Transcript – Episode 118
[Show music begins]
Michael Harle: This is Episode 118 of Alohomora! for January 3, 2015.
[Show music continues]
Michael: And welcome, listeners, both live and who will be listening in future. We are here for our live discussion of the Order of the Phoenix film. I’m Michael Harle.
Kat Miller: I’m Kat Miller.
Alison Siggard: I’m Alison Siggard.
Rosie Morris: And I’m Rosie Morris. And our guest fan today will be all of you guys! There are two ways that you can get ahold of us. First of all, by phone; you can call us at 1-206-GO-ALBUS – that’s 206-462-5287. Or you can get in contact with us – maybe for our international listeners – on Skype. And it’s free to use Skype, so just give us a ring at AlohomoraMN. If you don’t get through to us the first time, just keep on trying; there are a lot of people trying to reach us at the moment, but do keep trying.
Alison: And before we go on, just remember – we just want to remind you – to make sure to listen to our book wrap and international cover discussion, which was released last night. So make sure you go back and take a listen to that today.
Kat: And it was so good, too. It was a two-hour episode. It was insanity. It was insane.
Alison: Oh, it was so good. It was great. It was so fun.
Kat: Yeah, it was a lot of fun. But guys, Order of the Phoenix: We’re almost officially completely putting it behind us. It’s a little scary. And sad. I don’t know.
Michael: Yes, but we had to journey through that movie first to get done with it.
[Everyone laughs]
Kat: You love that movie, Michael.
Michael: My God, it was… it is not the worst. It is not the worst of the films in my opinion…
Alison: No.
Kat: That’s true.
Michael: … but it is not… no.
Kat: It’s not the best, either.
Michael: [laughs] It is not the best.
Alison: No. No, no, no.
Kat: It sits firmly in the middle.
Alison: Uhh…
Michael: [laughs] I don’t know if it’s even… it’s on the lower end of my list. But oh, lordy.
Alison: Yeah. [laughs]
Rosie: We should say a very quick Happy New Year to all of our fans as well because it’s 2015! It took us however long to get through that book, but we’ve got a new book starting this year. It’s 2015.
[Kat and Michael laugh]
Kat: Nine months because we started Order in April, so…
Rosie: Yeah.
Alison: Oh, wow.
Kat: Crazy.
Michael: [laughs] Somebody in the chat said, “Michael should be out of breath from all the running.”
[Everyone laughs]
Michael: I think that is the perfect summary of this film. We were coming up with that during the chat…
Alison: Oh, man.
Michael: … but I just kept saying, “The script is running! The movie is running! It’s got to run. Keep going, you guys! We have no time for this movie.” [laughs]
Kat: We will get there. All in due time, my friend.
Michael: We’ve got to run. We’ve got to run now. [laughs] We’ve got to keep going.
[Rosie laughs]
Kat: Oh, episode’s over. Just kidding. Just like the movie.
[Everyone laughs]
Kat: Anyway… yeah.
Michael: Lordy.
Rosie: We should also say that we are watching the chat, but there will be a little bit of a lag. So if we don’t get to your comment straight away, we are still watching, and it will probably come up in a little bit. So be patient with us. [laughs]
Kat: Yes, please do, please do. Hmm. So I think we usually discuss this pretty much every movie watch – and we touched on it a little bit – but what’s your order? What’s your order of the eight movies?
Michael: What’s your Order of the Phoenix?
[Alison and Rosie laugh]
Kat: No… har, har, har.
[Michael laughs]
Kat: No, how do you rank them? What’s your order?
Rosie: Order of the Phoenix is not very high up.
[Everyone laughs]
Alison: Yep.
Rosie: I love Prisoner, which I know a lot of people don’t.
Kat and Michael: I do.
Alison: Oh, I love that movie.
Rosie: Yeah.
Kat: Okay, mine… since I know my order is very definitive.
Rosie: Fair enough. You go.
Michael: Go.
Kat: It is “7”…
Alison and Rosie: Okay.
Kat: … okay, so this is adaptation-wise, not…
Alison: Are you going from top to bottom?
Kat: What?
Alison: Are you going from top to bottom or bottom to top on your list?
Kat: Favorite to least favorite.
Alison and Michael: Okay.
Kat: Yes. Wait, I have to write this out so I don’t miss one.
[Alison laughs]
Kat: “7”, “3”, “6”, “8”, “5”, “2”, “1”, “4”.
Rosie: Sounds like the lottery.
[Michael laughs]
Kat: There you go. Yep, “7”, “3”, “6”, “8”, “5”, “2”, “1”, “4”. So that’s my order.
Alison: If I go from bottom to top, my least favorite is “6”, and then “5”, and then “4”, “2”, “1”, and then “3”, “7”, and “8” are all tied.
Kat: Oh. Three-way tie. Okay, fair enough.
Alison: Yeah.
Michael: That’s interesting.
Alison: I count “7” and “8” as one movie, so…
[Rosie laughs]
Michael: I don’t. [laughs]
Kat: No, I don’t either. “7” is way better than “8”.
Michael: I think “7” is far better than “8”. I rank them… Prisoner of Azkaban is top of my list, always, definitively; it will never move from that spot.
[Rosie laughs]
Kat: Mhm.
Michael: Half-Blood is my second favorite, then, which I know is unusual…
Rosie: Okay.
Alison: Oh.
Kat: Mhm.
Michael: … then Deathly Hallows – Part 1. And then things get a little muddled depending on how I’m feeling. “1” and “2” moved up and they stand in the same place.
Rosie: Yeah, I’m going to throw my hat in for “1” because it’s a Christmas movie, and we’ve just had Christmas, so… yeah. I like “1”.
Michael: See, I always see Prisoner more as the Christmas movie just because it’s got more winter imagery.
Kat and Rosie: Yeah.
Michael: So I tend to associate that one with Christmas, yeah.
Alison: Yeah.
Michael: And then after that, probably Part 2 and then… what’s left? Order of the Phoenix and then Goblet of Fire at the bottom because…
Kat: Oh yeah, Goblet is the worst movie ever.
Michael: [laughs] Goblet is the worst.
Kat: Ever!
[Everyone laughs]
Alison: So bad.
Rosie: I think my issues with Goblet and Order of the Phoenix are very similar in the fact that they just cut out so much stuff, and left in so much stupid stuff.
Alison: Yeah.
Rosie: The choices are bad.
Micahel: See, the thing is… the difference, though, that I see between Goblet and Order – because there is a similarity, definitely, with what’s cut and how things are changed – but to me, for some reason Order comes off a little better for it than Goblet because Goblet just ends up being super – and I said this in the last movie chat – Goblet ends up being really campy and silly.
Alison and Kat: Yeah.
Michael: Order doesn’t quite come off that badly in that way. It still comes off badly, but not for… it’s not campy.
Kat: Well, it comes off flat.
Michael: Yes. It does come off flat.
Kat: Order is flat, and Goblet is not as flat.
Rosie: Yeah. Because Goblet is still trying to be an action movie, whereas in Order they’re trying to be more of a Harry Potter story, but they just do it badly. [laughs]
Michael: Mhm.
Kat: Yeah. I guess we should get on with our movie discussion about Order then, yeah? All right.
Michael: Get on with it. You have no time. Keep running! Run!
Rosie: From the Wikipedia page we’ll have a little bit of a summary of what the film did. It was a live action filming that took place in England and Scotland for the exterior locations, and Leavesden Film Studios as we saw in the lovely park shot at the very beginning which is now the car park for the Studio Tour.
Kat: Which is so funny; how did I not know that?
Alison: I didn’t know that.
Rosie: If you look across the houses you can stand in that car park and say, “Hey, that’s the same view!” [laughs]
Kat: That’s funny. I’m totally doing that in April when I go. I’m totally doing that. I didn’t know.
Rosie: This film was filmed during February to November 2006 with a one month break in June, presumably so that the actors could do exams. Post production on the film continued to take several months afterwards to add in the extensive and sometimes unnecessary visual effects.
[Everyone laughs]
Rosie: Budget was reportedly between 75 million, even, and 100 million in pounds, which is 150 to 200 million dollars. And Warner Brothers released the film in the United Kingdom on July 12, 2007 and North America on July 11, both in conventional and IMAX theaters. And it was the first Potter film to be released in IMAX 3D.
Michael: Kind of.
Kat: Lame.
[Alison and Michael laugh]
Rosie: And as we were discussing earlier in the movie watch, there were some scenes that were 3D and some that weren’t, and it was just all a bit of a mess.
Kat: It was the last 20 minutes of the movie, right?
Michael: Yeah.
Rosie: I think so. I think it was the fight scene where they just stood there and had a 3D light show or something.
Kat: Yeah.
[Alison laughs]
Michael: It was a different time for 3D, kids. Back in the aught-nots, we didn’t do 3D for the whole movie.
[Everyone laughs]
Kat: Oh, lord.
Rosie: Order of the Phoenix is the unadjusted 26th highest-grossing film of all time, and a critical and commercial success acclaimed as the best one yet by Rowling, apparently, who has consistently offered praise for the film adaptations of her work. She has to say that. [laughs]
Kat: I mean, it made her millions of dollars, so…
Michael: She’s said that at the end of every single one.
Kat: Yeah, “It’s the best yet!”
Michael: “I thought it was the best yet!”
Rosie: And to be fair, it probably was the best yet in terms of a success. Most people went out to see it on the actual release days – more of that kind of thing – whereas the previous movies might have had a bit less of a following maybe.
Michael: Mhm.
Kat: Right. That’s true.
Rosie: This film opened to a worldwide 5-day opening of 333 million dollars, fourth of all time, and grossed nearly $940 million total, second to Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End for the greatest total of 2007. The film was nominated for 2 BAFTA film awards in 2008.
Kat: That’s insane. How many times did I see Order in the theater? I think only twice, and I saw Pirates six times. Whoops.
[Michael and Rosie laugh]
Alison: So it’s Kat’s fault that Order lost out. [laughs]
Kat: Yeah, well, I was in my Orlando Bloom phase, so how could you blame me? To be honest.
[Michael and Rosie laugh]
Kat: I mean, I’m always in that phase, though.
Rosie: Pirates was definitely a better film than Order, I think. Even if Order is an amazing story in the book, and it’s Harry Potter so you have to go and see it. But I think Pirates was a better film.
Kat: I would agree, yeah. Orlando over Harry.
Michael: Which one was At World’s End? Was that the third one or the…? I don’t even remember.
Rosie: That was the third one.
Alison: I don’t think I ever saw those ones.
Kat: Yeah, because Dead Man’s Chest was the second one. Yep, it was the third one.
Rosie: So it was the one that was supposed to end the trilogy as well.
Kat: It did end the trilogy. What? There’s no fourth movie; what are you talking about? That does not exist.
[Everyone laughs]
Rosie: I actually did fall asleep during the fourth movie, so that just… yeah, it doesn’t exist to me.
[Alison and Rosie laugh]
Kat: It was pretty bad, it was pretty bad. Man.
Rosie: Filming-wise, February to November is quite a long time period to be devoted to one film and then still cut out some key scenes and mess around with other things.
Kat: I mean, I read somewhere that there was over 45 minutes of footage, and then the thing that – I said this in the chat – all the Quidditch scenes were cut because Tiana Benjamin, who played Angelina Johnson, had to drop from the film. And so they were like, “Eh, we’ll just cut the Quidditch,” and so they cut all the Quidditch.
Alison: Ugh, which makes me sad. I love Quidditch. [laughs]
Kat: Yeah, but it’s so not essential.
Michael: Yeah, the Quidditch is a logical cut to me…
Kat: Yeah.
Michael: … especially because almost all of it is imported over to the next movie.
Alison and Rosie: Yeah.
Michael: And it works better there because, I mean… and people said this in the chat, but poor Ron is pretty much reduced to just standing around and being sympathetic.
Alison: Yeah.
Michael: But he gets really good character development in Half-Blood so it works.
Rosie: Yeah.
Michael: It’s just at the sacrifice of Ron having any purpose in this movie. [laughs] So… but yeah, getting rid of the Quidditch is fine. There’s other things that are much more, I think, egregious than that.
Rosie: Yeah. Yes.
Kat: And it’s not going to win awards if it has twenty minutes worth of Quidditch in it.
Alison: That’s true.
Kat: Not that it won any.
Michael: Not that it did, anyway.
[Everyone laughs]
Kat: Not that it did anyway.
Alison: Well, we do have a list of awards it was nominated for and…
Kat: Nominated but not won. For the record.
Alison: Yeah.
[Michael laughs]
Alison: So let’s see. We’ve got the 2007 MTV Movie Awards: Best Summer Movie You Haven’t Seen Yet. It actually won the Choice Summer Movie at the Teen Choice Awards.
Kat: Big surprise.
Michael: Yeah, the kind of award that it’s not hard to win.
