Peter Brohan » Media

Review: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Peter — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 03:07:47 +0000

: Harry and Ginny

Another year passes, and another Harry Potter film comes along. Ever billed as a series of films for the whole family, it is quite nice to see that this iteration has kept to the friendly tone of its predecessors, although it has lost some of the dark tension of its source material in doing so.
The original book is a tale of Voldemort’s growing strength, both over Harry’s school year, and during his original rise to power. It forebodes the dystopian setting of the final book, occasionally dipping into the personal lives of the characters to lighten its tone. The filmakers, in possibly a wise profit making move, if maybe not so good from a storytelling perspective, have decided to change the tone of the film from this feeling of dread to a happier one, concentrating more on the relationships between the Hogwarts characters than that of Harry and Voldemort.

One can, unfortunately, see the change of screenwriters in this. Steve Kloves, who took a film off from adapting Harry Potter during “Order of the Phoenix”, returns, and seems to have decided that any character development (or lack of such) undertaken in the previous film should be ignored in favour of his version of events at the beginning of this film. Ginny is therefore oddly close to Harry even from the start, despite Harry’s relationship with Cho Chang in the previous film. This is especially obvious in the Quiddich tryouts, where Ginny stands with Harry, away from the rest of the croud addressing the prospective players, despite Harry and Ginny never having been shown as being more than friends, whilst Ron is relegated to stand with the other players.
On the flip-side of the newly discovered romances in the films however, it is nice to see Ron and Hermione being given much more character depth beyond Hermione’s irritated/knowledgable persona and Ron’s general goofiness. Both characters have much more filled out roles in this film, as their attitudes towards each other change from the previous rather covert portrayal, to their new, much more obvious attemts at each other. By the end of the film however, I had begun to feel that I was being beaten around the head with this a little, as the “Ron and Hermione like each other, as do Harry and Ginny” message was repeated about every ten minutes throughout the film, just in case you had forgotten. This treatment befell several other plot-points as well, although it is possible that this is merely a harkening to the the films younger audience members.

The film’s more human focus is a to stark contrast to the few action-packed sequences which did manage to make it through the child-proofing process. Near the beginning of the film there is an astounding fly-through of London, climaxing in the destruction of the Millenium Bridge by Death Eaters, which continues the high standard of special effects which have been apparent throughout all of the films. The basis of the film of course relies on these special effects, and although gigantic CG montages are of course in evidence once again, with several large-scale shots of the castle, a quite impressive climactic battle, and a rather perfunctory Quidditch match, it’s the small things that are really impressive throughout the film. I was particularly pleased by Ginny’s pink tribble (miniature puffskein), which was a nice nod to the original text. My only major complaint is the lack of adherance to the work on the previous films. I realise that it’s now basically cannon that Hogwarts and its surroundings look completely different in every film (I suppose it’s another way of hiding the castle and hinting at its magical origins), however the Dark Mark has changed form completely for this film, and whilst it looks slightly less ridiculous than that in the Goblet of Fire (which was incredibly cartoony), it is rather difficult to connect the two, especially during its first short appearence in the film.

The film contains many of these nods, for better or for worse. Dumbledore has a blackened hand throughout the film, for example, and although he doesn’t elaborate on how he got it at such great length as in the book, it’s nice to see that such things have still been carried over. Lupin and Tonks are in the film as well, although their contribution towards the general angst of it all has been reduced to a single throwaway line by Tonks as they leave the Weasleys’. Some of these short mentions however, seem to have been the effect of cuts for time, as Fenrir Greyback is mentioned prominently during the first part of the film, despite his part being mainly reduced to running at the characters out of a cornfield, before growling and running back in again, in possibly the least effective attack ever undertaken by any Death Eater, (although the others of his group do more than make up for it). The largest of these losses is unfortunately the title, where, although the film does explain the origin of the Half-Blood Prince, it’s rather unclear why he should be important enough to merit inclusion in the title, and the rather brilliant double-meaning is lost.

Despite these foibles, the film is held up extremely well by its (as usual) excellent cast. Alan Rickman, despite his sadly brief appearances and rather neutered storyline, manages to add an impressive air of cold distain into every scene he enters in an excellent characterisation of Snape, whilst Michael Gambon does well in showing us many more sides of Dumbledore. Jim Broadbent is, of course, truly brilliant as Slughorn, portraying his indulgances and eccentricities wonderfully to bring a greatly likable character to the film. The main cast also perform extremely well, despite some of their more Lucas-esque “romantic” lines, and perform their characters to a higher standard than ever before.

