Ghost in the Machine

Teenage Wasteland.

Second on the weekend bill was David Yates’ Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, the sixth installment of the series (and Yates’ second directorial outing after 2007′s Order of the Phoenix.) On one hand, this year at Hogwarts is a deftly-made piece of work, and probably the most accomplished and filmic of the Potter movies (tho’ I still prefer Goblet of Fire overall.) But, on the other hand, Yates and the assembled cast are just gathering steam right as the source material is petering out. I racked my brains before the movie trying to remember anything about Half-Blood Prince the novel, and basically came up with the ending, “Slughorn,” “Harry’s Potions book,” and “Dumbledore drinks the crap.” These four things do not a movie make, particularly not a 150 minute movie like this one. You can pad it out with Quidditch and/or various adenoidal episodes on the Big Three’s part, but Half-Blood Prince — the movie like the tome — still feels somewhat overlong, unnecessary, and redundant.

Part 6 of the Harry Potter saga starts in media res — so much so that it feels like Yates & co. have basically given up on the non-readers — with a trio of the Dark Lord’s Death Eaters openly attacking London Muggles in broad daylight. Yes, it’s gotten that bad. But the potential Chosen One (Daniel Radcliffe) has his mind on other matters at the moment — mainly, getting to know the cute waitress at the local station cafe once her shift ends. Alas for Harry, Albus Dumbledore (Michael Gambon) apparates into the scene and bigfoots that plan relatively quickly — Instead, he enlists young Potter in an scheme to entice former Prof. Horace Slughorn (Jim Broadbent) back into the Hogwarts fold. (Slughorn is an inveterate namedropper, and thus susceptible to Harry’s influence. That being said, the dance of seduction here all seems a bit more unsavory when viewed rather than read.)

Anyway, soon Harry — and Slughorn — and the rest of the gang have all returned to Hogwarts (with the exception of those schoolboys in disgrace, the Weasley twins, who are now making a mint in Diagon Alley.) But the darkness all around has now seeped even into Fortress Dumbledore — students become bewitched, various assassination attempts go awry, and the scion of Slytherin in particular, Draco Malfoy (Tom Felton), seems to be under more strain than usual. Perhaps worse still for the gang, the trickle of teenage sensuality seen in Goblet and Order has swollen to a torrent, and Harry, Ron (Rupert Grint), and Hermione (Emma Watson) are now in the full hormone-fueled throes of adolescence. Honestly, after all the pregnant looks, strange urges, and attempted snoggings in the first hour, I half-expected Harry to whip out an ID named “McLovin’” and try to score some butterbeer.

The kids all acquit themselves well enough given the modicum of plot this time around. Still, with all due respect to the teens, the secret weapon of the Potterverse on film remains the long and growing list of distinguished British thespians on hand. From the starting cast (Alan Rickman, Maggie Smith, Robbie Coltrane, Warwick Davis, David Bradley, Mark Williams and Julie Walters) to the later pick-ups (Michael Gambon, David Thewlis, Helen McCrory, Evanna Lynch), Half-Blood Prince is stocked to the gills with well-done character turns. The only person who noticeably stuck out as bad was Helena Bonham Carter — She’s wayyy over the top (again) and may be refining her Queen of Hearts here. (I also would’ve liked to have seen He Who Must Not Be Named at some point over the film, but I suspect he’ll be back for the next two installments.)

That being said, the best thing about Half-Blood Prince is probably Jim Broadbent’s turn as Slughorn. At first, he just seemed to be doing a slightly toned-down variation of his “snip, snip, slice, slice” cameo in Brazil. But Broadbent manages to infuse the character with a melancholy I never took away from his more glad-handing, Falstaffian persona in the book. This should’ve been the “Half-Blood Prince’s” movie, really (or Dumbledore’s, for that matter) — but, particularly given the notable absence of the high adventure or puzzle-solving plot dynamics of earlier Potter tales, it’s Broadbent’s haunted sense of regret here that leaves a mark after the credits roll.

Life and Death Experiences.

Plenty of variety in this weekend’s trailer bin: 28 Weeks Later‘s Jeremy Renner is the man you call if you’re in the Green Zone with a bomb on hand in the trailer for Kathryn Bigelow’s warmly-reviewed The Hurt Locker, also with Anthony Mackie, Brian Geraghty, Evangeline Lilly, Ralph Fiennes, David Morse, and Guy Pearce.

