Wednesday 16 November 2016

Never read the book


I hear that the latest Harry Potter spin-off film is about to be released, with up to five more if the first makes it as big in the box office as the originals.

It sounds to me as though they are going for the American market, as the bits I heard had U.S. accents and I hear it is set in New York.  J. K. Rowling doesn't need the money I am guessing, but she did write the book, so it could have been her idea to go Trans-Atlantic to please Disney.

I may be a rank (with a lower-case 'r') xenophobe, but I feel very territorial and proprietorial about Harry Potter. It is just so English that it would be impossible to transport Hogwarts to any other country, but the lead character was expelled from Hogwarts, so I suppose it will work.

I still worry, though. Look what they did to Winne-the-Pooh. That was unforgivable. Disney bought up the rights to my childhood and turned the bear into some fat, bumbling, pathetic idiot. I haven't seen any of the U.S. adaptation of The Office, but I can just imagine the hammed-up facial expressions and exagerated gestures to let the audience know that this or that has happened, somene feels this or that about something, or a joke has been made - using genuine English irony.

The Harry Potter films are now as much a part of Christmas here as 'It's a Wonderful Life' has been for years, but Corda never really fitted into Hollywood and - unlike Potter - his film flopped in the beginning.

I have never understood (and it has never been explained to me) how the Freddy Frinton film - the one with the catch-phrase, 'Same proceedure as last year, Miss Sophie' - became an integral part of the German New Year's Eve celebrations. I have never seen it,  but I suppose it could be simply the catch-phrase.

I will probably sneak into a cinema to watch the new one before the DVDs come out, as I have with every Harry Potter film made. Like someone who took crack for the first time and spent the rest of the addiction trying to repeat the high, I have been trying to re-live the night of watching H.P. and the Philosopher's Stone, a few days before Christmas, in a cinema-full of rapt children, with snow gently falling outside.

I was fifty years old... Sigh...

28 comments:

  1. That very first Harry Potter movie was the first example of a movie looking exactly the way I pictured things in my mind when I read the book. I loved that they stayed so true to the actual story line. I even loved the sound track. -Jenn

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    1. Yes - you can imagine how magical it was, watching it around Christmas with the snow falling outside! I never read any of the books, but they took a whole generation of kids right through childhood, school days, ups and downs and how to deal with them, good v evil, teenage love affairs - the lot. I just tagged along.

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  2. It's the same here in Austria with the the Freddy Frinton film. A seasonal ritual, it's on TV every year.
    Don't ask me why?

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    1. Really. Austria too. It's a mystery - even to my German friends.

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  3. The US version of The Office is hilarious. One of my all-time favorite shows.

    I love the image of you sneaking in to the theater to watch HP. It brought by memories of taking our niece and nephew to see The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe when they were still very young. It was right before Christmas, too.

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    1. I did take a grandchild as cover. I was more excited than he was.

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  4. That first Harry Potter movie was so well done. I saw it early in its run, and remember the theater having a few children mixed in with the oldies like me. We all loved seeing the story unfold.

    The Disney corporation also worked its magic across our Times Square district. If one looks carefully, the old Times Square still lurks in a few nooks and crannies.

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    1. A bit like Picadilly Circus here then. There was a huge neon Coca Cola sign up there even during the 1940s, I think. Probably part of the Special Relationship deal. These days it's LED.

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    1. Came a little while after the Beatles, Weave...

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    1. Sometimes, when I am not screaming and swearing.

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  7. Love all of the Harry Potter's .... and, you're right .... so English but, isn't Eddie Redmayne in this new one although, he probably has an American accent .... shame !! When our Dad was alive, we always used to watch ' Dinner For One ' { same procedure as last year Miss Sophie !! } ..... our Dad LOVED it !!!! He laughed himself silly every Christmas !! XXXX

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    1. I heard Eddie Redmayne interviewed this morning, and he sounds very English. I hope he is not instructed to put on an accent like Dick Van Dyke was...

      Your FATHER watched it every Christmas??? Strange.

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    2. I think that it is the sort of humour that our parents liked. I guess we have to remember that they didn't grow up with The Office and alternative comedy. I didn't mind watching it once but by the time I'd seen it three times I was done !!!!! XXXX

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    3. My father loved Westerns (Bonanza, etc) and stuff like Tommy Cooper. I used to like Hancock and Cooper, but I seem to have grown tired of them. Theye didn't understand or like Monty Python.

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  8. Dinner For One makes no sense to me. -tried watching it once. Just once.

    Americanized versions of well done foreign shows really grate. I'm thinking of Getting On & The Killing, specifically. If anyone here in the states tries to re-make Mad Fat Diary I'll scream. The American version of The Office morphed into its own thing, and, for a time, was actually funny.

    I might be all Rowling'ed out & may just pass on the new film franchise entirely.

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    1. What is it about remakes? Are they scared to do anything new? Compare Tarkovsky's Solaris with the one starring George Clooney and you wonder why they bother.

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    2. Yes, I think they are too scared to create something fresh & driven by greed to recreate what has worked.
      Speaking of both remakes and holiday films, from what I recall, Miracle on 34th St. was remade, and it was distinctly lacking. Small wonder...

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    3. I have never seen the original!

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  9. I remember taking my son to watch a Harry Potter film. It's good that an English accent doesn't always mean there's a villain about.

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    1. Don't be fooled - it's a fiction. There is always a villain attched to an English accent.

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  10. Not moved or entertained by the novels or the movies

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    1. Now why do I find that completely unsurprising?????

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    2. From one who says he is a film-critic, but doesn't like Powell and Pressburger?!

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  11. When I first saw Tin Tin speaking with an American accent, I nearly lost my lunch.

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    1. I found Mozart's American accent in Amadeus strange, but why should we always insist on an English one for people who were not English? What I cannot stand is when an English actor is playing, say, a German soldier speaking in his own language, he puts on a terrible faux German accent. If they gave Tin Tin a Belgian accent it would be worse.

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