Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix + summer movies.

"So here we are: at the end of the Harry Potter decade. The books have been printed and are under lock and key. (Presumably.) JK Rowling has made her choices." The New York Times asks four writers and one artist to dream up possible endings to a remarkably successful franchise. But the real ending will be revealed when 12 million copies (in the US alone!) of the 7th and last volume in the saga, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, appear in bookstores, whether virtual or brick-n-mortar, on July 21.

But first, there's a movie to see to, of course, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, based on book #5, opening pretty much around the world over the final days of this week.

Updated through 7/14.

"After the triumph of the last two movies, directed by Alfonso Cuarón and Mike Newell, this is a letdown," writes Newsweek's David Ansen. "Let me hasten to add that there are delights to be had." Special mentions: Imelda Staunton as Dolores Umbridge, Evanna Lynch as Luna Lovegood, Gary Oldman as Sirius Black, "And, as always, Stuart Craig's production design offers endless visual delights." All in all, though, "The storytelling seems occasionally disjointed, but more important, for all the special-effects wizardry, that touch of film magic never surfaces."

"Daniel Radcliffe and his young co-stars are maturing into decent actors, and director David Yates delivers plenty of warmth, humour and stunning settings," writes Nick Curtis in the Evening Standard. "But there aren't many surprises or scares here, nor even any major abracadabra set pieces until the very end. Devotees of the series, even as they sink once again into the comforting embrace of JK Rowling's world, may feel they've seen it all before."

"This movie is more Narnia-like, with its motley collection of folks amassing to fight the coming war against the forces of darkness," writes Variety's Anne Thompson. "And it even brooks comparison to A Wrinkle in Time: it all comes down to fighting evil with good, doesn't it?"

Jeffrey Wells: "I found it a spookier-than-usual mood piece, although there's nothing so dark to me personally as the idea of having to sit through two more of these things."

Writing in Der Tagesspiegel (and in German), Christina Tilmann notes that with Order of the Phoenix, the series leaves the realm of the children's film once and for all. Further, Yates and screenwriter Michael Goldenberg have streamlined the story while, at the same time, gleefully referenced a slew of cinematic popular mythology: "It begins with a James Bond-like chase over the Thames along the Houses of Parliament. Harry's encounter with a Dementor is reminiscent of Japanese horror films. Fragile Hermione falls, like Naomi Watts, into the hands of a King Kong-sized giant baby who immediately falls in love with his catch. The repressed rebel, Kreacher, the treacherous house elf of 12 Grimmauld Place, recalls Gollum of The Lord of the Rings. And Sirius Black, too, Harry's unjustly hunted godfather, clearly bears traces of Aragon, the hero of Tolkien's Ring parable, with his wild hair and dark, melancholy eyes."

"Two years before she was offered the role of Dolores Jane Umbridge in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix a friend of Imelda Staunton's called her up to say he'd just read JK Rowling's book and that there was a part in it she'd be perfect for. 'So I read it,' Staunton says, 'and thought, "Small, squat, ugly, toad-like woman — thanks a lot."'" Mark Salisbury picks it up from there - and talks with Daniel Radcliffe, too.

Also in the Los Angeles Times, Amy Kaufman rounds up local events pegged to the publication of Deathly Hallows.

AICN's Quint also talks with Radcliffe.

John Walsh profiles Rowling for the Independent.

Earlier reviews: Mike Goodridge (Screen Daily), Kirk Honeycutt (Hollywood Reporter), Leo Lewis (Times of London) and Todd McCarthy (Variety).

Updates: A few more, via Jeffrey Wells: Time's Richard Corliss calls this one "[p]erhaps the best in the series" and "not just a ripping yarn but a powerful, poignant coming-of-age story."

"This is not a family movie," warns David Edelstein in New York. "It's not even a borderline gothic horror movie"; instead, it's downright "Orwellian.... Did I mention that, for all its portentousness, this is the best Harry Potter picture yet?"

Then there's a "B" from Emanuel Levy and 3½ out of 4 stars from Rolling Stone's Peter Travers.

Updates, 7/9: Kenneth Turan on Phoenix for NPR: "Though many of its elements are strong, it finally can't transcend being a way station in an epic journey - a journey whose cinematic conclusion is several years in the future."

"The filmmakers and studio have gone to great lengths to merge the movies and books in fans' minds, even beyond trying to make 'faithful' adaptations," writes the Chicago Tribune's Mark Caro. "Still, the books and movies - and their respective cultures - are not the same, a point being driven home this month by the great Harry Potter convergence." Via Movie City News.

