to think that the Harry Potter are timeless literature and the films are woefully miscast?

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

Inflammatory title to draw you in. I hope. I just fancied some HP chat.

I'm re-watching the films at the moment. Is it me or is there something old-ladyish about Alan Rickman's mouth? I realize I am thinking about this far too hard, and I know it's practically forbidden to speak ill of him on MN. But every time I see those films, I'm disappointed again that he just isn't as sexy as his voice.

I also think the Burrow looks all wrong to me. I love what they do with the reeds in the scene where Bellatrix taunts Harry and he and Ginny run after her. But I imagined the Burrow being rural and farmland-ish, with an overgrown garden around it - not plonked down in the middle of a marsh. Am I right?

What's your favourite bit of the films/books?

I just wanted to say how much I've enjoyed this thread, it's great watching people who know what they are talking about have a conversation about the merits/downfalls of HP and other literature. I actually feel I am learning and have picked up on some interesting themes that I didn't see when just taking the books at face value.

FWIW I think a lot of us who don't have any background in literature accept that certain authors are "good" because that's what we have been told, as opposed to reading and forming our own views.

Austen writes about female relationships. So far, so chicklit.
But she does it in the coolest, most knowing and scathing and elegant prose imaginable, which, of course, is the thing that's lost in the adaptations; thus she gains a reputation for writing about silly girls at balls, and not for the minutely observed comedy of the human condition at which she excels.

How many chick lit writers are so subtly damning about their own heroines in the opening paragraph of their books, as Austen is about Emma? I have just reread the surviving fragment of Sanditon and she's very good on social networks, fashions and empty posing.

I also enjoy reading the Brontes but find them unsettling and exhausting, or dull and preachy. Whereas with Austen I know that she has total control of her characters and prose, I tend to feel with Emily and Charlotte at least that their characters end up controlling the narrative. It probably comes down to a matter of taste. I also prefer the Classical to the Romantic era in music.

This thread inspired me and DD to watch the films again this week. We are now onto DH part 2, nearing the end now as Harry has just told the snitch "I am ready to die"

YY, fox, me too.

cash - but is it writing about female relationships that makes it chicklit? Because some books seem to get categorised that way and others don't. Eg., I've never seen Emma O'Donoghue's 'Life Mask' categorised as chicklit (maybe because it's historical as well, but I think just because she's seen as highbrow and chicklit isn't).

I think you're right people think it's 'silly girls at balls'. But I also think there's a slightly odd tendency for people to assume any literature you enjoy can't be highbrow, unless you really had to struggle to get it.

hula - ooh, I must watch again!

But she doesn't just write about female relationships! She writes about complex social issues, women's and men's position in society, classism, money, land etc.

But like LRD I'm torn between saying 'she's not chick lit' and 'there nothing wrong with/no such thing as chick lit'. Austen was certainly a popular novelist in her time but I would no more compare her with chick lit than I would compare her with Dan Brown (not an implied criticism of either I just mean they're not directly comparable just all best sellers). And I don't think the Brontes are more interesting (except Anne maybe). They're more potboilery and manic alright - just different writers.

Not sure 'potboiler' is what I mean there - but WH and JE have an awful lot more action than any of Austen's books.

The problem with books v films is because they cut all the good dialogue to wedge in as many elongated and improbable fight scenes as they could.

Poor Bonnie Doodah had no chance at all playing Ginny as all her best lines were cut. In HBP she has a nose to nose row with Ron, she takes the piss out of the boys, she is smart sexy and funny. You just dont get that in the films, she is as wet as a thunderstorm sandwich!

Same with the others, you dont get the interplay that you get in the books, so Harry et al are all very one dimensional and as an actor its almost impossible to give a good performance when your character....well, doesnt have any character!

However, I do like the films and with the exception of the age issues with Snape, Remus, Sirius etc, thought they were cast ok.

at 'wet as a thunderstorm sandwich'!

I take no credit, I pinched it from Terry Pratchett, it always makes me laugh!

Ah, good borrowing deserves credit.

I do like Terry Pratchett.

Not to mention that the film randomly redistributes lines to make Ron look more stupid and Hermione cleverer.

Not to mention that the film randomly redistributes lines to make Ron look more stupid and Hermione cleverer.

