Harry Potter and the Cursed Child

 2022, d.  - theatrical performance (June 19, Ed Mirvish Theatre, Toronto)

Let's just get this out of the way off the top...I like Harry Potter ok. I'm not the hugest of fans, but I do generally like the film series and think they were quite an achievement.  I found the books started feeling unnecessarily bloated around the fourth and gave up on reading them.  I vehemently detest J.K. Rowling's outspoken anti-trans stance, and find that for someone who talks a lot in her stories about acceptance, that she seems painfully unaware of how close-minded and proactively hurtful she has become.  I wish to, as much as possible, distance my assessment of the Harry Potter and the Cursed Child from the ugliness of its creator, separate the art from the artist, as a lot of other artists had a hand in this production than just Rowling (is it fair to wish that the property were owned by some faceless corporation, like how Disney has control of Star Wars now?)

I was lucky enough to have a friend who is working on the show and graced me with tickets to the opening day performance, lucky in the sense that tickets are hard to get generally, and that I didn't have to pay for them.  

I'm not a regular theatre goer, but I've seen a number of different productions in Toronto (and even a couple on Broadway).  This was, far and away, the biggest, most elaborate, most technically complex production I've seen.  The theme of the show, through and through, is magic, and it's everywhere within the production.  It's not just the pyrotechnics emanating from the wands, or the clever trap door-aided physical transformation scenes, or the slight of hand tricks where one part of the set becomes a complete other set without you noticing the act of transformation.  It's everywhere.  I remember a performance of Les Miserables with a transforming set, but that's just it's transition from one act's backdrop to another.  This show's sets seem so simplistic and yet they are constantly move right before your eyes without calling attention to themselves.  Sometimes it's just a trick of the lighting, sometimes it's the ancillary players using the props as one thing, but them becoming another thing as the scene goes on (suitcases play multiple parts throughout the performance).  

While there are no songs -- it's not a musical -- there are dance numbers, and the dances are quite incredible.  They use props, wardrobes, and the various tricks of the sets and stage to create a dazzling display that serves the dual purpose both of visually arresting choreography but also in obfuscating the set transitions.  You only kind of notice the end result when they exit the stage, to see that it's been completely redressed during their dance.  The dancing is very contemporary, but also so specific to its dual purpose.  It's "in world" in terms of the people and their movements and the accessories being used, and, except maybe the first time, it never feels shoehorned in... there's an organicness to it.  Other scenes change as a result of passing time (an anti-montage if you will) which involves the cast on stage moving slowly and jerkily to not-quite-strobe lighting cues that make it seem like time is acting erratically.  Part of the plot also involves time travel, and they've devised an exceptionally clever lighting effect to show when a journey has completed, on top of the clock motifs embedded into the set that are equally highlighted by different lighting.

The stage features rotating pieces, trap doors, treadmills, all which are used in both obvious and obtuse ways.  Characters will walk decently paced while basically existing in same spot, while the curving part of the stage provides movement to pieces around them that give the illusion that the performer is moving closer or further away.  It's so well done, and so subtle, that unless you start to look for it you don't even see it.

Wire work also has a heavy role to play in this, and there are performers being swung around the stage, and in one instance over the audience (still not sure if it was a performer, an animatronic, or just a trick of light and wind), but it's again, always disguised how the performer, previously untetherd, suddenly is up in the air (or whether it's the performer or something else, swapped out through a trap door).

I was just in awe of this production purely on a technical level.  It's dazzling, and certainly exceptionally well thought through.  No movement is wasted, and every piece of the set seems to have been optimized for maximum functionality.  And it all looks magnificent.

Now it's all in service of the story, an original creation from Rowling, with playwright Jack Thorne and director John Tiffany also getting story credit.   It's steeped in the lore of the previous Harry Potter septology, but basically fits as a legasequel, in which the primary characters are children of the lead characters of the previous series, but the parents also play a part.  As well, in legasequel style, the kids are dealing with ripples that remain from the previous endeavour. 

In this case our leads are Albus Potter and Scorpius Malfoy, the former the younger child of Harry and Ginny, the latter the son of Harry's childhood rival, Draco.  Albus is awkward and anxious, he feels the weight of his father's legacy on him in a way his brother, James, somehow ignored.  He's unsure how to live up to the expectations he thinks are upon him, and it builds up anger and resentment towards his father within him.  Scorpius, meanwhile, is a nervous twitch of a boy who is super smart but also super awkward.  The horrible, unfounded rumour is that his parents used a Time Turner to go back in time and that he's the offspring of his mother and Voldemort.  In an absolutely clever and well done on-stage montage, we traverse two years of the boys' lives at Hogwarts (and inbetween) in less than 10 mintues of stage time which serves both to solidify their connection to each other, as well as the awkwardness between Albus and Harry.