Alison: Yeah.
Kat: To win, right. Exactly. Yep.
[Alison and Michael laugh]
Alison: Yep. Nominated for lots of 2007 Scream Awards: The Ultimate Scream, Best Fantasy Movie, and Best Sequel. Daniel Radcliffe nominated for Fantasy Hero category. And the film did win Best Sequel, and Ralph Fiennes… I can never say his name.
Kat and Michael: Ralph Fiennes.
Alison: Ralph Fiennes, thank you…
[Alison and Michael laugh]
Alison: … won for Most Vile Villain. I don’t know why I can’t say his name still. It picked up three awards at the inaugural ITV National Movie Awards: Best Family Film, Best Actor for Dan Radcliffe, and Best Actress for Emma Watson, which does always seems to happen and poor Rupert just gets the short end of the stick all the time.
Michael: Yep. [laughs]
Kat: Aww. He’s just there. He’s just there to be pretty and – don’t kill me, fans – not even that pretty. So…
Alison: Yeah, no, I agree with you.
Kat: Yeah.
Alison: Anyway… nominated for Best Live Action Family Film at the Broadcast Film Critics Association, won 2007 People’s Choice Award for Favorite Movie Drama…
Kat: Drama? Okay.
[Everyone laughs]
Alison: Which I don’t know how it got drama but all right…
[Michael laughs]
Kat: Sure.
Alison: … they just picked up on angsty Harry and decided it was dramatic. Six awards for the 13th Empire Awards: Best Film, David Yates won Best Director…
Michael: Pfft.
Kat: Hey!
[Alison and Michael laugh]
Kat: Don’t be hating on Yates! Don’t be hating on the Yates.
Alison: I don’t think it was that bad.
Michael: Oh, I will get to him. I have a lot to say about that man. [laughs]
Kat: Oh, honey, I know we will.
Alison: He did receive the BAFTA Britannia Award for Artistic Excellence in Directing before he directed so… calm down, Michael. [laughs]
Kat: Oh!
Alison: Someone liked him.
Michael: Yes, which includes Order of the Phoenix, but low on the list when they talk about it. [laughs]
Alison: Yeah. Imelda Staun… my gosh, I can’t speak today. I’m sorry.
Rosie: Imelda Staunton. [laughs]
Alison: Imelda Staunton, yes, was nominated for British Actress in a Supporting Role at the London Film Critics Circle Awards.
Michael: Now, that is well deserved.
Alison: Yes!
Kat: Yes, it is. She’s incredible.
Alison: She is fabulous.
Michael: I don’t know if it was… this rewatch of this film more than any other is where it hit me; the scene where she’s being dragged away by the centaurs, I was like, “No! Come back! You were so good!”
[Michael and Rosie laugh]
Kat: Yeah. “Please don’t leave us! The best actress in the movie.”
Michael: “Don’t leave us! Don’t leave us with these guys!”
[Kat and Michael laughs]
Alison: Yeah, she nails this part. Oh, it’s fabulous.
Kat: Mhm.
Alison: Nominated for 2008 BAFTA for Best Production Design and Best Special Visual Effects. Let’s see… going down this list… nominated for Art Directors Guild and Costume Designers Guild. All right, I talked about sweaters multiple times so I think that’s deserved. Everyone has fabulous sweaters.
[Kat and Michael laugh]
Kat: There’s a lot of good jumpers. Lots of good jumpers.
Alison: Yes.
Kat: The heart ones that Fred and George wear. Oh my God, I love those.
Alison: Yeah.
Rosie: I love that they’re always wearing identical clothes… all different colored versions of the same outfit; it’s just beautiful.
Alison: Yeah. It makes me laugh.
Kat: Pretty much. Very cute. Very, very cute.
Alison: Yeah, I mean, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Everything Emma Watson wears, I want it in my closet right now.
Rosie: Except for her breathy acting. [laughs]
Alison: Well, yeah. [laughs] Let’s see…. British Academy Children’s Awards, nominated for Best Feature Film, and Hugo Awards, nominated for Best Dramatic Presentation in 2008.
Kat: Interesting.
Alison: So lots of nominations. Not very many wins. But I feel like that’s Potter movies.
Kat: Surprise, surprise.
[Michael and Rosie laugh]
Michael: Quite honestly, though, considering where we were all putting it on our list…
Alison: Yeah.
Michael: … of the Potter movies that would deserve to be nominated, this is, perhaps, not one of them, so… to win, rather. This wouldn’t take a win against other movies from that year.
Kat: No. What category would it win?
Rosie: Set design. [laughs] I think the set design in this film is amazing.
Alison: Yeah.
Kat: Okay.
Michael: Best new cast additions.
Alison and Rosie: Yeah.
Kat: Oh, that’s a good one.
Rosie: Supporting role or something for Evanna would be a good one.
Michael: Yeah.
Alison: Oh, yeah.
Kat: I could see that.
Michael: Yeah, absolutely. Which, actually, leads perfectly into the meat of our discussion. There’s a lot of great things to talk about with this movie.
[Alison laughs]
Michael: And of course, listeners, we do want you to make sure and call in with your thoughts. We are watching you on the chat, too. We are definitely seeing mostly… if we could see your faces, you’d all be pretty much nodding in agreement with everything we’re saying right now.
[Everyone laughs]
Michael: Good cast additions, good sets, all that good stuff. And yes, there were a lot of new cast members.
Rosie: Pretty good writing.
Michael: Yes, and some writing that happened.
[Kat laughs]
Rosie: Did you see that a second ago they were all saying about how we should call the episode “The Great Yate Hate Debate”?
[Everyone laughs]
Kat: Say that five times fast.
Rosie: “Great Yate Hate Debate.”
[Everyone laughs]
Michael: Well, and… yeah, so maybe we can talk a little bit about him before we get to the cast. So David Yates comes along and everybody goes, “Who is that?”
[Rosie laughs]
Michael: With good reason because David Yates had pretty much strictly done television up to this point. He had never directed a film. And he grabbed Nicholas Hooper and said, “Come with me,” and Nicholas Hooper was like, “Oh, okay.” And together they made Order of the Phoenix. And I feel personally that you can tell that Hooper and Yates are both from television and not film. It’s pretty evident in the way that the film turned out. Again, we joked in the show during the chat about how the scenes just run, run along, from one moment to the next, which is definitely how TV works in many ways.
Alison and Kat Yeah.
Michael: And Yates did reflect later on on Order of the Phoenix and said, “I had absolutely no idea what I was getting into.”
[Rosie laughs]
Michael: Which is also evident. [laughs]
Kat: Yeah, this would have been a good time to pull out the movie split.
Rosie: Yes.
Alison: Yes, definitely agree.
Kat: I would advocate for this being two movies or – and I know we’ve said this over and over and over and over and over again – a TV show. Let’s make Harry Potter into a TV series.
Michael: Which I’m sure Yates would have loved.
Kat: Please, lord in heaven, please let this happen. I am praying.
[Alison and Michael laugh]
Kat: I mean, they’re making it into everything else; why not a TV series?
Alison: Yeah.
Rosie: Because it would take too long and the people who were actually acting in it would grow up too fast.
Kat: Well, whatever.
Michael: Yeah, the one thing, I think, that holds Harry Potter back from being a TV series is that you need a mammoth amount of extras that are children and because of the laws with how long children can work it would take forever.
Rosie: Yeah, it would just…
Kat: It doesn’t have to be live action. It can be animated. Whatever.
Rosie: That’s true.
Michael: I would love an animated one. Yeah, an animated Harry Potter would be great.
Kat: I’m down with that. I’m down with that.
Michael: So yes, that’s what the background was on Yates and he would definitely change up his style noticeably about three more times…
[Alison laughs]
Michael: … because I think you can see a pretty distinct change from here to Half-Blood. I still get the feeling – he has never really said this – but I get a strong feeling that he went back and watched his predecessors’ work a little more closely.
[Rosie laughs]
Michael: And that’s why Half-Blood and Hallows resulted the way they did.
Kat: I’m wondering if anyone listening has any thoughts on Yates. If you do…
Michael: They’re all saying, “No animation!”
[Michael and Rosie laugh]
Kat: No animation? It would be amazing. But if you have thoughts on Yates, gives us a call.
Michael: Yes, please.
Kat: It is 206-462-5287 or on Skype at AlohomoraMN. And look, somebody is calling. I’m going to answer it.
Michael: Please do.
Rosie: Go ahead.
Kat: Hello, caller.
Caller: Hi.
Rosie: Hi!
Kat and Michael: Hello.
Kat: What’s your name? Where are you calling from?
Caller: I am Sabrina McClain. I am from Lexington. I’d like to mention that in the movies we never see Lily stand up to James and I think that they should have included her in “Snape’s Worst Memory” for that reason.
Michael: Ooh, Sabrina, that’s interesting. Interesting that you point that out because Lily was in the film. She was filmed. That whole memory was filmed in its entirety and it was cut. [laughs] So it’s all there, just somewhere in a vault…. Warner Bros.
Rosie: That scene and the changes made to that scene are one of my biggest issues with this film. It is so bad.
Alison Ugh, yeah.
Rosie: And I think they cut that scene because even though they filmed the whole thing, they understood that it was bad so they tried to make the best out of a bad situation…
[Kat laughs]
Rosie: … and just made it even worse.
Michael: Mhm.
Alison: Yeah.
Michael: Yeah, the way that they chopped it up – and we talked about this in the chat – we were already disappointed because pretty much none of the actors in that scene looked like they should.
Alison: No.
Michael: And then on top of that, the scene is super confusing because the Legilimency feels like it was just shoehorned into the script because it had to be there. And the memory is just a trainwreck because there’s no explanation for it – it just kind of happens. And then again, just like the rest of the movie – moving on, keep going! There’s no reflection on it.
Alison: Yeah.
Michael: So a lot of the reflection on the Marauders is lost. Which is interesting, listeners, because if Cuarón had stayed on, he had intended to put the Marauders explanation in this movie.
Kat: Oh.
Michael: Yeah.
Kat: Where’d you hear that?
Alison: That would have been interesting.
Michael: He said it – Cuarón said it a long time ago. He thought that was his plan, but of course it didn’t pan out that way. And I feel like that scene where Sirius is sitting there with Harry with a jacket and no other clothes on…
[Everyone laughs]
Michael: … at the station, I think that’s almost the place where it could have been mentioned. “Oh yeah, the Marauders’ Map. Ha-ha-ha! Good times.” But nothing of course came of that. I saw that in the chat, I_See_Thestrals said,
“I tend to look at the movie more than the director.”
Kat: Yeah.
Michael: But I_See_Thestrals, a good lesson here is that if you take any film classes you will learn about something called the auteur theory. The auteur theory suggests that the director of a film is the film, that everything you see is the director’s expressed purpose. And so I think – especially with the Harry Potter films because we got so many different directors – I think that it is very noticeable…
Rosie: Yeah.
Michael: … what the directors are doing.
Rosie: The differences between films are definitely highly influenced by the directors rather than the continuity of the cast or anything.
Michael: Yeah. I think it’s also worth mentioning because since I mentioned that Hooper also came along with Yates from television – Nicholas Hooper – we should talk about the music for a minute because there was a lot of praise in the chat for the soundtrack of Order of the Phoenix. What do you guys think?
Kat: Ugh, it’s not my favourite.
Alison: I… yeah.
Rosie: It has good moments and slight… the detail in a couple of the scenes is nice, like the fireworks scene with the music.
Kat: Mhm.
Alison: Oh, yeah.
Rosie: And the opening sequence, the music is darker there and it does kind of fit as an opening after the death in the last film.
Michael: Mhm.
Rosie: But it doesn’t have the same atmosphere as some of the others have, I think.
Alison: It’s forgettable…
Rosie: Yeah.
Alison: … I think is the thing. Like you said, there’s those good standout moments, but for the most part… you just don’t think about it. It’s not like John Williams’s score or even Desplat’s at the end… or in the last few, which are beautifully done.
Kat: Right.
Alison: It’s just kind of there.
Kat: Just real quick while we have a second, we have a couple of people trying to call in who haven’t added us to your contact. You have to add us to Skype before we can add you to the call. So if you’re listening to this, be sure to add us to your contact list and then we’ll be able to add you to the call. Okay, cool.
Rosie: Just to read a few comments, The_Giant_Squid says that they especially love the happy music and it makes them want to dance, which I definitely agree with.
Kat: Mhm.
Rosie: And RoseLumos says that when people think of Harry Potter music, they think of John Williams. And to me, I definitely think of that iconic theme and that kind of iconic atmosphere that comes with that music, and it was a bit lacking in this film.
Kat: And speaking of callers, we do have one of our actual past guests on here. It’s Jacob. Hello, Jacob.
Caller: Hello.
Rosie: Hello.
Kat: How are you?