That pissed the kids off no end. "But X said that not Y!". And they hate the Room of Requirement bit at the end of DH pt II, because what happens in that scene bears no resemblance to what actually happens, you dont see Nevilles Granny, Snapes flight is totally wrong and there isnt the bit where the Order of the Phoenix organise things.

Drives DD2 wild that does!

Agreed, nugget. As regards 'chick lit', I used to teach Fanny Burney and Austen on a course on women's romantic fiction, gender and genre that included Marian Keyes and some Mills and Boon - interestingly, it was my students who were rendered most anxious by the inclusion of novels they considered 'disposable. I had one say 'I didn't come to university to study crap!'

(I still have fond memories of a seminar on a dopey Doctor/nurse romance in which the sultry doctor makes some crack about how plain the nurse is, whereupon she stops eating from rage, and spends a legacy from a conveniently dead auntie on a nose job, contacts, an expensive cut and colour, and a new wardrobe, and clicks back into his clinic on vertiginous heels to show him she doesn't care...)

Which is a long way of saying that I agree that the term 'chick lit' is ill-defined and problematic, and dismissive. But when I said that to regard JA as simply the mother of chick lit us unfair, I was defining 'chick lit' as 'non-literary commercial fiction produced and consumed by women'. I do think that for, say, Cecilia Ahern to be anything akin to JA, she would have to write flawless, brilliant, witty prose, and cast ironic, unsettling lights on class, money and gender.

Sorry, got left behind in discussion. As you were. (I will say I was around on one of the locations for the first film, and Robbie Coltrane's body double was cool. Also the owl wrangler. )

That's it Talcum - I think the term 'chick lit' is fairly meaningless at this stage but your definition is reasonable if we have to have one! For example poor old Marian Kees gets tarred with the fluffy chick lit brush when the majority of her novels deal with serious subjects (bereavement, drug addiction, infertility, depression, domestic violence and rape) but just happen to have female protagonists and some romance stuff as well.

Sorry for derail all! I don't like the way 'SPEW' gets left out and thus they had to change the way Ron and Hermione get together.

As I said early in the thread, I still haven't gotten over the total lack of Winky the house elf.

Goblet of fire was a travesty of a film! So much was wrong with it and it's only redeeming feature was David Remnant (and there wasn't enough of him in my opinion!!)

I liked the scene in dh2 where Snape was headmaster and Harry confronted him with the line "you appear to have a breech of security". Wasn't the same as the book but I did enjoy that bit!

David Tennant! Blooming predictive text!

JFK oops! personally I don't enjoy Dickens, and that's interesting about his marketing, I know he used to hold very well attended readings. Still think that his social commentary, humour and writing style are head and shoulders above Rowlings. I tried reading the Harry Potters aloud to my children and stopped very quickly because I think they are written quite badly. I also find the derivative nature of her writing irritating because she lifts ideas from other authors who I love.

However it has to be said that the main reason I find the adulation of HP annoying is just because there are much better children's authors. Still many of them only got republished because of the success of HP, so there is that.

Agree that Prisoner of Azkaban is by far the best of the series. The earlier books are quite simplistic and formulaic and the later ones are very badly edited (ie would have been much much better with at least a third cut out). I expect good children's books to hold together better and to have a bit more depth I guess.

I started reading the first Harry Potter with my daughter and then she avidly read all the others with me snatching the books when she'd finished them. We loved the stories and enjoyed their development into darker realms.
Then came the films which added another level of enjoyment, admittedly some were better than others but they did not detract from the wonderful stories and believable characters. We still love Harry Potter!

The biggest travesty in the films was that they didn't have Peeves The Poltergeist in.

I read that they cut it out because, although the scenes were good, they didnt add anything to the story so could be lost without it affecting anything.

Its a shame the had to miss so much out thats in the books. Watched a couple of them today with DD and she kept asking questions because the films seem to be based on the idea that the viewer has read the books. It didnt occur to me but when she asked why Harry was doing Quidditch trials, they hadnt actually said that he was the new captain.

Also, I can see why they made films but actually I think that they would have been better done as a TV series, so say 6 one hour episodes per book. That way they would have been able to get more in.