Cinematical's James Rocchi lists and riffs on 7 "Reasons Why Summer Movies Keep Getting Dumber."

In the Los Angeles Times, Sheigh Crabtree talks with Hairspray director Adam Shankman, who tells her, "Here's what I'm scared of. This movie is so right-thinking at its core and its heart is in such a special place that if critics are mean to this movie it will hurt me." Emanuel Levy gives the film a B+.

Laura M Holson reports on the online conversations - and confrontations - between fans and makers of Transformers. Also in the New York Times, Brooks Barnes's box office report.

Ryan Stewart recalls a rumor that, of course, turned out not to be true: that Paramount would offer Transformers, during same week of its theatrical release "a premium pay per view choice for somewhere in the neighborhood of $40 and assuming the experiment turned out to be a rousing success - and it would have - the vaunted 'window' would be good and smashed for all time.... The interesting thing about all of this is that most of the people I talked to who believed the story was going to turn out to be true were not outraged by it in the least - and neither was I. I've come to believe that 'smashing the window' is an idea whose time has truly come, mainly because of the ever-deteriorating movie theater experience."

Phoenix is "easily the best film in the franchise," announces Jim Schembri in the Age.

"When it comes to Harry, part of me - a fairly large part, actually - can hardly bear to say goodbye," writes Stephen King in his Entertainment Weekly column:

Although the only thing we can be sure of is that Deathly Hallows won't end in a 10-second blackout (you're going to hear that a lot in the next few weeks), my guess is that large numbers of readers will not be satisfied even if Harry survives (I'm betting he will) and Lord Voldemort is vanquished (I'm betting on this, too, although evil is never vanquished for long). I'm partly drawing on my own experience with The Dark Tower (reader satisfaction with the ending was low - tough titty, since it was the only one I had); partly on my belief that very few long works end as felicitously as Tolkien's Rings series, with its beautiful pilgrimage into the Grey Havens; but mostly on the fact that there is that sadness, that inevitable parting from characters who have been loved deeply by many.

[...]

And here's something I believe in my heart: No story can be great without closure. There must be closure, because it's the human condition. And since that's how it is, I'll be in line with my money in my hand on July 21.

Via Dwight Garner.

John Ortved puts together a looong oral history of The Simpsons for Vanity Fair and interviews former series writer Conan O'Brien as well. Plus: 10 funniest episodes. Via Waxy.org.

Updates, 7/10: Order of the Phoenix, "which begins like a horror movie with a Dementor attack in a suburban underpass, proceeds as a tense and twisty political thriller, with clandestine meetings, bureaucratic skullduggery and intimations of conspiracy hanging in the air," writes AO Scott in the New York Times. "Perhaps by design, the films never quite live up to the books. This one proves to be absorbing but not transporting, a collection of interesting moments rather than a fully integrated dramatic experience. This may just be a consequence of the necessary open-endedness of the narrative, or of an understandable desire not to alienate Potter readers by taking too many cinematic chances. Although Order of the Phoenix is not a great movie, it is a pretty good one."

"If director Chris Columbus represented risk aversion with the first two Potter films, Alfonso Cuarón and Mike Newell in the third and fourth stood up for artistry while British TV director David Yates seems intent in this fifth chapter on not jeopardizing what has been accomplished up to now," writes Kenneth Turan. "Though Yates hasn't brought any overpowering directorial style to Phoenix, he does have some advantages. As the terrifying wizard Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes) grows in power, Potter's world noticeably darkens and gets more involving. Plus, having a cast that includes the cream of current British actors - think Michael Gambon, Brendan Gleeson, Jason Isaacs, Gary Oldman, Alan Rickman, Maggie Smith, Imelda Staunton, David Thewlis, Emma Thompson, and that's not the entire list - certainly doesn't hurt." Also in the Los Angeles Times, Gina Piccalo reports on the local premiere.

"It takes guts to tackle a movie musical," writes Variety's Anne Thompson. "Fail to achieve just the right balance between believable, accessible reality and attention-grabbing, stylish entertainment and you fall on your face.... So when New Line Cinema decided to turn its hit Broadway musical Hairspray into a $70 million movie, it was no surprise that chairman Bob Shaye selected Chicago exec producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron."

