Daniel Radcliffe is quite awesome.

I was not aware of this, but apparently Daniel Radcliffe is an awesome, funny guy. He seems like he'd be fun to get a beer with.

Deathly Hallows: Official Trailer

Fucking
Epic

Emma Watson: 2013 Class at Brown

So Emma Watson is attending Brown University.

I'm thinking about applying.

Half-Blood Prince Review: Meh

As a sign that I have grown since my last Harry Potter review I will admit that there is, as far as I can tell, no available rubric by which one can assess a Harry Potter film except to compare it to other Harry Potter films. And on that scale Half-Blood Prince deserves a resounding "It wasn't as bad as Order of the Phoenix." Truthfully, though, I have no idea how to review a Harry Potter movie, how to assess a Harry Potter movie.

The movies are not the books. Alright, we are clear on that. But then what are the movies understood to be? Are these companion pieces? Are these part of their own narrative? Or is each movie a stand-alone entity beholden to nothing but that which appears on the screen?

This is what Half-Blood Prince provides: teenage melodrama. I do not mean that to be pejorative; a significant chunk of the movie is primarily teenage melodrama. The majority of the subplots concerned the whole Ron / Heronme non-relationship drama with a pinch of Harry and Ginny thrown in. And this is the crux of my problem when trying to write this review.

The review I want to write focuses upon Half-Blood Prince as a waste of a movie. This movie could have been the Voldemort movie; a movie the majority of which was back story and trips into the pensive to view the historical progression from Tom Riddle to Voldemort. That would have been a kick-ass movie. We could have hit every scene with Dumbledore and Harry looking at memories. We could have had segments of exposition wherein Dumbledore explains to Harry and the audience what the fuck is going on. We could have cleared up all of the ignored subplots of past movies and explained how Harry's scar fits into the Voldemort plot which propels the entire series.

But then I look at what the movie actually was: teenage melodrama stilted on awkward psuedo-exposition trying to cobble together Draco's treachery, Voldemort's past, the Order of the Phoenix's consternation, and Slughorn's crazy-old-man eyes. There is enough melodrama to overshadow the plot undercurrents yet there is just enough exposition on the larger Harry / Voldemort conflict to make me wonder why it was not embellished.

I think the movie strives to be primarily stand-alone and so focuses upon teenage melodrama in order to both meet the expectations of its primary audience and not expect too much from them at the same time. We assume that people are familiar with the characters and so do not have to provide a wealth of introductions yet do not rely upon this supposed understanding on the part of the audience to build a strong narrative which drives the overall plot foreward. Yet I wonder if this construction is at all sensible. Do we suppose that what fans want is to see Ron and Heronme being awkward rather than memories related to Voldemort? If Half-Blood Prince is any indication then the reply is an overwhelming probably.

While this is not the movie I wanted it pissed me off less than Order of the Phoenix. But I have to wonder if my lack of anger is the result of the quality of the movie or my own numbness to the franchise. And at the moment my guess is that I just stopped expecting anything from these movies in terms of exposition, coherence, or storytelling and rather pay $7 to see gratuitous shots of Emma Watson's ass.

Half-Blood Prince: Pre-Viewing Review

The local theatre was sold out for the midnight showing of Half-Blood Prince. So, instead of watching the new movie I watched Prisoner of Azkaban and Order of the Phoenix tonight. Based upon those movies this is my review of Half-Blood Prince which, again, I have not seen.

JESUS FUCK-ASS CHRIST WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH THE PEOPLE WHO MAKE THESE MOVIES?

If you want to make a movie based on a book? The process is easy; the process is the opposite of difficult. You want to know what to do? Ok, here are the simple, easy-to-follow, retard with down syndrome instructions:

1) Open the book to page 1.
2) Have your set director replicate what is described on page 1.
3) Have Daniel Radcliffe say what Harry says on page 1.
4) RE-FUCKING-PEAT UNTIL YOU RUN OUT OF GOD DAMNED PAGES!!

