Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix trailer and more

So because the new Harry Potter film is soooo close to coming out (only 7 months more to wait! ;-P), the whole promotional campaign has started for good. It's no longer random photos and interviews from the sets, the first official teaser trailer is out:

I'm actually rather disapointed with it - I much preferred the stills that were released. The trailer is all action and high tension (the music is so over the top!), only Snape in the Occlumency scene gets me excited. I guess I have unrealistic expectations - I'd like it to be an art house film or something of the sort ;) (Cuaron wasn't that far from doing that with film 3 and there's more and more rumours that he might be back for film 6, so maybe there's still hope ;-P)
Anyway, I found a nice fan made trailer on youtube. It's just a slideshow of some of the stills that were released (but since I liked the stills that suits me ;-P) and it's set to the soundtrack of Requiem for a Dream:

There are some recent stills which weren't included in that fan made trailer and there's a few which I'm again excited about (kind of depressing that I keep liking the stills, but not the video ;-P). Here's Harry with his geeky Ministry hearing appearance (there've been similar stills around but this one I think is particularly nice ;-P) and then there's two pics which people are very excited about - Harry's hand after his detentions with Umbridge (pic1 and pic2). Of course what's disapointing is that in the books the line that Umbridge has Harry ingrain into his hand is "I must not tell lies" which I think is a much better line than "I will not break rules". Of course the book is so huge that they've definitely had to cut things out of it - so perhaps Harry's outburst in Umbridge's class was cut and that's why they had to change the line. I hope it's that, otherwise I think it's a horrible change ;-P
At least the visual side of the film should be very good and the person largely responsible for it is in fact Sławomir Idziak, so there's a nice Polish accent there ;)

But back to the official trailer - book 5 is dark and intense, so in a sense it's good that they have gone that way (the trailer certainly implies that it's going to be the darkest of the lot!), but on the other hand book 5 is probably one of the funniest of the series, so I really hope that comes across in the film as well (the trailer doesn't make me optimistic about that even if the photos implied it :-/). Anyway, just to show you how much darker this new Potter trailer look, check out the trailers for the previous four films.

1: Philosopher's Stone


2: Chamber of Secrets


3: Prisoner of Azkaban


4: Goblet of Fire


2nd trailer to 4:


While Goblet of Fire was the first of the lot to get a PG-13 certificate in the US rather than a PG as the rest had done, I think the trailer for Order of the Phoenix implies that the film could be darker even than that (that at least I'm happy about). But on the other hand I'm starting to wonder - is it still going to be marketed at children?

But back to video material of the new HP film - there's also a very short TRL preview available on-line (near the end Daniel Radcliffe talks about the kiss in a rather amusing way):


The best preview we've had so far though (even better than the trailer) is a preview that was shown on HBO:

One part that I'm absolutely loving is Imelda Staunton as Umbridge. She is just spot on! And it's not easy to balance an act like that, I mean it's a woman who is on the one hand supposed to be all sweet, dressing in pink all the time and talking to almost everybody as if they were 5 year olds, but at the same time being a really, really nasty cow who for example punishes students by making them cut lines like "I must not tell lies" in their own skin. And she's just brilliant - all this is coming across even in those very short clips :)
I'm sort of disapointed with the hightened drama of it all though. The interviews we've had so far have mostly been saying stuff like that David Yates has really tried to take it down, make it a bit subtler (which on the one hand I say yes to, but on the other hand I think it's damn difficult to do with this sort of material - the Harry Potter series is hardly subtle ;) It's the Bollywood of literature ;) ). Unfortunately - I just don't see it. Not in the previews we've had so far. I'm particularly disapointed with the clips of Sirius in this preview. Not only is he weighing his words in a way that makes them very over the top, but he is also out of character. Sirius is an energetic man with a short temper who acts fast and thinks later (or not even then sometimes) - that's what the books have made us to believe anyway. But the Sirius on the clip is a different Sirius :-/
Oh well - it seems like most of the film is going to be like that for me - it'll score on some points and disapoint on others :-/

Well, that's it for the moment. Just as a P.S. (because I don't think it's big enough to put in a seperate post and yet it's such a ridiculous piece of Harry Potter trivia that I think it's worth mentioning), here's the annual Forbes list of the richest fictional characters. Lucius Malfoy is on the list ;)