Three comments about films…
- So I went to see Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets with Cal a couple of days ago. It’s kind of a complicated story as to how that ended up happening. It certainly wasn’t planned. It’s far from an awful film, but it’s far from brilliant either. The special effects are pretty stunning – considerably better than in the first film – but the pacing is leaden, the characterisation pretty slapdash and threadbare and, well, it’s still a bit long… It’s worth seeing, but don’t get too excited…
- Harry Potter’s length might have been a disappointment, but I went and bought the extended DVD of Lord of the Rings [US | UK] a few days ago, and that’s substantially better than the film that was shown in the cinema. It’s a full half an hour longer than the theatre version – mostly exposition and character-development – and it feels substantially richer and you feel more invested in it as a result. Most interestingly, I think, it exposes how odd the pacing was on the theatrical version, particularrly in the Cate Blanchett / Lothlorien episode…
- While we’re talking filmic nonsense, I’ve put a very old review of The Patriot online – mainly because I was talking to Meg about the film yesterday and because it’s such a revisionist piece of crap that someone has to stand up and be counted and say so…