Word: branagh
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...kindly Professor McGonagall, while Robbie Coltrane provides a comic foil as the lovably gruff gamekeeper Hagrid. Simultaneously though, moments of hair-raising creepiness are offset by the considerable humor throughout, provided largely by Kenneth Branagh’s portrayal of new Defense Against the Dark Arts professor, Gilderoy Lockhart. Branagh positively revels in Lockhart’s self-obsessed dandy dress and mannerisms, a perfectly effected over-the-top caricature oblivious to the sinister events transpiring around him. Ultimately though, despite the movie’s ineffable fun, it is difficult to view Chamber without a certain sense of regret...
...chase than an intramural sport. And Harry's showdown with a monstrous serpent in the bowels of Hogwarts should equal the most excitable readers' expectations. Making their Potter debut in Chamber of Secrets are Dobby, a funny, forlorn, computer-animated elf, Miriam Margolyes as Professor Sprout and Kenneth Branagh as Gilderoy Lockhart, the vain Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher - a role that was much sought after by British actors last year. "It's rather winning," says Branagh of the character, "his combination of total confidence with an absolute absence of talent." Designing his wardrobe, costume designer Lindy Hemming departed...
...this for an also-ran explorer whose legacy is the inspiring result of his great failure. We meet Shackleton (Kenneth Branagh) on a lecture tour, when he learns that Norwegian rival Roald Amundsen has beaten him to the South Pole, a voyage he has tried and failed at. Undaunted, he vows to become the first to cross Antarctica. His wife (Phoebe Nicholls) pleads with him to keep his promise to stay home and go into business. "I'm not a salesman," he demurs...
Less-true words have rarely been spoken. The adventurer, played with noble, doomed optimism by Branagh, is a shoeshine-and-a-smile pitchman nonpareil, hawking his expedition to dowagers and businessmen, whose names he promises to plant on newfound territories. He even lends his name to an Antarctic-themed dog-food ad. He finds funding, a ship--the Endurance--and a crew, selling them on their chances despite the encroachment of World War I and a thickening ice pack. And after the ship gets trapped in the ice, he uses his dogged charisma to lead 27 freezing men as they...
Like a doughty icebreaker, the mini-series is slow to gather steam, and writer-director Charles Sturridge's script veers toward the overdramatic. But Branagh makes Shackleton a very human icon, hubristic but good-humored. The explorer later died trying another Antarctic mission, so one shouldn't oversell his lessons. Still, Shackleton is a well-executed reminder that failure can breed success...