This time last year, Slashing The Seats was proud to unveil the very first Harrry potter review in the whole wide world.
Of course, we’ve long since been banned from hanging around Emma Watson (despite a sound defence argument resting on the key fact that none of us have identifiable genitals or human emotional drives) by the powers that be, so we didn’t get to go to the premiere. Instead, we had to rummage through the bins round the back of cineworld. We got there first though. This time round, well, we weren’t so lucky.

Actually, it’s fair to say we weren’t actually that bothered. we had a weekend filled with rum, rollerskates and questionable sexual encounters with troglodyte cannibals to plough through, so we didn’t have time to write about boy wizards. Frankly, unless it’s a miraculous hangover/rash cure magic can fuck right off.

Anyway – I suppose now we’re here you’ll be wanting a review of some sort won’t you? Very well, gather about me now, and I’ll begin….

The fun part about this is that I don’t have to go into the plot (which is good, because it’s all over the shop). If you’re reading this, you probably already know what happens, but that doesn’t make it any less boring. The decision by the money bags at Warner to split the film in two is understandable, but frankly the best thing here would have been to edit out Rowling’s interminable exposition and deliver a breezy magical chase movie. With judicious editing we could have been sitting down to Raiders of the Lost Ark with wands. Instead we get a gloomy, droopy and largely structureless mess that loses an awful lot of the good will built up by The Half Blood Prince.

The problem is, with our three heroes doing a bunk from Hogwarts to go galivanting about the Scotch countryside looking for McGuffins Horcruxes, there’s a distinct lack of form that thoroughly undermines the pace.

Alongside this, the admittedly lovely scenery isn’t the only thing that’s exposed. Reduced to a small group, the cracks in Watson, Grint and Radcliffe’s acting are writ large. That isn’t to say they aren’t game, but being surrounded by so many fine stage actors has obviously had an effect, leading to misplaced volume and stilted delivery that just isn’t suited to the small, intimate personal dialogues we’re meant to be involved in. The acting here isn’t bad per se, just slightly unsuitable.

On the upside, things aren’t quite so dark this time around. Sweeping away the dusty school halls has given returning director david Yates a chance to wash off the oily blacks that so dominated his last crack at Potter.

The only problem is he’s replaced them all with frosty blues.

Previously we were drawn in by the hissing, aquiline menace of Death Eaters swarming like smoke underwater, unseen terrors crowding the previously warm and welcome halls of Hogwarts. This time we’re left..well, a bit chilly.

That said there are some good things lurking (often quite literally) in the mix here. The occasional horror elements work well, jolting but well executed and not forced (there really is nothing more upsetting than a dead owl is there?), and the occasional moments of levity are welcome, warm and natural.

Finally, despite the occasional shortcomings of the leads, there’s are some splendid performances by the adults. Ralph Fiennes in particular is clearly enjoying his chance to finally hog the limelight, slitthering across the screen like a jellied ham, while Bonham-Carter reprises her superbly unhinged role, ethereal and bewitching in every sense of the word. Oh, and let’s not forget Alan Rickman. His duplicitous, calculating turn is short but pitch (black) perfect. Laying terrible plans with not a hint of maniacal pantomime evil or glee. Here, he’s simply rotten to the core, and his performance shines because of it.

Overall this is an overlong money-maker, rambling and too adherant to it’s source material. Full of meandering asides and false trails that lead around in circles while the real action gathers over the next hill. Taken on it’s own, it’s unsatisfying (yes yes, I know it’s ‘Part One’…) and muddled, but has flashes of a fantastic finale to come.

Not the best entry in the series by a long chalk, Deathly Hallows is unfortunately an overstretched if solid preamble.

It’s darker! it’s probably a bit better! It reminds STS of the time our Uncle Dave dropped his Patronus at a wedding (the police arrived shortly afterwards). It’s Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part one, (hereafter referred to in it’s easy-to-remember acronymic form HPATDHPO) and from the looks of this..well, it’ll be alright, like.

The arrival of a new Harry Potter movie is always cause celebre round at STS towers, partly because we are entirely staffed by illegally imported child labourers, and partly because I quite closely resemble Voldemort.

Anyway -the new Deathly Hallows trailer hit the web today, and it seems that Harry is still more than capable of seeing off the hordes of Twihards despite his advancing years.

Continuing the series’ now trademark descent into ever darker territory, the trailer hints that many of the books more whimsical elements will still find their way onto the screen, while the outstanding effects work promises a truly awesome final showdown with he who shall not be named.

