yakalskovich | I just saw the HP4 movie!

essayel suggested I should label this post as
spoilerific!

I was very pleasantly surprised by the movie; it worked. There was no cheesy CGI that would kill the suspension of disbelief; the merpeople were in fact quite wonderful. Mad Eye Moody worked very well, the movie was very funny at times, and it would fully comprehensible to one of the few people on the planet that have not read the book.

Which was all not necessarily true about the third movie, much as I loved Sirius and Remus in human shape.

And now for a few random details:

I had actually imagined Rita Skeeter worse, more over-the-top; perhaps Warner Brother didn't like to piss off the journalists?
I kept my eyes madly peeled for anybody with horns at the Quidditch World Cup, but when I thought I saw some, they turned out to be nothing but a fool's cap... *sigh* Well, on the other hand, it means that Gilbert Whimple was really just a slow-line throwaway and not a hidden plot to kill him horribly in book seven. I like Gil alive, thank you.
There was no Ludo Bagman, and no house elfs; Sirius was restricted to a CGI thinggy in the fire.
People actually wolf-whistled when Harry got nekkid and stepped into the bath; that was the slashy contingent int he left back area of the cinema. They went 'wheee' at any Harry/Ron moment, and at any Snape/Karkaroff one.
The German dubbing (which was forced on us, as I'd said) wasn't as bad as I'd feared; only to have Snape dubbed in German was unbearable. Snape needs Alan Rickman's voice to be properly himself!
Ralph Fiennes as Lord Voldemort is absolutlely totally fucking brilliant!!!!!!!!!!
Cedric was very good, and his father was heartbreaking. People die so casually in movies; we're used to it. JKR knows how to make you stop at a fictional death, as you would for a real one; that is an art form.
Draco as a ferret was as funny as you'd ever have thought.
I liked the Patil sisters just as I do in the books; but i the movie, they were suddenly both in Gryffindor.

Movies I need to see soon:

Serenity
Narnia
King Kong
In Her Shoes
The Great Silence (that monk docu-soap)
HP4 in English!!

Erm, Nazgul, was there anything else?