Harry Potter Part 7 Part 1 - AKA: HP7a

When I first read that the producers of the wildly (and mostly deservedly) successful Harry Potter series had announced their intention to split its final instalment into two parts I was immediately despondent. After the genuinely awful start to the Potter series the third through to the fifth films were exciting, dark when they needed to be and revealed their child stars as promising actors of the future. Much of the promise of those 3 middle films seemed to evaporate with the announcement that part 7 would be in two parts. There was only one reason to split the seventh film into two - money. Any talk of sticking to the original text is simply doublething on the part of the producers. The 4th, 5th and 6th books are both incredibly long texts and were both adequately reduced into screenplays of around the 140 minute mark.

I toyed with the idea of not going to see HP7a for this reasons and others. My experience of the original texts was one major reason. I was hugely bored with the first half of HP7 the book as it consisted almost entirely sneaking around bits of England hiding from baddies. Thankfully the second half of makes everything worthwhile - it has a wonderfully emotional finish and I recommend reading the lot. With this in mind I decided that I needed to see HP7a, since without it the payoff next summer wont be half as good. At least it wasn't going to be in 3D anyway. All this meant I went into the cinema with not the most open of minds - I was expecting to be disappointed.

The story of Harry Potter has moved on from its boarding school roots and for the first time in the series we are out of Hogwarts and into the unknown. Within the opening half hour Potter and his chums are thrown into mortal danger and are on the run from Voldemort and his cronies. The film sets itself up on a war footing from the outset, Potter and co are forced to go into hiding for fear that they are putting their loved ones in danger. They camp out in the woods, infiltrate the ministry of magic and fight against several dark mages to evade capture. It's a story in which the dangers are terrifyingly real and in which the quidditch of the early instalments seems like a twee sideshow by comparison. The film ends up being very true to the book and is full of a number of lovely touches - more of those later.

Before getting too carried away with praise though: the film is too long. For an adaptation of half of a book that isn't as long as some of the previous tomes in the series, over 150 minutes is just silly. I thought that we'd got over the need to include every little microcosm of the Potter-verse when we got to part 3. Apparently not, and we are subjected to a number scenes which could easily have been coalesced into dialogue asides or (forgive me for suggesting it) even a montage. An example is Bill Nighy's appearance to read out Dumbledore's will to the kids. It probably goes on for about 5 minutes and adds literally nothing that couldn't have been done by the kids talking about the event later. One part of the film that could be cut out but I'm glad they didn't is a cartoon-styled sequence in which Hermione tells a story of three brothers and the creation of the Deathly Hallows (the MacGuffins for part 2 btw). Some beautiful animation there and a credit to whomever on the production team is responsible.

Rather than being dull though, HP7a's long 'on the run in a tent' sequences take on the feeling of a character drama. Harry finds himself in the eye of a storm and is torn between facing his destiny and protecting his loved ones. Hermione is brave and resourceful, but knows that Harry must ultimately face his demons alone. Ron is best friend to both, but is tortured by thoughts of losing them to teenage lust. This three-way teenage melting pot of emotions and fears added to the physical dangers of dark magics is the recipe for a pretty bloody good drama. Much better than the book ever managed in my opinion.

Apart from the length and occasionally unnecessary sequences, the film is overall very enjoyable with a good mix of darkness, comedy and teen angst. It's the perfect way to set up the final battle of the next film and also fun to see loads of well-famous British actors with incredibly small bit parts. I'm looking forward to HP7b, roll on July 2011!

Monetarist Propaganda

I watched the last 30 minutes of this last night and after I gathered my jaw off the floor I struggled to comprehend the lunatic propaganda that I had just witnessed on the normally-progressive Channel 4. The documentary was a one-sided polemic in which the presenter blamed the latest financial crisis on 'big state' and 'big government'. He held Hong Kong up as a paragon of monetarism, shining a light on everything that works about that tiny city state as an example of the Asian tigers and avoiding all mention of the other Asian tigers who's economies have failed.

He suggested that Hong Kong is a beacon of prosperity and that Britain needs to emulate it if the nation is to return to the 'glory' years of the 18th and 19th centuries. One presumes that by Britain's 'glory years' the presenter isn't talking about when there was no NHS, no right to vote, no women's suffrage, no state pension, child labour, endless wars on the continent, rotten boroughs in parliament, disease, back-breaking hard work and short life-expectancies. I guess he means some kind of rose-tinted view of buccaneering British conquistadors forcing trade agreements on Indian and Chinese natives, waving a Union Jack around on the battlefield and rolling in pound notes in some kind of Jane Austin upper-middle-class fantasy. Just what I don't need.

The documentary produced a long line of vox-pops (exclusively city types and people sitting on right-wing think tanks) who told us that the ONLY way to repay the debt was to reduce taxes, release controls on business and downside government. This brazen hypocrisy on the part of those who created the financial meltdown is so ridiculous and it astounds me how few have challenged it. The program talks of a 4.8 trillion pound national debt in terms of a household debt, the presenter uses the same disingenuous arguments as the government and deliberately misconstrues the truth by equating a national economy to one of a family budgeting its incomes and outgoings. He parrots the government's line about treating this debt as something that has to be paid off by managing outgoings, rather than something that is dealt with by investing in Britain's economic future.

I was heartened to discover this morning that the presenter of "Britain's Trillion Pound Horror Story" is the same guy who recently has produced similar documentaries denouncing environmentalism and fear mongering about genetic engineering. Not a man who's grasp of science is the finest then. But I wonder how many of those who watched this program will go out of their way to discover the presenter's history of misinformation and lies. Few I suspect. However, while programs like this can find a place on a serious television channel during prime time the government's lies about its 'necessary' cuts will continue to be the mainstream.

