Harry Potter & the Goblet of Fire

the latest installment in the jk rowling's potter books is arguably one of the best in the series. harry potter & the goblet of fire is one of the books that i enjoyed most after reading all of the six published books. it shows that there are actually other hogwarts-like academies out there in the wizarding world.

the latest movie is indeed darker and is totally different from the previous 3 installments. i think it started getting serious and more appealing to older audiences in the prisoner of azkhaban. here, with a new director in tow, you can see the film is very different in approach. harry & the gang are growing up really fast - you can see in this film how harry, hermione and ron have grown so much from the first potter film. harry & ron have bulked up (they're no longer children really) and hermione is getting more & more beautiful with each film. the goblet of fire also shows a new cast in victor, cedric and fleur as the three other tri-wizard champions. victor & cedric are dashing & very handsome men while fleur is equally attractive. it is a good thing that the scriptwriter managed to squeeze in around 600-pages of the book into a 2 1/2 hour movie or else it would have been really disappointing to watch this film. i personally enjoyed the film except that i found that the story was too focused on harry. its all harry - i would have enjoyed seeing how the other tri-wizard champions managed their tasks. there were also very few scenes for hermione and ron in this film, much unlike the previous films. i guess trying to fit too many persona in this film would not have really worked so much. i think its just a bit sad because rowling introduces too many characters sometimes who suddenly disappears or is mentioned too little in succeeding books. and what's up with harry's hairdo here? he was very handsome in the prisoner of azkhaban and now his hair looks like a mop in this film.

there are 3 more books left in the potter series - the last book has not been published yet. i wonder if daniel radcliffe can still pull-off his harry potter character five years from now if he reprises his role as harry in the last book. i think he'd be too old & grown-up to play harry by then. ahhh five years .... its worth the wait.