Seriously. Turning a book into a movie is the opposite of difficult. There is, in no way, cause to have consternation over this process. The entire fucking movie is already laid out for you in the god damned book. The book gives you all of the dialog, ever. The book gives you all of the descriptions of all of the scenes, ever. The book gives your actors direction, your set directors a description of what they have to create, your director an indication of what he has to direct. It's as if, imagine this, it's as if you already have the script...in book form...and then you can take this script and fucking make a god damned movie using it.

I know, right? It's cake. It's easier than cake. It's Lindsay Lohan on a bender pre-baked cake. It's the simplest god damned fucking thing on the planet.

1) Take the fucking book.
2) Make what the book fucking says appear in the god damned movie.

And I know what you're going to say; I fucking god damned know what you will say: "But people won't sit still for as long as that sort of movie would run."


THEY SAT STILL TO READ THE BOOK YOU SEMEN GUZZLING CUNT SHITTER!

Christ damn it's not as if you're turning War and Peace into a movie. It's Harry fucking Potter. Everyone and their retarded niece has read it, twice.

You take the book.
You replicate what is in the book.
You make millions of dollars.

Fucking. Simple.

Good lighting, though. Damned good lighting. Props to the lighting guy.

Emma Watson in Leather

Huffington Post, that bastion of journalistic integrity, has a "story" which is little more than a picture dump of Emma Watson attending the premiere of 'Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince' wearing a leather halter dress.

I can't think of a comment at the moment. I can't think of much of anything, actually.

Emma Watson is hot. And a good actress. And hot. And she has that accent. And the hot. And she over-pronounces everything. And the being hot.

Half-Blood Prince: Trailer 3

OH
MY
GOD!

Harry Potter and the Shitty Ending

For the past few weeks I've been reading through the Harry Potter septology again. I've gone through about half a book a day (on good days), trying to condense the experience into as short a time as possible while still affording myself time to do my schoolwork and wank off. After cramming through the series (to the best of my abilities) this is my assessment:

Deathly Hallows is a shitty ending.

Yes, the book itself is good. It has enough quality, compelling story to get one through the shit. And even though the story lurches between it's repetition of "lull - angst - action" the action is invigorating enough to have made the lull and angst worth the time spent reading the pages. Deathy Hallows has character development, fills out the story, has that one part where I have to put the book down and walk away because I'm crying too much, and an ending climax which is BEST.

But as an ending to the series? It blows more goats than Aberforth.*

The main story ends with that terrific climactic battle and a nice wrapping up of the titular devices. Fine. But then that's it. There are no more pages. Yes, we get that crappy "19 years later" thing but that is little more than a list of names. We don't really know what happens to the degree that we know what happened after the other books in the series. The best comparison I can think of is the difference between Return of the Jedi and Return of the King...which I've just now realized have strikingly similar titles.

Anyway, Return of the Jedi ends with the death star blowing up and Ewoks dancing. And in terms of an ending to the Star Wars Saga that's fine; the ending compliments the structure of the storyline. The entire character development, story, plot, and focus of the series was on blowing up Death Stars, on overcoming the Empire. We aren't ever really led to give a shit about anything given how narrow the narrative is.

Contrast that with Return of the King. After The One Ring is destroyed we still get a shit ton of pages flushing out the rest of the narrative. Checking quickly, I find that The One Ring is destroyed on page 249 and the story ends on page 347. And then Appendix A starts and goes on to page 481. So they destroy The One Ring and then we get 200 pages of more shit.

Now, Compare that to Deathly Hallows. The battle ends on Page 743. The story ends on 749. And then we get that "19 years later" bullshit chapter.

As a book? Deathly Hallows is fine. But as an ending to the story of Harry Potter Deathy Hallows is fucking abysmal. The manner in which the story ends does not cohere with the manner in which the narrative was presented throughout the septology. After investing so many pages in these characters, in fleshing out their relationships and motivations and characteristics the only real answers and ending we get is "what the fuck was up with that Harry - Voldemort thing" and "what the fuck was up with Dumbledore". That's it.