Time's Richard Corliss updates his first impression with a longer consideration of the entire series: "The early novels we fell in love with now look, in hindsight, like charming children beguiled with their own ripe sense of play - the Quiddich games and eccentric ghosts, the in-school rivalries and disappearing acts. This fifth film shows the great tale in transition, embracing mature themes, hurtling toward a possibly tragic conclusion. All of which makes Potter 5 not just a ripping yarn but a potent, poignant coming-of-age story."

"The finest moments of The Order of the Phoenix are the ones in which Harry and his friends and fellow students band together to help themselves - to reject the complacent ideals of the establishment, as they're reflected in the mincing, insidious Dolores Umbridge, and to jump-start their own world - their own adult lives - by harnessing the energy and idealism of youth," writes Stephanie Zacharek at Salon. "Whatever the flaws of Yates' movie may be, he does grasp the countercultural vibe of Rowling's book, and, as she does, he makes sure it feels modern and vital instead of like some musty fantasy imitation of Woodstock."

"The Order of the Phoenix takes things further into teenage rebellion and weaves the beginning of the series' backend into maybe the best of the series to date leaving us in a state of anticipatory bliss of how it will all end," writes Erik Childress at Hollywood Bitchslap. More from EricDSnider: "It feels like an exciting and fast-paced fantasy adventure - which is exactly what it's supposed to feel like."

"Are there still so many Christians determined to believe that the Harry Potter stories are some kind of occultic conspiracy to lure children into the devil's clutches?" asks Jeffrey Overstreet. "Have the countless testimonies and interpretations about the value and meaning of these stories done nothing to persuade the skeptics to give the series a second look?... Read 'The Sacrificial Boy Wizard' at Christianity Today."

For the San Francisco Chronicle's Mick LaSalle, "It all depends on the perspective: Taken as a motion picture, the new Harry comes up short. But taken as a visual aid to the experience of reading a book, the new Harry does its job."

"The darkest and most threatening of the five Potter films, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is also the only series entry outside of the third, Alfonso Cuarón's Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, that feels like the product of a vivid cinematic imagination and not just a faithful transposition of a kid-lit bestseller," writes Scott Foundas in the Voice. Yates "infuses the heretofore storybook atmosphere with a grittiness that's as startling to our senses as it is to young Mr Potter's."

Updates, 7/11: "My fantasy would be to see the series remade by David Lynch, complete with time shifts, character body-swaps and elliptical dialogue," writes Bidisha in the Guardian. "Or Kathryn Bigelow, who could shoot this very male tale with her characteristic muscularity. Mary Harron, who adapted American Psycho with slick, creepy perfection, would wrench breakthrough performances from the young actors. Best of all (and least likely) would be David Cronenberg, whose lurking homoeroticism and yuppie body horror would easily accommodate Rowling's nimble mix of genres."

"With a plot dominated by political infighting at the Ministry of Magic, Order of the Phoenix could easily have been as dull as one of those Star Wars prequels, a CGI-enhanced version of congressional coverage on C-SPAN," writes Dana Stevens in Slate. "Instead, the movie is brisk and lively, if not exactly action-packed." And again, production designer Stuart Craig comes in for a very special mention indeed. His work here "is beyond genius, from the living paintings to the Deco-on-drugs Ministry corridors to the town houses that split in half to reveal hidden buildings inside. And the Hogwarts school, densely imagined and lovingly created from the ground up, is one of the great examples of movie architecture, up there with Kane's Xanadu and the Bates Motel."

"[F]our sequels into this saga, it finally feels like we're watching a bona fide, honest to God movie," writes the Philadelphia Weekly's Sean Burns. "It's a tight, thematically unified piece of work, and the moral of the story is: Adolescence sucks."

But R Emmet Sweeney, writing for the Reeler, finds it to be "a flashy complement to its source novel but incapable of standing on its own. As drama, it is bloated and unevenly paced, never establishing any kind of narrative rhythm. It lunges from plot twist to plot twist, squeezing in drops of character development that never cohere. As a visualization of a fictional world, however, it is consistently impressive: Stuart Craig's Victorian gothic set design, the convincing magic of its visual effects, and the superb work of the supporting actors create a buzzing background far more fascinating than the nth re-telling of the hero-as-Jesus figure yarn."

"For full blown Potter heads, there is no need to worry about the infusion of new creative forces," PopMatters' Bill Gibron reassures us. "While some of the subtlety and depth from Phoenix's fleshed out pages may be missing, this fifth installment is still immensely entertaining. Beginning with a bang and ending on an incredible display of martial magic, Yates is a director who understands cinematic shorthand."