The crux of the story is a bit of a shoehorn, as a wedged-in scene finds Cedric Diggory's father (the boy played by Robert Pattinson in The Goblet of Fire) implores Harry to use a Time Turner to go back in time and save his boy.  Harry, now Mister of Defense or somesuch, denies the existence of any Time Turners and refuses the old man's pleas.  However, a skulking Albus is aware that Harry recently discovered a Time Turner in a raid.  Albus and Scorpius, escaping their train to year 3 at Hogwarts, set out to steal the Time Turner and set right what Harry could, or would not.  Of course, these two awkward boys and their Time Travel shenanigans make a real mess of things and things get real bad.  

The plot weaves in and out of events of The Goblet of Fire, but uses its story to be one about fathers.  Harry feels like a failure as a father to Albus, a boy he doesn't try to understand, but then admits that without having a father himself, he doesn't have anyone to measure himself against.  Scorpius, having recently lost his mother to disease, senses distance between his father and himself, distance which Draco admits to not wanting but not understanding how to correct.  Harry's father figure, Dumbledor, makes appearances as a moving speaking portait (an excellent effect of lighting) and calls the old man out for his coldness.  James Potter, the father Harry never knew, is a bit of a shadow, until he is not.  And there's even another father who plays a role in the proceedings, but that's a spoiler.  And of course, there's Cedric Diggory's grieving father, who has seemingly withered away in his despair over the years.

Being that this production's opening day was on Father's Day, it was a rather fitting day to catch it, and the impact seemed even greater as a result.  I think it's the strength of the story.  The stupid boys doing stupid time travel things without thinking through the consequences seemed an exercise to get some fan favourite characters into the proceedings as well as drag the story through a number of familiar cues.  There are some surprises, but it all felt a little fan-servicey and it gets a bit Back to the Future Part 2 at times.

The all-Canadian(?) cast were all quite good, with only Scorpius performer Thomas Mitchell Barnet and Katie Ryerson's Moaning Myrtle really standing out for giving bigger, broader performances.  Everyone else was giving apt energy.  I think Draco Malfoy performer Brad Hodder did a good job, but it's more the character than the performer that gets the best speeches in the production, in part because of considering who the words are coming from. The accents are all "stage British", and sound as such, fading in and out a bit throughout.  It's all fine to my Canadian ears.  Actual Brits may feel differently.

The heavy insinuation by the end is that Albus and Scorpius are in love with each other, but the story never goes beyond inference.  It seems to be explicitly written in a way to allow for plausible deniability that they're just bestest friends ever and that the "love" they speak of for each other is just that.  It's Rowling's late-stage, out-of-story admission that Dumbledor was gay all over again, just cowardly. The boys share a hug or two but there's no kiss, which seems regressive.  I'm sure the production doesn't want the interruption of hate-filled homophobes standing up and disrupting the whole play but they easily could have devised it so that the show ends with their kiss which then goes to curtains and fanfare reception, drowning out the haters.  Fuck the haters.

Which brings us back to where we started. Rowling. A hater. Its obvious that this is a successful production but I have to say in the back of my brain I couldn't shut off the notion that there would be some form of anti-trans subliminal messaging somewhere in all this.  There isn't, and I admit it is paranoid thinking that there would be.  I'm sure it's something neither Thorne nor Tiffany would allow, but how does one condemn the artist and still condone their art.  If you support the art, you're therefore supporting the artist, are you not?  I can't in conscience tell people to pay to go see this production, but I can't really say it's not something worth seeing either.   The story, the name of Harry Potter is the draw, but the real art of it all come from set designer Christine Jones, costume designer Katrina Lindsay, movement director Steven Hoggett, composer and arranger Imogen Heap (it's a great score), lighting designer Neil Austin, sound designer Gareth Fry, illusions and magic from Jamie Harrison and all the other great artists involved.  Everyone else polished it up and brought it to life, all Rowling did was build the world and the characters and story (I know, it is a mighty achievement and I'm really falsely underplaying it... I just wish she weren't such a TERF).

10 for 10: I Need a Catchy Title?

