Greasy Spoon

Today we head down to Leicester for the Braunston parkrun, which is one we haven’t done before. MD seriously holds be back today. It’s true that there is less lead biting at the start but possibly more barking, if that’s possible. However what really stuffs our time is his FIVE comfort breaks. Three of which require a poo bag and I’ve only stuffed two down my shorts. That’s inconvenient but it’s the lost time that’s the real disaster.

Afterwards the only place to grab a coffee is the local leisure centre but I don’t think they’ll be much chance of a bacon roll there. They’ll probably just be a coffee machine and a long queue.

Instead we head home to see if we pass any cafes on the way back. Surprisingly we come across one of those greasy spoon affairs that lurk in laybys. This one, which is called Paula’s and is staffed by a chap who doesn’t look much like a Paula, is actually rather posh. It even has its own Batmobile and website.

In the afternoon Derby beat Rotherham 3-0 at what will soon no longer be called the iPro Stadium. What was supposed to be a 10 year deal will apparently end on 1^st January after just three years.

L again picks tonight’s film, so it’s a good job I get to take a pint of Centurion in with me. 

 
Ok. So I admit I was the one who watched all the Harry Potter films without fully understanding what was going on. Well, I did follow the first one which was utterly charming and the second to last one which was a bit like a proper film but the rest were all well, full of the sort of stuff I didn’t really understand. Wizardry you might call it. Made up stuff. So it’s fair to say that ‘Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them’ probably wasn’t made for me.

It's been five years since the last Harry Potter film and it’s a surprise that it’s taken that long for them to decide to bleed the original idea dry but now they clearly have now. ‘Fantastic Beasts’ is based on a fictional textbook Harry and his classmates studied at Hogwarts and JK Rowling published as a short story in 2001.

We are now back in the 1920’s and in the interests of coining the more lucrative American market the action has been moved to New York. Former Hogwarts student and now wizard zoologist Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) has arrived in the city on route to Arizona where he is going to release a Thunderbird into the wild.

When he arrives he is arrested by Porpetina Goldstein (Katherine Waterston) aka Tina a downgraded Auror from MACUSA (Magical Congress of the United States of America) whose job it is to investigate any unregistered wizard who comes into the city.

By now Newt has lost his suitcase, which contains not only the Thunderbird but other fantastic beasts, after one of the oldest tricks in the world, the old swapped suitcase affair. Consequently his beasts end up with no-maj (aka muggle) wannabe baker Jacob Kowalski (Dan Fogler).

The charges against Newt are dismissed by Percival Graves (Colin Farrell), presumably the boss, when he examines Newt's suitcase to find nothing but doughnuts while the contents of his original suitcase escape and run amok in NYC. 

Newt and Tina along with Jacob and Tina’s mind-reading sister Queenie (Alison Sudol), who seems to have the hots for Jacob, now team up to recapture them Pokémon-go style. Queue comic chase sequences.

Yes the Niffler, a magical platypus with an expensive strain of kleptomania, is cute and funny as it attempts to cram all the world’s valuables into its bottomless stomach but Eddie Redmayne performing a mating dance with the aim of luring a rhino-style beast, an Erumpent, is beyond excruciating.

You know that studios have run out of ideas when they end up resorting to more and more special effects. An hour into this I already have a CGI related headache along with a severe case of boredom.

Headache aside, I was sort of with everything to this point but new characters such as Credence Barebone (Ezra Miller), the adopted child of the wizard hating Mary Lou (Samantha Morton), keep coming at you from all angles without much in the way of an explanation. 

None of these characters added up to much which meant I didn’t really care much for any of them. What made the Harry Potter watchable was that the brilliant characters which are sadly absent here.

Rowling is capable of much better than this. We know she is, Casual Vacancy, Cormoran Strike etc. To me ‘Fantastic Beasts’ is a cluttered mess and I haven’t been so unentertained in a long time.

At least you know it's a wind up when Johnny Depp appears at the end as Grindewald... it is a wind up, isn’t it? Apparently not, this is going to be a series of five films. Wake me up when it's all over.

Afterwards we have a couple of beers in the Scribblers’ ‘Room With A Brew’ before rounding the night off with a couple of Chocolate Gorillas in the Blue Monkey. We did stick our heads in the Borlase on the way to the Blue Monkey but they’d only got Tuck on, so we didn't stay. Good job really, would have hated to miss out on the CG.

