Boy, does it seem that that director position of the Harry Potter movies is like the DADA position in the books?

It does seem cursed. Ever since Chris Columbus left, the movies have not only gotten worse, but also longer and with rather poorer actors.

Damn it all.

Sure, I loved GoF. I've seen it three time since Friday evening. I was ecstatic that Snape got to show more of his humour, and also that I got to see him scale a ladder in his potions stores room (insert swoon).

Durmstrang was fantastic, Madame Maxine was just as elegantly gigantic as I had imagined, and the Beauxbatons girls were perfectly gorgeous and snooty.

Some of our original characters, though, were ... sub-par.

Dumbledore, for instance. Would Dumbledore show the rage or resignation that Gambon gave him in the movie? Certainly, Gambon can give us the eccentric, wacky Dumbledore that we love, but it took Richard Harris to give us the dignified, eloquent, cryptic Dumbledore whom we revere and mourn.

Ron turned into too much of a bitch, way too quickly. There were many ways that the director could have made the transition much smoother.

The movie seemed focused too much on the Triwizard Tournament. It's been years since I've read GoF, but the entire book wasn't so entirely absorbed in it. Was it? Either way, there was too much focus on the tournament, with not enough intellectual digging into it by Hermione. I mean, damn.

Though right now, I'm kind of busy and went off on a tangent, so ... I'm just gonna finish this later. Perhaps.