As the penultimate wizardy chapter ‘ The Half Blood prince’ makes it into shops today, this seemed like an opportune time to show this lovely teaser for next years kid’s magic juggernaut: The Deathly Hallows. Looking at this, expect lots of legging it about through dry ice forests and John Hurt suffering from Strep Throat (based on the v/o anyway…).

Generally, we watch any old crap round here – in the interest of being a representative, even-handed site obviously – from Marley & Me to Apocalypse Now,it’s all fair grist to the review grinder-yep,we even sat through Troll 2 once.

But just occasionally there are some movie crimes so cynical and heinous in their deployment that we’re robbed of even the enjoyment bought by bright shapes moving around a large screen.
Twilight: New Moon is one of them…

The Twilight Saga’s advance guard of posters and promos have been doing the rounds for a few weeks now, it’s gangsta/Calvin Klein ad Werewolves looking like the world’s worst boy band as they balefully bring to life everything awful about post-Rowling fiction in one sanitised, imaginatively stultified package

The reasons for the unerring – and to most people over 30,completely mystifying – popularity of the Virginity-embracing Goth-a-thon are manifold and as ancient as the vampire myth itself, but the main one?

Boredom.

To contextualise; it’s probably worth remembering at this point that tabloid fodder Cradle of Filth are from a small country village, the interminable ennui of small-town existence producing gratuitous, theatrical stabs at an inescapable conformity that have absolutely nothing to do with the isolationist work of their contemporaries

Twilight has risen from the endless malaise of the American Midwest. Despite the stunning scenery, for many growing up there it’s an endless vista of mini-malls and soccer meets, a land robbed of endless opportunity that retains a general snobbishness for any authentic ‘old-world’ culture (”What do you eat in Britain?” Is a standard enquiry I received while travelling), and while this is a gross oversimplification; in terms of romance, Utah is up there with Chernobyl.

It’s no wonder then that the Disneyfied, stripey-sock Goth peddled by Hot topic is grasped so ravenously by teenagers in a locale where dying your hair or missing church is a rebellious act, and although tweens the world over go through endless recycling of these tropes the constant marketing of them as a substitute for genuine invention is a troubling one. Potter and his ilk are the spawn of daytime TV and half-remembered nursery tales, rather than any familiarity with actual fantastical literature. It may be churlish to suggest, but I’d be sorely surprised if J.K’s library included anything by Lord Dunsany. Tapping into a culturally bereft society doesn’t gift a work with any greater kudos.

Likewise Twilight is born of a warped, half developed sexuality, a flirting with defiance in the face of the US religious machine, and the deeply unsatisfied and unrealised yearnings of its author. Vampires are the ultimate asexual – the bite representing a non-threatening penetration – that means they are non-threatening romantic partners, perfect grist for the mill of the unsettlingly carried out (if well-intentioned) Chastity movement the books encourage. While virginity and chastity are both admirable qualities, they are very personal ones that shouldn’t be enforced by mass-media or religion; to do so is a backwards step, rather than a liberating one. Here non-sensationalist information is the key, not mass hypnosis.

Most movies try to sell you a tie-in computer game and a McDonald’s happy meal. Twilight tries to sell you morality.

Twilight (And Buffy beforehand, although Weedon at least realised this and had fun with it) is in effect Mills and Boone without the edge. Here there’s no sex, and while there’s haemoglobin aplenty even death is robbed of it’s power.

Author Stephanie Meyer claims the novel is about ‘losing true love’, but has aimed it squarely at a population so cut off from genuine interaction the word becomes meaningless, a substitute for parental affection and an excuse to pretend at the rebellious. In one of the most telling scenes Bella’s ability to commune with Edward is enhanced when she pursues ‘The Dangerous’. In this case, riding a motorcycle – that ever present symbol of disaffection for American youth. Meyer has crafted a work where motorcycles and leather jackets stand-in for danger, where Italy represents the entire planet outside the Midwestern bowl, and where dreaming of wider horizons inevitably leads to terror and sadness-or at least a simulation of it.

New Moon offers an endless curse – one of morbid, flatulent commercialism infecting its victims with a warped feminine ideal where the answer to everything is a good man who doesn’t want to have sex. It has more in common with Mona the Vampire than Dracula – this is sex and death without the sex and death played out by blandly attractive mannequins whose only supernatural power is the height of their hair.

Excited yet?

By the beard of Zeus! Behold the new teaser for upcoming sorcery-fest Percy Jackson And The Olympians: The Lightning Thief.