Caller: I’m all right. How are you guys?
Kat: Very good, thanks. What do you want to bring up? What do you want to discuss?
Caller: Just talking about the soundtrack, the fifth one is one of my favorite soundtracks.
Rosie: Oh, okay.
Caller: And I think it’s mostly because… I listen to it a lot, but it’s mostly because they play a lot of the music from the fifth movie at the Wizarding World…
Alison: [laughs] Oh!
Caller: … and it reminds me of that, so I do it for that reason.
Kat: Oh. They do. He’s right, they do play that.
Michael: Yeah, that’s true. They pump Order through the speakers at the Wizarding World.
Kat: And rightfully so because a lot of it is very… fast…
Caller: Very upbeat.
Alison: Yeah.
Kat: Runny, as Michael would say. [laughs]
Caller: They play Umbridge’s theme a lot, and it almost gets annoying, but it’s still awesome.
Kat: That’s true.
Alison: Oh, that’s true.
Michael: Yeah.
Kat: It is awesome, I would agree.
Alison: I feel like that theme is running through a lot of things.
Rosie: Yeah.
Kat: Yeah. They also play “Harry’s Wonderous World” which I love.
Alison: Oh, I love that song.
Michael: See, I think that the difference for me between Hooper and Williams is that, as many people know, Williams pretty much writes his music beat for beat for what’s going on the screen…
Rosie: Yeah.
Kat: Mhm.
Michael: … whereas Hooper definitely does blanket themes that are just like, “Here’s the general mood.” Because one of my least favorite parts of the soundtrack that he did was the scene in the prophecy hall where it’s just that low kind of “baaaaa” tone.
Kat: Yeah, yeah.
Michael: And you know Williams would have been like “boom boom, ba-da-ba-boom…”
[Alison and Michael laugh]
Kat: Oh, right. Yes, yes.
Alison: Yeah.
Michael: So, Hooper, like Yates, would eventually grow his themes, as we will see later in Half-Blood Prince.
Rosie: Yeah.
Michael: So… and again, speaking of… oh, go ahead, Kat.
Kat: I was just going to say, we have another caller. It’s our Aussie friend, Amanda, the best Bellatrix we all know.
Michael: Oh, hey Amanda!
Caller: Hi.
Kat: Hello. Is it like six in the morning for you?
Caller: Uh, five in the morning.
Alison: Oh my gosh!
Kat: She’s been up all night. She was with us for the movie watch.
Caller: Oh, thank you.
Alison: Wow.
Kat: Yeah. It’s dedication.
Caller: I enjoyed it thoroughly because this was one of my favorite movies. Before Deathly Hallows came out, it was on the top of my list.
Rosie: I wonder who your favorite character could possibly be.
[Everyone laughs]
Caller: Definitely not Bellatrix. I don’t like her at all.
[Michael and Rosie laugh]
Caller: But just in general, I like the movie. I think as a film it works just as well as Goblet of Fire. And I’ve got to say, the possession scene still makes me cry.
Kat: Oh.
Caller:
I love it.
Kat: So, very the opposite of what the rest of us think.
[Everyone laughs]
Caller: Yeah, I know. I don’t know what it is because I still like watching it again with you guys. I sort of got to the bit with the Ministry and I’m like, there’s a lot missing. But that doesn’t bother me so much because it makes for a cleaner scene for a film for someone who’s just walking in as a not-book fan.
Michael: Mhm.Rosie: Sure.
Caller: But the actual fight with the Death Eaters is like, you blink and it’s over. [laughs] But I do miss the 3-D in the scene as well.
[Rosie laughs]
Caller: That scene with the thestrals, I’m half-reaching for glasses before going, “Wait a minute.” I haven’t done that for a long time.
Michael: Amanda, I have to ask, what about Order makes it work for you in a similar way to Goblet? Because what we were saying before, we all put Goblet at the bottom of our list. So I’m interested about what in Goblet and Order clicks for you.
Caller: I think just to go back a movie to Prisoner of Azkaban, everybody got angry at that film because it left out so much, and it made it inconsistent in the end and the characters didn’t make sense. Step forward to Goblet of Fire, and that’s when the films really hit their stride of being a really good mix of an interesting captivating movie that could be held on its own against the books. I’m not putting it very well; it is five in the morning.
Michael: [laughs] No, I get what you’re saying actually.
Caller: Yeah. I think for a casual movie viewer, the first two are magical. I personally find them a little bit boring going back to these days because they have lighter stories.
Rosie: They are lighter.
Caller: Yeah. Prisoner of Azkaban, I get angry because the story is completely wrong and someone just walking off the street would be like, “Huh? I don’t get why these people care about each other.”
[Rosie laughs]
Caller: But by the time we reach these two, I think someone with the prior knowledge of the movies can walk in and fully understand what’s going on. And I also like Order of the Phoenix because it throws in tidbits for the fans like the goat.
Michael: Hmm.
[Kat laughs]
Caller: It’s very good to be like, “Oh yeah! I know that!”
Rosie: There are still some gaping holes in the plotline of this movie that I don’t think people can gather just from actually watching it.
Caller: There are worse plot holes that come up.
Kat: That’s true.
Michael: Well, I think the problem as far as plot holes go is going to be inevitable with any of the films, but each film begets the next film’s plot holes unfortunately. So, even though there’s plot holes in Order, they may have been left over from Goblet.
Rosie: Yeah. But they don’t fill them in.
Michael: Yeah, and they’ll never…
Rosie: Do some patchwork. [laughs]
Michael: Well, yeah. By the last movie there’s some gratuitous emergency patchwork going on, like you said.
Rosie: Yeah. Like the amount of times they say “Padfoot” without actually saying that Padfoot is Sirius…
Caller: Yeah.
Rosie: That is just improper.
Kat: [sighs] Yeah, that’s true. I’ll give you that one.
Michael: Well, it’s interesting that Amanda said that this film is actually more easier for a non-fan to digest, because I think we were seeing in the chat that the general opinion is that it’s not.
Caller: Mhm.
Michael: I left the film the first time saying, “What happened?” And I knew the book back to front! [laughs]
[Rosie laughs]
Michael: But of course, we had some really great additions not only in the director’s seat and the music, but also in the cast as we’ve mentioned.
Kat: Mhm.
Michael: We added to the roster Evanna Lynch as Luna Lovegood and Natalia Tena…
Kat: You’re welcome for Evanna Lynch, everybody – who’s a MuggleNet fan.
Michael: Yes, yes.
Kat: You’re welcome!
Michael: [laughs]
She did see the casting call on MuggleNet and that is how she got through. And there’s… if you’ve ever seen, listeners, her audition tape, it’s pretty great because she basically says: [as Luna] “You don’t have to choose me, but if you don’t, it’s the wrong choice.”
[Everyone laughs]
Michael: Pretty straightforward. It’s pretty hilarious. Natalia Tena came on as Tonks…
Rosie: She did.
Alison: Who’s so underutilized.
Kat: [gasps] I don’t know how you cannot like her. I love her.
Rosie: I love…
Alison: Oh, who – sorry? No, I love her, I just said she’s…
Rosie: She’s good at a lot of things, but as Tonks, she’s just not how I pictured her. She’s just not bubbly and energetic enough in my head.
Kat: I think that’s the script though.
Rosie: Probably.
Michael: Yeah.
Alison: I just don’t think they used her enough.
Rosie: Yeah.
Michael: Yeah, I think that’s the script.
Kat: That’s definitely true.
Michael: She has – if you have never seen it, listeners – she has an excellent scene that was cut from Deathly Hallows: Part 2 where her and Lupin reunite…
Alison: [gasps] Yes.
Michael: … and that’s where she’s at her most Tonks-iest.
Rosie: I don’t think I’ve seen that.
Alison: Oh, it makes me cry.
Kat: It’s really cute.
Michael: It’s really good.
Rosie: [laughs] I’ll have to look for it.[laughs]
Kat: Yeah.
Michael: Of course Helena Bonham Carter steps very perfectly into the shoes of Bellatrix Lestrange, and it’s almost like it was written for her…
[Everyone laughs]
Michael: Which interestingly…
Rosie: [laughs] But it wasn’t!
Michael: It wasn’t, yeah. It was supposed to be Helen McCrory, who would go on to play Narcissa Malfoy.
Kat: Which is so weird!
[Everyone laughs]
Alison: I can’t see it.
[Everyone laughs]
Kat: I can’t picture that, and I love Helen McCrory. She’s one of my favorite British actresses, and I just can’t see her as Bellatrix. But I’m so intrigued. If there’s a audition tape or something out there, I want it so bad.
[Michael laughs]
Kat: I really want to see it, I really do.
Michael: It ended up being fortuitous because Helen McCrory got pregnant around this time, so she couldn’t be in the film. But she would come back to play Narcissa, and I think the two of them ended up fitting the roles they got much better than one ones they were sighted for.
Alison: Yeah.
Kat: I agree.
Michael: George Harris sauntered in as Kingsley Shacklebolt. [laughs]
Kat: Oh my God, I love him.
[Everyone laughs]
Alison: Love him.
Kat: He’s my favorite. I love him.
Michael: And listeners, if you don’t know, he is the captain that you see in Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark
[Alison laughs]
Michael: That was one of his first breakout roles. So, nice to see that he’s still into acting after all this time.
Kat: And he is the quietest, most soft-spoken person that I’ve ever had the pleasure of speaking to. He’s kind and he’s just so sweet. It makes me love him even more.
[Rosie laughs]
Kat: That’s all.
[Everyone laughs]
Michael: And then of course, probably the most major of the new adult actors, Imelda Staunton was added as Professor Umbridge.
Kat: Did I leave her off the list?
Rosie: You did. I added her on there. [laughs]
Kat: Oh, whoops.
[Everyone laughs]
Kat: I was like, I don’t remember putting her on that list. Thank you.
[Michael laughs]
Kat: How could I have overlooked that one?
Michael: Kind of an important one.
Kat: Oh, kind of.
[Everyone laughs]
Rosie: The character is different from the books…
Michael: Yes.
Kat: Yes.
Rosie: … but for the films she is perfect. That is exactly what they needed Umbridge to be in this film.
Alison: Spot on.
Kat: Exactly.
Rosie: Yes. It’s stunning.
Alison: Casting in this film was just… some of the best casting that I think has happened in the entire series…
Rosie: Mhm.
Alison: … happened in this film, with Evanna…
Kat: Since Lockhart, pretty much.
Alison and Rosie: Yeah.
Alison: Like Evanna, Imelda Staunton, Helen Bonham Carter, just all of them – perfect…
Kat: Ace. Ace!
Alison: Right on.
Kat: Speaking of right on, we have another caller. Hello, caller.
Caller: Hi.
Kat: Hi, what’s your name? Where are you calling from?
Caller: I’m Kacie, I’m in California, and I’m FentlingSmidget right now on the chat.
Kat: Oh, hello!
Michael: Oh, FentlingSmidget! [laughs] You’re the one who came up with our shipping name, right?
[Everyone laughs]
Kat: Yeah, Danael.
Caller: [laughs] Yes.
[Michael laughs]
Caller: I just had a question relating to that. I was wondering what you guys thought of Daniel’s acting in this film. I know Michael likes his wardrobe, but…
[Everyone laughs]
Kat: Michael likes more than just his wardrobe.
Michael: Yes I do, and I would steal that wardrobe. And if he was wearing it, I would steal him in it as well.
[Caller and Michael laugh]
Michael: Just saying…
Rosie: This is a very difficult film for him to act. Just some of the things that he has to do from the director’s decisions are a bit strange…
Kat: Yeah.
Rosie: … but I think he does the best that he could with that. But there’s so much awkward twitching and it’s just off-putting! [laughs]
Kat: All the neck rubbing…
Rosie: Yeah. It’s so weird!
Kat: Is this a movie about a masseuse?
[Rosie laughs]
Kat: I don’t get it. Okay, it’s not the worst, although I always think about… because he has come out and said before that filming Half-Blood that he was drunk a lot of the time…
Rosie: Yeah.
Kat: … and really rough, and I can see the spiral in this movie.
Michael: Mmm.
Kat: Doesn’t this take place when he was doing Equus?
Rosie: …
Kat: Because he’s super, super, super, super, super skinny.
Michael: I thought he did Equus after that.
Rosie: I thought he did it in the gap between the two.
Kat: Right, but he would be losing weight and getting in shape at this point.
Rosie: Probably, yeah.
Michael: Yeah.
Kat: Okay. Which kind of shows, because he looks a little gaunt and a little skinny.
Rosie: Yeah.
Kat: A little off.
Alison: Yeah.
Kat: Definitely not the Harry we read about who eventually fits into Dudley’s clothes.
