Harry Potter and the Magical Mystery Tour of Britain!

Six hours later I emerged from screen 8, blinking in the light. That's six hours I spent looking around a cinema to see if anyone else looked as unimpressed as I did. I was, of course, sitting in the new Harry Potter film, entitled, 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1', or as I like to call it 'Harry Potter and the Magical Mystery Tour of Britain'.

Unfortunately this was only part one of the final film, so I am now obligated to see the second. Kudos JK, have some more money. Harry Potter part one seems to be an advertisement for the British Tourist Board and National Heritage. Off they'd go, woosh, another area of outstanding national beauty, woosh, oh and another. I've never seen these places! I notice that they never once thought to hide in Margate.
Oh and that fucking tent. I was sick of the site of the fucking thing. A good hour and a half of the new HP film is not needed, because it features Harry and Hermione dragging the same bloody MAGIC tent around from place to place and going, "phew, aren't times difficult" - but hey, we have a magic tent and a magic bag with literally everything in it. At one point Hermione suggested that she and Harry stay out in the wilderness, with the tent, with the bag, and grow old together. I almost screamed at the suggestion, partly because I could physically feel myself getting older as the film went on, partly because it didn't seem beyond the film that we would have to watch that happen. Still, that tent was one prop worth its weight in gold. It was a sound investment and the prop man on Harry Potter should be praised.

So apart from these sweeping views of British landscapes, a cinematic technique that was only the tip of the iceberg when it came to ripping off Lord of the Rings, there were a few other moments in the film...though, predictably, they were stupid. The film began well but lost momentum after ten minutes. After seeing the scene with Death Eaters & Snape and the scene where everyone turns into Harry, it became rubbish.

For a start, the film is lacking in detail: "Oh, hi, we're back. Hm? Oh yeah, that's right, I'll tell everyone - guys, just to let you know Mad Eye Moody has died so I wouldn't bother to look out for h...what? Mad Eye...Mad Eye Moody. Squiggly eye with...oh nevermind, but, let's just all be aware; he's dead. He died, off camera so. Don't expect to see him again, that's all". The HP films are notorious for glazing over such details, but here it's abysmal.
Hey wait, don't the kids still go to school? I swear a school was involved once. Something about witchcraft and wizardry? Yep. Ok, let's see it. Uuum. OH HEY, LOOK, A TRAIN! Why would there be a train if there wasn't a school? That PROVES it, those students must be going somewhere! Yes, but I wouldn't mind seeing a potions lesson, or a Quidditch match or - ["LOOK; ok? The train means that they're going to school, and the school is out there somewhere, but that's not what it's about anymore, it's waaaaay bigger and more important than that now! No Hogwarts for you"!]

Hogwarts. Remember Hogwarts? That's good, because Harry Potter doesn't. Not a mention of the bloody place. It's not fun anymore! There, I said it. I mentioned Quidditch. I'd have killed for a game of Quidditch in this film. Or even a cauldron blowing up in Ron's face or something, ANYTHING that suggested I was in the world of Harry Potter and not, instead, a childrens second-rate good vs. evil Lord of the Rings rip off.
What happened everyone? Remember when it used to be enjoyable watching a Harry Potter film? Remember when you used to crack a smile while you watched it? There'd be some mild peril, they break some rules, Harry steps up to a challenge, he and his friends defeat the threat...and then they'd all sit down to a big feast and Dumbledore (god rest his soul) would go "FIFTY points to Gryfindor!" and everyone would cheer and they'd all lift up the house cup, and go yeeeah!
Here instead we have Harry weeping into the face of a bloodied up house-elf with parkinsons and digging a shallow grave for him in Cornwall; Jesus. Wingardium leviosa!

The thing that really let's this rubbish down though is simple and it's hardly the films fault really. J.K.Rowling...how are you even published? This is why I stopped reading your books. I read Bukowski now man.
While the film can be held responsible for the ridiculously uninformed, poorly crafted scenes that are always meant to mean a lot more (romance with Ginny spanning many, many pages - yeah he zips up a dress and...we'll just take it as given that there's some sort of romance there, good, that's been alluded to, moving on...) Ahem, anyway, the director can not be held to ransom for Rowling's blatant cheating.

Yes, cheating. It's quite clear that she never, ever planned on writing these awful epic titles later in the series. The really huge books where it all becomes a serious battle between good and evil. Welcome to Harry Potter, where everything is something! We're going to take a look back at all the things you used to enjoy and we're going to tell you what they really were!
Harry's invisibility cloak was a seemingly innocent, inventive magical device for sneaking around school. OH-HO, not so fast, in fact Harry's cloak was a powerful, world-ending artifact the whole time! And look at this, Harry's glasses are a horcrux into another dimension where Dumbledore is alive as a phoenix and gives Harry the legendary fez of invulnerability which he must use to defeat Voldermort's postman, thus cutting the dark lord off from bills and magazine subscriptions of everykind kinds! Have at you brute! Or, whatever is convenient to J.K.Rowling's story at the time. Honestly, it's as bad as Sabrina the Teenage Witch! Sorry, that's not fair really. Sabrina was pretty good.
Douglas Adams did a lot of mad stuff with Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy but he obeyed the logical laws of the universe he created. The babel fish is convenient, but was explained and operated within an established world of Adam's creation. Rowling set up some rules in about three books, became a too powerful author, refused her book to be edited, and started blowing apart her own world, twisting it into some half-baked epic of two-part film sized proportions. Secret codes, mystical swords, old legends, one ring to rule them all and in the darkness bind them...oh, sorry...I get those two mixed up sometimes because one of them ripped off the other one. Dementor? More like Black Riders mate.

