Rich visuals but lengthy

In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Mike Newell does his best with the visuals but not the story. The length works against the film, writes Ervell E. Menezes

SPECS ARE COOL: Harry Potter’s specky look has become a rage with his fans. There’s been a a dramatic increase in the  sale of spectacles in Britain

SO, the J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter saga goes on and on with each film surpassing the earlier one, in quantum at least and the fourth film Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is all of 160 minutes. The trio of Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson are intact, though Watson says she is getting bored with the "sameness," but they have roped in brilliant British director Mike Newell (Four Weddings & a Funeral, among others) to do the honours and he does his best with the visuals but not the story, it is far too long to hold the viewer.

Talk of marketing and Harry Potter has set a new benchmark. There were teenage heroes of yore, like James Dean of three-films fame or Elvis the Pelvis Presley or the Beatles, but did they get so much mileage? No, they were born in a different time. Now it is an era of promotion and in that school there are two Indian girls (from Hyderabad, it seems), not for the love of the Third World I’m sure.

But to get to the film good young Harry must contend with being mysteriously selected to compete in the prestigious Triwizard Tournament, a thrilling international competition that pits him against older and more experienced students from Hogwarts and two European schools.

Irreverence is loud and clear and probably its best selling point and Our Trio (Harry, Ron and Hermione) is pitted against the evil Lord Voldermot (Ralph Fiennes) which sends shock waves through the entire wizard community when their Dark Mark scorches the sky at the Quidditch World Cup, signalling Voldermort’s return to power. But for Harry, it is not only harrowing news but he has yet to find a date for Hogwarts’ Yule Ball, which incidentally is graphically and lavishly projected. And what about the Goblet of Fire? Well, let’s keep that a secret.

From the creeping crawlies and jumping spiders to the sail ship rising from the ocean and other tasteful sequences, The Goblet of Fire is in a class by itself. But the narrative is not. As for the stars, they flit in and out of the frame like mots, you can hear Maggie Smith’s voice before one sees her and Miranda Richardson is a reporter for the Daily Profiter. There’s Gary Oldman, Alan Rickman, Michael Gambon and may others like Richard Burton, Rd Steiger, Robert Wagner and Co in The Longest Day but they are mere names meant to make a crowd.

Director Newell tries his best to make the story last (tick, it does) but its inordinate length works against the film. That brevity is the soul of wit is unwittingly overlooked with the result Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire runs out of breath long before the final curtain comes down.

BRITISH author J.K. Rowling has cast a spell over people all over the world with her best-selling series about the young wizard, Harry Potter, and his friends Hermione and Ron. But, even die-hard fans of Harry and the gang, may not have known some amazing facts uncovered by The Mirror, that are sure to make viewing their favourite film even more enjoyable.

According to the report, author JK Rowling, boy wizard Harry Potter and actor Daniel Radcliffe, who portrays the character of Harry, were all born on July 31. It says that when Harry’s best friend Ron’s father, Arthur Weasley, takes Harry and his friends to the Ministry of Magic, he enters the serect code 62442 into a telephone keypad. The letters, when typed on a standard mobile phone spell out the word "magic".

The character of Natalie McDonald, who appears on page 159 in the fourth book in the series, Harry Potter and the Goblet Of Fire, was a real nine-year-old girl from Toronto, Canada, dying of leukaemia, who wrote to JK Rowling and wanted to know the plot of the next book because she would not live long enough to read it, it says. However, by the time the author replied, she had already died. So Rowling paid a tribute to her by making her a first-year student at Hogwarts named by the Sorting Hat in Gryffindor — the house for the brave at heart — in the fourth book, it adds.

Other interesting facts, include that Ron’s brothers, the twin jokers, Fred and George who own of Diagon Alley’s new Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes, were born on April 1, more commonly kown around the world as April Fool’s Day, and that Harry’s god- father, Sirius Black, is named after the brightest star in the night’s sky, also known as the Dog Star. In the series, Sirius uses his skills as an animagus to turn into a big black dog. — ANI

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