Rosie: No… and I think there’s so much emotion in the book, like this is the angsty Harry and the sassy Harry thing where we constantly flip between the two. But Daniel’s acting in this film… there were several moments where we wanted him to be yelling and then he didn’t, and then there were several moments where we didn’t want him to be yelling but he was. There were some odd things going on where it’s not quite realistic, I think.
Alison: That’s kind of my – people are going to hate me – my problem with Dan Radcliffe a lot of the time in these movies. I feel like he’s so wooden.
Rosie: Yeah.
Alison: He’s so… just kind of there sometimes. I mean, he’s got really great moments, especially near the end of the series, but…
Kat: Yeah.
Alison: … he just… there’s no emotion.
Kat: You know why I think that is too, and that’s why I brought up Equus? I think the stage really changed Dan. And it definitely made him grow…
Alison: Oh, yeah.
Kat: … and be more animated and more comfortable with himself.
Alison: Yeah.
Kat: That’s why I think the later movies… obviously he’s also older and knows more of what he’s doing, but he’s just so much more alive in the later movies.
Alison: Yeah.
Kat: He doesn’t feel stiff and awkward and like he’s nervous to do anything.
Rosie: Yeah.
Kat: And I think that has a large part to do with his time on stage, which is why I’m so thrilled that he did that.
Rosie: Yeah.
Kat: And I hope he continues to do that because he is a brilliant actor now – he’s amazing. If you’ve seen any of his other work, he’s incredible.
Alison: Yeah.
Michael: Yeah.
Rosie: Equus was February 2007 and this movie obviously wrapped at the end of November 2006. So yeah, Equus was after this film.
Alison: It was after.
Kat: But this was the preparatory time probably for him.
Alison: Yeah.
Rosie: Yeah.
Kat: Got it.
Michael: Yeah.
Kat: It makes sense.
Michael: Yeah. I think Dan is also working with a really rough script here…
Kat: Mhm.
Michael: … compared to… he’ll get better. I think he takes the lead excellently in both Deathly Hallows [films]. I think that’s when he finally shoulders the burden of a lead really well.
Kat: Mhm.
Alison: Yeah.
Rosie: Yeah.
Michael: But yeah, he’s still struggling here. But again, not all of it is his fault. I’m sure there were probably different ways that he approached various scenes and Yates was like, “No, no, we’ll go with this one.” So, it’s a mix of director and actor, which interestingly is worth talking about. One of the actors who was established in the series and whose character was changed a lot: Sirius Black. Let’s talk about him. [laughs]
Rosie: He has good hair in this film. [laughs]
Alison: Yes.
Kat: Great hair! I mean those curls…
Alison: How do I get those?
[Everyone laughs]
Kat: I know. I said this in the chat, but I want his stylist’s number.
Alison: Really, between him and Emma Watson, I’m just like…
Kat: What is that product?
Alison: … how? [laughs]
Michael: Yes. But as was noted a lot in the chat, listeners, feel free to call in with your thoughts, especially on Sirius and what was done with him.
Kat: Mhm.
Michael: But he seems to have become very sympathetic and sweet.
Kat: Ugh!
Michael: Pretty much the ideal godfather.
Rosie: He’s completely forgotten the torment of…
Michael: Yeah. [laughs]
Alison: Yeah.
Rosie: He’s meant to be all tormented being stuck in his house or tormented because of his Azkaban past.
Michael: So over it.
Rosie: But there’s nothing. He’s just happy. [laughs] It’s very strange.
Michael: Yeah.
Alison: Yeah.
Michael: Yeah. Everybody’s pointing out in the chat, even the dog was a different dog.
Rosie: Yeah.
[Everyone laughs]
Michael: Sirius has changed a lot.
Kat: Yes, he has.
Michael: So.
Kat: We have a caller, Lauren. Hello.
Caller: Hi, this is The_Giant_Squid_2.
Kat: Oh, lovely.
Alison and Rosie: Oh!
Michael: Hello, Lauren.
Kat: Thank you for calling. Where are you calling from?
Caller: I’m in Georgia in the United States.
Kat: Oh, okay. What’s your question? What do you want to discuss?
Caller: So Sirius, in the book he’s kind of an enormous jerk to Harry for a lot of the time…
Michael: Yeah.
Caller: … and then in the movie he’s this really nice father figure, hugging him and having these sweet little moments. And I really agree with you guys when you say that he’s much more sympathetic and people like him a lot more for Gary Oldman’s portrayal.
Kat: Thank you very much! I said this.
Alison: Yep.
Rosie: Yes.
Michael: Lauren, do you think it’s a good thing the movies made him sympathetic before his death, or do you think it robs the movie in any way?
Caller: I think it’s nice for the movie, but I don’t know if it’s accurate for the books. Do you know what I mean? It makes a nice movie but it’s not necessarily true to how he’s supposed to be.
Michael: Mhm.
Rosie: Yeah, he fits…
Michael: Keeping in mind of course that… go ahead, Rosie.
Rosie: He fits the godfather role a bit more in the film…
Caller: Yeah.
Michael: Yeah.
Alison: Yes, exactly.
Rosie: … matching the caring, natural father figure thing.
Michael: Yeah.
Rosie: But then we still got those unexplained things like the “Nice one, James!” line that’s just completely out of nowhere.
Alison: Exactly.
Rosie: Yeah. It’s just there are again issues. [laughs]
[Caller laughs]
Michael: Yeah, that…
Rosie: But I do love Gary Oldman, and he is perfect for Sirius, in my opinion, so I don’t care. [laughs]
Michael: Yeah. Well, we have to keep in mind that, again, things that were consequences from the previous movies, while Sirius is present in Goblet of Fire, he’s a log in the movie in Goblet of Fire.
[Alison, Kat, and Rosie laugh]
Michael: That’s all we’ve seen of him. That’s his presence between…
Alison and Kat: A log…
Kat: That’s a Sirius log.
[Michael and Rosie laugh]
Michael: So to make up for his lack of presence, obviously, the choice that was made was to make him more relatable and sympathetic so that the people who perhaps haven’t read the book or aren’t as familiar might have a bit more of a shock when he is, of course, killed off.
Kat: Wait, you know what’s funny about the log in Goblet? It’s burnt, so it’s Black.
[Alison, Kat, and Michael laugh]
Kat: Sorry.
Michael: Hilarious.
Kat: Bad joke Saturday. Here we go. All right, we have another caller on the line. Hello, caller.
Caller: Hello.
Kat: Hi. What’s your name? Where are you calling from?
Caller: Hey. I’m Alyssa. I’m calling from Florida, and I’m RoseLumos on everything, I guess, on the chat, on the forums.
Rosie: Hello, RoseLumos.
Caller: Hello.
Michael: It’s good to talk to you.
Alison: Yeah.
Caller: Hi. So I just got off of an ad, so hopefully I’m still on the same topic you guys are, but as long as you’re talking about Sirius…
Michael: That’s okay.
Kat: Yeah, Sirius.
Caller: Okay. One of my things is in the books, I like how weird… they have a strained relationship, Harry and… they’re never really father and son or like friends; they almost seem to be on two different paths of conversation whenever they talk. It’s nice to see them be together in the movie, but it’s also just not as faithful to the book as they should be, in my opinion, and also just age difference that really… I know he’s a great actor, but maybe they should have looked for someone closer to the age range when they were casting.
Michael: Yeah, that’s something that we pointed out during the film is, of course, that pretty much all of the adult actors are aged between five to ten years from their book counterparts.
Rosie: Yeah. But I think that is an accident partly as well because if you think about the first movie, when they cast the actors for the Mirror of Erised scene, they didn’t know how young James and Lily were when they died, so they had to then subsequently age all the other characters. But thinking about the way their relationship is different, I think that we needed to see Harry have a happy relationship outside of the school situation and outside of the Weasleys within this movie so that he has something to fight for from this point on once he’s fighting for Sirius’s memory and he’s fighting for his parents’ memor[ies] and all of that stuff a bit more than he has been previously; it’s another thing that the Death Eaters and that Voldemort have taken from him, so he has to fight to regain it or to find some stability. But I think… I don’t know if you guys agree, but it changes Sirius’s death, him having that relationship and him being a happy character in this film rather than a tormented one, because Sirius’s death in the book is something that Harry blames himself for but is actually not his fault; it’s more perhaps Dumbledore’s fault or perhaps Sirius’s fault for being reckless, whereas in the movie, if Harry hadn’t gone to the…
Michael: [laughs] It’s his fault.
Kat: Yeah, it’s his fault.
Rosie: It is his fault. In the movie, it’s his fault.
[Kat and Michael laugh]
Rosie: And that might be why they put in [the Killing Curse] as the spell that Bellatrix uses in the movie so that it’s not his fault, but Bellatrix definitely did kill him in this scene, but otherwise, Sirius would never have been there if it [were]n’t for Harry. He’s there to save Harry and not to get out of the house.
Kat: Especially because he… isn’t it funny that Kreacher is in the movie, but he’s not in the movie?
Alison: Exactly.
Rosie: Yeah.
Michael: Oh, okay, let’s talk about that.
[Alison and Michael laugh]
Kat: Even though… because people are like, “Oh, but did he even talk to Kreacher? No, but Kreacher was super important to keep in the movie?”
Michael: Yeah. Okay.
Kat: Bad choices.
Michael: So here’s the problem with that, as most of the listeners probably know by now, but of course, Kreacher was completely cut from the scripts toward filming, and then Rowling said, “Unh unh unh! You need him.” Which really… I don’t know about that. There might’ve been ways to get around that.
Kat: Yeah, because she wanted to keep him because of, obviously, his whole storyline in Deathly Hallows, but then they didn’t even use the storyline in Deathly Hallows! Ugh!
Michael: Yeah, it ends up being very much glossed over. Some of the…
Kat: And I’m sorry. I’m being so loud, but I wanted that storyline so badly.
Michael: No, well, because the consequence here is that Kreacher is shoehorned in with some reshoots because he was not meant to be in the film and…
Rosie: But he had some really nice alliteration. [laughs]
Michael: He does, yeah. He does have some… he’s definitely striking in his appearance. I think what’s weird is in his first appearance, he’s shown to actually be attending to Mrs. Black’s portrait, which we never see, and she’s talking to him. You can actually hear it if you’re listening closely.
Alison: Oh.
Rosie: Portraits.
Michael: Yeah, but the actual portrait… but they didn’t have a budget for the portrait.
Rosie: But again, that’s more tormented Sirius, isn’t it?
Michael: Yeah.
Rosie: Without all of the details as to what’s tormenting Sirius stuck in that house, and the locket’s not there, and they’re cleaning the house, and all that storyline is cut as well. It’s just…
Kat: Also a giant mistake.
Alison and Rosie: Yeah.
Michael: RoseLumos in the chat says, “There should be a graveyard of Harry Potter plots that die between the books and the movies.”
[Alison and Michael laugh]
Michael: Very true. Yes.
Alison: So every subplot?
Michael: Well, and like we said in the scene where Sirius comes down the stairs and Harry is in the living room with Kreacher, and he’s like, “Kreacher, enough of your bile! Away with you!” And you’re like, “And the point of that was…?” Yep, nothing! [laughs]
Kat: No point.
Michael: Yeah, just had to have in there. Let’s see, what else can we talk about that we talked about in the… and listeners, feel free to call in with your thoughts on Kreacher. Please do. Oh, you know what? Let’s also talk about… since we talked so much at length about Sirius and Kreacher, let’s talk about another great character who’s not so great in the movies, Professor Lupin.
Alison and Kat: Aww.
Michael: Where’d you go, Professor Lupin?
[Alison laughs]
Kat: He’s so underutilized.
Alison: Yeah, I know.
Michael: Oh, God. And what’s weird to…
Rosie: Was he filming something else at this point? Because he’s just not there.
Michael: Oh, Thewlis?
Rosie: Yeah.
Michael: I don’t know. I’m not sure what he was up to at the time, but it is, I feel, especially frustrating because he is the key to picking Harry up from the Dursleys’. And he is the only major character who was cut out from that scene. Ad the trust…
Kat: Yeah, it’s all new people. I mean, except for…
Alison and Kat: Moody, but…
Rosie: And now I’ll mention the fact that this is actual Moody, rather than…
Michael: “Actual Moody.”
[Alison and Michael laugh]
Michael: Exactly. So we have a little bit of a gap there, and then of course, we do see Lupin a few more times. He’s at Grimmauld Place at dinner, and he has one line.
[Alison laughs]
Rosie: It’s the most important line. [laughs]
Michael: [laughs] Of the whole scene! And then he also is, of course, at the Ministry at the end battling, and he of course has a big moment when he holds Harry back. They did keep that from…
Rosie: Healer in Training says this movie should be called Harry Potter and the Lack of Lupin.
Kat: It should be.
[Michael laughs]
Kat: That… I know Rosie dislikes it for some very strange reason. I love that silent moment where it all goes silent and Lupin is holding…
Alison: Oh, I do too.
