All About Harry

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is coming out July 15th.  Since I am pretty much a geek (and fortunate enough to have a few sufficiently geek-like friends) I’m going to the midnight premiere in costume. I’m a little nervous, though.  The films have been iffy for me; I loved the first two (Sorceror’s Stone & Chamber of Secrets), despised the third (Prisoner of Azkaban), thought the fourth (Goblet of Fire) was okay, and the fifth (Order of the Phoenix) was redeemed only by the presence of Fred & George.  Since my favorite books are Prisoner of Azkaban, Order of the Phoenix, and Half-Blood Prince, you can maybe see my concern.  They like to screw up the films that correspond to my favorite books.

I’m also concerned by certain film posters that have been made.

White doves?  Really?  And that’s the smallest part of my outrage.

I won’t even comment on that one.  If you can’t see how wrong it is, you probably haven’t read the books.

But lest I scare you away entirely from the theater, I did find some good posters.

I like this one.  And because it’s really, really hard to read, I’ll quote you the statement at the top:  “I am not afraid.  I am with you.”   Those words seriously makes me cry every time I read them in the book.  If they’ve put them on a poster, that surely means they’ve left them in the film, right?  They just better have them in the correct context!

Here’s a clip from the film that I just now found.  Sigh.  It’s a scene not in the book.  I can understand having to cut scenes from the book for the sake of making all the plot fit in a  movie, but is it really necessary to cut Rowling’s scenes so that the directer and screenwriters can invent their own scenes? No.  Stuff like that is exactly why the Order of the Phoenix film wasn’t very good.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qr4jovx2tEU

And here’s a gorgeous little parody involving Hitler and the anguish we all felt when the Half-Blood Prince’s release was delayed.

And just in case the film does disappoint, you can always watch the musical: