There's no Oldman and no serious plot turns for the first 90 minutes. Nothing...really... happens. That's integrity, dude.

On one hand I admired Cuaron, the producers and screenwriter Steve Kloves for taking the time to build slowly and spookily, and making this first section of the film all about hints, hauntings, portents and puzzlements....and not much else. On other hand I was saying to myself, "C'mon..."

Of course, Cuaron & Co. have done exactly what they wanted to do. It's not "wrong" for a movie to skillfully meander around for 90 minutes, but let's not let the swooning-over-Alfonso syndrome blind us to the basic virtue of picking up the ball and running with it. This opener, as it were, which runs 21 minutes longer than Woody Allen's ZELIG, is an appealing eyeful. It's also clearly stuck on itself.

I realize the proper thing would be to forget my gut responses and make an effort to get into this movie as it simply is, instead of what I would have preferred. Except I've always felt that a movie has to come to me, and not the other way around. That's what the great ones usually do.

Let's bend over backwards and say that as far as mildly boring super-expensive franchise movies for kids and the young-at-heart go, AZKABAN is one of the best.

I don't mind it at all when films take their time setting things up. I loved it when Tony Scott waited for 50 minutes to start the story for MAN ON FIRE. So why was I shifting around this time?

Because it's the same old cauldron and the freshness is fading. This was my third year at Hogwarts, and I've gotten quite used to it. There ought to be more to a young sorcerer's education than just this. There's a big snarly world out there.

I realize, of course, that Harry misses his Dad and Mum and wants to know the truth about how and when they died. But wasn't this also a big concern of (sorry to bring up another franchise) Bruce Wayne's?

I wanted something a bit meaner and kickier, I suppose. A story that felt looser and less constrained by reverence for the page. But that wouldn't work, would it? You can't mess with a franchise. You must stay in the groove. The fans need their feed.

I liked the swirling Dementors well enough, but aside from their soul-vaccuming routine they didn't seem very different from the banshees in DARBY O'GILL AND THE LITTLE PEOPLE.

And I thought it was nervy to stay with a certain upsetting-to-children scene in which an easy-to-agitate creature was beheaded by a ghoulish creep in a cloak. Whoa. As the kids grow older, the story turns are getting a bit heavier...properly.

The scene with the three-tiered purple bus (the first vehicle the Hogwarts-bound Harry steps into, at the beginning) is overly exaggerated and cartoonish. It's like someone at the producer level said, "Let's throw something in for the tykes."

I loved that Daniel Radcliffe's Harry doesn't cower like a kid any more...that was getting old. He holds his ground and talks right back to his elders, looking them straight in the eye...good fellow. That said, I'm not sure about Radcliffe's acting range. I'm getting used to what he can do, and it doesn't feel like enough.

Emma Watson's Hermione is getting more and more fetching, and she can now throw a good hard punch. (They clapped in Paris when she dropped Tom Felton's Draco Malfoy ...you know, the blonde-haired meanie.) I can see Watson as the next Diana Rigg in an all-new, Gen-Y version of "The Avengers" in six or seven years.

Rupert Grint's Ron has grown into an enormous irritation. Has he ever performed one feat of magic, or shown the slightest confidence about anything? He seems old enough these days to chase girls and drink lagers, but he still whimpers like a six year-old when something scary happens. Kill him off and bring in someone more interesting. I've had it with this guy.

I missed the kindly emotion that the late Richard Harris brought to Dumbledore in the first two films. (They should have CG'ed him like Oliver Reed was in GLADIATOR, just to do it.) His replacement, Michael Gambon, exudes a certain sinister quality that lends a cooler tone.

Alan Rickman's Snape is darkly amusing as usual. Emma Thompson's bit as a dithering, half-blind Hogwarts instructor of some kind feels wholly superfluous.

Oldman's Sirius is agreeably feisty, colorful, pained. He does a lot more with this grimy fugitive character than you might initially expect, and I'll leave it at that. David Thewlis is introduced as Professor Lupin, a tweedy Dark Arts professor who seems sympathetic enough...at first. The great and grungy Timothy Spall shows up at the two-thirds mark as a half-man, half-rat...something along those lines. I shouldn't say any more.

HARRY POTTER AND THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN is not a burn. It's not going to piss anyone off. (Am I? No.) And yet...

As I sat there and sat there, trying not to think about the hygiene problem that a woman sitting next to me had obviously decided not to deal with, I was saying to myself, "Yeah, yeah....good stuff, Alfonso. Good imaginative moves. This is obviously a much better POTTER than the first two....you're skating figure-eight's around Chris Columbus...this is a rich, well done ride."

