Hey everyone,
I went to see harry potter and the goblet of fire last night and was well and truely blown away by it! I doubt it was my low expectations created by the first few films that were pretty lame (3rd was the best) that had me walking out of the cinema with a huge grin on my face. The story was well edited, the cinematography was tops and the CGI was, with all blockbusters these days, splendid.
I heard one parent of a young kid complaining about the violence in the film and was amused quite a bit. If you have read the books they ARE violent and dark and the film was a good visual representation of the nature of good and evil.
The one thing that really got me into the harry potter books was that i read them when i was at a comparative age to the characters. In the film the characters are more realistic to their said age (14) and they obviously had a lot of fun making the film. The seriousness of the themes is balanced well by a lot of good humor.
Definately one of the better films i have seen this year for the old and not so young. What did you think of it?
Mark
I want to see it but I dont have friends that read the harry potter books 
I guess Ill wait until its on dvd
i have a friend that torrented it
i want to see it but havent yet, so you say there was some humor in it?
like how much would you suppose, on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being none 10 being all.
how much did the humor play a role in the movie?
if you took out all the humor how would the movie be?
I personally didn’t like it much at all…it went WAY too fast, it would have been better if they left the world cup out completely, because seriously, the entire beginning of the movie till they were at school was like five minutes.
also, wtf is up with their dance routines??
and rita skeeter wasn’t a beetle in this one, fleur wasn’t a veela, grr…no winky…
where??? I want to knooooooww
is it on torrentspy.com?
Although I’ve only seen the first movie, I expect that all of the others are similar in the sence that they leave a lot of the things that were in the books out of the movie. They have to, though, or else the movies would be 6 hours long (and whats wrong with that?!).
I’ve read all of the books numerous times, and they’ll never get old.
My kids will read them.
I’ve never had much interest in Harry Potter in general. I do, however, want to see the King Kong movie. 
Well, I felt the movie was kind of so-so. I could have done without the teen melodrama, and it felt, well, rushed. It certainly didn’t take it’s time with anything. Also, Patrick Doyle’s score disappointed me. His work on Henry V was superb, but his score on this movie just didn’t do it for me. That being said, the movie was certainly enjoyable and exciting. Not too shabby, but not great either.
I haven’t seen it yet, but I work at a movie theatre that is showing it. I have to say a lot of people are enjoying it. If it weren’t for the fact we have been sold out for most of the times I can go during the weekends, I would of gone and seen it already(if a movie is sold out I can’t get free tickets for it.)
I saw it. My opinion is quite a bit different from yours Napalm. I loved one and two–two more than one. I didn’t care for 3 and was extremely unimpressed with GoF. However I liked books 3 and 4 much better than 1 and 2.
I think the problem with Goblet of Fire was the director and the editor.
I read all the books (I read them out loud to my kids actually, it became a sort of family ritual, even when my kids got old enough to read them alone) and I saw all the films, and this one really had a few splendid moments, but I think the choice of director was all wrong. I think Alphonso Curan (director of the third, and best of the series) would have done something more in spirit with the book, and thus a lot better. I say that because of all the books, Goblet of Fire is my favorite, and I guess I was dissapointed that the film did not match the book.
The editing was horribly choppy, and the music too corney. At times, the costumes and the scenery got too elaborate and the actors were swallowed up.
Still, as usual, the three main kids were great, as was the guy who played Dumbledore. I liked the guy who played Krum, and the young lady who played Fleur was hardly in front of the camera, which was too bad. Madame Maxime was terribly miscast because when I read the book, I imagined this incredibly beautiful giant french woman, as opposed to the ugly giant french woman, which dissapointed me. Not the fault of the actress, who in reality was covered in unnecessary make-up. And Karkaroff, in the book was a lot more interesting than the portrayal in the film.
However, I HAD to go see it, and I’m glad I did. Many of the visuals are stunning–the maze scene in 'mazing, and I was genuinely sad about what happened to poor Cedric. I just wish they had a better director, or at least they should have made the film longer to smooth it out and make it less choppy.
My wife never saw a Harry Potter film before, never read the books, and hated this one. She had not the faintest idea what the hell was going on–which leads me to believe that the makers of this particular Harry Potter film were a bit lazy–they just assumed that the audience knew all the charactors and read the book, and thus the film comes across as a type of slide show for the familiar. Which might make for an interesting experience for those of us who have read the book, but an unsatisfactory experience for any one else.
Things I liked:
The dragons.
The cinamatography and deep colors–visually very beautiful. And meloncholy, also.
Dumbledore getting pissed off at Harry when he thinks he cheated.
The Patel twins always saying “Hi Harry” and giggeling.
George (or was it Fred) asking out Angelina (I think her charactors name is Angelina)by tossing paper at her and using sign language.
The three main kids–I have a fatherly affection towards them because they are just about the same age as my own kids, so of course I want them to succeed!
Neville arriving late with his shoes around his neck.
The bathtub scene with Moaning Mertle! Actually, very funny and awkward!
Things I did not like:
Choppy editing
No development of Reeter Skeeter
Assuming the audience understood everything.
Leaving out that great part in the book when Snape shows off his own dark mark.
Leaving out the part of the book when Snape taunts Harry and Hermoine
Leaving out the whole bit in the end of the Harry gives his money to Fred and George
The Halloween-like imagery of the death-eaters.
The Halloween-like treatment of Voldemort.
Not enough of Malfoy and the Slytheryns! They are hardly in this one!
Still, like I said earlier, I liked it. It’s just not as good as Prisioner of Azkaban. Just my opinion…
Sadly, a movie could never fit all of the excellent stuff from the books. One of the things I enjoy most about HP is getting to see and learn about all the cool magial items, potions and whatnot, and sadly, my nerdiness was not fufilled in the movie as it was in the book.
The problem i saw with the first 2 films in particular was that the director felt as though they had to explain everything to the audience. This film is the 4th in a series and can assume that the people going to see it have seen the previous ones. In this way i felt that the film could deal with new material instead of retreading old or irrelevant information. I love the complexity of the books but trying to preserve it as a film simply cannot be done. I am in favour of the editing (Rita skeeter is a fantastic semi-villan and i think they conveyed this well without having to include yet another sub plot- the ladybeetle fiasco). The exclusion of Dobby and the S.P.E.W dampaign was not missed.
Just in terms of plot i think that more needed to be explained about barty crouch and his son and how he escaped from Azkaban- also the fact that he did not have his son killed by dementors as happens in the book will complicate things possibly for the next film.
The thing that i liked about this film was that the director had two very differing styles that he could have followed (Christopher columbus’s, and Alphonso Curan) and he managed to draw them together to create an image of hogwarts that i imagined when i read the books. The first films were too clinical- the kid actors did not act like kids, but rather as though someone was telling them exactly what to do. The third had some great spontaneous moments that gave a sence of fun of the magic world. The fourth, in my opinion displayed real, spontaneous action and was true enough to the book for me.
The movies have gotten better each time in my opinion,
Mark
Originally the studio wanted to make GoF 2 movies, released a few months apart like Matrix 2/3 were… I think they could have left Rita out entirely, though I had forgotten about the Veela thing… You can never get a truly “good” movie from a book, you have to treat them as 2 different interpretations of a myth almost… The main elements are there, but the details vary… Think how much they’d have to leave out if they had changed it to a radio teleplay 