(Saturday 19^th November)

Send For Harry

L runs the Sleaford Half Marathon for the third year in a row. I’ve bailed out this time but then I haven’t got a mileage target to hit. At least not yet. It’s the warmest it’s been for a race in Sleaford in living memory, probably ever, but that’s not actually saying much. Despite their being a frost in the car park the temperature is officially above zero, the wind below 30mph and it’s not raining. Yet.

L, has she makes a habit of, hacks several minutes off her best time here in her last ever race here. So see you next year. Maybe.

We head home for the usual post race chill out session, which is so chilled out that we’re well late getting out the house for tonight’s film. Then the bus doesn’t turn up. After a long wait we start to walk and then hop on the next bus as it catches us up. In the meantime we negotiate, renegotiate and then renegotiate again the film we’re going to see.

We manage to cram in a Broadway meal and then I break my AF fast of two days, as we settle down for the latest Harry Potter.

Something is wrong though. Harry’s ditched the glasses, gone for contacts and grown some stubble. Ah, this must be ‘The Woman in Black’ then, a ghost story from the once great Hammer Films. It is based on a book by Susan Hill from 1983. There is also a popular stage play and a TV movie, made in 1989.

It grabbed my attention immediately when three children leapt unexplained to their deaths from a window in perfect synchronisation. From walking in with not very high expectations, I'm already slightly impressed. Nicely morbid does it for me every time.

Arthur Kipps (played by Harry), who lost his wife (Sophie Stuckey) during childbirth, works for a law firm. His firm, not very impressed with his recent efforts, ask him to travel to the remote village of Crythin Gifford (wasn't that one of the houses at Hogwarts... perhaps not) to find out if the recently deceased Mrs Drablow has left any unknown wills. His employer warns him that it's his last chance to prove his worth to the company.

When he gets there, after a long trip north, there's suddenly no room at the Inn, despite booking, and there’s also something not quite right about the whole village, whose residents clearly don't want him around. It could be connected to the mysterious deaths of a lot of children and the sightings of a woman in black.

That is, apart from one man, Simon Daily (Ciaran Hinds), a man with a car, a rare thing at the turn of the last century. He too has lost a child, his son, and his wife (Janet McTeer) has gone slightly crazy. She also has two dogs, how more crazy can you get?

The late Mrs Drablow lived at Eel Marsh House, which is your standard horror film rundown mansion, which lies at the end of long winding road that is impassable when the tide is in. Like Lindisfarne or Amityville on sea. I'm not sure how long the woman has been dead but the house is already very dilapidated but then the process of law can be pretty slow or perhaps she just wasn’t into cleaning.

Now what we get is a good old fashioned haunting as Kipps looks through a mound of the old lady’s paper while bumps, bangs and creaking floorboards happen around him. Kipps copes admirably. He possesses an uncanny stupidity/bravery in the face of it all but then I guess when you’ve seen off one shady figure you can see off them all and the Lady in Black is no Lord Voldemort.

She is though a wronged woman on a mission and we all know to steer well clear of those. They cannot be appeased. Kipps discovers the back story, how she lost her child and it appears now that she’s determined that everyone else will lose theirs too. The bad news for Kipps is that his own son is coming up to visit in a few days time.

I rather enjoyed this. Whereas most modern horror films just pile in loads of blood and gore, this is a real throwback, old school horror, with plenty of scenes that keep you on the edge of your seat. It's just you, a creepy old house and Mr Radcliffe. Oh and the dog. I was worried about the dog.

It's even sort of scary. You see them coming but the scares are still quite effective. They probably overdid it a bit at times and stuff like murky liquid leaking from a faucet has never been scary but overall, I loved it.

Plus Daniel Radcliffe is actually rather good. They handled brilliantly and didn’t ask him to do anything he couldn’t. Just stand there and look moody, which he did well.

So does it all end happily ever after? We'll I'm not saying but I left the cinema with a spring in my step but then I do love a good death.

Afterwards we pop into the H&H for a slowie and then head home. Where I try to watch all the cycling before dawn. Vicky Pendleton hasn't had a good weekend and she's been saying this week that she's been having nightmares about being chased by a monster called 'Olympics'. She needs to send for Harry.