Kat: It’s the only part of the whole movie that actually makes me feel something.
Alison: Dan’s face.
Kat: I don’t care at all that Sirius is dead. I care about what’s happening with Harry and Lupin.
Rosie: I think it’s just that by that point, I’m just so disappointed that I’m just not feeling it…
[Alison laughs]
Rosie: … and therefore, it doesn’t work for me.
Michael: It’s probably the most surprising moment of filmmaking in the whole film.
Kat: That’s what I mean. It’s the only thing that’s made me feel anything, and it’s like, there’s no sound. It’s just Dan screaming. You don’t hear it.
Rosie: Maybe I just wanted to hear him scream. [laughs]
Kat: It’s beautiful.
[Alison laughs]
Michael: Well, see, I like it because they put that subtle crescendo on his cry. That brings the sound back in. It’s…
Alison: And you just start getting…
Rosie: It’s Helena’s little laugh as she leaves the room that the sound comes back. And I love that moment. It’s just the evilness of the laugh.
Alison: And the echoing. Yeah.
Michael: Yeah, that works. I thought that worked well just because… again, it’s the most surprising moment to me because it’s like, “Oh, this is a film technique. Where have these been for the last two hours?”
[Everyone laughs]
Kat: Where have these been? Right.
Michael: Because again, the important thing for me personally when I watch the Potter films is that I do like to look at them not only as adaptations… and this is important, I think, listeners, for the future of the Potter films and how they are analyzed. Because they are not respected. The Potter films are not respected in the film community. They are just seen as franchise material that makes money, cash cows. But there is a lot of artistic merit in all of these films. That’s possibly why these films are… we were spoiled by these films. Very much so. There was never a young adult adaptation like this.
Rosie: That’s true.
Michael: So it’s important to go look at these films, not only as adaptations but [also] as works of film, and there’s… I think that helps take apart why even fans of the books like or do not like the films. Because I think to jump around from Columbus’s style to Cuarón’s to Newell’s to Yates’s, you’re going to find a lot of major differences between them.
Kat: By the way, for someone who says he can’t roll his R’s you do “Cuarón” very [well].
[Alison and Michael laugh]
Michael: Cuarón. It’s because I care about Cuarón.
Kat: Yes, you do very [well].
[Michael laughs]
Kat: I know you do. I know you do.
Michael: But we’re not here to talk about Prisoner of Azkaban.
Kat: No, we’re not.
Michael: But let’s see. What else can we discuss that was…?
Alison: Luna?
Kat: Luna!
Michael: We have a lot of good points, of course, that came up in the chat.
Kat: Luna! Luna!
Michael: Luna? You want to talk about Luna?
Kat: Danael!
[Alison, Kat, and Michael laugh]
Michael: Let’s talk about Luna.
Kat: By the way, I just wanted to say that – I think it was bent-winged-snidget – they came up with “Danael,” and I would like my own name for me and Jason Isaacs, so come up with something fun.
Rosie: There was one of those as well at some point.
Michael: Kat wants one that’s not a portmanteau of her name and Lucius Malfoy because she doesn’t like…
Rosie: Oh, okay. So not Katius.
Michael: … Jason Isaacs as Lucius Malfoy.
Kat: Oh, it was Katius – no, no, no. Something with Jason Isaacs instead, please.
Michael: Danael.
[Michael and Rosie laugh]
Kat: It’s your friend’s name but with an L on the end.
Michael: Yeah, it is! Yeah.
Kat: Spelled a little backward, but yeah.
Michael: It pretty much is her name with an L on the end, yeah. [laughs] I like that. I’m very happy that I have a shipping name with Daniel Radcliffe now.
Kat: You need to hash tag that every time you tweet now. Danael. Danael. Danael.
Alison: Really though.
Rosie: Kat, you’ve got Kason.
Kat: Kason. All right. Cool. I’m down with that.
Michael: Oh, there we go. Oh, there’s a very interesting one that I don’t really know if I can say that bent-winged-snidget put in there.
Kat: How is it spelled?
Michael: K-I-S-A-A-C-S.
Alison: Kisaacs? [laughs] What?
[Michael laughs]
Kat: Wait, what? How is it spelled?
Michael: K-I-S-A-A-C-S. Pronounce it in your head.
Rosie: I like Meowsaacs, though.
Alison: I do, too. That’s good.
Rosie: Meowsaacs.
Michael: Yeah, Meowsaacs. That one’s pretty funny.
Kat: Meowsaacs?
[Everyone laughs]
Kat: Oh, because of my last name. Got it.
Michael: Yeah. So let’s talk about Luna.
Alison: Luna!
Michael: Because Luna is a great addition. And everybody… there’s pretty much no hate for Luna, which really, there shouldn’t be.
Kat: I mean, how can there be?
Alison: Really, though?
Michael: Well, you know.
Kat: I mean, she’s got some bad hair at some points, but that’s not her fault.
[Alison and Michael laugh]
Michael: So the interesting thing we noticed with the reread of Order of the Phoenix is actually, Luna is not in the book very much.
Rosie: No. She’s a lot more in the films. Because she’s so amazing. [laughs]
Michael: Yes. She definitely takes a pretty good presence in the films, to the, I think, the benefit of the films and her character, I would say. What did you guys like most about… what’s your – and I’m asking the listeners as much as my fellow hosts here, so please call in if you have thoughts on this – favorite scenes, favorite moments from Evanna?
Kat: “You’re just as sane as I am.”
Alison: Definitely the forest.
Michael: [laughs] Those all came at the same time. Yeah. Where people pointed out, just wandering around in the Forbidden Forest…
Kat: With no shoes on.
Michael: With no shoes!
Alison: Yeah! Barefoot. In Scotland. What?
Kat: The fact that she wears Converse. That’s pretty dope.
Alison: Yeah. Go Luna.
Michael: That’s why you know [she] and Harry were made for each other. They both wear Converse.
Alison: They’re Converse-wearing.
[Michael laughs]
Kat: Someone pointed out this is the moment in this movie where the Luna and Neville shipping started.
Alison: For sure. They both grab each others hands, like, three times.
Kat: Lunville? Is that their…?
Alison: Lunville. [laughs]
Kat: Lunville? Is that their ship name?
Michael: Nelluna?
Rosie: Or Nevna.
Kat: Nevna?
Michael: Nevna.
Kat: Nevna, that’s a cute one. Nevna.
Michael: So… but of course…
Kat: Lovebottom? Ha ha! Sorry.
[Everyone laughs]
Kat: Longgood?
Michael: Most people are saying their favorite scenes are the “You’re just as sane as I am” or the moment with the Thestrals in the forest.
Alison: Thestrals.
Michael: I think also her last scene with Harry is very well done.
Kat: It’s beautiful.
Michael: It’s a very striking scene. So yeah, Evanna just knocks it out of the park on this film. She just is Luna Lovegood, as Rowling had said. Oh, people are hashtagging Lovebottom.
[Everyone laughs]
Kat: Nice. Nice.
Michael: So… and then there’s… I guess that leads really well into her and the rest of the young cast. So of course, we’ve got hints of Ginny, we’ve got Fred and George… but of course, yes, we have a lot of the younger cast having to step up, I believe, in this film because with the moments of the Dumbledore’s Army, that’s absolutely dominating, taking the film.
Kat: Yeah, they finally get scenes and words.
[Alison and Michael laugh]
Kat: Yay!
Michael: Substantial scenes! Yeah. Dumbledore’s Army. Thoughts on that, you guys?
Alison: I love the DA. I have said this before, but the DA is my redeeming thing for this whole book. I love it. I love just…
Rosie: I’m back, too.
Alison: Yay! Hi, Rosie.
Michael: Welcome back.
Alison: Just everything about it. And I love the montage of DA scenes they do in this film. That’s probably the best part for me in this film, is just… everyone is awesome! Ginny is kicking butt out there and being the Ginny from the books actually for once. Not awkward?
Michael: Well, speaking of Ginny, probably one of her most striking moments is actually one where she doesn’t have a line, and a lot of people noticed it and pointed it out. It’s the Christmas practice at the very end when Harry is walking over to Cho and Ginny just…
Rosie: She has a lot of longing looks.
Alison and Michael: Yes!
Michael: She just turns her head and gives it a look, and it’s… the way that it’s done in the film I actually like because it’s not overtly in your face.
Rosie: Yeah, the bit on the bridge as well, where after the first DA meeting, and Hermione says, “Cho couldn’t keep her eyes off you… and Ginny gives this look…
Alison: She just looks so sad…
Michael: [laughs] So yes, it’s almost like Bonnie Wright does an excellent job with Ginny when she doesn’t have to say anything.
Rosie: Yeah, unfortunately.
[Everyone laughs]
Michael: Her looks say it all, really. And then Fred and George, of course, steal the show. With their moment. It doesn’t live up to what you guys wanted? [laughs]
Kat: Yes in some ways, no in others. I like the fireworks, I like the moment, the little flying and all that, but I really miss Peeves. And I miss the… obviously, there’s blatant defiance, but I miss the Umbridge angle of the defiance.
Rosie: I miss the teachers sticking up for the rebellion of the students and all that.
Kat: Yeah, although that Flitwick “Unh! is the best single moment in that movie. It’s amazing!
Alison: I miss the build-up to why Fred and George leave. Because in the book we got that throughout the entire school year. I mean, they’re like, “We don’t wanna be here, but we’re here.
Kat: And it makes sense that it’s cut since we never find out how they open the shop. Harry never gives them their money.
Rosie: And again, there are close to that for people who have read the books: We see these Skiving Snackboxes; we see all of those little details so that if you have read the book, you can put the pieces together, but without it, you just go, “Oh, they’re gone. Okay. Bye!
Michael: I definitely think that that’s a problem that we noted as we were watching, that this movie introduces… okay, like the book, where – and we’ll get to this – Grawp is introduced, and then two chapters later he is used… that’s pretty much the whole movie. Where something is introduced and then immediately paid off, so… and that definitely happens with Fred and George. The scene right before they leave is the scene where they’re like, “We should leave!
[Everyone laughs]
Michael: And that continues to happen quite a bit throughout this film, which I think might be actually one of the problems with it. The other thing worth noting, listeners, that we didn’t mention before… another new person qho came on this film was the screenwriter. This is not Steve Kloves. And I think a lot of you in the chat thought it was. This is Michael Goldenberg. He’s new.
Kat: So random.
Michael: Yet another person who didn’t have a lot of experience, he had been… his best known thing prior to Order of the Phoenix was the 2003 Peter Pan.
[Everyone laughs]
Michael: And he hasn’t quite done anything big since. So that’s Michael Goldenberg, and you can definitely, again, tell that there is a difference in the screenwriting, I think, as well.
Rosie: It seems to me that they brought in so many untested people at this point in the franchise.
Michael: At this point…
Kat: Yeah. I know.
Rosie: This is where it’s getting big. Why would you not use the bigger people now?
Michael: [laughs] Yeah, maybe get somebody who’s a bit more on the trustworthy side. And it’s definitely a big risk for a studio like Warner Bros. to go with an unknown for this, in so many different areas, like you said.
Kat: Well, speaking of…
Rosie: I think, filming-wise, there were a lot of little details that were very good, though, and I think that we picked up on a few of those things throughout the film watch. We had the steps of authority with the fight between Umbridge and McGonagall where they were stepping up and down on the steps and having that discussion about who was winning the argument at the time. I really like that detail.
Kat: I mean… I love that moment, but we actually have another caller on the line! Hello, caller!
Caller: Hi!
Kat: Hi! What’s your name. Where are you calling from?
Caller: My name’s Maurice, and I’m calling from Texas.
Kat: Oh, great! You have a question, comment, grievance?
Caller: Well, I want to say, “Order of the Phoenix is my favorite movie along with Prisoner and Part 1 of Deathly Hallows.” Mybe they’re all pretty much similar, but I want to say that you have an issue with the script in this movie, though I do think you guys have a point in talking about the script, and I think it’s because Steve Kloves… it’s the first time he took a break from writing the script, so Goldenberg, I think, the one [who] wrote the script for this one? I do think that if they had done a split with this movie, maybe it would have helped a lot.
Michael: Yeah, it’s interesting to me that we’re saying that a split might work here because actually… despite my grievances with Order of the Phoenix, I can’t see a split making it better. I almost… because the film, as it turned out, is very plotting, and the book is very plotting. It’s hard to boost this book and make it popcorn fun like Goblet of Fire was…
Kat: Well, as bent-winged-snidget is saying, actually, in the chat that now that JKR is delving into screenwriting, they would be curious to see how her movies would turn out… and so would I.