The Disappearance of Alice Creed

This is the kind of thing we do well in Britain isn't it? Here is a small budget production with a tight script and interesting premise. Two stern-faced and occasionally-masked men spend the opening scenes of the film methodically and meticulously preparing a house and a room for god knows what purpose. They buy a series of tools, bin bags and plastic sheets, then boost and strip out a van, attach poles and hooks to walls in a warehouse and dig holes in a forest. They do all this without speaking a word, barely acknowledging each other let along the rest of the world. These are two guys up to no good. Then they kidnap a young woman and a plan begins to unfold. A simple plan of kidnap and extortion. Or is it as simple as it seems?

With only three actors in the whole film the microscope is on them and their ability to deliver a performance that carries the story. I remember Eddie Marsan from Vera Drake but had no idea how terrifying he would be able to make his beady eyes, Gemma Arterton seems to be turning into the next Brit to cross the pond and succeed so I guess there was no worry about her being able to express the terror of a woman kidnapped (as well as a number of other emotions - which would give away too much of the plot to discuss in detail). Suffice to say that there are a series of plots swings and twists as the histories and motivations of all three characters are revealed and then tested to the limit. At no point does the claustrophobia and tension of the plot suffer from awkward acting - full marks all round.

It's not just the acting that did it for me. The opening few minutes in which the kidnappers buy all their gear and fit up their lair has much more menace to it than even Eddie Marsan's eyes are capable of generating, it's all about the short disconcerting cuts and odd camera angles. Everything's there and in place to put the viewer off, to unsettle you ever so slightly and make you tense about what's coming next.

As I already said, the film is very claustrophobic. With only 3 actors and very few sets it feels at times as if you're intruding something very private by watching it. That's a feeling that paid off towards the very end when a character looks straight into the camera for about 5 seconds, it's kind of a 'what would you do?' moment and an absolutely brilliant way to finish. This is a film you should watch.

RED - bit of a let down

This was certainly a film to be excited about. Talk about a top quality cast and some kick-arse trailers, the bit in the trailer where Helen Mirren starts shooting a minigun gave me a strange reaction. At first I would disappointed to see that one of Britain's great actresses had decided to give into the pressure and take the Hollywood paycheque, but then I thought that there's actually something glorious in seeing a RADA luminary live the action film cliché. Well, let's say I had high hopes.

My understanding is that the film is based on a comic book. This makes sense as there are a lot of contrivances in the story that don't stand up in the real world. For a start, the opening 15 minutes focuses on a Bruce Willis connecting with a woman (Mary Louise Parker) who works in the social security office. He keeps on pretending that they've not sent him any pensions cheques as a pretence for calling her. Somehow she thinks this is charming and ends up falling for him when they finally meet (he breaks into her house while being chased by some kind of SWAT team). They then go on a trip around America - you can tell they're travelling places from all the post cards that say things like 'Delaware' on them - having hi-jinx and meeting all Willis' ex-CIA goons; Malkovich, Freeman and Mirren.

This gang then uncover a plot to kill them all, so they have to kill the US Vice President while chatting up Russians, winding up arms dealers and firing a huge amount of ordinance. It's a bit funny (John Malvovich especially) and fairly silly but all incredibly forced. Just not as good as I had expected it to be. Maybe that's because I saw it on Saturday morning when I thought I'd get a bargain matinee ticket but didn't (you only get bargain matinee at Showcase on weekdays - what use is that?!), but I was left fairly nonplussed.

The Social Network

No matter what reservations I may have had about watching a film detailing the creation of Facebook (a site on which I do have an account and use to share photos with friends), I was completely won over by a film that is littered by Aaron Sorkin's trademark dialogue. The opening scene was enough to do it for me, in which Mark Zuckerberg and his soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend engage in a twisting conversation that operates on multiple levels before swinging off in different directions. It was the West Wing all over again and I was smitten.

On the surface the film is about Mark Zuckerberg (the Facebook CEO) and how he created Facebook at Harvard University in 2003 / 2004. The story is not as simple as this though. Since several different groups of students were interested in creating online social networking sites at the time, the story is told from the point of view of a series of flashbacks from a later date at which Zuckerberg is being sued by most of the people who knew him at the time. Rather than being a story about web-development, it's a story about people battling each other to be king of a new online world - i.e. a story about characters.

The main character is of course Mark Zuckerberg. I don't know what Zuckerberg is like in person, but if Jessie Eisenberg is playing him true to life then he's an annoying nerd who always has a witty one-liner, a complete grasp of internet computing and an inability to communicate with real people. You might think that the story of Zuckerberg's young life is a story of affluence and roller-coaster rides to fame and riches, but 'The Social Network' paints him as a guy who only ever wanted to be accepted by people who matter to him. It is after his girlfriend dumps him that he creates the first beta version of Facebook, despite all the fame and riches and groupies he stumbles over it is still people like her to whom he looks for acceptance - the film's final scene being a poignant demonstration of that.

Whether this is true to real life or not is a question I don't have the information to answer. What I do know is that this film gives an in depth portrayal of an intriguing character as well as an eye-opening overview of the development of one of the world's most popular and successful websites (the truth of which appears to be largely validated by reading the Wiki entry for Facebook). And if that's not enough for you, it's written by Aaron Sorkin.