And then it hit me. Or rather, the title of this article did.

Cuaron kept laying on the atmosphere and occasional humor (that under-the-sheets masturbation gag, etc.) and dreamscaping his way through Rowling's world in ways that I couldn't help but be aroused by. The slightly grainier color, the liveliness of the camera work....the constantly inventive eye of a real filmmaker. But too often I felt stuck, caught...like I was just waiting it out.

The spirit of AZKABAN wasn't with me, but the spirit of Papillon was.

The War That Was

June 6th is next Sunday, and there's a big 60th anniversary of D-Day festivities happening that day near the old assault beaches on the French northern coast. President Bush was in Paris a few days ago (I was under the impression he'll attend the D-Day thing, but now I'm not sure), and there's a pro-Iraqi, anti-Bush "manif" (i.e., demonstration) happening at Place Bastille this Sunday also.

Anyway, with some DVD distributors trying to cash in on the D-Day thing by putting out WWII flicks and my temporary digs in Paris and all, I thought I'd be doing a piece about the appetite of today's audiences for 1940s war flicks. Question is, does one of any size exist?

It's not just the under-40 crowd that has a limited interest in the WWII experience, but boomers also....or so I'm starting to believe. And the guys who fought it are getting on in years. The whole era is getting hazier and more remote, and I wonder if those WWII DVD's are selling or renting according to projections.

The fight against Germany and Japan doesn't resonate like it used to. Perception-wise, there's something a tiny bit rickety about WWII in this era of terror. WWII was played according to recognizable rules, and with a reasonably good guy, Franklin D. Roosevelt, in charge. There are no rules today except "watch out!" and Bush, a lesser figure by any standard, is calling the shots. Not a lot of overlap here.

The darker, more complex WWII films -- PATTON, BATTLEGROUND, A BRIDGE TOO FAR, THE LONGEST DAY -- still resonate, but the gung-ho variety, particularly the ones made in the 1940s and '50s, don't. Mainly because it's so difficult to buy into their half-innocent, half-arrogant, America-knows-best attitudes.

There's a two-disc, special-edition version of THE GREAT ESCAPE that came out a week or so ago, and I was surprised to discover when I watched it this week how forced a lot of it seems today. It all feels so damn smug. I found the docs on the second disc (including a piece about the real escape) much more intriguing.

I don't really feel like wading into this, but if anyone has a reaction to what I've said, or can name some WWII films (particularly among those that have recently hit the DVD market) that don't feel unduly bogged down by sentiment or naivete, please write in.

Bada Bingue

There's two bad things about not being in the States now -- not seeing last Sunday's episode of THE SOPRANOS ("Long Term Parking"), and missing the season finale airing this Sunday ("All Due Respect").

HBO viewers will be looking at, among other things, a final showdown between Tony and Johnny Sack (with Tony's crew "circling the wagons") and Tony wondering about making a "sacrifice bunt," which I presume is an allusion to zotzing his renegade ex- con cousin, played by Steve Buscemi, who's otherwise known as "Diet Tony."

"Respect" will have to be something to top "Parking," to judge from what I'm reading in the chat rooms. I feel I've almost seen it after reading Kim's detailed synopsis on www.televisionwithoutpity.com. The description of Adriana's demise reads as follows:

"Silvio stops the car and gets out. Adriana finally realizes what's going on and starts to panic. She tries to crawl across the front seat of the car away from Silvio, who's opened the passenger door as she screams, 'No, no...please!' Silvio grabs her roughly and asks where she thinks she's going, and then calls her a f***ing cunt. He tosses Adriana onto the ground, and she tries to crawl away from him through the leaves while crying, 'No! Nooooo!'

"Silvio calmly walks after her and pulls out a gun. Adriana crawls out of the frame, and Silvio walks after her. We hear one gunshot, and then another, as the camera pans up to the sky."

I wrote early last March that "as far as Drea de Matteo's character is concerned, I want something made clear. She's a rat, she's dead. No two ways. Guasto." I was wrong in predicting that Christopher (Michael Imperioli) would have to pull the trigger; I should have known he'd freak and fall apart after learning she'd talked to the feds, and leave it to Tony and Silvo.

An L.A. pal assures me that "Long Term Parking" was "a very good episode." A friend wrote me a few days ago from New York and said he overheard some people chatting excitedly about it the next day (i.e., Monday) on the IRT.