"Pallid, morose grays encircle Harry like a noose, a lethal pallor in keeping with the film's replacement of the franchise's familiar juvenilia (Quidditch, pal Ron's wisecracks) with an adult sensibility marked by enraged indignation," writes Nick Schager at Slant. "If only that anger received suitable resolution, Order of the Phoenix might have approached the superlative heights of Alfonso Cuarón's Prisoner of Azkaban."

Rebecca Traister interviews screenwriter Michael Goldenberg for Salon.

Online listening tip. Yates and producer David Heyman are guests on the Leonard Lopate Show.

Annalee Newitz in the San Francisco Bay Guardian on Transformers: "The film has this sort of murky, inexplicable opening sequence that takes place in what we're told is 'Qatar, Middle East,' where good US soldiers encounter mean, scorpion-shaped Deceptacons who smash the crap out of them. The Middle Eastern 'bots look bizarrely like improvised explosive devices come to life; made of scrap metal and old tires, they hide in the sand and strike at unwary troops who are trying to be nice to the native folks. This is possibly the only part of Transformers in which Bay attempts to grasp feebly at political relevance and make something other than a zoomy truck commercial. Of course, he fails miserably."

For the WXWS, Hiram Lee looks way back to Live Free or Die Hard and Evan Almighty.

Back to the Phoenix - and the Boston Phoenix: "As a viewing experience and not as a kabbalistic colloquium among Potterians (who will overlook its scant values and over-digitization), Phoenix is crammed and quick, a shorthand version of a thick-as-a-brick pulp tale already well understood by the initiated and of no consequence to the trifling rest of humanity," writes Michael Atkinson.

Robert Cashill catches Transformers: "Jurassic Park got the digital ball rolling, and Gollum in the Lord of the Rings movies and the new King Kong ran with it, but this is it. Flesh and fantasy are now one. It helps, maybe, that the transformers are machines, with no irksome fur or skin to replicate. But here we are.... And that saddened me. All that wizardry leaves no room for dreaming."

"At a few points in [Order of the Phoenix], we get flashbacks to Harry's younger days—to scenes from the earlier movies," writes Peter T Chattaway at Christianity Today. "It is startling to realize just how much growing up Harry has done since the first film came out seven years ago. It is also sobering to think that a series that began with such potential is beginning to show serious signs of sequel fatigue."

Interesting: Chattaway asks, "Why does the fifth Harry Potter film show so little feeling for its characters?" Whereas, the Oregonian's Mike Russell writes that Phoenix is set "a difficult in-between place [between Books 4 and 6], as author JK Rowling lines up her dramatic chess pieces and builds a sense of dread. Fortunately, the filmmakers... understand this, and respond by focusing on Rowling's characters (and small moments between them) to a degree that's unprecedented in the movie series." Hm!

"[W]ithin its cautious parameters, the Harry Potter series remains arguably the most consistently enjoyable blockbuster franchise around," writes Paul Matwychuk. "I always enjoyed the Potter movies far more than Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy, for instance. That's not exactly an acceptable critical opinion, I know, but JK Rowling's sly, whimsical humour and her ever-growing cast of Dickensian professors and students just seems so much more inviting to me than the dreary self-importance of Tolkien."

Time's Rebecca Winters Keegan: "Now that the summer movie season is officially half way through, we wanted to single out some of the smarter marketing ploys so far."

"Like many, the Potter fan inside of me... enjoys these films enough in the moment, but their Xeroxed joys are fleeting ones, despite their undeniable visceral thrills," writes Rob Humanick.

Updates, 7/12: "Because I am an outsider to the culture of Harry Potter, I turned to the expertise of Laura Boyes, an [Independent Weekly] contributor and film curator at the NC Museum of Art, and her 18-year-old daughter, Adrian, for help in understanding Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix," writes Neil Morris. Dialogue ensues.

"Although Phoenix contains a singularly awesome showdown between Voldemort and Dumbledore - featuring computer-generated spells rivaling the strongest sequences in Bryan Singer's X-Men movies - the latest Potter story continues to construct one of the most drawn out build-ups in the history of pop culture," writes Eric Kohn in the New York Press. "The academic woes and struggles with magical red tape remain engaging to a point, but they also carry the scent of distraction."