And it doesn't even match the other books in the series. In every other book we get that section which comes after the climax. The section in which Harry and Dumbledore have their little chat and the "going back to Privet Drive" section. The books end leading into one another. But Deathly Hallows just stops. We don't get to see the fallout; the consequences; the impact the climax had on the world at large. It's just "yup, he's dead" and that's that.**

Harry Potter is a narrative fleshed out to the degree of Lord of the Rings, but what we get at the end is Return of the Jedi, not Return of the King. And that is frustrating. After building up these characters and after spending all of this time reading about them I want to know what happens. To put it bluntly: I care about more than Harry, Voldemort, and Dumbledore.

That's really the problem with Deathly Hallows as an ending to the Harry Potter series: It only addresses Harry, Voldemort, and Dumbledore and those aspects of characters which impact the Harry, Voldemort, Dumbledore story. All of these other characters are simply brushed aside. And that's bullshit.

*I kind of cringed inside when I wrote that.
**I used a pronoun so that the "zomg spoilers" assholes couldn't bitch about me spoiling anything.

Half-Blood Prince Trailer

Marcus Belby and the London Bar Brawl

A British teenage actor playing a minor role in the upcoming "Harry Potter" film was stabbed to death during a brawl in London on Saturday, police said...Knox plays Ravenclaw student Marcus Belby in the upcoming film "Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince,"

Not Marcus Belby!!!

One Part Gullible, Two Part Potter

Deathly Hallows: 784 pages
Half-Blood Prince: 652 pages
Order of the Phoenix: 896 pages
Goblet of Fire: 734 pages
Prisoner of Azkaban: 448 pages
Chamber of Secrets: 352 pages
Philosopher's Stone: 309 pages

Warner Bros. Pictures will release its film adaption of the final "Harry Potter" book in two parts, saying doing so is necessary to stay true to the tome.

I've seen each of the Harry Potter films at least three times and read through the series at least six times and this is my verdict: You cockgobbling asshats at Warner Bros. don't give two shits about staying "true to the tome". Sure, you stay "reasonably close to to tome" or "vaguely similar to the tome" or "Emma Watson has tits now so we will change wardrobe accordingly...to the tome". But at no point have you assholes bothered yourselves with being true to the tome.

And, really? I've come to terms with that; I have accepted it. No one bothers to literally translate a written work into film anymore save the people who do Naruto. So even though I was pissed off after I saw Harry Potter and the scenes from Order of the Phoenix that fit into 138 minutes I accepted the film as the best I could get; it was all that was available to me.

Except NOW that you money sniffing cadaver fuckers have come to the end of the series you've decided to do a two part Harry Potter Movie?! Are you fucking shitting me?

We're not stupid, you know. We know that Deathly Hallows is shorter than Order of the Phoenix. We know that you left things out of every Harry Potter film to date. Hell, we all know that you're just doing a two part movie because you know we will pay to see it. But even giving you the fact that the last book lends itself to a two part movie I still won't concede that you ought to make a two part movie. Why? I do not want to have to wait a year to see part two of the film version of the ending to a story I've already read six times.

So, how about we find a nice middle ground. What if you make the movie four hours long and charge more for tickets? How would that be problematic? Release a four hour epic final Harry Potter Film and make an event of it. People love lining up at midnight to see shitty movies. People love to sit on their asses. Why not take advantage of that and blow your final wad on one final unprecedented four-hour Harry Potter joygazm? Do you really think that would irritate anyone? Do you really think people would not show up? It's the last Harry Potter movie: People will sit there for however long it takes and pay whatever you make them pay.

You're knowingly taking advantage of the fans anyway. You're milking this thing for all you can under the guise of "staying true to the tome", something with which you have not concerned yourselves at all thus far in the series. But if you're going to fuck the fans in the ass with this two part bullshit why not give them the courtesy of a reach-around and put the two parts together and just charge more? Charge $30 for a ticket. Charge $40. We'll pay it. We'll happily bend over and take it.

We just ask that you give it to us all at once.

Statute of Limitations: Spoilers

With the release of Deathly Hallows we have a neat opportunity to discuss spoilers and the period of time that must be allowed to pass between a thing being release and information about the thing being presented.

This article, in part, addresses the issue offhandedly.

One quote from the article favors a significant chunk of time:
"I think we should have at least a few months, allow people to read and discuss and digest before blasting it from headlines," says Leaky Cauldron Web master Melissa Anelli.

