I beg of you all – who have read the Harry Potter books – to not give anything away. I beg you.
I am now 3/4 of the way through Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire
— Ron and Hermione are CLEARLY in love with each other. I love love that! Didn’t see it coming at all. No wonder they are fighting like cats and dogs.
— Something tells me that Harry and Cho are NOT going to end up together. Not sure why, just doesn’t seem like it.
— I love Hagrid as a courting half-giant, trying to grease his hair down
— Oh, and the Weasley twins are very quickly becoming my favorite peripheral characters. I love them!!! This small section made me laugh out loud on the bus this morning:
“So … you lot got dates for the ball yet?”
“Nope,” said Ron.
“Well, you’d better hurry up, mate, or all the good ones will be gone,” said Fred.
“Who’re you going with, then?” said Ron.
“Angelina,” said Fred promptly, without a trace of embarrassment.
“What?” said Ron, taken aback. “You’ve already asked her?”
“Good point,” said Fred. He turned his head and called across the common room, “Oi! Angelina!”
Angelina, who had been chatting with Alicia Spinner near the fire, looked over at him.
“What?” she called back.
“Want to come to the ball with me?”
Angelina gave Fred an appraising sort of look.
“All right, then,” she said, and she turned back to Alicia and carried on chatting with a bit of a grin on her face.
“There you go,” said Fred to Harry and Ron, “piece of cake.”
That just makes me laugh.
— Oh, and I can’t stand Fleur Delacour and her half-veela French-accented haughtiness. I don’t like her for laughing at Ron.
— I haven’t figured out Viktor Krum yet, and what’s up with him.
Loving every second of these books – this one in particular.
Argh. You know how hard it is to see you post that stuff and not drop subtle hints that *mmpf, mmpf, and rmplmf mffl*
It’s difficult stuff.
hahahaha!! I know!
but i have read no reviews and no one has spilled the beans … so i feel so lucky about that!
I’ll be done with the full series by next week probably. Then we can have a good talk about the whole thing.
I’ve read all six books and still think Goblet of Fire is the best one…need to go back and re-read!Isn’t it just the most amazing thing that a book can pull you into a make-believe world like that? I’ve never experienced it with any other books. They’re magical themselves!
And I just want to say that I absolutely adore Mad-Eyed Moody.
I agree with Jen, Goblet of Fire was my favorite. Also the Weasley twins get more entertaining in every book. They are hilarious.
I too adore GoF. It’s my favorite of the books. Though after the travesty that was the Prisoner of Azkaban movie, I’m leery of the GoF movie.
Nevertheless, here’s a pic of Brendan Gleeson as Mad-Eye. (http://www.aintitcool.com/display.cgi?id=20892) Don’t worry; there’s no spoilers there!
I did wonder how they would create that one googly eye. It looks really cool!
Laaaaa – deeeeeee da-da
I didn’t even like the books that much and it’s killing me.
The funny thing … it’s more because the books are a popular phenomenon, I guess. My kids love them, and I enjoy the movies more than the books, but I still read ’em.
If you don’t have ’em on your list, look into Clive Barker’s Abarat series.
cullen – hahahahaha
You’re saying “la deee da” on my blog – I am so charmed by that!!
Sheila, I want to scream at you and say “I know and then in the next book THIS happens and this and this…”
I am so glad you are reading and loving these books. I think they are awesome!
Oh my God and I also love the two older Weasley brothers – who suddenly appear in this book. Like – Bill – the one with the ponytail and the dragon-skinned boots? hahahaha and the earring!!!
I love the Weasley family and I’m not ashamed to say it.
Is it a spoiler to tell you who plays Lord Voldemort in the movie?
No! I just don’t want to know plot points and stuff like that.
who plays him?
The epitome of patrician sexiness: Ralph Fiennes.
Wow – that’s perfect.
Also I love how Percy Weasley has kind of descended into the bureaucratic side of magic and become a big ol’ bore – writing a 20 page report on standardizing cauldron width. hahahahaha
OHMAGOD Ralph Fiennes….perfection. They seem to do a fantastic job casting these movies. Emma Thompson as Professor Trelawney was genius, and I thought Gary Oldman was fantastic as Sirius Black. I think I’m in the minority when I say I LOVED the Prisoner of Azkaban movie- it was darker, more grown up- just like the book. You can only do the fun, immature stuff for so long…
Sheila, as you read the rest of the books, you definitely notice a change in tone. I think the movies should reflect that too. Have fun with the books!
Jen, I also loved the Azkaban movie. My favorite thus far. It had a pacing that played so much better than its predecessors. At least I thought.