10 for 10... that's 10 movies which we give ourselves 10 minutes apiece to write about.  Part of our problem is we don't often have the spare hour or two to give to writing a big long review for every movie or TV show we watch.  How about a 10-minute non-review full of scattershot thoughts? Surely that's doable?

[2019, May Update -- this was still in Drafts? Let's finish it off. Which should be interesting considering it was ... 2017 ?!?!]

[2019; August Update... jeebus, just finish already, format or not]

[2019; SEPTEMBER OMG !]

In This Edition:

The November Man, 2014, Roger Donaldson (Dante's Peak) -- Netflix
iBoy, 2017, Adam Randall (Level Up) -- Netflix
Volcano, 1997, Mick Jackson (The Bodyguard) -- Netflix
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, 2016, David Yates (The Legend of Tarzan) -- download
The Void, 2016, Jeremy Gillespie, Steven Kostanski (Father's Day, Manborg) -- download
Colossal, 2016, Nacho Vigalondo (Timecrimes) -- download
Paradox, 2016, Michael Hurst (Room 6) -- Netflix
2:22, 2017, Paul Curie (One Perfect Day) -- download

aaaand Go.

Netflix still often feels like the corner video store, where there are a hand full of first run movies at the front, but most of the place is filled up with Straight To movies and delete items. The November Man is a Straight To flick for the Bourne crowd, or probably more precisely the fans of the British spy procedurals.

Pierce Brosnan is Devereaux, an ex-MI5 operative. Or is it CIA? Which is in vogue these days? I still get this flick mixed up in my head with the John Snow MI5 movie I previously rushed through a post. So yes, CIA. He was a hit man, but he's old now; ex-CIA black ops kind of guy in retirement. He is convinced by an old boss to help him extract a... what's the standard word... asset from Russia. The asset is about to get caught and she has good intel on a Russian general. Devereaux agrees but things go south, as they always do, and the asset (who turns out to be his old paramour) dies... at the hands of Deveareaux's once-protegee. But not before she gives him the Next Clue. So, now Devereaux is angry and upset at the CIA and his ex-protegee but still wants to help out the Next Clue, played by Olga Kurlenko.

Standard convoluted plot of espionage and revenge, which happens to be based on a popular adventure book series. Its not all that original and Donaldson spends far too much time recreating Bourne style scenes, but the acting is all committed and the locales are generously exotic. Brosnan is probably stuck with playing B-rate ex-spies of many sort and he does it deftly enough. This was definitely sitting on sofa checking Facebook fare, though. [9:36]

---

iBoy is a wonderful Netflix Original from Britain, not perfect but a lot of fun. It's your classic 80s inspired technology magic super-powered tale sourced from people who understand a bit about technology, but depending on you to not know a lot. In other words, much of what happens is not at all possible. But with some decent effects, it still makes for engaging fantasy.

Pretty much all technology based fiction.

Tom lives in a rough part of London, those classic towers you see in all the movies -- run down, cramped and ridden with gangs. He has a crush on Lucy and on the night when he was finally going to confess his feelings, he finds her gang raped. The movie almost lost me there; I am in the camp where I am tired of that being the impetus for most fiction heroic males. But at least it was able to move past it quickly enough. Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

Tom has to run from the gang members, and in turn shot in the head and (I forget exactly how) ends up with parts of his cell phone embedded in his brain. Boom! Magic technology powers, that makes him kinda of like Besson's Lucy (not the character in THIS movie) in that he can see and interact with technology "waves". And soon after, he realizes he can manipulate them, and control mobile devices and data.

From there it runs as a typical revenge / vigilante drama, but the play on technological powers is charming enough. Eventually he reveals himself as the iBoy, and discovers the core leadership of the gang that hurt Lucy. But at a cost. There is always a cost. The weird thing about the movie is that it keeps on dancing between the goofy scifi powers based stuff, and the darker plot elements around the rape and the balance of power of those who committed it versus those who manipulated them. It wants to be deeper than it is, but only succeeds half way.

Still, Maizie Williams is always worth watching. [9:36]

---

Volcano goes into my list of favoured disaster flicks, but not enough to be added to The Shelf. Like the movies about asteroids looming down on us, there were two volcano movies that season. This is the Tommy Lee Jones one, the one where a volcano grows in central LA and the emergency management guy has to pull out all the stops in order to reduce the loss of life. Anne Heche is along as the scientist who has to convince people of the Bad Stuff About to Happen.