Twelve for ’09.

On the occasion of the new year, EW previews some of the more-anticipated films of 2009, including Michael Mann’s Public Enemies, Terminator: Salvation, Spike Jonze’s’ long-awaited Where the Wild Things Are, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Pixar’s Up, Harold Ramis’ Year One, The Taking of the Pelham 1-2-3 (again), Wolverine, and Watchmen.

Mudblood Aristocracy.

Don’t drink the water…With Michael Gambon looking and sounding more Gandalfian than ever, the international trailer for David Yates’ Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is now online. Well, ok then.

Riddle in the Dark.

In anticipation of the HP & The Half-Blood Prince trailer, which should be on later tonight, USA Today scores two stills from the forthcoming sixth Potter film, including this one of young Tom Riddle looking Omen-ish. (Conveniently, he’s played by Hero Fiennes-Tiffin, Ralph Fiennes’ nephew.)

Update: “I can make things move without touching them. I can make bad things happen to people who are mean to me. I can speak to snakes too. They find me, whisper things…” And here it is. (Link sent via Raza.)

Year Six Approaches.

Here we go again…Along with several media previews (note beat-up Harry on the Empire cover), a bunch of new stills from Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince hit the tubes. (That’s Jim Broadbent as Slughorn on the left.)

Banner Bulks. | Harry Splits.

Hulk smash? Or does Hulk whine for two hours about his condition like last time? The rather underwhelming teaser for Louis Leterrier’s The Incredible Hulk is now online. (I had hopes for Norton, but it looks like, if anyone saves this film from summer mediocrity, it’ll be Tim Roth.) Meanwhile, Harry’s seventh year at Hogwarts, Deathly Hallows, has been split into two films, both directed by Order‘s David Yates and coming out in 2010 and 2011 respectively. If it’s at all like the book, I guess there was just too much camping in the English countryside to fit in one film.

Albus Out.

“‘Oh, my god,’ Rowling, 42, concluded with a laugh, ‘the fan fiction.’” So, as you probably heard, in a moment of retroactive characterization (a la Elisabeth Rohm on Law and Order), J.K. Rowling revealed that Albus Dumbledore is gay. Well, ok then. “A spokesman for gay rights group Stonewall added: ‘It’s great that JK has said this. It shows that there’s no limit to what gay and lesbian people can do, even being a wizard headmaster.’” And if nothing else, the news should make the witchcraft yahoos that much more livid.

Broadbent to Hogwarts.

Speaking of Indy IV, Dr. Jones’ new colleague, Jim Broadbent, is cast as professor and celeb hound Horace Slughorn for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. That works.

Harry Potter and the Epilogue to the Epilogue.

For those others who were looking for more information from the epilogue of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, J.K. Rowling offered her take on what happened to the surviving characters in a recent online chat. For example [spoilers], “Harry Potter…was named head of the Auror Department under the new wizarding government headed by his friend and ally, Kingsley Shacklebolt.” (She also reveals the fate of Ginny, Ron, Hermione, George, and Luna.) Well, ok then…but why, exactly, wasn’t this squeezed somewhere in those last few pages? I’d have taken this info over some of the interminable shenanigans in the English countryside.

The Year of Living Dangerously.

Naturally, like most of the wizarding world, I spent Saturday deeply ensconced in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, J.K. Rowling’s long-awaited final installment of the tale of the Boy Who Lived. And the verdict? Well, I enjoyed it, and I appreciate the degree of difficulty Rowling faced in closing this much-beloved tale. But, I’ll go ahead and put a word in for the muggle-hearted: It was easily my least favorite in the series (Put another way, it was the first book in seven where I started flipping forward every so often to see how much I had left, and the first where I found myself thinking the movie would assuredly be better than the book.) For obvious reasons, the rest of the discussion will involve spoiler-vision, so click the space below to highlight (and don’t click anything if you don’t want to know the end) [Update: Spoiler-vision turned off, now that the book has been out for awhile]:

* First off, I very much agree with this Laura Miller Salon review: I thought the book sorely missed the presence and the rhythms of Hogwarts. I get that Harry, Ron, and Hermione might have to break out of their safety zone to prosecute the war on You-Know-Who, but in all honesty, I didn’t find the wandering around the English countryside nearly as engaging as all the boarding school shenanigans that have marked the series in the past.

