A different kind of wizardry

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neha sharma

@loveneha_r

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Posted: 20 years ago

A different kind of wizardry in fourth 'Harry Potter'

By Bob Strauss, Staff Writer

For the first time, an Englishman is running Hogwarts.

"Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire," the British boy wizard's fourth movie adventure, was directed by Mike Newell of "Four Weddings and a Funeral" fame. Unlike American Chris Columbus and Mexico's Alfonso Cuaron, who helmed the previous adaptations of J.K. Rowling's best sellers, Newell knows from experience what an English education is like - although, he admits, his school was short on broomstick-riding and spell-casting courses.

"This one is bound to be a bit different, because I'm English and the others weren't," Newell states flatly. "Whether anyone will notice, I don't know, but I hope it has a kind of authenticity. And it's a little darker than the others, because these kids are growing up, and they have to face stuff that they haven't had to before. But the real thing about it is that it's a terrific adventure story and a really good thriller."

In "Goblet," Daniel Radcliffe's 14-year-old Harry is embroiled in a strenuous magic competition, and his great nemesis, Lord Voldemort, takes human form as the scary Ralph Fiennes.

But the most frightening element of all?

"Jo Rowling is very, very interested in what happens to these people when they hit puberty," Newell observes. "So you've got to take it on, and of course it's painful, as we all remember it. But it's also terribly funny

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as well."
Some things know no cultural barriers And Newell broke a personal one as well, when he left the character-based comfort zone of his previous British and American films to take on the massive, effects-laden "Potter" production.

"I was very 19th century and anti the whole business before I started," he says, "and then I realized that there's so much that you can do."

Still, you can never totally take the practical English schoolboy out of the high-tech filmmaker.

"It's ludicrous, but I kept on wanting it to be real," Newell admits. "I wanted a real dragon, and I wanted the boy to really be able to swim underwater for an hour, and so forth. If it looked fantastical, I wasn't really interested in it. Well, of course, there aren't dragons. But if there were, I hope that the dragon would look and behave the way that we've got it."

http://www2.dailynews.com/film/ci_3038268