ALSO, how the fucking hell do Harry, Ron and Hermione get caught by a man impersonating Johnny Depp but then manage to defeat several powerful dark wizards at a leisurely stroll? It's ridiculous! I couldn't believe people were buying it. Another thing; "Shit, how do we get out of here"! said Ron. "Don't worry", said J.K.Rowling, who suddenly decided that she could draw on some old forgotten character, say, Dobby the house-elf, and decide that he could teleport everyone out of the impenetrable fortress. Good stuff. Good, good stuff.

Still, as ever, the Harry Potter franchise gave us another nice example of British actors...although there are so many of them now that they each get 5 minutes screen time at most before another lot come in. There were more cameos here than an E4 film countdown. Did you see the guy from Gavin & Stacey? That was cool.

So, in short, Harry Potter has lost the magic. And with that magic, it has lost its charm. No longer does anyone slip into the magical world via a telephone box, no longer do we get to see clever uses for post-boxes and things, oh no, now we get an intense ride of poor decisions and a poorly crafted plot that makes the DaVinci Code look plausible.

Meanwhile, this year at Hogwarts, one of the girls in Ravenclaw found a magic shoe that released a dragon into the Quidditch cup final, but it was defeated through some clever magic and dynamic broom flying and she won 50 points for Ravenclaw and they won the house cup. Ah, much better.

A distinct 5.5/10
Still...it was better than Inception.

Passing the Torch; Film 2010

Claudia Winkleman was handed the hefty mantle of continuing Jonathan Ross' legacy on Film 2010 and made her debut a month ago now. I've watched about three of the four now aired and...look, it was always going to be hard to follow in the steps of Jonathan Ross...but first, let's take a look at the new structure of the show.

Film 2010 (or whatever year was featured in the title) was always a very well balanced programme. It was both easy to watch and informative, it made incisive and intelligent points without being inaccessible (like, say, The Culture Show might be to certain people). It was a BBC big hitter, by which I mean it had a wide audience, appealing to a variety of people types. And, naturally, rather than try and replicate the show exactly, some changes have been made to the format of the show - but importantly the show's target demographic seems to have shifted, or at least that's the only explanation I can think of that explains the awful new tone of what used to be a fairly regular event in my week.

Apparently , rather than giving a fair, detailed and broad review of new films, Film 2010 has opted for a more select audience it seems. The word 'broad' is fairly key here. So often used as a fairly negative word, 'broad' is usually used alongside undeserved bedfellows like 'dumbing down', 'mass appeal' and plain 'stupid. Broad doesn't necessarily have to mean X-Factor. I'm mentioning this because it seems that Film 2010 has chosen to make itself less broad and to develop a somewhat different dynamic to itself.

For me, and fuck off I'm usually right about this stuff, Film 2010 has degenerated into a pretentious, indie hipster, film student, overly opinionated, nightmare [with due respect to reading film students].
The beginning of every review seems to begin with a flurry of name dropping, old 'classic' film references and the mention of technicalities, just so that none of us are in any doubt that Claudia Winkleman and her sidekick Dobby [name unknown] know what they are fucking talking about - "let's get one thing straight here guys, I've seen this film, this film and this film, one of them was in black and white and I know the work of this direcotr who made a film that not many people have seen but I have because I fucking know film" - thanks Claudia, we get it, but I presumed you knew about film by virtue of your hosting this programme so let's skip the pretentious bullshit from now on eh? It's exhausting.
Winkleman can't help but proceed everything with "For me" and "I've always" and "His early work" - the sorts of phrases that tell you that your order of the big pile of crap is on its way in just a sentence time. This isn't so bad you say, but she literally barks all of these comments at this bloke Dobby [name unknown], who is just as bad as her really and returns her service with some film opinions that are equally high art, high literature and so richly full of themselves that to consume one as food would be to give yourself diabetes of the idiot gland. Shut up, it's a real condition.

My point is, this show is for everyone. It's on BBC 1 for fuck sake. But it's like they go out of their way to prove what an exclusive club it is. At the beginning it ought to play the piano music, the title should come up with Film 2010 and then Claudia Winkleman's head should pop up and go "keep up if you can stupid" at which point her brain should explode, revealing an excess of film tape. GOD SHE KNOWS SO MUCH ABOUT FILM!!

There are strong overtones of hipster-ness in the show, which is probably why I'm reacting so furiously towards it. Anything trying to be anything and it's not for me. I mean, FOR ME Film2010 would be better with Jonathan Ross, I'VE ALWAYS liked Film2010's EARLIER WORK. Oh look at that, I'm a wanker as well. But then I haven't ruined a perfectly good platform for film review by rendering it some pompous excuse for these two presenters to vomit up their conceited yet mysteriously repetitive views, not on the film itself, but on film as a medium, man. It's the way Winkleman and Dobby both talk to each other in argumentative way, fully believing that their opinions on film define their very being. And that's just pathetic.
Come back Jonathan Ross, you gave a well rounded, accurate opinion on film and didn't have to roll out the obscure references and pro-subtitle stance to prove just how much passion you had for film. As such, I found you both likeable and believable. Film 2010 and Claudia Winkleman are neither of those things.