Altered Beast [Review: Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes Of Grindelwald]

Score: 3 out of 5 stars
All movies reviewed on the Sci-Fi Gene blog are given a score of 3 out of 5 stars

The second Fantastic Beasts movies takes place in 1927. An Obscurius transforming-rage-monster (it's no coincidence, by the way, that Obscurius rhymes with Mr. Furious) from the first movie is missing presumed alive. It seems everybody wants a piece of him - the Ministry of Magic, the American and French Ministries, Albus Dumbledore, and the naughty wizard Grindelwald, who has inconveniently escaped his US captors. Everybody, that is, except Newt Scamander who refuses to take sides as he is perfectly happy overworking his devoted assistant Bunty and playing with his seaweed-dragon. I know, right? Hufflepuffs... In order to prevent this being a very short trilogy, the Fates, in the form of US wizard Queenie and No-Maj Jacob Kowalski, conspire to send Newt and his family of baby Nifflers after the Obscurius. The trail leads to Paris, where Grindelwald is quite possibly up to something.

There are plenty of great cinematic moments, action set pieces and characters in this film, as well as points of interest for fans of the original series of books and films. Nagini, for example, turns up and is not quite as we remember her. The hypnotic sort-of-fascist Grindelwald is played brilliantly by Johnny Depp, to the extent that you can't tell if his ability to convert followers is a magic power or just extraordinary charisma. It's a rockstar performance vaguely reminiscent of David Bowie's Tesla in The Prestige.

However there are also many disappointments. The plot hinges on Dumbledore's past with Grindelwald and the reason they are unable to move directly against each other - but we get barely a hint of the romance. The Nifflers and Bowtruckles appear to good effect once or twice but not nearly enough, and there are very few new Fantastic Beasts. Human characters also don't get their chance to shine - can we have a Bunty spin-off series please? The plot itself is disjointed and difficult to follow, lacking in flow or perhaps logic, and while in the first movie there was great pleasure in exploring all aspects of US wizard culture and the 1920s setting in general, the second doesn't really get into either real or fictionalized history in the same satisfying way.

All in all, this movie is enjoyable in places but it's less than the sum of its parts and less satisfying than the first movie or the Harry Potter series, leading to the disappointing score of 3 stars out of 5.

Rikki Don't Lose That Number [Sci-Fi Telephone Booths]

We're all familiar with a certain Time Lord and her preferred mode of telephonic transport:

But while the Doctor was one of the first, she is far from unique - in fact there's a long and respectable tradition of science fiction heroes travelling in telephone booths. Excluding the good Doctor, here are my top five long distance callers:

#1 Bill And Ted

Doctor Who has spawned many spin-off series and movies over the years. My favourites were the Bill and Ted movies - Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989) and Bogus Journey (1991). It's a blast - a great time-travel comedy and a decent attempt to create an American Doctor Who. It's absolutely canon. The eponymous heroes, played by Alex Winter and Keanu someone or other, travel through time in a US phone booth "borrowed" from Time Lord Rufus (who strictly speaking should be called The Rufus), encountering historical celebrities in their quest to complete their homework and ultimately secure the future of civilization through music. A nice touch is that this TARDIS is actually controlled by looking up the desired historical period in a phone book and dialling the number.


#2 Harry Potter

Why waste time with flying cars, boring broomsticks, itchy Floo powder or those blasted Portkeys when you can travel in style in a phone booth? The phone booths in Harry Potter are secret entrances to the Ministry of Magic.

#3 Professor Branestawm

In the BBC's fun adaptation of Norman Hunter's Professor Branestawm, starring Harry Hill, the Professor invents a slightly slower-moving phone.

#4 Neo

The Matrix is another of my favourite Doctor Who spin-offs. The links to original Who are subtle, but Whovian fans should be well aware that in Doctor Who, the Time Lords have a supercomputer called the Matrix. In the Matrix, there is also a supercomputer called The Matrix. If you are exploring the Matrix and need to leave in a hurry, you get to a phone booth.

#5 Superman

The final entry in this list is Superman. He only rates #5 as he doesn't actually travel in a phone booth, he just changes in one. This will be hard to explain to the mobile phone generation.

Scamanderick

Newt Scamander’s never quite tough enough

To catch his pet niffler who snaffles stuff.

Well-meaning, sincere,

And not quite all here:

In other words – typical Hufflepuff...

Harry Potter And The Media Convergence Phenomenon [Spoiler-Free Review: Cursed Child]

This is a review of the script of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, read as a novel. I haven't got tickets to see it on stage and I'd have to kill far too many people to even get to stand outside the theatre. I was going to use my Cloak of Invisibility to get in, but I've put it down somewhere...

This is also a SPOILER-FREE review. This means I'm not going to make the mistake of telling you what happens to Dobby this time.

So first of all, Cursed Child is a perfectly enjoyable read. It's accessible as a play script, in fact after the first few pages you can easily forget and think of it as a story written in idiosyncratic style. To be fair it's more of a novella than a novel, but will still keep you occupied for the duration of a short internal flight. Using some clever plot devices, the plot involves both familiar and new characters, there's a lot of fun, some surprises and, happily, some new discoveries about the characters and the Potterverse. The story arc is satisfying, the ending is a little less so.