In general, the film is a success for Potter fans, and brings us succinclty towards the closing chapters of the story. Although the original book’s rather enjoyable dark tone has mostly been removed from the film, the theme of light’s fight over darkness still perseveres (nicely illustrated in a scene near the end of the film), bringing the common theme of hope against all troubles back to the audience. Whilst not quite keeping up to the standard of the book, it’s still a nice family film, and worth watching for any fans of the Harry Potter saga.

Choir Recording.

Peter — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 21:06:49 +0000

Last week, one of the choirs I sing in (the University of Liverpool Singers) recorded themselves singing a couple of tracks.

For an amatuer choir, they’re not bad all! You can listen using the flash player, or download from the links below (please not too much, as some of us have to foot the bill for the bandwidth). If anyone wants lossless copies of these, I have them.

01 – Locus Iste

02 – Abendlied

03 – Loch Lomond

04 – The Long Day Closes

Dear God Why?

Peter — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 01:12:14 +0000

I want you to look back on everything you’ve ever read, and I want you to pick one that you feel is the most influential, the most powerful, and just simply the most impressive. For me, it’s difficult to pick a book. I can see several different reasons for picking any of a number of simply awesome books. To make my point, however, I’m going to pick Dante’s “The Divine Comedy”.

The Divine Comedy is the story of the author’s imagined journey through the the three realms of the afterlife, Hell (inferno), Limbo (purgatorio) and Heaven (paradiso). Guided through these rather foreboding realms by people important to him and (at least in his feeling) history, The Divine Comedy represents both a huge religious statement, a significant political commentary of the time and one of the most significant works in literature ever. Despite having no religious feelings myself, I still find the Divine Comedy and awe-inspiring piece of work, something that should be treated with great reverence and care. This is why I am appalled to discover that “Inferno” is being made into a videogame.

I understand that consumers are forever asking for deeper and more meaningful stories, and this is possibly why they’ve decided to make this, but unfortunately the likelihood of this is extremely slim. From my previous knowledge of video game conversion (and from viewing the trailer) Dante appears to have been removed from his role as worried observer and been given a new role: to go through the levels of hell and hit as many things as he can.

This new level of depravity in marketing disturbs me. This is obviously not a game for those who have read the book, the large majority of such people are unlikely to play video-games, and I do not believe that those who do are likely to wish to play it. Who could possibly believe that the story could be converted into a pop-culture friendly video-game? Who then is the game for? The only option conceivable to me is that it for those who have heard of the book, and are interested only in the concept, not achieving knowledge of the real thing, after all, how likely is it that the game will convey the meaning, or realistically, any of the content of Dante’s book?

EA have released several press statements stating their excitement for this opportunity to “fuse great gameplay with great story”, but I remain unconvinced. There is no need for a video game of Inferno, and there never will be. Please just leave the classics alone.

Are You Aware?

Peter — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 23:39:38 +0000

It’s been a long time since I last wrote anything on this. I originally set it up as somewhere where I could write about my university experiences. That idea seems to have gone down the pan somewhat as I’ve written one and a half posts in the month and a bit since I got here. to fill in this gap however, I’ll blog, rather than about exciting things that have happened to me, (which are currently a little thin on the ground) about things that I’ve found that I think are interesting.

Most of the people that I know have, by now, seen the “awareness test”, used by THINK! (a government agency know for such wonderful and intuitive advice such as “Speed Kills” and “Don’t drink and drive”) as an advertisment recently. It’s a wonderful idea, and probably one of my all-time favourite adverts, being both remarkable intellectually pleasing, and yet, at the same time, actually puts it’s message (”It’s difficult to see what you aren’t looking for”) across. (For those of you who have not yet experienced the wonders of the world’s oddest basketball game, there’s a link at the bottom).

Anyway, this leads me to the point of this post. They’ve brought out another one, which is even better! As their website seems to be slightly behind their advertising, you’ll have to watch the lovely Youtube version:

To me, this is really the epitome of advertising. Despite their strange insistance that what will get to people the most is flashy graphics and silly catch-phrases, I still think that something clever and surprising will do the job much better. It’s true that we all remember that Washing Machines live longer with “CALGON”, to have a break, have a KIT KAT, and many others, however it seems to me that something clever is going to stick with you in a slightly different way than a catchy jingle (not to mention that it’s difficult to think up a catchy jingle for the message “Don’t run over cyclists, it’s not very good for them, or your lack of jail time”). I won’t deny that I rather enjoyed the inimitable Barry Scott on the Cillit Bang adverts, but I’d much prefer to see more adverts of this calibre, despite the technical brilliance of the latest car or perfume ad.

The other awareness test (and probably this one by the time anyone reads this) can be seen on http://dothetest.com and several others, not used for advertising, though still quite good, can be seen on Youtube. That’s about as interesting as I can think of for the minute. They seem to have changed Songza so that you can’t embed music any more. I assume no-one ever clicked on the boxes anyway, so I’ll just leave it now.