* The action scenes. I’ve complained as recently as my Order of the Phoenix film review that Rowling’s action sequences tend to be kinda clunky. Well, as befitting the last book in a seven-tome saga, there’s a lot of action in here, from escapes from the Ministry, Godric’s Hollow, Luna Lovegood’s house, and Gringotts to the final, climactic Battle of Hogwarts. And, most of it, in my humble opinion, didn’t really jump off the page. In a way, Hallows felt more like a screenplay treatment than a book, and, as I said, I expect the inevitable movie will make more of these myriad escape and battle scenes.

* The “homages.” Yes, all fantasy is derivative, often intentionally so. (As every fanboy and fangirl knows, Tolkien, Lewis, Lucas, and others all deliberately hearken back to collective myths in their writings and films.) Still, there was a lot in Deathly Hallows that felt lifted, from the very One-Ringish locket (As my sister wryly noted, it was “Share the load” all over again.”) to Harry’s Aslan-like sacrifice in the final battle, from the Sword in the Lake to Ma Weasley paraphrasing Ripley’s most memorable catchphrase from Aliens. Each time, it was pretty distracting.

* The fifth element is love? Ok, it’s been obvious it’s going this way for awhile now, but I still found it rather irritating. But that assuredly speaks worse of me than it does the books. Let’s move on.

* The deaths. As it turns out, my guesses about where this was all going turned out to be pretty on the money. (I’ve long been of the school that Snape was deep undercover, and — while I always thought Harry would end up losing his magic when he lost his horcrux/scar — my basic contention that he’d end up all grown up and outside the magical world of Hogwarts was somewhat substantiated by the epilogue.) But the deaths here…well, to be honest, they felt pretty arbitrary to me, as if Rowling wanted it both ways. None of the major characters (except Snape and Voldemort, both givens) ended up on the other side of the veil (even if Ron seemed a goner after leaving in a huff, and Hagrid’s been a one-trick-pony for at least five books now.) But Rowling pretty remorselessly cuts a swath through her supporting characters, including offing Hedwig, Mad-Eye, Lupin, Tonks, Colin Creevy, some random Muggle Studies prof, and, most shockingly for most, I’d guess, Fred Weasley. In short, all of these deaths seemed to me the equivalent of Haldir kicking the bucket in Lord of the Rings…a way of bringing the high stakes of death into the equation without it actually affecting any of the major characters. (Ok, Fred may be a Theoden level loss, but it’s a toss-up.) In short, the lack of major deaths, especially when compared to the catastrophic losses among the second tier, makes Hallows seem at once painless and bloodthirsty.

Not to miss the forest for the trees, I didn’t hate Deathly Hallows, and would still, without a doubt, number the series as a whole as a masterful work of children’s fantasy. (I’m not about to recant The Leaky Cauldron at this late date.) I do find myself wishing Harry’s final year at Hogwarts had taken a somewhat different direction. but it’d have been hard in any case for the seventh book to live up to the mighty expectations before it (although I actually found David Chase’s infamous Sopranos non-ending to be a more satisfying piece of pop culture closure.) Still, the surviving characters of Deathly Hallows — and especially J.K. Rowling — have more than earned a happy retirement. So, so long, y’all, and here’s hoping future Gryffindors are up to snuff.

The Dark is Rising.

By the start of Order, Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes) is loose, Cedric Diggory is dead, and Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe), once more at the mercy of the Dursleys for the summer, is poised on the verge of adolescent rebellion. He hasn’t heard a pip from friends Ron (Rupert Grint) and Hermione (Emma Watson) for months, nor has he heard any news of goings-on in the magical world. So it is with no small amount of surprise and consternation that Harry finds himself first attacked by Dementors one gloomy evening, then expelled from Hogwarts — by authority of the Ministry of Magic — for using his wand to defend himself. Brought back into the magical loop by these events, Harry discovers that many of his former allies, including godfather Sirius Black (Gary Oldman), have banded together to re-form the Order of the Phoenix in preparation for Lord Voldemort’s next move. More troubling, it seems Minister of Magic Cornelius Fudge (Robert Hardy) is not only not inclined to believe Harry that You-Know-Who has returned, but also views Harry and his mentor Albus Dumbledore (Michael Gambon), as a political threat, and has turned the general public and popular press against them both. Finally, to further complicate Potter’s prospects, Fudge dispatches one Dolores Umbridge (Imelda Staunton) to Hogwarts with a ministry mandate to stamp out both dark sarcasm and Defense against the Dark Arts in the classroom. Thus hemmed in, Harry, Ron, and Hermione find once more they need to take matters in their own hands, and begin to defiantly assemble what they call Dumbledore’s Army, a student organization dedicated to preparing for the worst. But, all the while, Lord Voldemort is up to his own tricks…and what good is Dumbledore’s Army if its young, bespectacled leader is already hopelessly compromised by his still-unexplained connection to the Dark Lord?

