Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince to enchant us this November

11 Aug, 2008

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince to enchant us this November

Posted by: Zang Caesar In: Entertainment| Videos

harry potter and the half-blood prince movie poster

I’ve never been so active in the blogosphere lately. But when I visit blogs I make sure I get a piece of cake that is worth eating, and browsing at Kuya Mon’s blog gave me a cake of the upcoming Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince movie.

I am a proud Potterhead, and although I was way behind some of my classmates and friends to have finally come to love the Harry series, I got way ahead of them when the books 5, 6 and 7 were released. I was always the first one to have the books that it is I whom they borrow the books from. It feels good, as it makes me a very important person.

So what’s up co-Potterheads? Here’s what we’ve all been dying for to see, to have a sneak peek at what’s going to happen in the Harry Potter 6 movie. So here’s the official trailer released last July 30, 2008. Below the video is a synopsis of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, which was actually a book review I wrote for our school publication after a month of the book’s release.

Ever darker Harry Potter enchants, terrifies

“I don’t believe in fate. I believe in hard work and luck, and that the first leads to the second.” — J.K. Rowling

It was worth the waiting: for about two years of anticipation comes out a tauter, leaner, better-written, more compelling, driving and entertaining tale as the boy wizard grows into a young man and is refurbished, yet again, in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

Released last July 16, 2005, this book, sixth in the saga, is a 652- (Scholastic version) or 608-page (Bloomsbury edition) and a 30-chapter must-read sequel of the sentology by J.K. Rowling. To prove its success, it sold 6.9 M copies in the first 24 hours upon release and 11 M copies sold in nine weeks, Scholastic reported.

Enter into the wizarding world. The adventure begins in the office of the British prime minister (sort of frustrates me as Harry has yet to appear in the third chapter). The wreaking havoc kicked off by Dementors, Death Eaters and assortied nasties, including the nastiest of them all, Lord Voldemort, has become impossible to conceal from the Muggles: series of murders, disappearances and falling bridges. In response to this, the new Minister of Magic (himself a biting parody of blundering bureaucracy) teams up with the Muggle world’s Prime Minister only to know that government, both mundane and magical, seems to be at a loss.

Enter Harry Potter, older now, less grouchy than before and worried about exam results and raging hormones, not to add the sadness caused by the death of his godfather, Sirius Black, in the fifth book. He has been moved to the Weasleys, leaving the pernicious Dursleys earlier than had it used to. Here we can see Harry both jealous and envious. Quidditch game has fallen off and there are obnoxious undercurrents in the previously easy relationships between his friends. The school, where he and his friends Ron and Hermione have to return to for their penultimate year, has been threatened and so security has been tightened. Parents are taking away their children lest Hogwarts cannot protect them.

They’re 16, and who’s snogging with whom makes the love scene more distinct than before: in the enchanted confines of Hogwarts they are more preoccupied with the couplings and uncouplings. Hermione is angry with Ron and Ron draws so close a girl he is infatuated with and the situation becomes a thought more helpless by the Weasley twins’ selling of short-acting love potions. Even Harry, overcoming his inhibitions, kisses a certain girl, not quite a woman, who has been driving him crazy, in a very triumphant moment that readers will embrace, giggle and fall in love with…

Snape has been victorious: he has finally got his dream job, that is teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts (DADA). His Potions is taken by another professor, a nice social satire of a gentleman. Horace Slughorn, who knows everyone and a retiree from Hogwarts, who is thrilled to have Harry although the latter cannot afford to be more lionized, let alone given the title “The Chosen One”. Slughorn unerringly singles out the rising star in the Hogwarts population, thus “The Slug Club”.

Albus Dumbledore, headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, takes Harry more into his confidence and on a pair of significant missions. Through the Pensieve Dumbledore puts a lot of mileage into, Harry is taught how someone becomes evil. Memory by memory run the little pictures of Riddle as he grows, develops and how is upbringing was like, and so the degradation of the lost and downrightly treated orphan Tom Riddle to the merciless schoolboy, the powermonger young man, and finally the master of Dark Arts, is traced. And so are the clues of the several tentacles of the Dark Lord’s immortality that Harry, in some cases he and Dumbledore, has to destroy.

Draco Malfoy, Harry’s archenemy in school, is charged with some terrible tasks, in which Snape may be involved. There are blood oaths and unbreakable bonds called Unbreakable Vow. Harry comes close to killing Malfoy when he conjures a spell he learned from the Half-Blood Prince’s scribbles.

And who is the Half-Blood Prince? He is never a new character in any way. The story primarily focuses on this prince’s enormity and how he substituted to kill a very important, beloved and very dear character. Yes, there is another major, seriously major, death and prepare yourself for a distress towards the end of the novel because the said death this time is more painful, excruciatingly unbearable and unbelievable. The helpful, long-standing textbook on potions with interesting scribbled marginalia that once were written by the Half-Blood Prince, a former Hogwarts student, himself.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is not a happy book. It is, however, a very excellent book. In maintaining with the mounted seriousness of the tasks shadowing Harry, there are fewer jokes, a lot less farce and fewer skits. By the book’s end, the battle lines are clearly drawn. Rowling has created something that is both more authentic and more broadly and profoundly grounded in publishing history. The book has lost none of the charm, enchantment, wit and laugh-out-loud hilarity and is an exceptional entertainment with crisp, well-drawn characters, magnificent plotting and clever plot twists, a consistent interior logic, undeniable thrill, a good sense of fun and crystal-clear values. This is a powerful, unforgettable setup for the finale. And as constantly, you’ll end this book voracious for the next.

After all, despite his glasses, lightning-shaped scar and teenage awkwardness, Harry is an epic hero, playing his part in a historic epic tale of love and hate, faith, loyalty and courage.

We had only guessed how J.K. Rowling had to wrap up a saga that millions wished would go on and on. In spite of everything, it is her hard work, not fate, that leads her to her luck as being the wealthiest woman in Britain—something she will call “magic” in her lifetime.