Basically, IIRC, something is happening with the fault line (its always San Andreas' fault, ba dump bump) which is sending magma flowing under LA. Things are heating up and geologist Heche, and her trusty side-kick, are trying to figure out why. I remember being horrified the first time I saw the cute, bespectacled sidekick get devoured by an unexpected eruption of magma. Once this event happens, a proper volcano soon emerges and all hell breaks loose. Do you really expect me to NOT use cliches when it comes to remembering disaster flicks?

At the time, Jones was already (click click...) 51, at which point I should be saying "too old to break out as an action star" but remember Liam Neeson's kickoff with Taken ? But that seems what they were trying to do here -- make him the sexy, leading man with against Heche, saving LA from all the stupid people who didn't believe her. But remember, we didn't know Heche was leaning in the direction of women at that time. Still, Jones never  really did reach Action Man status.

And I still did get utterly chilled at the most heroic act in the entire movie, by some rather nameless subway worker, who jumps into flowing lava to save a woman, and dies as lava absorbs him -- but not before he tosses her into the arms of horrified workers. It wouldn't have gone that way in reality, but .... disaster flick. [10:24]

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Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is the latest, or first, in the new Harry Potter cinematic universe. This is supposed to take us in two directions: to America and trundling along with Adult Wizards. Eddie Redmayne, the chameleon actor of our current age, plays bumbling, nerdy, stumbling and innocuous British wizard Newt Scamander who has come to America to... oh, I don't remember, but he has a bag (of holding) full of monsters. In his mind, they are not monsters, just misunderstood beasts from myth and magic. But really, dude some of these things are truly beastly, horrific things that would kill people given the chance. What I was disappointed in, in the representation of the monsters, were that so very few of them were mythological. They were basically just alien creatures that the wizards of the world either destroyed or manipulated reality to hide from us. That has to be it right? How else could such a plethora of creatures never have been heard of before?

Anywayz, when one of his creatures gets free he gets caught in a mystery about how muggles (non-mag in the US) interact with magicians, a notorious Bad Guy and some usual HP politics. But the best bits were actually between no-mag baker Jacob Kowalski and Newt, as Jacob gets drawn into a world he is really not supposed to know anything about. Think about it, these magicians never really any cook or bake anything, they just wave a wand and it appears or assembles or something. But Jacob knows, through instinct and skill, what those spells would have drawn upon for the first time. It made me wonder whether there are magicians out there creating new spells that would require non-mag's to provide the base ingredients. What a scandal that would cause.

But the movie never really caught me beyond the interaction of those two. The rest just seemed... forced. [9:31]

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The Void is one of those Lovecraftian flicks that was probably adored by the horror movie film fest circuit. I wonder whether and how it would have played at FantAsia in Montreal. Remember though, this is a lowish budget movie I saw in 2017, something I saw running on the movie / specfic blogs that looked interesting enough. Basically anything Lovecraftian, cults and summoned monsters and transformation and tentacles, can attract my attention. I wonder what that says for me. I remember liking it, but not loving it.

A couple of people are on the run from ... someone. They end up at a mostly abandoned hospital, which recently suffered a fire, and is on a downturn in use. They drag in the survivor and almost immediately things begin to go wrong, with a nurse killing a patient, her face ripped off by ... something. The Good Guys kill her, but she comes back, all tentacly and gross. From there things get all the more convoluted and creepier, connecting the people on the run to a cult that is summoning something from the namesake.

In another era this would have been done by John Carpenter. The over-use of vomit inducing practical-effected monsters and devolving people & creatures was probably the only boon to this movie, for the ideas it was trying to depict just faded away in the over-troped, over-used, not very creative scene to scene "plot". [6:31 because I don't really have much more to say about it, with this faded lingering impression left]

--

[full disclosure; i just deleted Noroi as i don't recall a single thing about it]

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Colossal is just a movie of the current era, a time when kaiju are not just coming back ironically or in homage, but also in tangentially referential ways. We have a movie whose sole premise is a presenting traumatized woman who channels a kaiju on the other side of the world. Or is it that he kaiju channels her? Well, whatever she does, the kaiju does as well. She swings her arm, its swings its arm. She walks, it walks and crushes Seoul. It only happens while she is in a certain point, and she cannot see through its eyes, but via the wonders of the Internet, can can see what's going on.

While this is a fantastical premise, this is not a genre movie. This is a classic indie emotion and interaction movie. Gloria (Anne Hathaway; The Intern) is a drunk of trainwreck. She has to escape to her hometown and is sleeping on the floor of the empty family house. Of course, she ends up at the local watering hole and connects with the bar owner Oscar (Jason Sudeikis; Horrible Bosses).

At first things are amiable between Gloria and Oscar, but as they explore this extraordinary phenomena, a really dark side comes out of him. I am not even sure of what is darker, that he seems to be so disconnected from the damage he can cause when he manifests his own kaiju (giant robot), or that there was a dark past situation that created this whole turn of events. Oscar is a horrible person and doesn't seem to be bothered by who is hurt, either lone Gloria who stands before him, or the countless nameless Koreans who he only sees on TV screens.

[kent's view]

[8:30]

--

[full disclosure; i just deleted Gambit (2012) & Paradox (2016); AGAIN I don't recall a single thing about them]

--

But I do remember this one, albeit slightly. Not quite time travel, more a romantic touch of synchronicity and a bit of time looping, this one was small budget and not thoroughly thought through (i love those three words together) but I rather liked it. I admit, I am rather charmed by Michael Huismann, who we first got to know on The Treme, but you might know better as the second Daario Naharis in Game of Thrones.  And I really like Teresa Palmer. So, I can at least enjoy watching two beautiful people fall in love. Add in some time hijinx and...

Dylan is experiencing something. He keeps on seeing innocuous events repeating: drops of water, flies, car horns, etc. Through chance, he gets connected with Sarah (he gets distracted at 2:22pm almost guiding her plane and another into collision; he's an air traffic controller).  Events and things out of time keep on colliding, focused around an event at 2:22pm and connecting the two new lovers.

Its not easy to explain where the movie goes, and how, and mainly/frankly because it doesn't entirely make sense. Suffice it to say, the lovers are connected through time and via the energy of a dying star from 30 years prior. I just rather liked the execution.

[7:41]

Wow. Cleaned out. And yet, I am not really sure WHY. I mean, I basically ignored the content of almost an entire year's worth of movies seen. Oh well, who I am to define my brain and that war going on in there.

3 Short Paragraphs: Oz the Great and Powerful

2013, Sam Raimi (The Quick & the Dead, Spiderman) -- download

Pretend you don't know anything about movies. Pretend you are one of those people who only downloads blockbusters or, in the day, only rented videos. Perhaps, as one of these people (and yes, you may visualize me as the film snob, tweed jacket and turtle neck) you believe that this movie must be done by the same people as the Alice in Wonderland that came out a few years ago. They are both brightly colored, mostly CGI and filled with fantastical characters that are not even there for the actors to work with. The tie actually lies in the production designer Robert Stromberg. Known in the visual effects world, he recently came over to production design with Avatar and Alice in Wonderland, which is not surprising coming from the world of computer graphics. But it was with each film's director, this man stood out capturing the dark mind of Tim Burton in Alice and really going with Raimi's overly saturated story telling in Oz.

You might also be that guy who never remembers that the wizard of Oz was never really much of a wizard, but more the charlatan behind the curtains. OK, maybe not you but I was that guy. Take away my turtleneck now. Raimi decided to tell the story of the man behind the curtains, from his oafish magic act in Kansas all the way past the tornado to rule the Kingdom of Oz. Oscar "Oz" Diggs (James Franco) ends up in Oz (he really should be more impressed they share a name) partly because of his escapades and partly because of a prophecy (we really cannot discount it, can we) where he will defeat the Evil Witch and become ruler. For the people, its about a benevolent leader. For him, its the dragon's hoard of gold. And the cute girls. Apparently, witches are not all / always green and ugly.

And it is with these witches, we get the true main characters. He first meets the adorable (forgive me while i swoon) Theodora (Mila Kunis) when he arrives and she is all about the prophecy, and his role in it, thus immediately falling in love with him. In another movie he would have slept with her, the cad, but in this one he is her first dance. Her sister Evanora (Rachel Weisz) sees him as a means to and end, prophesied wizard or not. And poor misunderstood Glinda, the brightest of the three and dubbed the Wicked Witch, when really she is just sweet and smart. She makes good use of Oz, despite his failings. And poor little Theodora is just used, used by Oz and used by her sister, to end up transmogrified into the worst that Oz can give, out-evilling the evil Evanora. Poo. And she doesn't even have a chance to be reverted and rescued before Dorothy comes along and douses her with a bucket of water. OK, that is not this movie but it was all I was thinking as I watched poor sweet innocent (if a bit scary) Theodora become a green skinned evil witch. At least Evanora gets her come-uppance, or come-downance with a house on the noggin.

Graig's review is here.

Oz: The Great And Powerful

2013, Sam Riami -- in theatre

I have written previously (in my Return to Oz review) of my lack of affection for the 1939 classic Wizard of Oz.  In spite of my borderline disdain, there's something within the concept of Oz that has always intrigued me.  Like all great fantasy, especially fantasy for children, there's a representation of darkness, the threat that everything is not going to be all right.  In Wizard there's the implication that Dorothy's parents have passed, what with her living with Aunt Em and Uncle Henry.  There's the devastating tornado that uproots her from her family and tears her away into foreign terrain.  There's the horror of witches and flying monkeys, and that's just the obvious stuff. When the Wizard is exposed as a tired old man from Kansas himself, there's a sadness there too, of a man having to pretend to be someone he's not for a very very long time.

Return to Oz was by far darker throughout, starting with everyone thinking Dorothy was disturbed, leading up to her potentially getting electroshock therapy, before escaping back into an Oz that seems virtually post-apocalyptic.  These sorts of dark tinges in the movie have long made me curious to explore Oz more, yet I never have.  I just keep going back to the films (even Wizard I have seen countless times... in spite of my troubles it's an alluring production, especially the final act in the Emerald City).  Eventually I'll get there, but for now I'm excited there's another feature.  However, the realization that it was not an adaptation of one of L. Frank Baum's many, many Oz stories left my expectations low (alongside the many middling and unfavourable reviews that passed my way).

The biggest disappointment of learning it's an "original treatment" is that it's quite obviously drawing upon the continued popularity of the 1939 feature rather than its own adventure (but having not read Baum's stories I cannot say whether building off of, or piggybacking on preceding stories is a thing or not).  The thing that sunk Return to Oz though, was the expectation (both from the critics and the public) of a repeat of the the classic, and I feared Oz: The Great and Powerful would try too hard to correct that financial mistake.  They did indeed lean heavily on the original Wizard for inspiration, but they have their cake and eat it too, as the writers, director and studio found their own legs to stand on.

In taking a minor player from the 1939 classic (but major player in Oz mythology) and centering an adventure around him it also doubles as an origin for the Wizard we're familiar with and expands upon the land we've seen before.  As a child I always wanted to explore the Emerald City more, and this film gives you a guided tour.  Oscar "Oz" Diggs starts off (in black and white 4:3 aspect ratio, no less) as a small time con-man and illusionist, a teller of lies and an purveyor of fakery, and a big-time skirt-chaser, a genuine cad on top of it all, affording himself no love or friendship.  Working in a carnival in Kansas, he's chased off stage by an angry mob, and a short while later chased into a hot air balloon by an angry strongman (whose wife he made the moves on).  In between the two chases, he meets with an old flame, Annie, who notes she's marrying a man named Gale, an obvious tie to Dorothy (I presume this to imply she's their mother).

The balloon ride is ill-fated, as Oscar is swept up in a 3-D tornado (I'm not certain that Baum always used the tornado as a portal to Oz, it was a river in a storm that took Dorothy there in Return) and arrives in a strange land of waterfalls and giant flowers and biting river faeries.  He meets Theodora, a wide-eyed witch who believes that Oscar is the wizard of a long-told prophecy who will bring peace to the land.  Theodora also believes she has a part in this prophecy by his side, whether she constructed this as her own delusion or was something her more deceitful sister Evanora seeded in her mind is unclear.  But it's Oscar's rejection of her that sends her already volatile emotional state into deeper despair (her tears burn and scar her face, a nice allusion to her fate in Wizard).  It's clear Theodora is a pawn of her sister (perhaps Evanora realizing that her sister wields more power naturally), and Evanora continues to play her, up to and including poisoning her goodness so all that remains is her rage.  Evanora, likewise, is the evil witch who has divided the land of Oz and created the strife that infects it.  She portrays herself as a Good Witch and deflects all of the land's ills on the Witch of the South, noting that Glinda killed her own father, their former ruling wizard (and as is noted, the people of Oz are forbidden from killing), when indeed the wizard died by her own hand.

Oscar, a trickster, is tricked himself by Evanora, sent on a journey to kill the "wicked witch of the South", in return claiming his throne and the ample riches of Oz.  Reluctant to kill anyone (for all its weaknesses I adore this film for it's conceit to non-violence), even if all it entails is breaking a wand, Oscar hesitates and recants his mission when he discovers Glinda, the Good Witch, is the spitting image of Annie.  Glinda, like Annie, sees Oscar for what he is, a charlatan, a liar, a cad and a fake, but also full of potential, and inherently a man who wants to do good.  She knows he's not a great wizard, at least not in the strictest sense of the prophecy, but he is a man who can theoretically guide the people of Oz as the prophecy declared, so long as the people believe in him and what was foretold.

Glinda is, quite obviously, a pacifist.  Soft spoken and kind-hearted, she needs Oscar to be their leader, their general in battle, because she hasn't the heart or mind to do the deed herself.  Cunning is not in her nature, kindness is.  It's her kindness that bolsters Oscar, that raises his confidence and allows him to be the man he always wished he was.  Though he's no great wizard, he can be a good man, and be good to people.  He will learn from others and change, as he promised to the sky when thrust at the center of the tornado (although Baum's stories, I believe, remained religiously neutral).

Oscar, like Dorothy in the other Oz films I continue to reference, collects a couple of curious accomplices, including a flying monkey named Finley and a china doll who never gets a proper name.  The discovery of China Girl (as Oscar nicknames her) is one of the most conceptually gruesome moments in children's cinema.  Though nothing outright horrifying visually, when Oscar and Finley discover China Town, it's buildings and people smashed, it's a curious scene.  Upon hearing the sobs of China Girl, then finding her behind a table, legs broken underneath, the weight of the scene takes hold.  This was a town once rich with life and China Girl witnessed its death, shortly before she was crippled herself.  She's a tough girl (she carries a knife) and Oscar repairs her legs with quick-drying glue, but the loss of her family weighs on her, and the darkness in her story runs very deep, though the film makes a point of not getting too lost in it.

The performances in the film waver between sound and broad.  With the minor players all doing their part to keep things in check, while James Franco, Rachel Weisz, Michelle Williams and Mila Kunis (in a brassy reprise of Margaret Hamilton's Wicked Witch when she turns) play it bold, old-timey film style.  Cinema rarely gives actors the opportunity to do that, but it's surprisingly fun to see when they do (last year's Oscar winner The Artist had it, only limited to broad physicality).  Unfortunately, the script drags the bigness of the performances as well as the pace of the film far too often, as it spends so much time mincing over Oscar's willingness to be the hero that's required.  It's nailed up early in the film and continually hammered home.  The film clocks in at almost 130 minutes and could use 30 minutes of trimming and tightening (and I could easily tell where to start).  It's a kids movie, through and through, and the lulls will find even the most patient child anxious in their seat for the scene to move on.  The biggest drag is the film's seemingly endless love affair with its own special effect.  It spends laborious amounts of time trying to wow and flutter the audience with fantastical landscapes, which in all their digital glory, look about as impressive as a cartoon.  Cartoons tend not to languish on their scenery too much because time is too precious, these live action fantasies could learn a thing or two by studying them (in fact, I wondered why this wasn't a digitally animated feature in the first place).  A few establishing bits and we're good, we don't need multiple 3-minute travel/falling sequences.  All the awe and wonder becomes a little tiresome when it's awe and wonder all the time.

As an addition to the Oz mythos, it fares pretty well, in fact (that Oscar introduces scarecrows and fireworks, among other things, to Oz makes a certain amount of sense), and Kunis' turn as the Wicked Witch was one of the great pleasures I've had in the cinema of late.  It's not the singin' and dancin' Wizard, but I'm quite thankful of that.  It's got some pretty major flaws, but as entertainment with the kids (I'd say 6+ depending on if your kid gets scared easily... my 11-year-old found some scenes scary, but he's a softie when it comes to that stuff) you can definitely do worse.

3 Short Paragraphs: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

2007, David Yates -- download

This movie begins the part of the series where I began screaming at the screen like an old man telling it to get off my lawn.  No, not the kids turning into annoying teenagers but at the lunacy of the Ministry of Magic.  This is the story where the powers that be are in Harry (or is it Big V?) denial.  That plot element, while I completely get it from the bad guys seed-dissent idea, frustrated the hell out of me.  The series has spent the first couple of movies establishing a destiny, a prophecy that everyone is buying into.  And with this one fell swoop, it all seems dissembled.  "If you bunch of magical wizardly types all believe in prophecies and the like, why do you need to suddenly discount this one?!?!" screams the old man in the bathrobe.

