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August 4, 2004 INTRODUCTION In Harry's third year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, he finds out that a man named Sirius Black, who is said to have betrayed Harry's parents and helped Voldemort kill them, has escaped from the wizard prison Azkaban and is coming to kill Harry. The Ministry of Magic therefore sends the Dementors, the guards of Azkaban, to station at Hogwarts in case Black arrives, but Harry's scar hurts and then faints everytime he sees them. Meanwhile, a new Defense of the Dark Arts teacher, Professor Remus Lupin, arrives... REVIEW The Harry Potter books are great to read, as they are suspenseful and exciting, but the films don't continue the legacy. The first two didn't, and so is this. Although it is slightly better than its predecessors, it is still a lackluster piece of work. After two extremely average efforts from Chris Columbus, Alfonso Cuaron, director of Y Tu Mama Tambien, comes along for Prisoner of Azkaban. Frankly, I think Cuaron explores the mind of these teenagers more thoroughly than Columbus, which is a good thing. In other terms, the pace of the story is quickened, hoping to stop the problem occuring in the first two, which wasted too much time in explanation of the background story. But it fails ultimately, because the pace was a bit too quick. Pretty irony, eh? As for the CGI, it was more or less like the first two, and the Dementors looked pretty good, but the werewolf was fake. It's even faker than the wolves in The Day After Tomorrow. And I thought werewolves had more fur? This werewolf in HP3 is almost furless, and very thin, too. It's more like a big monkey who shaved its fur and put on a wolf mask. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban improves on The Sorcerer's Stone and The Chamber of Secrets, but only barely. It still fails to capture the magic J.K. Rowling gave to her fantastic books.
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