Frumious Lord Schnozzless
Saw the new Harry Potter. I suspect it wasn’t bad, but I didn’t get it. It didn’t answer the question I’ve been asking since Fiennes turned up in the last one: What happened to the Voldemort guy’s nose?
Then there are the other questions. Did he have one to begin with? Is this the cause of his nastiness: proboscis envy? Apart from his meanness towards the kid, what forms does this nastiness take? Did Harry’s dead parents have something to do with the loss of the nose? What does he have against Harry anyway, didn’t he approve of the nude scenes in Equus? Why can’t Voldemort’s name be mentioned when everyone knows what it is, even the poor schmucks in the audience who haven’t read the books? Why can’t Voldemort’s name be mentioned without one’s voice dropping an octave and an eyebrow rising significantly? And what is that girl’s problem, is she attempting semaphore with her eyebrows? So what if the noseless one wins, how bad can it get? How will it affect the lives of the ordinary powerless mortals?
And there’s the big question, the one the entire Potter movie series has been pretending not to hear: What exactly is at stake here? As long as it remains unanswered, the movies will have as much sense of urgency and emotional impact as a power struggle in a boarding school drama guild.
A film adaptation should be able to stand alone, independent of its source, and it must be coherent even to those who have not read the book. At least with the Lord of the Rings movies, you need not have read Tolkien to know why Sauron looked like a glowing vagina.
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
July 18th, 2007 at 23:04
See, this gives off more of your I-want-to-conquer-the-world attitude. You ask how bad can it be if a noseless DARK LORD wins over the scarred geek.
I wanted to ask if you’ve read what’s available of the series of books; seems like you have, anyway. Or have you?
“A film adaptation should be able to stand alone, independent of its source, and it must be coherent even to those who have not read the book”
One of my thoughts; although it would’ve been better if it was staged as faithfully as it CAN with the book. I mean, they’ve produced a Fantasy, so how can some things, sometimes crucial to the grand plot, be omitted because of difficulty?
“At least with the Lord of the Rings movies, you need not have read Tolkien to know why Sauron looked like a glowing vagina.”
Very well put. Before you said it, I’ve never thought of Sauron’s Eye as a glowing vagina. Hahaha!
July 19th, 2007 at 01:51
Extras, season 2 just came out on DVD in the US. You have to catch it for Daniel Radcliffe’s cameo as himself being full of himself (I guess just like all the actors who do cameos in Extras). Oh, and check out the season for David Bowie’s song for Andy Melman as well.
July 19th, 2007 at 07:25
what do u think of ‘on the lot’ on star movies?
July 20th, 2007 at 08:55
Voldemort to Harry: You will lose everything–especially your nose!
July 20th, 2007 at 11:12
This movie sucks! it offends and confuses those who have read the book and those who haven’t. and to think the 5th harry potter book was the best i’ve read in the series! all the best parts in the book were scrapped, merde. david yates is no peter jackson. the latter treated Lotr with reverence;while yates crapped on the 5th HP film.
the eye of Sauron is not a glowing vagina! it’s blasphemy to say so!
July 20th, 2007 at 19:35
commentson comments
to tonyrom in relation to this part of his comment:
“… I wanted to ask if you’ve read what’s available of the series of books; seems like you have, anyway. Or have you?
“A film adaptation should be able to stand alone, independent of its source, and it must be coherent even to those who have not read the book†…”
my stupid comment: wrong flow of thought. the quotation [“A film adaptation..”] does not support your assumption that she has read a single potter book. if a person stated: “A film adaptation should be able to stand alone, independent of its source, and it must be coherent even to those who have not read the book†does this mean that he/she has read whatever book that has been adapted into the silverscreens?obviously not, or… was it really obvious? what JZafra said about film standing alone, independent of its source is what should be in film adaptations so that those who have not yet encountered the source of the adaptation wouldn’t be asking too many questions, and not able to understand the whole film. it’s like a fact, the quotation. is it? i think it is. am i thinking? who knows?
my comments to witchqueen to this part of her comment will be put in brackets ([comments]):
>This movie sucks! [haven’t watched it yet, but i belive you]
>it offends and confuses those who have read the book [i disagree. if you have digested the book, you shouldn’t be confused. i’m a potter fan myself] and those who haven’t.[i agree]
>and to think the 5th harry potter book was the best i’ve read in the series![word!]
>all the best parts in the book were scrapped, merde.[ i don’t know what ‘merde’ is but about the scrapping part, it’s predictable.]
>david yates is no peter jackson.[that’s why his name is david yates and not peter jackson]
>the latter treated Lotr with reverence;while yates crapped on the 5th HP film.[whatever you say]
comment on “ Frumious Lord Schnozzless â€
just so you know, Voldemort has got no nose coz before he was transformed into his present physical form, he possessed a snake so that he would survive–voldemort needed a body to survive and snakes are the most compatible creature with him if my memory’s correct–thus carrying some features of the snake into his renewed look.
and back to witchqueen… what does blasphemy mean? har!
July 21st, 2007 at 16:16
Don’t forget the director’s ability to “own” the movie. This would be so much better in Terry Gilliam’s hand, but then he vows never to make Potter movies.
Voldemort’s lack of nose is a statement against plastic surgery. Belo is evil.
July 26th, 2007 at 20:05
You people sure are vicious… ^_^
My favorite book was the third one. I thought that aside from Deathly Hallows, it was very well-written. And my favorite director among all the Potter films was Alfonso Cuaron, who, incidentally, directed the third film as well. I loved his take on the Whomping Willow shedding its leaves and such as indicative of the changing seasons, with a rather human-like personality. Also, the dementor scene during the last part of that film was almost poetic. But even so, I thought the fifth movie was good, expecially visually. The screenplay and Radcliffe’s acting really sucked, though.
Hmm… with regards to Voldemort’s nose, from my understanding, his soul, which was reduced to nothing more than mere wisps of essence, adopted a physical form that’s as human as he could muster at the time with whatever puny magic he retained, which was a fragile, infant-looking monstrosity. To regain his strength, he began feeding off of his pet snake’s “milkings”, hence the snake-like quality of his face and its flat nose’s slits for nostrils. But snake “milkings” could only maintain the life in his breath, and as his original body had died, he had to “create” a new physical form. Apparently, even in Rowling’s wizarding world, bringing the dead back to life is an impossible feat. This new form is devoid of ordianary human functions, and as such, need not have ordinary human features. That, and because he is the embodiment of pure evil. He’s actually even supposed to be “skeletal”…
August 1st, 2007 at 17:17
i love harry potter, as a whole. however, i hated the 5th and 6th books. why? because sirius was unreasonably killed (poor guy!) in the former and the latter read like an even more hormone-filled british version of sweet valley high.
buuuut… i did like the 7th book. rowling seemed to realize that she had to make up for the last two crappy bestsellers. maybe she stopped reading the wildly popular fanfiction and comparing her own work to them, haha!
and, as for the HP5 movie, i was puzzled about the nose, too. i guessed that since voldemort split his soul seven ways (the horcruxes) to ensure that he wouldn’t be killed that easily, maybe his nose was included in one of them by mistake. =)