David Yates…That Guy with Harry Potter
Newsweek has a brief but interesting article about David Yates, the Director of Order of the Phoenix. Here are a few of the more interesting snippets from the article…with my thoughts on the snippets in italics:
“He’s one of the most exciting directors coming out of this country at the moment,” says longtime ‘Potter’ producer David Heyman. The “Harry Potter” producers must be applauded for having the guts to hand the Potter franchise over to an “emerging” director. It’s a great way to keep the series fresh and keep it evolving. When all is said and done, the Potter franchise will have done more to promote British filmmakers and actors than anyone in Britain could have ever dreamt possible. They’ve really put British filmmaking on the map. Which is a very good thing…we already have enough “Hollywood” to go around.
“‘Phoenix,’ the fifth book in author J. K. Rowlings’s series, is by far the most ideological, and seems allusive to post-9/11 politics.” This is something that makes so much sense, I’m surprised it hasn’t been alluded to more. “Order of the Phoenix” was released in June of 2003, three years after “Goblet of Fire” in 2000, so JK Rowling was writing this right smack in the middle of the aftermath of September 11th and the lead-up to the Iraq war. Very interesting. I’ll have to go back and read some of “Phoenix” with this in mind.
“Yates has pushed all the actors, in particular Daniel Radcliffe, who plays Harry, to deepen their performances this time around. ‘I’ve stretched Dan quite a bit. He’s a very intuitive person, very bright, quite sensitive,’ he says. ‘I’m just helping him wake those things up. You can see his determination and ambition, and he can switch things on a sixpence, so I can’t wait for people to see what he’s achieving.’” Daniel Radcliffe may not be given the proper credit because of the popularity of the “Harry Potter” films (for some reason it seems only obscure films get the “quality” label), but he’s a very fine actor. Same goes to Rupert Grint and Emma Watson. Now that the actors are getting a bit older and wiser, it’s going to be great to see what they can do when they’re asked to dig a little deeper inside of themselves.
There doesn’t seem to be a lot of information on David Yates, but here’s his Wikipedia Page and his IMDB Bio to give you a little bit more info.
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