(Sunday 19th February)

It All Ends, I Think

A lazy start to the day, horizontal, and there’s no great rush to get up and take the dogs on the park as it’s raining again. So once we emerge from the duvet, I catch up on the cycling instead, much to the dogs’ frustration. It’s raining I reiterate to them. MD hops from paw to paw (‘so what?’), Doggo nods, understanding, yet still looking through the door with a longing look (for a football) in his eye. I give them breakfast to shut them up. Well, lunch actually, as its gone 12:00. The rain does eventually stop and we make it onto the park.

Then it’s into town for Butter beer and Muggles Mead. I examine the pump clip for Muggles Mead and see it’s a Nottingham Brewery product. So it’s going to be very pale and quite bitter then. Yep. Like all their beers.

‘It all ends’ here of course. I’m all for that, as long as they hang on a few minutes whilst I quickly revise part one (whilst the adverts are on) and then tee-up the subtitles (Wikipedia) for part two. Now is not a time to get lost.

So, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2. The film picks up swiftly from where part one left off, with Johnny No-Nose (Mr Voldemort to you) stealing the awesome elder wand from Dumbledore's tomb. Now I am invincible... and all that... cackle, cackle, cackle etc etc.

Meanwhile our three heroes continue to play hunt the horcrux to undermine Voldemort’s invincibility idea, as usual surviving only by the skin of their teeth.



In one instance stealing a dragon to escape from Gringott's Wizarding Bank, destroying half of London as they go before ending up in a lake. With all three of them soaked to the skin, Harry and Ron take off their wet clothes and share a ‘manly’ torso moment, well, until Ron can no longer hold his stomach in. In the last film it was Harry and Hermione in a topless clinch, I hope this isn’t a weird reworking.

Then with Hermione beginning to unbutton her dress, we all (the men) sit there with bated breath. Go Hermione go, but no, this time she keeps her kit on. That could well have been the moment when you'd wished you'd paid extra for the 3D version but, typical girl, she'd rather be cold and miserable.

Anyhow back to ‘horcrux watch’. Pretty soon they just have two left to destroy. There is Voldemort's snake Nagini and then rather inconveniently they find that there’s one imbedded in Harry himself. Oops, that’s a bit weird and a bit tricky too. Harry says his goodbyes and heads off to sacrifice himself for the greater good.



RIP Harry... or rather not. Let’s just say, he got out of that one nicely. Just don’t ask me to explain it, even Wikipedia didn’t seem sure.

Which brings us to the final battle.



Of course there’s a battle, as there must be, but as ever battles leave me cold despite the wholesale attempted slaughter of the students (nice thought). It’s all a bit too exciting for me, I preferred the doom, gloom and depth of part one but I cope. The film is exciting yes, but it’s mainly the Daniel Radcliffe show, fair enough, while Emma Watson pants and gasps in the right places and Rupert Grint sucks his stomach in and smashes the odd horcrux.

Severus Snape bids a tearful goodbye, slaughtered by Voldemort and his tears, yes his tears, reveal an interesting secret he’s been keeping to himself.



The pleasantly deranged Bellatrix Lestrange checks out too, in a costume that Tim Burton probably has his wife Helena Bonham Carter wearing for the weekend lie-in, and explodes into confetti. An interesting way to die and less messy I guess.

I would say Maggie Smith stole the show, as Professor McGonagall, you’d certainly want her in charge of protecting your castle, if it wasn’t for Matthew Lewis as Neville Longbottom who steals several scenes.



He has the best line for a start, with a cheery “Well that went well” as they all narrowly escape death, to stepping forward to single handedly denounce the dark lord and slaying Nagini, Voldermort’s snake, the final horcrux. Then all of a sudden Voldemort gasps his last and the movie kind of ends a bit quick.

The big question of course is does Harry get off with Hermione? Afraid not. Then does she get off with Draco Malfoy? Again sadly not, but wouldn’t that have been cool. Oh well, Ron will have to do then. Then we're back at King Cross Station platform 9-3/4, again looking very St Pancras, which must really confuse the American tourists. It's odd that at this point they suddenly leave the CGI paintbrush in its box and don't age the characters much for the final scene nineteen years on with them all packing their own offspring off to Hogwarts. Bless.

The first film came out in 2001, when JK Rowling was still working on book five. Since then its taken ten years, seven books and eight films but the marathon is finally over and I feel like I've run one myself. Like my running, it started well, peaked too soon, flagged a bit in the middle, made you momentarily want to give up, then got its second wind, ran the last stretch well and then tonight sprinted over the line. Just don't ask me for a resume of the whole lot. ‘It all ends’, I think.

(Saturday 16th July)