Michael: Great timing, Rowling, on that. [laughs]
Rosie: [laughs] But also, I don’t think that cutting this book into two movies would help. I think it was just, they needed to make better choices about what they did cut and about what they did leave in. Cut Grawp. Get rid of that whole thing. [laughs] Completely unnecessary. Get rid of Kreacher, I guess. Get rid of the things that aren’t necessary and actually include the bits that make sense.
Kat: I mean, we need Kreacher. If Kreacher was going to pay off, I’d be fine with Kreacher. But he didn’t pay off. Cut him. Put Dobby back in because – I’m sorry – I love Dobby.
[Michael and Rosie laugh]
Rosie: And just rearrange some of the scenes, would make it better as well, I think.
Michael: As we talk about this, listeners, because this is going to be probably one of the biggest topics we have today with this, please call in and tell us what scenes that you would like to have kept in or which ones you actually think should have been cut from where they were in the film because we would love to hear your thoughts on that. I think, unanimously, Grawp should have been. We all [unintelligable] to the film.
[Kat and Rosie laugh]
Rosie: TheGiantSquid says, “More in the Department of Mysteries.” I definitely agree. I want to see more of that. The Department is still a mystery for us, having watched that film.
[Kat laughs]
Alison: I think one of the problems is – and some people are saying this in the chat have mentioned this – we didn’t have the whole series yet, which is the whole problem with all of these movies in general. The first few is, we didn’t know what was happening at the end. We didn’t know where we were even leading to, so it’s hard to make some of those choices, like the Kreacher thing, unless you know what’s coming up.
Kat: Yeah, and that’s the problem with movies being made while the books are still being written. I understand why they did it. It was a phenomenon. They hit it at the right time. That’s great and well. I would be okay with them… If they decided to redo them in 20 years, that’s cool. Or they could have just waited until the books were done. That would have been cool too.
[Rosie laughs]
Alison: I don’t think they ever intended to make the whole thing, maybe.
Michael: HealerInTraining said in the chat something very provocative: “I’m indifferent about Grawp. Needs something to replace the twins’ subplot.”
Alison, Kat, and Michael: Ooh. [laugh]
Michael: And the world screams and then dies [unintelligible].
[Alison and Michael laugh]
Michael: I feel like the twins, like we said before, could have just been properly handled rather than cut because that’s actually necessary.
Kat: And I do agree with what RoseLumos is saying, that the non-addition of Marietta was actually a good choice because it was a good way to break up Harry and Cho. I agree with that. It would have been great if they had written “Sneak” on her face, but it’s all right.
Rosie: Yeah. But they did it in a [unintelligible] way as well. It wasn’t Cho’s fault. It was the Veritaserum.
Michael: And see, that’s my thinking, is that I think it would have been a good way to deal with by merging them, but I don’t think it was written well. Because the point where you get the information that it’s not Cho’s fault is so past the point where you care…
[Michael and Rosie laugh]
Michael: … because it’s Snape just dropping that line like, [as Snape] “Oh, the last of the Veritaserum was used on Cho Chang,” and I’m like, “Who cares?”
Rosie: That’s the one that didn’t pay off straight away.
[Everyone laughs]
Michael: The one thing that’s subtly written, and it’s written very badly. Of course, that completely changes the Harry/Cho relationship and dynamic because there’s… Cho is not so weepy as she is just long-banged and round. Those bangs, guys. Wow.
[Everyone laughs]
Michael: Choices were made.
Rosie: [unintelligible]171 says that St. Mungo’s Hospital should have been included, and I definitely agree with that. That whole thing. And then they shoehorn the Neville story in afterward when they could have just actually included it. And brought Lockhart back as well. [laughs] That would have been… I love that sequence in St. Mungo’s, and it would have been so perfect if they included it again here.
Kat: Yeah. Even if they didn’t have Lockhart, that scene could have and should have been in the movies because… and still, it would have given them a lot of material to play with later with the could’ve-been storyline for Neville. Which is so important. It’s so important.
Michael: Yeah, that’s the upsetting thing, I think, with even bothering to include that backstory on Neville is that it goes nowhere in the films. It’s another thing that ends up being purposeless. And I think the reason that we lose those scenes, like going to the hospital and what-not, is because unfortunately, I think that’s a logistical thing of “We can’t build so many sets, so we’re just not going to build that set. We’re just going…”
Kat: Oh, come on. They spend $330 million making this.
Michael: Well…
Kat: I don’t know how much they made, but you know what I mean.
Michael: And that’s the amazing thing about the Harry Potter films. No matter how much they raked in and no matter how much I think we think they could have spent on it, they were definitely very mindful about the budget, which [mumbles] I think is very much evidenced in Deathly Hallows – Part 2, but we’ll get there.
Kat: Yes, TheGiantSquid, thank you. They did cut out almost the entirety of my favorite chapter, and that is a very big, big deal.
Alison: Also, huge plot hole: McGonagall and Hagrid are still at Hogwarts, so why does Harry feel like he has to take everything by himself?
Michael: Yeah, that’s a… Okay, and that leads it to another discussion that’s related to this one, which is the use of the already-established adult actors. What happened? Because once we get to Hogwarts, McGonagall… This is her shining book. I think we’ve all agreed on that. Caleb definitely would if he [were] here. But she is reduced to that scene on the steps and the up and down and up and down, and then she’s done.
Rosie: I wonder if this is where [Dame Maggie Smith] starts getting ill. When did she have cancer?
Michael: Around this time, I believe.
Rosie: Yeah, because I think some of the shots we’ve seen of her being looked after by Dan… I think that was around this film as well, so I think this is maybe why her role was scaled back slightly, to make way for that.
Alison: That would make sense.
Michael: There is photographic evidence that there was a scene where she was reading the Prophet after she’s… [laughs]
Alison: Great. I love that picture.
Kat: Yeah, one of those 45 minutes of cut scenes.
Michael: Yeah, so she… There was some more filmed with her. It just didn’t stay. I think, of course, as we mentioned, Hagrid is also severely shafted [laughs] [in] this movie. Not only is he included in about one scene, but it’s the one that we don’t want in the movie, so…
[Alison laughs]
Kat: We have a caller. Hello, caller.
Caller: Hi, hello.
Michael: Hi, who are you? What’s your name? Where are you from?
Caller: My name is Rebecca. I’m RebeccaTheRavenclaw on everywhere.
Kat: Hello, RebeccaTheRavenclaw. Hello.
Michael: I saw last night you just made your triumphant return to the main site.
Caller: Woo! Yeah, oh my gosh, yes.
Michael: Welcome back.
Caller: It’s been so long. It’s ridiculous, yeah.
Michael: [laughs] So what are your thoughts, Rebecca?
Caller: Well, I don’t know really where we are right now because I muted the thing, but you were asking about things that we wish would have been in and the adult characters not getting enough time. I wish that there was the career advice thing in McGonagall’s office. That was a big deal for me, and I came to the series so late. I was way past… I read the books after this movie, so I was super confused when I watched this movie. I was the person going “What’s going on, what’s going on, what’s going on?”
[Rosie laughs]
Caller: I had no idea what was going on. And when I read the books, I was like, “Whoa, there’s so much here. There’s so much more here,” and now that I’m rewatching the movies after reading the books, it’s like, “Ah, I wish that was in. That’s really sucky that they cut that,” and it just feels like there'[re] so many places that they could have added things, and they chose to put in more flashy stuff, and it’s like, “Well, that’s not really what the book is like,” so… I don’t know.
Rosie: Even just the “Have a biscuit, Potter” line would have been perfect.
Caller: Yes. Yep. That and yeah, just the McGonagall-Umbridge battling it out stuff… That is so missed here because you really only get the scene on the stairs. And in the book, it’s much more, to the point where Umbridge is taking five people to Hagrid’s house to arrest him or whatever she’s planning on, and then they fire at McGonagall. And when I read that in the book, I’m like, “What is going on here?” This is not in the movie, so for people who… I mean, I don’t know if I’m that big of a percentage of the population. I think a lot of people read the books and then watched the movies, but going the other the way around, it’s a huge shock to read so much stuff that’s like, “Okay, this is not even barely touched on in the movie. Why are so many things cut out?”
Michael: Mhm.
Rosie: Yeah.
Michael: Yeah.
Caller: Yeah, so many things.
Michael: Yeah, I think with McGonagall, it’s the most offensive to fans, definitely, because she is so important in the book. And like you said, Alison, it ends up creating a giant plot hole of there’s still plenty of authority figures left at school, so why do we have to run into the forest and not tell anybody? Definitely some problems with that. Kat, by the way, how are we doing on time here?
Rosie: We are an hour and 15 minutes in.
Kat: Yeah or so, so we’re okay. We’ve got another, I don’t know, 15 [to] 20 minutes to wrap it up.
Michael: Okay, so maybe let’s go to the Ministry because we haven’t gone there yet.
[Rosie laughs]
Kat: Ooh. Okay. [laughs] Sorry.
Michael: I would say first thing, in my opinion, I don’t know if you ladies agree but a fantastic set.
Alison and Kat: Yes!
Kat: Gorgeous.
Alison: Yes.
Kat: Gorgeous. Uh huh.
Michael: Outstanding set.
Rosie: Very green.
Michael: It’s almost like they took the exact description in the book and then built on it.
Kat: Yeah, that’s about right.
Alison: Uh huh.
Michael: Oh, I see we have another caller.
Kat: We do.
Michael: Hello?
Caller: Hi! This is Queensilver171 from the chat and the forum…
Kat: Hello!
Michael: Hello!
Caller: … but my name is Kristen.
Kat: Hello!
Michael: Hi, Kristen.
Caller: Hi! Sorry, this is sort of off topic, but I kind of noticed an inconsistency in the books, actually, when I was watching this movie. When Bellatrix gets broken out of Azkaban, and the rest of the Death Eaters, they all seem to get their wands back.
Rosie: Yes.
Caller: I was just wondering, why wouldn’t the Ministry of Magic have disposed of their wands or gotten them away somehow? I mean, Hagrid gets his wand broken when he’s kicked out of Hogwarts.
Rosie: That is true.
Caller: And we know it’s Bellatrix’s wand because Ollivander sees the wand and marks it as Bellatrix.
Rosie: Yeah.
Kat: Isn’t… I feel like we learn something about that.
Rosie: I’m not sure we do, but the… I mean, we know that they were broken out of Azkaban with force and if their wands were held close to where they were being kept. Not obviously within the cells or anything, but if they were somewhere nearby then perhaps they could have picked them up on the way or they could have been reunited with their wand somehow that way.
Kat: We don’t know that they are the original wands of those people.
Rosie: That is true.
Kat: They could be new wands.
Michael: Yeah, I See Thestrals just said, “They just went to Ollivander’s.” [laughs]
Kat: [laughs] Yeah.
[Rosie laughs]
Caller: Yeah. [laughs]
Kat: Well, because later on, Ollivander is forced to make new wands for people.
Rosie: Yeah.
Caller: Oh, that’s true.
Rosie: But I don’t think…
Caller: I just…
Rosie: He hasn’t been taken yet, has he?
Kat: No.
Alison: No.
Michael: The only wand that we actually find out that kind of gets covered – and it’s not in the books; I think it’s covered later – is that Rowling confirmed that Peter Pettigrew went and got Voldemort’s wand from the wreckage of the Potters’ house…
Kat: Right.
Michael: … because he thought it would curry favor with Voldemort. So that’s the one wand we know is covered.
[Rosie laughs]
Michael: Obviously for very important reasons. But yeah, no, there is definitely a gap there. Especially because…
Rosie: They should be broken, really.
Michael: Well, yeah, because the Ministry says they’re going to break Harry’s wand for a second breach of magic. [laughs]
Kat: Well… And we know how easy it is to snap a wand.
Michael: [snaps fingers] Deathly Hallows – Part 2.
[Michael and Rosie laugh]
Alison: Ah. Stop it.
Kat: Sorry, sorry. We’ll get there.
Michael: But to go back to the Ministry, thoughts on the scenes that we get in the Ministry, both the beginning and the end. I know the disappointment is that, of course, we didn’t get the various rooms in the Ministry.
Rosie: Yeah.
Michael: Do you think they were necessary, or do you think…
Rosie: I think they were written so cinematically that it would have been amazing to see them.
Alison: Yes.
Rosie: But they are unnecessary details within the plot.
Michael: Mmm.
Alison: They help world build…
Kat: Yeah.
Alison: … but they don’t really do anything for the plot. Except for breaking the Time-Turners.
Kat: Yep. Right, which isn’t an issue in the movies because it never ever comes up again.
Rosie: No.
Michael: Mhm. Although retroactively the fandom, especially the fandom [that] watches the movies first or perhaps only the movies, definitely there is still a complaint…
Alison: Yes.
Michael: … that the Time-Turners should be able to remedy everything.
Rosie: Yeah. [laughs]
Kat: Yeah.
Michael: The interesting thing to me is because the brain room apparently made it to a later version of the script.
