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Azkaban CONTINUED FROM PAGE 7 (Alan Rickman) and divination witch Professor Trelawney (Emma Thompson, who seemingly copied Tracy Ullman’s character in “Robin Hood: Men in Tights”). Professor Lupin (David Thewlis), the new de fense against the dark arts teacher, bonds with Harry through his one time friendship with Harry’s par ents. While “Azkaban” begins with the same tired rigmarole of Harry leaving his porcine relatives, di rector Alfonso Cuaron blurs the train ride to school into an icy nightmare. The film has many of the same tired elements from the first two films — the classes, the hijinks and the detective work — but Cuaron makes the experience more organic than episodic, with heavy emphasis on mood to en hance emotion. Rather than fighting puberty, Cuaron allows the film’s princi ples to flirt with their changing personalities. Ron is still the goofy cynic but embarks on adventure without complaint. Hermione is growing into an experienced witch. Harry lives through Radcliffe, who just barely peeks out of his childhood-acting cocoon and shows rage, confusion and hopelessness with more depth. Cuaron gives the audience play fully subtle foreshadowing of a con nection between Ron and Hermione. Cuaron is lucky and painfully patient: before he shot a single scene, he had two films of character build-up. He takes the road less traveled and only hints at the smallest kernel of a relationship without exploring it. Whoever di rects the film where this relation ship comes to fruition will have himself a huge emotional payoff. “Azkaban” is the dark but beautiful cousin of the first two films, going deeper into charac ters and mood. Alfonso Cuaron has completed a cinematic hat trick, and hopefully the next di rector will keep the spell alive. Comments on this story?E-mail gamecockfeatures@gwm.sc.edu Wolfe CONTINUED FROM PAGE 7 electing London’s mayor and Greater London Assembly. Low turnout (which benefits the conservatives) and opposi tion to the war in Iraq (which benefits the liberal democrats) are expected to deliver Labour a nasty one-two punch. The high cost of simply driving the motor ways to get to the grocery store or to work has also driven up dis satisfaction among voters that may have voted for Labour on June 10, but will now be chang ing their vote or staying home al together. While Labour is still expect ed to hang on to its parliamen tary majority, a disaster at the polls Thursday could be the death knell to Tony Blair’s pre miership and his chances of be ing only the third prime minis ter to preside over three terms. Many voters dislike Blair and his policies but still back the Labour Party. There are also a significant number of Labour members of parliament who want Blair out, favoring Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown. Brown, in his position as chancellor, acts like a combina tion of the secretary of the treas ury, White House budget direc tor and director of the Office of Management and Budget. All of this makes him the second-most powerful man in the govern ment, next to the prime minis ter. The high-level political ma neuvering is the stuff of low-level political drama and has played out as such in the newspapers. The latest rumor has Blair’s Chief of Staff Jonathan Powell mentioning to a conservative journalist that, “It's a Shakespearean tragedy. Gordon Brown is like the guy who thinks he's going to be king but never gets it. He's never going to be prime minister.” The quote, reported in The Spectator, was immediately de nied by Powell and the Blair camp, but it still has a ring of truth about it. Regardless, it doesn’t matter what’s true or not — perception is reality in poli tics, and the public perception of Blair is not good. Still, Ken Livingstone, a Labour member and the incum bent mayor of London, said Sunday that dispatching Blair af ter the anticipated June 10 dis aster would only cripple Labour and lay the groundwork for con servatives to make a comeback. Livingstone cited how the con servatives began to fall apart af ter ditching Margaret Thatcher for John Major, only to lead to a devastating defeat for Labour in 1997. Whatever happens, it cer tainly makes for interesting times over here and is at least a little bit better than driving to the local gas station to protest the obscene prices. Just don’t ask me to pay for the gas, though. Comments on this story?E-mail gamecockfeatures@gwm.sc.edu I STROM: SUMMER I ill ^ Mon. - Fri. 6:(X) a.m. -11:00 p.m. Sat. 10:00 a.m. -10:00 p.m. Sun. 12:00 p.m. -1^0 p.m. M- Fri. 6:00 a.m. -10:00 p.m. Sat. 10:30 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sun. 12:00 p.m. -10:00 p.m. website: stc.se.edu