Fun with Franchises: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (2001), Part II — “Way to Say Slytherin Like an Asshole, Maggie Smith”
What better way to start Fun with Franchises than with the king of all franchises (that we haven’t done yet)? This is the highest grossing franchise of all time, and is without a doubt the main one I grew up with, so it made sense to start with it. Harry Potter is by far the one franchise that every single one of my friends and I could make jokes and references to and have everyone get those jokes and references. Plus it’s just great.
I had so much fun with the Disney films and later the Bond films, I thought, “Let’s just try this with everything else.” Essentially this is us just watching these movies that we can talk endlessly about because we grew up with them and just cracking jokes and asking all these logical questions. It’s all for fun and basically for parody. We do this because we love them.
And that’s Fun with Franchises. Right now, we’re doing the Harry Potter franchise, and today is the second part of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.
Fun with Franchises: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (2001), Part I — “Voldemort: What a Cunt He Was”
What better way to start Fun with Franchises than with the king of all franchises (that we haven’t done yet)? This is the highest grossing franchise of all time, and is without a doubt the main one I grew up with, so it made sense to start with it. Harry Potter is by far the one franchise that every single one of my friends and I could make jokes and references to and have everyone get those jokes and references. Plus it’s just great.
I had so much fun with the Disney films and later the Bond films, I thought, “Let’s just try this with everything else.” Essentially this is us just watching these movies that we can talk endlessly about because we grew up with them and just cracking jokes and asking all these logical questions. It’s all for fun and basically for parody. We do this because we love them.
So this is Fun with Franchises. Right now, we’re doing the Harry Potter franchise, and today is the first part of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (also known as Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone to you Brits, and Australians, and… Canadians, and… the woman who wrote the book).
Hugo and the History of the Movies (Part III)
Yesterday we covered all of Hugo before the dramatic turn reveal through that the film is not about Hugo or the automaton or even Georges Méliès, but rather about the movies.
This is the part where it gets exciting for me, because I get to talk about the reason I love this film so much. Yesterday, I left off with the cover of “The Invention of Dreams.” Today, we’ll dive into just how Hugo is about the history of film, what it tells us, and how it manages to teach viewers about film history without them even realizing it. (It’s like that old tale of the kid not liking a vegetable, and then eating it without realizing it and going, “Oh, I guess I do like that.”)
Today, we go back through a history of the movies:
Hugo and the History of the Movies (Part II)
Yesterday, I talked about the first 12-13 minutes (depending on whether or not you want to count the opening studio logos and such) of Hugo and how brilliant they are.
Today — well, I’m just gonna keep going and see where I end up. We start where we left off, just at the title card, which is just about 13 minutes into the film. In fact, this next screenshot I’m about to post happens exactly 13 minutes into the film. Talk about being concise:
Hugo and the History of the Movies (Part I)
This was originally going to be my 1,000th post. I was thinking of something to write up, and saw that the article I wrote about my favorite moments from the film was getting a ridiculous amount of traffic as compared to everything else (I guess because of the HD screenshots), so I figured, “Well, that would be fun to talk about how the film relates to film history and all of that, plus I can throw in a lot of screenshots, and make it like those Tron articles (which still get by far the most views on the blog, because people just link to all the pictures).” Basically — fun, and a calculated risk to boost traffic. Because if you can, why not?
So my plan was to write up an article with screenshots about, as the title says, Hugo and the history of the movies. Only, with me, nothing is ever that simple. I started watching the film again (third time now) and then my film student brain turned on, and I started noticing all these great moments, which turned into a whole film analysis, and — it became a whole thing. I can never contain myself to just one article. Ever.
Anyway, here’s part one of me talking about Hugo and its use of and reliance upon the history of movies (as well as some other stuff. Mostly about how Martin Scorsese is a genius). (more…)
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