Another quote, from J.K. Rowling, endorses a shorter period of time:
"You can't be too precious about this stuff. Obviously, as a writer I would prefer people to be able to sit down and read it and discover the ending through reading the whole story. But with 'Half-Blood Prince,' people dangled a sheet over a flyover (overpass) the next day — 'Snape kills Dumbledore.' Part of me does find that very funny; I can't help myself."

What do you think?

Harry Potter: Expanded Epilogue.

The TODAY show interviewed J.K. Rowling and she said some stuff about what happens after Deathly Hallows.

Note: Pirate Pete says, "Thar be spoilers in that thar link!"

Harry Potter and the Early Ship Dates.

Deepdiscounts.com apparently mailed some copies of the final Harry Potter book early and then realized their mistake. Once they realized that they can't read a calendar they released an appeal to their customers,

We are also making a direct appeal to the Harry Potter fans who bought their books from DeepDiscount.com and may receive copies early requesting that they keep the packages hidden until midnight on July 21

Yes. Certainly that will happen.

Harry Potter and the Scenes from OotP that fit into 138 minutes.

Let's assume for a minute that human beings are physically capable of sitting in a chair for more than two hours and 18 minutes. Then let's assume that there is enough source material to make a compelling, exciting, and interesting movie that could span at least three or four hours. Then let us assume that a human being, interested in the subject matter of the movie, could sit in a chair for three or four hours while said movie played.

Given that all three of these assumptions are true, what the fuck is wrong with the people who make Harry Potter movies?

They damn well know that people enjoy the series. They damn well know that people want to see these movies. And they damn well know that little kids have the attention span required to read the damn books. So at what point did some jackass in an office somewhere decide, "You know...they can sit still for the time required to read these books. But surely, surely they would not be able to sit still for the time required to watch the story from the books in movie form."

I don't know what I'm supposed to do. I enjoyed the movie. But the movie was terrible. It had at least three montages. THREE MONTAGES to get through the story, to attempt to fill in the giant fucking gaps left by the crappy storytelling of the movie.

I understand these movies to be companion pieces, visual representations of choice scenes from the books. And in that respect Order of the Phoenix was good. The problem is that in smashing all of these plot points together the screenwriter has to completely change the fucking story in order to kinda sorta fit things together in a sensible manner.

I started listing things that were changed in this movie from the book. Not things that were left out, mind you, but things in the movie that were different from the book. And my list reached 15 things before Harry entered Number 12 Grimmauld Place. Keep in mind that's only "Harry is attacked by Dementors" and "Harry goes to Grimmauld Place". Fifteen things that were significantly different.

And that is from the arguably inconsequential setup chapters, the chapters which start the story. If I had kept going I would have had no problem finding 200 things that were different from the book.

Some choice these pissed me off scenes?
- Hagrid does not teach them about Thestrals. Harry and Luna just sort of find the Thestrals because, uh, Luna knows where they are...I guess.
- Harry sees Snape's memory not in the Pensive, but as a result of him deflecting Snapes attempt at Occlumency. Not only does this shorten the memory but it leaves out Lilly and most of the explanation of what the hell is going on.
- When fighting, wizards apparently turn into masses of either black or white smoke, depending on whether they are good or evil.
- In the book the Department of Mysteries it is a fucking labyrinth. In the movie? It's three rooms and a door. One door. The entire Department of Mysteries only has one door.
- The prophesy? The thing that explains WHY THESE STORIES EXIST? Yeah. Harry hears parts of it in the Department of Mysteries. That's it. You get to hear parts of it. And Dumbledore has a 20 second conversation with Harry in which he nods once, as a means of explaining, "Yeah, you or Voldemort will die...sucks for you"

There are at least 15 other scenes I could list. But those are the big ones. It's not all bad, though. The lady who played Umbridge was good. Her kitten office was, indeed, full of kittens. And, Luna was cute. So cute.

So if you haven't read the book? Read the damn book. If you want to see some of the scenes from the book played out on the screen out of order and with absurd changes? Go see the movie.

Just don't expect to leave the theatre feeling happy.