As the paragraph above attests, there’re a lot of balls in the air this time around, but Yates, screenwriter Michael Goldenberg, & co. do a solid job of keeping everything moving without doing grievous harm to any of the many included subplots. (Several have been excised regardless, such as this year’s Quidditch match. No real loss, imho.) And throughout, what Order of the Phoenix gets most right — in fact, one could argue it’s actually done better here than in the book — is the feeling that things are simmering to a boil. Hermione, Ron, and especially Harry have grown from wide-eyed, trusting children to gawky, hormonal teenagers (and better actors, for that matter), seething with imminent rebellion against the powers-that-be, and their world has similarly gone from a colorful, fantastic, and ever-so-occasionally dangerous realm of magical delights to a gray, ominous land of hidden agendas, political propaganda, fallible adults, and fatal consequences. In the last movie, Harry’s Hogwarts cohort were on the threshold of early adolescence, and had just begun to discover the tantalizing mysteries of the opposite sex. Here, slightly older, they come to another classic teenage rite-of-passage: finding that the world — and, more often that not, the people in charge — aren’t all they’re cracked up to be, and that they may even actually be out to get you.

Of course, Yates is helped out tremendously in bringing Order to life by his ever-expanding Dream Team of British thespians. Imelda Staunton, as the main new cast member, is note-perfect as Umbridge. A pink-festooned, unholy cross between the Church Lady and arguably the real You-Know-Who of Rowling’s books, Margaret Thatcher, she’s like something out of a Roger Waters fever dream (and continues the “The Tories are Coming!” subtext I noted in my review of the last movie.) Even with Staunton aside, tho’, Order is packed to the brim with quality actors reprising their roles from the first four films — Oldman, Hardy, Brendan Gleeson, Maggie Smith, Michael Gambon, Emma Thompson, Jason Isaacs, Robbie Coltrane, etc., and particularly Fiennes and Alan Rickman. They’re all excellent, and frankly it’s good fun just to see so many of them around again to help further flesh out the Potterverse. (Although, having seen Naked and The History Boys since Goblet, I’m slightly more concerned about Harry hanging around the likes of Remus Lupin (David Thewlis) and Vernon Dursley (Richard Griffiths)…what would the Umbridges of the world have to say about that?)

Dumbledore’s Army.

Alert the Ministry: The new trailer for David Yates’ Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is now online, albeit not in the best format. Looks…ok, although I’d be surprised if it lives up to Newell’s Goblet of Fire (or even Cuaron’s Prisoner, since Order may have been my least favorite book in the series thus far.) Update: It’s now available in Quicktime — go here instead.

The Hallows of Death.

Year seven at Hogwarts gets its registration date: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows comes out July 21. Look for Berk and I in the midnight line.

Hallows Be Thy Name.

Old news now, but it happened while on the track: Harry Potter’s final chapter gets a title: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

Call to Order.

Ready for another year at Hogwarts? The new teaser for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix which I mentioned on Friday is now online.

Phoenix Landing.

The new Fiennes-centric Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix teaser poster is now online. Look for new photos from the film here, for a very brief clip here, and for the teaser — if, like me, you’re not going to see Happy Feet — on Monday. Update: Here it is.

Phoenix Rising.

WB releases several high-quality stills from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, including one of the eponymous Order and several of new headmaster Dolores Umbridge (Imelda Staunton). (And, since it’s wartime at Hogwarts now, it looks like the late ’70′s haircuts of Goblet have gone by the wayside as well.) Update: More here.

Muggle Memories.

As part of the sixth anniversary festivities for The Leaky Cauldron, the Harry Potter blog-turned-comprehensive-fansite I set up way back when, Melissa Anelli, Sue Upton, and John Noe — current heads of the site team (now numbering 150 strong) — interviewed me this week on their weekly Pottercast. Great job over there, y’all, and thanks for the chance to reminisce.