Rosie: Oh, okay.
Michael: It got pretty close to being filmed and then it got cut.
Alison: Interesting.
Michael: And I…
Rosie: But that would have been something for Ron to do, which they obviously couldn’t include in this movie.
[Michael laughs]
Alison: Yes.
Michael: I think… Because what I feel is lost from cutting these scenes is that the Ministry just doesn’t feel that intimidating to me.
Alison: No.
Rosie: The whole “I’ve got scars” line in the later books and all of that “He’s been through it too; it’s not all about Harry,” all of that angst is not included because we haven’t seen Ron go through anything that Harry hasn’t.
Michael: Yeah.
Kat: Right.
Michael: Well, and I said in the chat, this is a problem that all of the movies I think have. This is not the first time Ron has been kind of pushed out of the films, and it’s because the script for each movie decided to give all of his informative lines about the wizarding world to Hermione where…
Rosie: Yeah.
Kat: Yeah.
Alison: Mhm.
Michael: Her eyebrows will steal your lines from left and right!
[Michael and Rosie laugh]
Michael: No one is safe. But I think Hermione ends up filling that role so that Ron is purely left to be comic relief and the sympathetic friend.
Rosie: Yeah.
Kat: So sad. And just quickly, I wanted to address this, a lot of people in the chat are talking about how they’d love the next part of the Wizarding World to be the Ministry of Magic and how that’s a rumor going around. The only place that came from is Alan Gilmore, who is the art director on the Potter films and at the Wizarding World, said that is what he would really love to see. I’m not sure how valid it is. Personally, I could think of other things, but…
Alison: Yeah.
Michael: It seems like the most logical next place to go, but it sure would be quite the undertaking since it would all have to be underground.
Kat: Oh my God.
[Michael laughs]
Kat: Right, exactly.
Alison: Wow.
Rosie: But there is a bit of the Ministry in the Studio Tour, if you’ve ever managed to go there.
Alison: Yes.
Kat: Yeah, the one little slip of it, right?
Michael: Yes, and if you go to the Wizarding World you can step into the telephone booth.
[Michael and Rosie laugh]
Kat: It does nothing, but yeah.
Michael: It does nothing, yeah.
Kat: Speaking of the telephone booth, we have a caller.
[Alison, Michael, and Rosie laugh]
Kat: Hello, caller.
Caller: Hi! How are you guys?
Kat: Excellent. How are you?
Michael: Good. How are you? What’s your name? Where are you from? And how are you?
Caller: I’m good. My name is Amber. I’m from St. Louis, Missouri.
Kat: Oh, great.
Michael: Oh, cool. What are your thoughts, Amber? What do you want to talk about?
Caller: There was a lot of discussion about how a lot of the characterization was kind of messed up in the movie and the translation; there’s a lot of characters cut. Which character do you guys think suffered the most and [which] scene from the book do you think would have fixed it?
Kat: Ooh, good question.
Michael: Ooh, that is an excellent question.
Alison: Ooh.
Kat: Who wants to go first?
Alison: Are we talking [unintelligible] in particular?
Kat: What?
Michael: I think we’re talking about this film in particular.
Kat: Yes.
Alison: Okay.
Rosie: Dumbledore. [laughs] Dumbledore is rubbish. I hate Dumbledore in this film.
[Alison and Michael laugh]
Rosie: He’s so bad. And the scene that would improve it is the whole redeeming conversation at the end of the book.
[Michael and Rosie laugh]
Alison: Yeah.
Rosie: We get that tiny scene where Harry is practically crying in the office and there is just nothing… no similarities between that scene and the one in the book. We get none of the explanation. And I mean, this whole book when it was marketed was marketed with that line “It’s time, Harry, for me to tell you what I should have told you all that time ago,” blah blah blah. The whole thing relies on that conversation between Harry and Dumbledore, and that is not in this film.
Michael: Yeah, it’s pretty much the whole point of the book.
Rosie: And that is the whole point of the book! [laughs]
Michael: Yeah. [laughs]
Kat: Yeah.
Rosie: It’s not in the film! What is the point of this film?
Kat: But you know what… okay, so there’s already some hate going on for Gambon in the chat here. Let’s just remember, kids: He doesn’t write the script, he’s a very good actor…
Rosie: He did not put his name in the Goblet of Fire.
[Alison laughs]
Kat: Right, he’s not Richard Harris. Yes, you know what? That’s okay.
Michael: It’s also worth remembering that Gambon went out of his way because he just does that I think in everything to kind of piss people off a little bit because he intentionally did not read the books.
Kat: Right.
Rosie: Yeah.
Michael: He was like, “That’s not my job. My job is to read the script.” And I think in this particular case, while that is a fair argument from an actor, I think in this particular case it does hinder his characterization of Dumbledore.
Rosie: Yeah.
Michael: Because he doesn’t know the book’s approach, he interprets the lines in a way that, of course, the fans deem as incorrect.
Rosie: But I do have to say that this is not my least favorite thing he’s done with the role. [laughs] My least favorite thing happens in the next movie, so we can skip over this for now.
[Alison, Michael, and Rosie laugh]
Kat: I mean, but there were other actors I’m sure who did not read the books.
Rosie: Yeah.
Michael: Oh, absolutely.
Kat: It’s just he gets hate because of that one crap line in Goblet of Fire, which admittedly is crap.
Michael: But then you flip to the other side where there were actors like Thewlis and Isaacs who were like, “I love the books. I embrace them fully and they follow me past the movies.”
Kat: And I embrace him fully.
[Alison and Michael laugh]
Michael: Oh yes, you do.
Kat: Sorry.
Michael: Nice long walk with Jason Isaacs.
Kat: Ah, that sounds lovely.
Michael: Okay, Kat, what character do you think could serve from getting a revised scene? Who suffered the most?
Kat: In this film?
Michael: Yeah.
[Kat lets out a long sigh]
[Michael and Rosie laugh]
Kat: I mean, I want my chapter.
Michael: Yeah, it’s…
Kat: So…
Michael: So Dumbledore and Harry, I guess.
Kat: Yeah, I mean, but I just want my chapter. [laughs]
Michael: You just want your chapter. [laughs]
Kat: But Dumbledore was fine for me. It didn’t super bother me in this movie, but I mean, I do want that… oh, that’s hard.
Michael: Alison, you’ve got one in mind while Kat’s thinking?
Alison: Yeah.
Kat: McGonagall.
Michael: Ooh. So which of her scenes, if you could only choose one, would you add back in to fix her…?
Kat: “Career Advice.”
Michael: “Career Advice,” yeah. Absolutely.
Kat: Or I mean, I do also really like when they’re attacking Hagrid, but “Career Advice.”
Rosie: Yeah. There’s just so much that’s missing.
[Michael and Rosie laugh]
Michael: And like Snidget just said in the chat – Oh, where’d it go? It was so funny – mentioning that Tom Felton and his approach to the character of Malfoy, and then when Snidget said that, I was like, “Oh yeah, Malfoy is in this movie.”
[Michael and Rosie laugh]
Kat: Oh, yeah!
Michael: Oh my God.
Kat: For half of a second.
Michael: For two seconds, yeah. They relegate Malfoy with the Inquisitorial Squad and Filch to a very Charley Chaplin-esque comedic sequence with the DA. That’s pretty much all he gets. Gosh, that was a really good question. Such a hard question for me because there'[re] so many answers.
[Alison laughs]
Rosie: Tonks as well. Tonks is…
Michael: I’d say…
Kat: You can’t say Lupin.
Michael: No, I wouldn’t say Lupin because he’s just… even though I love him and he’s fantastic, he gets royally shafted in the books just as much as the movies, so I can’t really say with him. I…
Kat: The Lupin chronicles, I’m telling you.
Michael: Yeah. I would say… gosh, and I don’t want to say “Ron” because I feel that that’s been a consequence for him since the beginning. But interestingly, the ones that I thought… and they’re secondary characters, but it really does bother me because of the way that they’re included and portrayed: the centaurs. They’re such a train wreck. What was going on? Because it’s just, again, things are shoved in at the very last minute and then paid off right after they’re shoved in.
Rosie: And I think it’s another case of overreliance on CGI. They are meant to be more humanoid than they are. And it would be so much easier if you actually film people.
Michael: Which is interesting, because if you pick up the new Creature Vault book with all of the information on the creatures from Harry Potter, the intention was to actually go with a more humanized animal approach. That’s what they thought they were doing.
[Alison and Michael laugh]
Michael: And it doesn’t quite come off that way.
[Rosie laughs]
Michael: And I mentioned this before, but man, Chronicles of Narnia had some awesome centaurs, and I don’t…
Rosie: Even going old school, like Xena: Warrior Princess.
[Michael and Rosie laugh]
Rosie: Centaurs in that are amazing, and that was 20 years ago.
Michael: We’ve had examples of better centaurs, yes.
[Rosie laughs]
Michael: So that, for me, was a disappointment. I think, though, as far a major character, and it’s weird that I keep coming back to it, but I guess, Harry, oddly enough.
[Alison laughs]
Michael: Because he’s just… I feel that Dan was up to it, but they weren’t giving him the chance. Because it’s just… again, and we notice this in pretty much every scene, where he’s supposed to be yelling or he’s like…
Alison: I think he’d be a lot better.
Michael: … “I’m going to yell. But I’m not going to yell. I want to yell, but no.” [laughs] And that’s pretty much all of these angry scenes.
Kat: I have a question. So let’s pretend Steve Kloves was around. How different would this movie be?
Rosie: Very.
Kat: You think so? Because I mean, he’s proven that he’s not afraid to cut out the good stuff.
Rosie: But I think he would have…
Kat: I mean, hello, Half-Blood Prince and all the memories.
Rosie: I think the problem with the whole “introducing an idea and it paying off immediately” and that pacing issue and the lacking the details in the correct places would have been solved with Kloves involved.
Alison: Seriously? That’s the lamest thing…
Rosie: I think he’s got a better idea of the overall feel of the movies.
Alison: Wow.
Rosie: That was just lacking from this one.
Kat: Where was he at this point? What was his lame excuse for not doing it?
Michael: He was tired and he wanted to do something else. That was pretty much his exact excuse was, “I…”
Kat: Wait, what? For real?
Michael: Yeah, he was tired.
Kat: Lame.
Michael: And he wanted to try another project.
Kat: Lame.
Michael: [laughs] Well, and of course, that didn’t last long, because he came back right afterward. But I think it’s interesting, Kat, that you posit that because I am wondering if it would have been that different with Kloves. Because he also – yeah, like you said – made some pretty bizarre choices in what he cut, especially considering that – he claims that – he knew more than anybody before the books were released.
Kat: Well, I mean, yeah. It depends on who cut it. If it was in the script and then it was cut because of time or like the Quidditch with Tiana dropping out or if it was things… I mean, we won’t ever really know. I mean, I suppose we could dig around and ask, but it’s hard to say whose choice it was to leave it out. For all we know… I mean, it has been said that this was a three-hour-and-ten-minute movie before th[ose] 45 minutes w[ere] cut.
Michael: Well, yeah. And again, we… longest book, one of the shortest movies in the series.
Kat: Second-to-last shortest, yeah.
Michael: [laughs] So what’s going on there? That is a bit offensive, in some respects.
[Alison laughs]
Michael: I had to point out, too, before start wrapping up the discussion here that ISeeThestrals had a great observation during the chat of the “spiraling out of control.”
Rosie: Yeah. So many staircases. [laughs]
Michael: Yes. And Alison noticed early on that there are a lot of aerial shots in this film.
[Alison laughs]
Michael: And I think that that… there’s a bit of filmmaking right there for you: that idea of the spirals as a motif in the film. I think that’s a great suggestion. ISeeThestrals, you get film student points for that.
[Alison, Michael, and Rosie laugh]
Kat: Yay! And yeah, I think before we wrap up, we have a chance for one or two more callers. If you guys want to give us a call, 206-462-5287, or AlohomoraMN on Skype.
Michael: Give us your last thoughts on Order of the Phoenix because we ain’t going to talk about it no more!
Kat: I’m going to talk about it!
[Michael laughs]
Kat: No, I’m not. I’m not. I am super excited for Half-Blood.
Alison: Michael and I are just running away from Order of the Phoenix.
Michael: Like the movie. The movie is running away from itself.
Kat: [sings] A do run run run, a do run run.
[Alison and Michael laugh]
Michael: And that’s something worth talking about – with the movie running to its conclusion – the conclusion itself!
Rosie: [sings] All you need is love!
[Alison and Michael laugh]
Michael: Yep. Indeed.
Rosie: Pretty much the whole thing.
Michael: Everybody said, “That is the most Disney ending they could have done.” And I think that is an insult to some really great Disney movies out there, you guys.