I'm presuming HBO will star re-running the entire fifth season later this summer, so I guess that's my shot. If anyone in West Hollywood has taped these episodes....naah, no begging. But I'm back on June 14th.

Still Does It

It's odd that the new two-disc anniversary edition of FIELD OF DREAMS (out June 8th) is the first to present this still-effective, much-loved film in its original anamorphic (2.35 to 1) aspect ratio. It looks great and all, but I wonder why it took Universal Home Video all this time to finally get it right?

I've also wondered why Phil Alden Robinson, who wrote and directed this classic ode to the spirit of baseball and down-home Americana, and whose clout was enormous after the film became a big hit (a $65 million domestic gross was pretty impressive back then), has directed only two features since -- the Robert Redford caper film SNEAKERS ('92) and THE SUM OF ALL FEARS ('02).

I didn't have the balls to ask him this when we spoke on the phone a few weeks ago, or why video audiences have only seen DREAMS with its sides lopped off until now. (My wimpishness is startling at times.) Mostly we just chit-chatted about the making of the film, how he got this or that shot....nothing too earthshaking. I hadn't seen the DVD at the time of our chat, so I was just kind of mushing around.

I was going to tell Robinson something that I'm sure he's heard time and again, which is that FIELD OF DREAMS gets me every damn time I see it, except...yeah, you guessed it.

It's not the "Dad, do you wanna have a catch?" scene between Kevin Costner and Dwier Brown that makes me choke up. (I think it's a little too on-the-nose). It's the third-act portions with Burt Lancaster's Archibald "Moonlight" Graham -- a kindly, 70ish small-town doctor who washed out as a ball player as a kid, but who magically gets a chance to play with some big-leaguers (the Chicago Black Sox, actually) on Costner's cornfield diamond in Iowa.

I love it when Ray Liotta, playing the ghost of Shoeless Joe Jackson, says to Lancaster as he leaves the field, "Hey, rookie?" (beat, beat, beat, beat) "You were good."

It's not Lancaster who actually plays, but his youthful self, portrayed by Frank Whalley. I've always wondered why Robinson cast Whalley, who's maybe 5'7" tall, if that, and not exactly an athletic-looking type, to play a young Lancaster, who, as we all know from his early films, was tall and strapping. Why not cast someone who at least vaguely resembled the way he looked in, say, THE KILLERS?

Okay, that makes...what?...four questions I should have asked.

I love the trippiness of FIELD OF DREAMS....all those voices and omens and ghosts, and all that irrationality and childish fantasy coming together in a way that eventually makes perfect emotional sense. It must have been hard as shit to make it work. It could have turned out mawkish or worse if Robinson hadn't adapted W.P. Kinsella's "Shoeless Joe" just so, and then shot and cut it with exactly the right touch.

Has there ever been a death scene, which is how I interpret James Earl Jones accepting Liotta's invitation to disappear into the cornfield, played with more merriment?

Jones, who's playing a J.D. Salinger-type writer named Terrence Mann, is giggling as he stands at the precipice between mortality and spookville. Jones says he's going to write about what he finds, and an angry Costner, who hasn't been "invited," tells him, "I want a full report," but c'mon....mortals can "talk" to ghosts, but they can't visit the place they come from and then return. The process of organic de-materialization and ectoplasmic assimilation is far too complex.

I wonder what Robinson would have to say to that? Forget it.

There's a bunch of extras on Disc 2, as you can imagine. The usual collection of deleted scenes...always welcome. There's a FIELD OF DREAMS roundtable discussion between Costner and a few ex-major league ballplayers, shooting the shit about life, dreams, the movie, and whatever. There's an appreciation doc called "From Father to Son: Passing Along the Pastime." There's a short piece about the actual FIELD OF DREAMS baseball field, which is still being kept up and attracting fans. And you've got Robinson and the film's dp John Lindley supplying the feature commentary.

I wonder why Costner didn't take part in the commentary. He's not on the extras like he was on the BULL DURHAM DVD. Maybe it's some lingering resentment issue...you can never tell with big-name actors. They do what they want to do, or they don't...and that's that.

Yo, Phil...wanna jump in?

I've said this before but I'll say it again: if you've still got problems with Costner (you know...if there are any DRAGONFLY/POSTMAN/WATERWORLD issues still sticking to your brain, which as far as I'm concerned should have been forgotten after the debut of Costner's OPEN RANGE, which was easily one of '03's best), listen to him rap on the BULL DURHAM commentary track. You'll forgive the guy totally.