oh my heart swells!

Belle and Sebastian are indeed touring Australia late July.

July 24th MELBOURNE, The Palais
July 25th SYDNEY, The Enmore Theatre
July 28th BRISBANE, The Tivoli

More info at the official site.

In other news of personal media excitement, I went along to see HPIII last night with Luke, matthew and Denise, and oh my stars, is it miles better than the previous two!

I thought it was a fantastic film translation of the written text. But then, I'm always sympathetic to these reimaginings for a new form. To me, it doesn't make sense to replicate everything. We have the books for the source material, and the films for a specific audio visual 'extension' of the text. It becomes something new in this rendering.

I thought this new director to the series (Alfonso Cuarón of Y tu mamá también) did a much better job with the Potterverse than Chris Columbus. Less artiface and more texture. Shooting on location as opposed to soundstages (as with the first two) gives it a 'lived' magic that was absent from the earlier films. It was far less Disney and more British. Speaking from an aesthetic film perspective. Not that it's a Mike Leigh film (though David Thewlis is a top Lupin), by any stretch of the imagination, but it's not as shiny as the previous installments.

Having said that, I'm wondering how significant holes in exposition (the origin story of the four mischief makers - Wormy, Moonie, Padfoot and Prongs; the map; the siginificance of the patronus) will effect the reading of the story for those who haven't read the books. Those of us who have, already come with so much backstory and knowledge that we fill in the gaps along the way.

Then again, JK has been quoted (somewhere) as saying that the director has inadvertently set up, and foreshadowed a lot of what's to come in the next two books. Even beyond what she stressed to the screenwriter to keep in the script... So perhaps these 'holes' are inconsequential in the scheme of things?