[Michael and Rosie laugh]
Kat: Yeah, I was just thinking about the Oscars that MuggleNet did about… it was in 2013, I believe.
Michael: With the corny ending, right?
Kat: Yeah, we had Best Corny Line, and that one, I think, came in third place, actually. The one that won was…
Rosie: It came behind “Everything’s going to change now, isn’t it?” Was that it?
Kat: I can’t remember the exact results, but I think “I love magic” won.
Rosie: Oh, okay. Yes.
Kat: [as Harry] “I love magic!”
Michael: Yeah. I think the most offensive thing about this particular ending is that it’s just so quick. There’s no substance to that ending.
Rosie: It’s like, “Oh, it doesn’t end in the fight?”
Michael: Yeah. Well, I think, the thing that was so funny for me, pretty much every time I watch this film, is when Ron says, “Oh yeah, what’s that?” and Harry is like, “Something worth fighting for.” And I’m like, “What is it?”
Alison: What is the thing worth fighting for?
[Alison, Kat, and Rosie laugh]
Michael: Oh, you’re being poetic! Voldemort has nothing worth fighting for. Got it.
Kat: Oh! Ooh, ooh! I thought of another scene and thing that I want back in: Snape and his memories.
Alison: [gasps] Yes!
Michael: Ugh.
Alison: The actual ones?
Michael: Yeah. I think just because it’s so choppy the way it’s done, right?
Kat: Yeah, it’s pooey. More Robbie Jarvis, please!
[Alison and Michael laugh]
Rosie: The scene that we get in Deathly Hallows when Snape dies? I don’t think we would have had that gorgeous sequence if we had had a better “Snape’s Worst Memory” in this film. Because…/p>
Michael: Hmm.
Kat: That’s true.
Rosie: And that’s so much effort into that because this one was so poor.
Kat: Yeah, and that is my favorite five minutes of the entire film series, so…
Rosie: But it did need a bit more.
Caller: Hi.
Kat: Hello!
Michael: Oh! Hello!
Caller: Hi! I’m GoldenSnitch7 on the chat.
Kat: Hello!
Caller: And I was just wondering, have you guys seen the picture where Harry… instead of saying “something worth fighting for,” he says “noses”? I feel like that would have fit into the movie pretty well because Voldemort doesn’t have a nose.
[Everyone laughs]
Michael: [as Harry] “Voldemort doesn’t even have a nose worth fighting for!”
Kat: Oh, the memes. Wait, what…? Oh, someone commented in the chat earlier about how Voldy was holding his breath when he was in the water, and I was like, “It’s not like he can pinch his nose! Ha ha!”
[Rosie laughs]
Kat: Because you know. True.
Michael: Yeah, well, and I think the thing that all the movies struggled with – possibly the only one that I feel did it more successfully than the others – was the ending. I think Half-Blood Prince is one of the few that actually ends pretty well and on an appropriately somber tone compared to the other films. The other films are very afraid to end somberly, and so they will always tack on an ending with the trio being like, “Oh, life’s great, right?”
Kat: Well, not Part 1. Part 1 does not end like that.
Michael: Well, and I don’t really think about Part 1 in that way because it’s a Part 1.
Kat: Right, right. Yeah.
Michael: So it’s meant to lead into Part 2. But yeah, this ending is probably the one that’s the most tacked on, I feel. Because it’s just… got to make sure the audience leaves happy. And then we’ll show the credits with the fireworks music because that’s the only happy track on the soundtrack.
[Alison and Michael laugh]
Kat: Yeah. Just thinking about the fight and everything, we… I want to talk about Voldy for a minute before we do wrap it up. Obviously, Ralph Fiennes: amazing. Absolutely incredible. What did you guys think about that whole sequence?
Michael: The fight?
Kat: Yeah.
Michael: It’s very true to the book. It’s a pretty excellent interpretation of the book.
Rosie: I missed the statue.
Michael: I used to be… yeah, I was going to say, “I used to be upset about the statues being cut,” but I see why. I think it would have been distracting.
Alison: It feels a little static to me; I feel like no one really moves at all very much.
Kat: But I mean, as, I mean, I think Harry points out later on, he learns that good magic necessarily isn’t flashy and all about the bangs and the booms.
Rosie: No, it’s just about stealing water from fountains and destroying them as well.
[Alison, Michael, and Rosie laugh]
Kat: But I love it because they’re manipulating the elements, which I think is so awesome. So awesome.
Michael: Davey B. Jones said the fight is the best fight in the film series as a whole. And I’m inclined to agree because…
Rosie: I think the characters had more to utilize from the surroundings than they do in, say, the final fight in Deathly Hallows, where they’ve just got bits of rubble around.
Kat: Which is BS because… ugh, let’s not even talk about that scene.
Alison: We’ll get there.
Michael: We’ll get there, but I think after this fight, yeah, there isn’t really anything that lives up to this in the series.
Rosie: No.
Michael: Especially when there should have been a lot of fights that should have lived up to this one. But yeah, I think the only thing that bothers me a little bit about the fight is that I don’t… I feel like Yates was having a tough time trying to mesh his cinematography with an abundance of special effects because there’s a really subtle thing going on where Voldemort is trying to direct his spells at Harry, and Dumbledore is deflecting them. And there’s so much flash, bang, boom going on in the screen that the way that Yates put the angles, I just… it’s really hard to tell what’s happening all at once.
Kat: Yeah, at some point, the camera is a little too close, so you miss all of the surroundings, and you’re just entranced in water or fire or whatever, and it’s gone. Sorry.
Michael: Well, I mean, I’m surprised, Kat, because I know – and listeners, you’ll know this from the book wrap if you make sure [to] listen to that – Kat doesn’t like when things aren’t centered.
[Alison and Rosie laugh]
Kat: It’s true. Well…
Michael: And Yates is kind of the king of not centering things in his frames, so… [laughs]
Kat: Okay. Not in movies, but on book covers, it’s kind of ridiculous.
Michael: See, and that bothers me on film just because… and I’m all for unconventional filmmaking tactics, but I think Yates does it to the point where he loses the action sometimes or he loses the main focus because he’s trying to be a little avant-garde with his camera, I guess.
Kat: Yeah. You know what’s ironic about that is, as a photographer, I almost never shoot people in the middle of the frame.
[Alison and Michael laugh]
Kat: No, seriously. Almost never.
Rosie: As a photographer, though, you need to use the thirds rule, don’t you? So you’ve got…
Kat: Well, if you’re taking a conventional portrait, yeah.
Michael: There still needs to be a, perhaps, a sense of balance of what’s on the screen.
Kat: Yes, exactly.
[Rosie laughs]
Michael: And I feel that sometimes Yates wasn’t always quite on top of that, especially with Order. I think he gets a lot better at it as the series goes on.
Kat: He does, because… and maybe let’s talk just very briefly about the fact that he’s directing Fantastic Beasts.
Rosie: He is.
Kat: Given his progression… because, as you said, he does get better, and Deathly Hallows – Part 1 is my favorite of the films. I think he does a really great job. Are you guys looking forward to that?
Alison: Yes.
Kat: What are your thoughts? Just briefly while we wrap up.
Rosie: I still think we need more information about what’s going to be in it because I’m not going to call it a Harry Potter movie until I know that it’s got enough of that world in it for me to enjoy it. But yeah, we’ll wait and see.
Kay: Okay. Anyone else?
Alison: I’m excited. I think it’s going to be good. It’s going to be different, but I think it’s going to be good.
Michael: I’m really thrilled to hear that they’re bringing so much of the behind-scenes-team back for this. I think that’s a really kind thing to do because that doesn’t happen in movies, you guys. Kindness doesn’t happen in filmmaking.
Kat: No, it doesn’t.
Rosie: Sadly.
Michael: And so that’s a phenomenal thing, that so much of the production team has been called back on to help.
Kat: Even people who actually aren’t working on the films are consulting, because I know for a fact somebody who worked on the films and is no longer working on the films – I won’t say who – has gone back to Leavesden as of last week, and is consulting on the sets and things like that. So that’s kind of exciting.
Michael: I am… there was a rumour before Yates that Cuarón was going to do it, and Jake just actually said it in the chat – and I completely agree with this – no matter how you feel about Cuarón and his take on Prisoner of Azkaban, Cuarón can come up with some pretty fantastic fantasy imagery…
Rosie: Yeah.
Alison: Yes.
Michael: … and I think Fantastic Beasts would be so suited to that. Cuarón comes from the same school of filmmaking as Guillermo del Toro. For those of you who don’t know, Guillermo del Toro of course did things like Hellboy and Pan’s Labyrinth.
Rosie: So creepy! [laughs]
Michael: And you would pretty much be getting that same visual look, if he had directed Fantastic Beasts. So while I’m glad that Yates is doing it and that it’s somebody familiar with the Harry Potter universe – intimately familiar – at the same time, I still… I know there’s going to be an element of what could have been for me when I watch it.
Kat: Yeah…
Rosie: I think it will be interesting to know if it’s going to be child orientated or adult orientated because…
Michael: Who they’re aiming at?
Alison: Yeah.
Rosie: … it’s Fantastic Beasts, and it’s a tiny little book, and it could easily go to How to Train Your Dragon style, interesting creatures…
Kat: Oh, God!
[Alison laughs]
Rosie: … but it could equally be as dark as the final books. So… we’ve really got so little information about it.
Michael: Yeah. No, people in the chat, I don’t want Benedict Cumberbatch to play…
[Alison and Rosie laugh]
Michael: … Newt Scamander. [laughs] He’s great, he’s fantastic, but no!
[Michael and Rosie laugh]
Kat: Yeah.
Michael: Only because I want to play Newt Scamander.
[Alison, Michael, and Rosie laugh]
Kat: And so does Caleb, and so does Eric and every other gentleman that I know.
Alison: Yeah.
Michael: Right. It’s just not going to happen.
Kat: I’m along the same lines. I like Yates and I’m excited for… now that he has the experience and knows the world. And I like the fact that there is nothing to adapt.
Michael: Yeah.
Alison: Yeah.
Rosie: Yeah. They can’t go wrong. Hopefully. [laughs]
Kat: There is that forty-page book. I’m not going to be let down by the fact that some subplot was cut, so I am jazzed! I don’t care who is in it, who is doing it. What a great episode!
Alison: Yes.
Michael: Yeah. Thank you, listeners, so much for being our guests today and calling in with your thoughts. You were what makes this show what it is. Alohomora! definitely couldn’t be the show [that] it is without your contributions, so…
Kat: [fake sobbing] Order of the Phoenix is done!
Michael: Yes.
Alison: Yes.
Michael: Yes, it is.
Alison: Yes, it’s done. [laughs]
Kat: Sorry.
Michael: I’m putting your tears in a bottle right now, Kat. [laughs]
Kat: I mean, I was sitting a puddle before…
[Alison and Michael laugh]
Kat: … so it’s okay. It’ll just add to the puddle.
Rosie: We’ve only got two books left.
Alison: Oh!
Rosie: How did we do that? We’ve been doing this for so long. [laughs]
Michael: We move on to Half-Blood Prince.
Alison: And if you would like to be on the show for our Half-Blood Prince chapters, which are coming up very quickly, make sure you check out our Be On The Show page at alohomora.mugglenet.com. You don’t need any fancy equipment; just a set of Apple headphones and you’re all good to go.
Kat: And of course, don’t forget you can keep in touch with us on Twitter, @AlohomoraMN, facebook.com/openthedumbledore, on Tumblr at mnalohomorapodcast. The phone number you have been graciously calling all day, 206-462-5287. And don’t forget to leave us an audioBoom. It’s free; all you need is an Internet connection. Leave us a message under sixty seconds. You can do it right over on alohomora.mugglenet.com. Send us your questions about Half-Blood Prince and we’ll play them. And then once we actually get into the episode, send us your feedback and you just might end up on the show.
Rosie: And don’t forget we’ve also got our fabulous store where you can get sweatshirts, long sleeve T-shirts, tote bags, flip flops, regular T-shirts, and so much more. And we also have ringtones of our fabulous theme tune, which you guys heard at the beginning and the end of this episode, and that is available for free and available on the website.
Michael: And along with your ringtones, we also have for phones the smartphone app. It is available, as Eric likes to say, on this side of the pond and the other… whatever.
[Alison and Michael laugh]
Michael: We just don’t have the magic phrase yet, I guess, but prices vary on this wonderful app, which includes transcripts, bloopers, alternate endings, host vlogs, and more, so make sure to check that out. And we look forward to moving into Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, but until then, we sign off for now.
[Show music begins]
Michael: I’m Michael Harle.
Alison: I’m Alison Siggard. [laughs]
Kat: [laughs] I’m Kat Miller.
Rosie: And I’m Rosie Morris. Thank you for listening to Episode 118 of Alohomora!
Michael: [as Harry] Open the Dumbledore!
[Show music continues]
