional]

That was part of what prompted me to write "And On The Third Day" in a way, I think. The "and the two boys she saves repeatedly" part. Because really, after you've invested that much time and effort into saving people, you ought to get to be around them in happiness when they don't NEED saving.

[starlady]

I should read that now that I'm not frantically writing Yuletide and papers.

In my head, I don't care what JKR says, Hermione eventually becomes Minister of Magic. Because really she is the best person for the job, bar none.

[recessional]

:D in On The Third Day-verse, she TRIED to live a life of leisure.

eventually the ministry said "look, why don't you come help us WRITE policy, so we don't have to deal with your massive public campaigns AFTER we've passed the damn thing?"

she was Minister about the time her eldest hit seventh year. (ron became an auror. harry was a stay-at-home-dad and avoided politics and reporters.)

[starlady]

That makes me SO HAPPY.

[recessional]

Initially, they were like, yay! We have the Potter and Black fortunes! We never have to do anything we don't want to again!

After about a year, Ron and Hermione started wrangling and Harry said he'd throttle both of them if they didn't find something to do. Ron decided to be an Auror after possibly a night of too much drinking with one of his brothers, but turned out to be quite good at it,, and Hermione started her social justice-work, with a bit more actual understanding this time (ie: perhaps I should ask the house-elves what would HELP them before I run off on my crusade on their behalf?)

The Ministry started to want to hide every time "GRANGER TAKES UP THE CAUSE!" showed up in the Prophet or the Quibbler. The rest was history.

[starlady]

I wouldn't blame Harry if he'd gone off to a life of Quidditch, either.

The Ministry started to want to hide every time "GRANGER TAKES UP THE CAUSE!" showed up in the Prophet or the Quibbler. The rest was history.

XD

[recessional]

Harry continued to discover that actually, he LIKED not having to save the world. At all. But instead run a small orientation program for Muggle-born students to Hogwarts and coach a local Quidditch team. WITH NO REPORTERS. ANYWHERE.

(In this world, Ginny becomes a world-famous Seeker, and she and Luna go around the world on cryptozoology tours on a regular basis; Luna teaches Care of Magical Creatures at Hogwarts on the basis that while she can combat the forces of evil like nobody's business, Ginny is not TOTALLY sure of her ability to keep from starving to death by accident because she got distracted by a creature only she could see. At least at Hogwarts, she'll get fed even if Ginny's in Turkey for a match.)

[janni.livejournal.com]

That Hermione is the only truly competent character in this series much of the time has my wondering, more and more, just why Harry is the hero instead of her.

[starlady38.livejournal.com]

Because, you know, otherwise it would be a girls' book.

[janni.livejournal.com]

With girl cooties and all, and everyone knows we wouldn't want any more of that.

[starlady38.livejournal.com]

Heck, the reason she's known as J.K. Rowling here is because Scholastic was afraid boys wouldn't buy a book by a woman. And I don't know that she's even fundamentally free of those attitudes herself, though one of the things I love about the books is how the characters are so real to us and to her, and how even if she doesn't know how to describe them, 90% of the time she knows and is respectful of who they are.

[janni.livejournal.com]

Yes. There's much done well, and as we all know, it's what you do right that makes a book work, not what you manage not to do wrong.

Had an interesting conversation at one point with three other female YA writers, all of whom were asked to write under initials--two refused, one agreed, and as far as I know there's no correlation between those decisions and how their books did.

Never been asked to write under initials myself, but that may be because my books have mostly been perceived as having a primarily female audience.

(I of course have major issues with the whole boys-are-less-tolerant-than-girls-so-lets-only-cater-to-the-boys attitude, but that's a whole other rant. :-))

[starlady38.livejournal.com]

(I of course have major issues with the whole boys-are-less-tolerant-than-girls-so-lets-only-cater-to-the-boys attitude, but that's a whole other rant. :-))

I suspect we'd be saying the same things!