Movie Watching

It was a hot weekend. After the battle to get LL to music and ballet (via failing to get to the library), we rather went into a decline for the remainder of the weekend. So we watched lots of movies: The Sword in the Stone (again), Shrek (again), Harry Potter and the whatever-the-object-was-the-first-time-round. LL watched Sword in the Stone a couple of years ago, entranced, without really understanding. This time she took more notice and enjoyed all over again (so that's another book for the evening reading list). Shrek, she enjoyed too. Actually, apart from the appalling cover version of Hallellujah by someone who ought to have known better and which went painfully out of tune in the last bar, it's an enjoyable enough film. The Disney references are fun (we love the mandatory heroine singing to the birdies bit, with the exploding bluebird and subsequent fried eggs for breakfast). LL enjoyed the fairy tale characters appearing. But, we still can't help wondering why it had to be done in the we-can't-quite-make-it-look-like-reality-yet computer animation. It doesn't quite work, distracts from an otherwise amusing movie, and adds almost nothing. Admittedly, doing the John Lithgow character would be difficult in live action, since he is so tall and the bad guy is so short (that after all being the joke). Other than that, why? (Still it's nice to see the technical writers listed in the credits along with the software developers.)

HP yesterday evening was pretty, long, and very irritating. That breadth of talent all being used for obvious roles, the lack of any real feeling of tension, the rather engaging little lad playing HP somehow mainly a spectator in his life for all the engagement we felt he conveyed. Still, despite being potentially quite frightening, LL watched a fair amount of it. (Do we add the first HP to the list of bedtime reading too? It's currently The Hobbit, as a respite from yet another repeat reading of Narnian claptrap. Are we warping our little girl's mind?)