Did anybody else go to a midnight showing of 'Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince'?

[sinkingfeeling]

[lindisfarne]

1. No. I would have liked to but will wait for the DVD. How was it? I hated OoP because of the way they

kept jumping. I'm not happy the same director is doing the remaining movies. Although he's not the only one who changes scenes for no good reason.

[sinkingfeeling]

2. Well, it didn't follow the book. Lots of things were changed and I didn't understand why the 'big'

one at the end had to happen. It is fast-paced and the filming is beautiful. You don't see 'moving pictures', the Fat Lady or ghosts, moving stairways, nor many robes and hats in this one. They left out many of the 'memories' about Tom Riddle in it. Overall, I don't know if this all that important, since HBP is not a story unto itself, but a link to the grand finale.

[lindisfarne]

4. They couldn't follow the ending? I don't like this director. I heard they made a big

deal of teenage angst (and I've seen a few clips, too). I'm sure that was thought to be for the audience, but that's the one thing I think could have been reduced. We all know what teenage angst is.

[sinkingfeeling]

5. Same result, but made Harry look kind of wimpy.

[RaleighNCDUer]

3. I wanted to, but couldn't handle the idea of getting home at 3AM.

Really sucks, because I WORK in a theater (PT) and I won't be able to see it till Saturday.

[here_is_to_hope]

6. I did, it was crap. eom

[NashVegas]

7. I Saw It Yesterday

I appreciate how difficult it is for the directors to make these movies work as movies considering all the side-trips that Rowling makes away from the main plot, that eventually lead back in.

It's not just 'if a gun is shown in the first act,' but 'if a gun, a bottle, a knife, a nude midget and a hand grenade are shown in the first act, they're all going to be used in the third.' And that's just hell to compact into two-three hours. Compare it to LOTR where sure there were a lot of little scenes readers loved, but most were to bring the main characters even more into focus. With Rowling, so much of it involves side characters who seem, initially, unimportant to plot.

IOW, I don't like that Yates did it, but I don't think it's his fault. I hope it's more like what was done to avoid another Chamber of Secrets; I never read the book, but it's a mess of a movie compared to rest. How much screen time was WASTED with the car-meets-wamping-Willow business? How much screen time was WASTED on Dobby's self-immolation? Likewise, how much screen time would be wasted with the Molly-Ginny-Fleur-Bill-Ron business? How much of that is necessary to move the plot?

What I did like about this was the look of the film, and Tom Felton stepping up to the plate and hitting it out of the ballpark. Who knew?

[Touchdown]

8. I would be I can't see the screen with everybody wearing wizard hats.

:evilgrin:

[NishiKotarou]

9. An undeserved bad rap.

Most of the loyal Potter readership, from what I've observed, hasn't really been giving this movie high marks. I guess I consider myself in the minority, because next to the Columbus flicks (1 and 2), I think this is the closest book to movie translation yet. There was unnecessary foreshadowing and all that jazz, but the movie was truly constructed for those that already had knowledge of the entire storyline. The cinematography was grand, I felt that Slughorn was WONDERFULLY chosen and even if the whole burning Weasleys thing wasn't exactly... well... real, I still appreciated the point. We complain, we yell when Warner Brothers doesn't give us an exact book to movie translation, but I feel this is as close as they've gotten.

[Goblinmonger]

10. I'm with you.

You just CAN'T translate the whole book to the screen. Can't happen. Get over it. Yates did a very good job of giving us what was important.

And I don't think this movie was about teen angst. That was the last movie. This was about coming to grips with real relationships (Ron-Hermoine and Harry-Ginny). I teach high school and I thought the depictions were great.

Slughorn was the shit. And, again, Luna proves to be a perfect cast.

Yes, people's favorite stuff was left out but give the guy a break, he has 2.5 hours to show stuff and has to worry about actual film pacing. I felt his direction was very artful and worthy of an Oscar nomination.

[Touchdown]

11. Me too. I thought it was one of the better ones.

I've always been a defender of film makers adapting an original work from some other media, and books are the most common of those adaptations.

The idea of translating a written work, word for word, chapter by chapter to the screen is to be expected or the translation is an unworthy piece of film making, is unrealistic at best, and childish at worst. As long as the film is faithful in mood and theme with the original novel, it should be judged on it's own merits as a film, and not on how much of the book they crammed into it.

Half Blood Prince had a coherent story, a narrative flow that was never disjointed, had emotional resonance, built up the story to set up the climax, and still got in all the key scenes from the book in there. As a film, it's a success.

As a book, it's lacking, but it was never supposed to be a book. The book lovers who are outraged don't understand film making.

[trumanh59639]

12. Nope

Can't stand HP.

[Name removed]

13. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[lazarus]

14. bullshit

they stopped reading harry potter because you said, "get a life"? Yeah, there's a cogent argument. If there's a Harry potter fan out there who hasn't read all the books already by now, I'd be surprised.

[shadowknows69]

15. k