Then, of course, we also cannot dismiss the overt Dark activities of Dolores Umbridge. From her scratching lies into Harry's hand to her interrogation of Cho, she is going far beyond political evils and into the realms of pure darkness.  The fact that this steels Harry and the kids into creating Dumbledore's Army, which in the long run helps the lot out, always made me wonder whether there were further machinations I was not aware of.  She is maneuvering to take control of Hogwarts but I never got whether she was doing it for personal gain or Big V manipulating or just to lend more political power to the Ministry.  Whatever the motivations, it confounded me that she got away with her obvious tactics while  the wizardly newspaper smeared Harry for acts in a prophecy completely out of his hands.  More cane waving.

This is the ramp up of the dark nature in the films, in the story.  The Death Eaters, introduced in the previous, escaping from Azkaban are no longer questionable.  Harry, and his slithery connection to Voldemort, is all Dark Side of the Force with him fighting to control it lest it control him. But anger seeps through affecting his relationships.  Umbridge's acts were just horrendous, especially when she forces Cho to betray her friends. Strange that all the darkness leads to a definitive reveal of Voldemort, which gives Harry back his credibility and the support of the Ministry.  The world is a darker place, now that everyone admits Voldemort is doing his best to return.

3 Short Paragraphs: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

2005, Mike Newell -- download

Here we are at epis... er. movie number four already.  By now we are finished with hinting at something going on in Harry's life, a conspiracy or destiny involving He Who Cannot Be Named, but constantly does get named.  It's outright, since the attacks of the death eaters have become overt and deadly. I never understood why the attack on the Quidditch World Cup didn't lead to definitive agreement that Big V was back, or at least people were working to get him back, and cause a reaction against any hint of Dark Arts. Alas I guess they have their dark fingers in the politics already and have to hush up the actions of their ... more obvious brothers.

This movie also ended the attempts to have any style & art to the movies (well, at least until the last two), settling into the familiar look present through the rest of the movies.  But it does do a bit of world building, when they introduce the Triwizard Tournament.  So there are other grand schools in other countries, hmmm?  I would love to see the American school with it's addiction to pop culture and marketing.  We get a weird concept in that the wizards are expected to take part in dangerous and potentially deadly competitions just to be named champion and the school will get a ... trophy?  The only way it settles in my mind is that we are seeing this from the kids' point of view, in that the is deadly serious and they have to be careful. But the teachers and parents are aware that all challenges are monitored and the kids are never really in danger, especially considering some of the kids are used as bait.  Or, if taken at face value, it is done to remind even children that the world of wizardry is fucking scary and you should be prepared to die, anytime.  Nice.

As a result we get our first death in this movie, a death seen as so tragic that it lends to my thoughts about the challenges being monitored.  Even in the wake of the controlled danger that are the challenges, Cedric's death is a wakeup of exactly how deadly Harry's destiny is.  I suspect V spent a lot of his energies simultaneously enhancing his infamous reputation while doing the Devil Convinces World He Doesn't Exist thing. But this death is a brilliant setup for the remaining movies, showing us that grim things are coming and that Harry is not going to be allowed to be a kid for very long.

3 Short Paragraphs: Harry Potter & The Philosopher's Stone

2001, Chris Columbus -- rewatch; download

Yes, Philopher's Stone, not Sorceror's Stone.  The name change for the US book, carried through with the movie, never made much sense to me. I guess it comes down as simple as, "Why would a philosopher do magic?"  At least when we found downloads, we got the non-american version.  We are watching the movies again because we missed the last three in the theatres so decided to catch up in full.  And I am also preparing to read the books for the first time, now that things are fully completely over.

In some ways this is my favourite movie of the bunch, basically because it is the one that introduces the muggle in me to the universe but also because it's one of the few in the story that is so wrapped up in its English setting.  The whole gist of the first story is not only to introduce us to the Harry Potter vs Voldemort mythology but also to the world of magic.  We get the idea of how the magic coincides in our world but is hidden from us and are tossed a few of the trappings in their world like wands and brooms and magic spells.  Add to that the very british idea of living at your school, bureaucratic ministries and the Edwardian & Victorian aspects to everything wizardly and I just loved rewatching this movie as much as I did the first time.

Hagrid was once again my favourite character, the gigantic groundskeeper and specialist in all things monstrous. Like the big bear of a uncle that we all wanted growing up, he dotes on Harry and speaks plainly to him like no other adult ever did before.   I am also rather fond of Dumbledore, the not quite doddering Gandalf-Merlin analog who always seems to carry an innocent air of knowing completely what is going on around him.  The last and possibly best character is Hogwarts itself but really, she isn't seen in her full glory until the third instalment.