Cursed Child also manages to retain that essential J.K. Rowlinguality, even though Rowling only co-wrote the story and did not write the script. Characters are sympathetic, do have more than one aspect to their personality, and do develop during the events of the play. Dialogue is two thirds genius to one third cornfield. I do miss the internal voices that run through all Rowling's actual novels - only used here in very limited ways.

CC does however suffer from being a play script, and in particular a play script that wants to be something else. It's a Media Identity Disorder if you like. CC owes its inspiration not so much to the original Harry Potter novels but to the films. It makes sense that the writers would know that their play will be compared to the films, or perhaps they have ambitions towards a film conversion. It's also true that media are converging - films, TV shows, plays, books, audiobooks, comics, games etc. are all becoming more or less the same thing, and in a world where you can buy Harry Potter wool, a play script that wants to be a film script, looks like a novel and reads like a short story isn't so far fetched.

Either way, CC features ultra-short scenes, with major location changes every few minutes, much action, and many magical effects. None of this needs to make it a bad play, but I suspect it may lose some of the intimacy that comes from the best-written theatrical plays. I would still be curious to see it, if I can find where I put my Cloak, and I'm willing to be proven wrong.

Voyage At An End

The Space Shuttle Atlantis landed safely, ending 30 years of the Space Transportation System. In addition to the research and engineering achievements the programme has opened up international collaboration in space.

With seven novels, eight films and rather a lot of Lego tie-ins the Harry Potter saga draws to a close. Thanks to Harry, Luna, Dobby and Neville reading is officially cool once again. Amy Winehouse passed away at the age of 27. It's no exaggeration to say she had an extraordinary talent as a singer, a unique voice in British music.

Endings have been on my mind this week. There's no direct connection between these three stories and I don't want to make this too contrived - it's just that while each of these endings is sad in a different way, there are also aspirations for the future and real achievements to remember and celebrate.

Hallow Darkness My Old Friend [Review: Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows Part I]

The final Harry Potter novel has been split into two parts for film adaptation. While there are obvious commercial benefits in keeping the cinema franchise going for another year, this was also the right decision artistically, and David Yates' new film HP7i is the proof.

As the HP novels got heavier, the films suffered either by trying to cram too much in, or by cutting until the plot was incomprehensible. Cut the novel in half and suddenly there's room to breathe again: filmed refreshingly in 2D, HP7i has atmosphere and pace, with enough time on the clock to create authentic settings, linger on significant scenes or build tension. At the same time, the plot, slightly simplified, remains coherent although you will struggle a little unless you have read the preceding books. There's a lot of borrowing from Lord of the Rings as the Fellowship of the Potter travel magically around the world to seek out and destroy a Horcrux: this borrowing is the fault of the book rather than the film.

As with the book, there's far less humour than the previous films (though by no means none) and plenty of death, darkness and despair. The characters have grown up, but the actors unfortunately more so: Daniel and Emma just about pass as older teens, but if CGI can make Jeff Bridges or even Brad Pitt look young in Tron Legacy and Benjamin Button respectively then surely they could have done the same for Rupert Grint. However if the ageing is dodgy the acting and direction is awesome - all three turn in their best performances so far and you really get a sense of isolation, and how different their magical upbringing has made them.

Conclusion: full marks, and I look forward to HP7ii.

Harry Potter and the Gloriously Unfilmable Novel

Charlie Jane Anders sparked an interesting discussion over at io9.com last week about whether novels can ever be "gloriously unfilmable." On reading I found myself taking the view that there's always a way to make an interesting film that's based on something from the book.

I've since seen Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

I think this film highlights one situation where it might be impossible to film a book. It's to do with the way the books get longer, darker and slightly more adult through the series, while the plots get more complex and interwoven. At the same time the fan base still includes a) a lot of 11 year olds and b) a lot of people who know the books inside out, both of whom must be satisfied at all costs.

HP1 (known to UK residents as the Philospher's Stone) set a precedent by being very faithful to the first book and more or less keeping everything in. For the sequels it would have been harder to cram everything in - so directors have had to choose what to cut. Alfonse Cuaron did this creatively in HP3 (the Prisoner of Azkaban) deliberately telling a much simpler yet still coherent story.

By the time we get to HP6 the director is faced with an impossible choice - keep it all in and your film is too long or too cluttered; cut it all out and it won't make much sense. David Yates has taken the second option. He's kept the humour and much of the adolescent drama, and sown the seeds for the real tragedy of the piece (that Harry ends up dating Ginny Weasley not Luna Lovegood) but cutting out so much else, including the Severus Snape and James Potter backstory, that the whole meaning of the Half-Blood Prince title is lost. Unless you know the book you will be baffled by the ending.

What's to be done? In my opinion there's nothing wrong with the production of this film. As with all the Potter films, casting is perfect. I could single out anyone but here Jim Broadbent (Slughorn) and Evanna Lynch (Luna Lovegood) steal every shot they're in, while Tom Felton (Draco) and A..l..a..n.....R..i..c..k..m..a..n (Snape) are more intense in each film. The effects are superb as usual - and while I doubt there's a single non-effect shot in there, much of the work is nicely understated or atmospheric and so doesn't detract from the drama. Despite the confusion the film is extremely funny and occasionally exciting or sinister.

David Yates is pencilled in for HP7 too - and there's the possibility of splitting it into two films. If this is the reason for it then I approve. It's one solution to the dilemma of HP6, and I will look forward to the next installment.