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Nerve Retro: Visions of Lolita
by Various Photographers
A visual tribute to the original nymphet.
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Best of Dating Confessions
by You
This week, the award for "Most Likely To Have Been Assaulted By A Giant Spider."
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True Stories: The Worst Photo Shoot of All Time
by Jennifer Albany
In retrospect, I should've stayed away from Craigslist's "Creative" section.
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Miss Information
by Erin Bradley
Help! Suddenly my boyfriend's the most annoying man in the world. /advice/
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Red Hot Chili Peppers: Me and My Friends
by Tony Woolliscroft
Twenty years of intimate photos, onstage and off.
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20 Ways to Get Your Arrested Development Movie Fix*
by Phil Nugent
*Until they actually make the movie.
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Sex Advice From . . . Mike White
by James Brady Ryan
Q: What has screenwriting taught you about dating? A: I write about awkwardness. Dating is the perfect inspiration. /advice/
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The Men Who Stare at Goats
by Scott Von Doviak
George Clooney & co. get political, psychic, and really weird. /entertainment/
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Painted Love
by Samantha West
Shooting as if with brushes and oil.
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Culture Wars: Debating Mad Men's Marriage
by James Brady Ryan and Isabella Notti
Spoiler Alert: Should Betty [redacted] Don [redacted] or [redacted]?
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Ten Revelations on the Road to Love
by Jack Harrison
Seduction is easier than you think.
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My Parents Were Awesome
by Eliot Glazer
Before fanny packs and Yanni concerts, your parents were free-wheeling, fashion-forward, and super-awesome.
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Awesome Advice, Way to Go!
by Erin Bradley
The Washington Post forgets that vampires aren't real. /advice/
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New Releases: DVD
by Scott Von Doviak
The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 plus three. /entertainment/
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The Nerve Debate: Marriage
by Elizabeth Wurtzel and Jack Harrison
A tie that binds — or chokes?
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Savage Love
by Dan Savage
Should I marry the only guy I've ever slept with? /advice/
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My First Time
by You
"I was surprisingly adventurous, and he was surprisingly shy..."
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Cinema Sutra: Showgirls
by Jack Harrison
Elizabeth Berkley teaches us how (not) to have sex underwater. /advice/
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Ten Inappropriate Relationships We Love
by James Brady Ryan
Would Harold and Maude be cute in real life? /entertainment/
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Nerve Retro: Modern Olympias
by Peter J. Gorman
The photographer borrows from Manet to capture the tiny movements that emerge from bored stillness.
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Best of Dating Confessions
by You
This week: The "Your Reasons For Joining PETA Are Suspect" Award.
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Everything I Know About Love I Learned From... Weezer
by Jakob Dorof
Insights on romance from the original geek-rockers. /entertainment/
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Miss Information
by Erin Bradley
How can I tell if he's toying with me, or actually interested? /advice/
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Talking to Strangers
by Briana E. Heard and Meghan Pleticha
Nerve asks deeply personal questions to people we just met.
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 hirteen's an awful, icky age — that is, unless you're
a wizard, to whom even the worst omen that's ever beset a cup of tea leaves
becomes just another sort of charm. J.K. Rowling's third
novel, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, took the story of Harry's
painful thirteenth year and transmogrified it into the best book of the series,
a tone-perfect evocation of a half-real age. And now director Alfonso Cuarón — the
stylish, visceral director of
Y Tu Mamá También — has taken that
ugly year and conjured the franchise's best movie too: a darker, looser
dreamscape that transpires more in shadows and dank forests than in the open
air of the Quidditch pitch.
The sly and hilarious opening scene will
be parodied at the MTV Movie Awards: Under the sheets late at night,
Harry
plays furiously with
his wand, breathing hard, flush-faced, until the wand flickers, and then pulses
with light. By the time his Muggle caretaker bangs open the door, Harry, pretending
to be sleep, has a wide smile on his face. (I imagine Jimmy Fallon hunched over
on a kid's bed, fiddling between his legs, then pulling back the covers to reveal
cartoonish tufts of hair magically sprouting from his palms.) By the next scene,
Harry
has exploded
with Carrie-like anger, shattering a glass from across the room with nothing but
his rage.
Harry, angry and upset, runs away from home and finds
his
way
to
a
very
different
Hogwarts.
Chris Columbus, the director
of Jumanji and the first two Potter films, was content to create Happy
Meal landscapes fit for a theme park — a spic-and-span fantasyland, full
of
bright
diversions.
But Cuarón's Hogwarts looks weathered and dirty — more old Times Square
than
new — institutional,
blocky and huge, and somehow less important than the woods around and the
Harry
can't control his fears, or his fate, or his magic. |
tunnels
below.
Nothing ever quite happens when it should: terrifying
wraiths called Dementors randomly attack Harry for no clear reason; he faints
uncontrollably; his broom
breaks. Harry can't control his fears, or his fate,
or his magic.
And true to the black magic of the thirteenth year, biology
begins to make girls look like women and boys like chemistry experiments. Harry
has lost all his baby fat. While Weasley has been banished to that dorky era
between cute and teen — as a
result,
he's not given a single act of importance; he's a
hanger-on. Whereas Hermione (played by Emma Watson, the best actress of the bunch)
has blossomed into a brilliant young woman with a battery of secret talents and
a self-confidence that impresses male teachers. (Is Dumbledore almost flirting
with her?)
I can't speak for women, but for boys, I remember thirteen
being a horrible year. I turned thirteen a few days before the first day of eighth
grade, when
I showed up wearing bright pink Jams, bright red zits, and an Ocean Pacific T-shirt — somehow
thinking that dressing like a surfer in my landlocked North Carolina hometown
was a good idea. My former friend Suzy, who had grown breasts over the summer,
mocked me before I made it into the classroom. It was also the year I had my
first real fight and the first time I asked a girl to a school dance (that I
didn't want to go to) and she said no (because she was waiting on a call
from a kid who wore skateboard logos, not surfboard logos). A horrible year.
But, come to think of it, not bad material.
Thirteen has always been a lucky number in films. My
favorite film about thirteen year olds, Something Wicked
This Way Comes (perhaps referenced by Cuarón), follows two
kids who fight evil, like Harry, to retrieve their father — and who win
out in the end, like Harry, by facing down fear with a smile. 13 Going on
30 played the age for
laughs; Thirteen rubbed our faces in so-called authenticity by displaying
piercings
and
house parties. And somehow this odd tale of Hippogriffs and Dementors seems more
real than them all.
In Hollywood, thirteen is also the age at which Hollywood takes
the training wheels
off and real movie-going begins — with the PG-13 rating. And the miracle
of Cuarón's film is that, through some strange magic, it converts a kiddie
franchise into a great teen flick; a scary movie that you watch in the dark,
maybe
even while
holding
hands, a movie that may fall apart at the end but never panders. It's a
transformational act more impressive than the film's writhing werewolf: The struggling
Olsen twins should take note.
n°
| ABOUT THE AUTHOR: |
 |
Logan Hill is a contributing writer at New York magazine. He has
contributed to Wired, The Nation, The New York Post, The New York Press and The Village Voice. |
©2004 Nerve.com.
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