Updates, 7/13: "[O]nce again the emphasis on that most over-rated and under-understood concept: dark," writes the Guardian's Peter Bradshaw. "And so the Harry Potter saga continues. It's essentially deeply conservative, with battles, and crashes, and giants and explosions and is shaping up to be an extraordinary real-time experiment for Daniel Radcliffe. Plenty of young actors complain that they did their growing up in public. For Radcliffe that is literally true.... Will it amount to anything more than just very good family entertainment - or will it assume a lofty Tolkienesque grandeur? I think and hope not.... But every time I sit down to a new Harry Potter movie, I'm struck by how very, very similar it is to the previous one - and how forgettable, even disposable, the plot twists are."

"Whatever happened to the delight and, if you'll excuse the term, the magic in the Harry Potter series?" wonders Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times. "As the characters grow up, the stories grow, too, leaving the innocence behind and confusing us with plots so labyrinthine that it takes a PhD from Hogwarts to figure them out."

"For those coming to the story fresh, the most helpful thing I can say is: don't worry, it's not you, it really does make this little sense," writes Robert Hanks in the Independent. "It's a shame that Yates isn't able to bring his television experience to bear on the story's subtext. In the more recent books, it seems clear that JK Rowling is trying to develop a political point; what isn't clear is what that point is."

"It is nearly impossible for an adult to watch Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix without seeing blatant echoes of current politics," argues Andy Klein in the LA CityBeat. "Fudge is the befuddled leader, trapped in a self-imposed bubble of ignorance; Umbridge is the bureaucrat whose sense of righteousness easily justifies revocation of civil liberties and the use of enhanced interrogation techniques, all in the name of a greater cause. The irony is that, were their real-world counterparts to view the film, they probably wouldn't recognize themselves for a second."

The Washington Post's Desson Thomson finds Order of the Phoenix "one of the most pleasurable films in the series."

Scott Tobias at the AV Club: "Though there are moments of levity scattered throughout Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the workmanlike fifth entry in the franchise, the overall feeling is that it sucks to be Harry Potter, and it's only going to get suckier from here on out."

"Blissed out, seemingly stoned to highest heaven, her smile is bliss." For Ray Pride, Evanna Lynch as Luna Lovegood is one of the margins of Phoenix to revel in. Related: An Evanna Lynch FAQ from Phelim O'Neill in the Guardian.

"The series has reached the unusual stage where actors of the calibre of Maggie Smith, Emma Thompson, Alan Rickman and David Thewlis appear in the background like beautifully upholstered furniture, doing little more than exuding classiness," notes Ryan Gilbey in the New Statesman. "This makes Staunton's forceful comic turn all the more welcome."

"Staunton is actually one of the few high points during a film that feels much longer than it actually is," agrees the Telegraph's Sukhdev Sandhu.

"Staunton is great fun - she's certainly one of the more colourful villains to strike fear into the hearts of the Hogwarts students," writes Wendy Ide in the London Times. "While this serviceable addition to the Potter series is unlikely to win any new fans, it's probably not going to disappoint too many of the existing ones. The formulaic structure notwithstanding, the Potter films continue to be one of the most visually inventive and meticulously detailed franchises."

"It doesn't really matter whether Order of the Phoenix is any good," writes John Constantine at Nerve. "It could be ten minutes of a guy in glasses with a lightning-bolt scar singing 'Everybody Dance Now' and people would eat it up. But it is good. Everybody wins."

"There have only been 13 films in history to open to $100 million or more in their first four days. Four of them have been this summer," notes David Poland at Movie City News. "Yet with all these massive openings, the total grosses over two months and ten days have only been a small bit better than in years past." Also, a review of Hairspray: "I liked the movie the first time I saw it. I loved it the second time. There are a couple of saggy spots, but the movie runs nicely in third gear for about seventy minutes ('Good Morning, Baltimore,' 'I Can Hear The Bells,' and 'Run & Tell That' are the home runs.) And then the film really comes to life when [John] Travolta and [Christopher] Walken have their duet."

"As an adaptation of an adaptation, Hairspray beats the odds against turning a musical based on a film into a credible movie, with a punchy cast that delivers the musical numbers without sacrificing the comedy," writes David D'Arcy for Screen Daily. Related: John Hiscock talks with Travolta for the Telegraph.

"[W]hat are the crucial factors that will allow the studio to produce a cash cow instead of a lame duck?" The Guardian's Phil Hoad has some fun breaking down the formula.

Update, 7/14: The NYT tries an interesting exercise: AO Scott and Manohla Dargis discuss, ever so briefly, various aspects of the Harry Potter series over video clips lasting a few seconds each. It's the latest addition to what is, in contrast, an abundant "Times Topics" page.

Posted by dwhudson at July 8, 2007 6:42 AM