Is it just me, or is part of the charm of the HP world that these are not fully fleshed out characters, but rather characatures of the characters they are portraying? Just a thought.
cullen – that’s an interesting point. I think you’re onto something. One of the reasons why the books just rollick along is because yes – the people are types – immediately recognizable – Oh, there’s Hermione. Within 2 seconds of meeting her, we know her character. She’s not a cliche, exactly – but she’s a girl that we all know. Same with Ron. The kind of beleagured kind-hearted boy overshadowed by his siblings. And the stern headmistress with a twinkle in her eye. Draco. The bastard spoiled cocky kid we all knew. And Professor Trelawney – the new-age flake. You don’t waste a lot of time trying to figure people out – the plot is the tricky part, but the people are all clear.
Oh and I totally agree about Emma Thompson as Trelawney – perfect!!
What I liked about the books was how her writing style changed as the kids aged, and kept very realistic to how kids actually act at those difficult changable ages.
Plus her faux-latin spell incantations are hilarious.
bingley – totally. I love the spells!
It wasn’t that I didn’t like the “feel” of the PoA movie; I did. My biggest gripe was that the director (I forget his name) seemed to care more about the feel than moving the storyline. Plus he left pivotal points out — not just filler, PIVOTAL points — which made the ending just. . .I don’t know. . .wrong.
(Dan Champion and I had a discussion about this very thing back in the spring, the thought of which now, having a discussion with him, makes me weep.)
Translating book to film is always an interesting business, not that we haven’t chewed that subject to rags here. One of the criticisms made of the first two Potter films is that they were too faithful to the books, particularly the first. There’s one scene from Chamber of Secrets, though, that stood out in my mind as an improvement.
D’you remember the scene in Flourish & Blott’s between Lucius Malfoy and Arthur Weasley? Malfoy said whatever disparaging thing he said about the family. Arthur’s reply, in a calm voice, went something like “Clearly, we have different ideas about what disgraces the name of wizard, Lucius,” and then more or less stared Malfoy down. In the book they got into a brawl.
I thought the scene in the movie gave the character more moral weight, if that’s the term (I should also say that I really like Mark Williams’s work in the role, and that Arthur Weasley is one of my favorite secondary characters).
::chew chew::
Stuff like that doesn’t bother me. (And this is from someone who thinks you CAN’T be “too faithful” to a book when making a movie.) I understand that some scenes don’t translate well from book to film. As long as the director and screenwriter keep the ESSENCE of the scene, I’m fine.
But. . .
I left the theatre, after seeing PoA, literally sick to my stomach. A lot of it was because I feel the director did a good job with so MUCH in the movie that it made what I consider his missteps so much more glaring.
I guess I’m too attached to some books to see them made into movies. That’s why I’m leery of the GoF movie — I loved the book SO much, I don’t want to see it gutted like PoA was.
I blame it on A Time to Kill.
Perhaps that’s why I liked PoA so much. I don’t like the books. I mean, I don’t dislike them. They’re my literary equivalent of Chocolate Chip Cookies. I don’t like chocolate chip cookies. But we have them around because my family really likes them. I’m going to keep eating them because not only are they around, but I don’t dislike them. Yet, I’m getting no nutrition from it.
I just made that up. It sucks. But it’s the best I can do right now.
Honestly, I don’t know how they’re going to make a movie out of GoF that addresses half of what’s in the book. As the novels lengthen, I’m thinking BBC miniseries is the correct medium to portray them visually.
rob – yeah, I see what you mean. Good point. The books get denser and longer as you go along.
The Quidditch World Cup alone could be an entire episode. It would be too bad if all that stuff got short shrift to keep the movie length down.
Oh, and about spoilers, they are *so* annoying. I’m reading Half-Blood Prince right now, but someone already spilled the beans for me, it was on-line in a really unexpected place. Keep those earplugs handy, red!
Oh yeah. DO NOT go to T-Shirt Hell.
I think the director’s name of PoA was Alfonse Cuaron (not sure on spelling). The director of GoF is Mike Newell (who did Four Weddings and a Funeral). I have already heard things about how much trouble they had making the book into the movie with time constraints. There is SO MUCH material to work with in these books, so many plotlines, that limiting it to 3 hours or so must be nearly impossible. That’s the magic of the books- everything is important, and she somehow brings seemingly unimportant things into pivotal plot points. It’s always interesting to see an interpretation, and I love seeing the actors bring her work to life. But I guess even if I do hate the movie, I can always just go back and read the book again and be happy…
I can’t wait until you finish the series; I anticipate your comments. And, then we can talk about it!
Both of my two sons read “Half-Blood Prince” before I got my crack at it, and had a lot of fun tormenting me with little hints that, as it turns out, they were making up all along. I’m looking forward to your end-of-series comments, and which book you enjoyed the best. My personal fave was “Order of the Phoenix,” but in the end it’s like having to choose between “Born to Run” and “Darkness on the Edge of Town.” Why should one even have to make the choice?
It’s just a plain wonderful series. Although I agree with rob that we’re moving into mini-series length – there’s just TOO MUCH INFO.
*sigh*