It may have a title more unweildy than a lightning bolt, but Fox is obviously hoping this will be filling the gap left by a certain boy wizard in years to come -even going as far as handing Chris Columbus the reigns.

The tale of a boy who discovers he’s descended from the Greek Gods certainly looks and sounds J.K.Rowlingesque, but any film with Rosario Dawson in a mini-toga and Steve Coogan as the king of Hell has to be worth a look right?

Younger readers-will this work? Or is Potter truly irreplaceable?

Bad news for the ‘already booked to do Thor’ Kenneth Branagh, but good news for red blooded, beef-eating English gentlemen everywhere, as Elizabeth writer Michael Hirst announces his latest trip into the barbarous depths of British history. The Tudors creator has signed on to adapt Bernard Cornwall’s epic tale of the Battle of Agincourt, a key moment in the hundred years war and one of the bloodiest battles in medieval history.

Rather than the traditional Shakespearian take, this version sees events through the eyes of a regular Joe – Longbowman Nicholas Hook – and deals with the interception of Henry V’s forces by a huge French army and their eventual seeing off thanks to a combination of superior firepower and English pluck.

Cameras are set to roll in early 2011, but with a budget of just $35 million, we may be looking at high-scale TV production rather than blockbuster epic, so expect lots of physical effects (ketchup) and legions of massed Brit-thesps taking time out from Harry Potter reshoots to don fake chainmail and smack their French counterparts about the head.

Even though you know what’s coming, the latest chapter in the HP saga still manages to appeal and enthrall by dint of an all pervading sense of menace throughout. It’s a huge cliché to say that each film is darker than the last, but here the villains – often played previously as pantomime moustache-twirlers – finally blossom into genuine threats, their evil casual and malicious and all the better for it. Throughout, there’s a real feeling that any of the leads could perish in an instant and despite Rowling’s occasional use of magic to neatly sidestep painting herself into a corner (Ron’s poisoning a case in point), fans hardened and casual will find some genuine, edge-of-seat moments to enjoy here.

Throughout, the film is a nice mixture of talk and action, the opening sequence over London featuring Death Eaters swooping like black ink in water is exceptional, tightly edited and genuinely pushing the boundaries of the 12A certificate, with hints at hundreds dying as the Millennium Bridge is destroyed. Likewise, while there are overly talky scenes throughout, they never become boring, with Harry finally realising the true danger he-who-shall-not-be-named poses. A growing menace lovingly conveyed via some beautifully dark photography by Amelie DoP Bruno Delbonnel, the opening storm staying on throughout, tiniting everything grey and transforming the previous Christmas box tweeness of Hogwarts into a mess of shadows and looming, unfriendly architecture.

As per usual, there is a marked improvement in the acting and although Radcliffe himself stays within some tightly delineated lines, he conveys a growing sense of determination effectively, managing to get away (just) with dialogue that is often overly purple. Likewise Rupert Grint continues to excel in the affably likable stakes, although Emma Watson perhaps relies too heavily on her burgeoning good looks, with her scenes often overly stagy and rather distracting because of it. Of the grown ups, Helena Bonham Carter stands out, her Ballatrix La Strange eerily menacing and sadly underused and while many of the other resident Brit thesps seem to be on a retainer, simply there to fill the screen rather than add anything useful to proceedings, Jim Broadbent puts in an incredibly strong appearance as Horace Slughorn, his physical comedy a genuine pleasure in a franchise often guilty of mugging, whilst still managing to imbue many of his scenes with genuine pathos.

On the downside, the challenge of squeezing 800-odd pages into one film often means too much exposition and Rowling’s tendency to rely too heavily on Deus Ex Machina doesn’t help, giving the feeling that some scenes are cut off half way through, while the smaller points that previously worked to flesh out the magical world are often sadly absent here – a grin-inducing appearance by the Weasley twins notwithstanding. It’s a small quibble, but one that the next film will hopefully have more room to rectify.

This dense plotting also means that viewers unfamiliar with the books (including yours truly) may find themselves slightly bemused by seemingly unimportant plot points that, at this stage at least, are never expanded upon, whilst the knowledge that the real action is coming up in the next two movies may leave you frustrated.

That said, this is an excellent exercise in tension-building. Beautifully rendered with some innovative effects and genuine good humour, it also finds the time to be truly thrilling. A strong addition to the series, with some lovely and affecting performances and a sense of elan papering over the previous film’s weaker characterisation. Not quite magic, but very close indeed.