Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (the Movie)

On Sunday morning my husband and I were standing outside in the bright summer sun, waiting for the movie theater to open. We weren't the only moviegoers up early on a weekend morning in eager anticipation of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

Opinions on the quality of the Harry Potter movies swing from ecstatic to sarcastic, as fans of the books are either swept up in the magic of seeing their fantasy world come to life, or bitterly disappointed by the differences between the movie and the book. My first thought on emerging from the dark theater back into the blazing afternoon sun, was that the Half Blood Prince was a particularly good adaptation of the book into movie format.

Simply by using the word adaptation, we are accepting the fact that the content of the book must undergo some alteration, some screenwriting metamorphosis that allows the moviegoer to share approximately the same experience as the reader enjoying the book. In early films we saw screenwriting that attempted to scrupulously preserve plot points and world building details. In later films, we saw mad efforts at condensing huge, sprawling story lines into one film, that usually resulted in awkward, hectic pacing. It is already common knowledge that the seventh film will be broken into two parts, to avoid giving the audience the sense that they are simply skimming over, or reviewing major plot points of the book, instead of enjoying a movie. Given that, I wasn't sure what to expect from the pacing and enjoyability of the Half-Blood Prince.

In my opinion the screenwriters did a brilliant job of capturing the emotional journey of the story's characters. By loosening their grip on exacting loyalty to the plot, they were able to focus on character growth and development. The movie skipped important plot points, added a major scene that wasn't in the book, and changed around the order of events- but the result was a beautifully-paced movie, in which I felt I could sit back and follow the characters as they adventured and interacted. The movie version of the book was like an impressionist painting of the book- leaving me with the same feeling that I had reading the book- even if the film was a slightly fuzzy Monet instead of a crisp, digital photograph of what I had read. The ending of the movie, which I can imagine disappointed some viewers, nevertheless produced exactly the same sentiment I had upon the conclusion of re-reading the Half-Blood Prince for the second time: that this had just been our last year at Hogwarts, and hadn't it been a lovely place to grow, to be together, and enjoy.

I think fans of the characters in the book- people who read because they love Harry, Ron, Hermione, and the dozens of other touching and memorable characters that populate Rowling's world- will have a great time watching the movie, despite (and of course because of) the plot changes.

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, Revisited

The first time my husband and I read the Half-Blood Prince, we were suffering from some pretty severe jet lag and a crazy kind of reverse culture shock in which our native land seemed oddly foreign in comparison to the life we had adjusted to overseas. The arrival of the Half-Blood Prince in theaters this summer is kind of a landmark for us, as if the time needed for the book to move from release to feature film was the time we needed to settle back into American rhythms. While reading the Deathly Hallows in 2007, we came to the startling realization that neither one of us really remembered anything about the Half-Blood Prince. As evidence of our amnesia, the word "horcrux" sent us running back to the Half-Blood Prince for reference to this vaguely chilling, but unknown term.

Coming back to the Half-Blood Prince did more than just refresh our memory of the plot and get us emotionally prepared to see the movie, it gave us a real appreciation for Hogwarts. Little did we know, in those early, bleary-eyed reading sessions, that Book 6 would be the last year we'd get to spend with Harry at the school- and it's a really great year. Harry is the captain of the Quidditch team, takes private lessons with Dumbledore, and aces potions class with the aid of the Half-Blood Prince.

We were also extremely impressed with the writing in Book 6. Rowling performs her own brand of magic, managing to review the vast and complex tangle of Harry's story so far without weighing down her readers with exposition. In fact the opening chapters, in which she has a lot of expository ground to cover, are action-packed, exciting, and intriguing. Her flashbacks to Voldemort's history are well-crafted insights into the series' villain and, at the same time, give us great insight into our hero. A book heavy enough to press flowers and leaves has space for wasted words and extraneous scenes, but every word and every event in the story feels critical to the coming crisis in Book 7.

Our only small disappointment with the book was the revelation of the identity of the Half-Blood Prince. Throughout the entire book, neither one of us could remember who the Prince would turn out to be. We cannot entirely blame jet lag for that lapse in our memory- Rowling touches on the revelation so lightly, relying entirely on the chemistry of the characters' personal relationships to bring weight to the resolution of the mystery for which the book was titled.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is currently #593 in Amazon's bestselling books. It is not available on the Kindle.

The Harry Potter Summer in NYC

As summertime comes to a close this Labor Day weekend, and friends and family report with bittersweet satisfaction that they've finally finished The Deathly Hallows, I got a little nostalgic, myself, and thought back on what I've come to think of as the summer of Harry Potter.

Harry Potter anticipation stirred all summer long. When I ordered my Order of the Phoenix movie tickets online, there were already dozens of reviews of the film- by people who hadn't seen it, but were just so excited that they had to give it five stars. A similar phenomenon occurred on iTunes- we eagerly downloaded a five star rated Order of the Phoenix soundtrack touted as the "best of the Harry Potter soundtracks" only to find that it was by far the worst.

But the first truly exciting Harry Potter event came July 11th with the opening of the The Order of the Phoenix. We went to see the movie at Loews Lincoln Square- a short walk from the Lincoln Center of the Performing Arts in Manhattan. As we exited the theater, a man who hadn't seen the movie called out to my husband,

"Was it any good?"

Good question. The Order of the Phoenix certainly wasn't bad. It felt like a visual highlight tour of the book, which is fine for dedicated fans, but seemed a little shallow when the movie stands alone.

All the Harry Potter films suffer from the fact that the books have hundreds of pages to express the passage of time, the rhythm of the school year and the seasons, and the frustration that builds as time passes, and Harry and his friends seemingly make no progress toward their goal. That said, some Harry Potter movies have translated to film better than others.

My favorite of the six movies is The Prisoner of Azkaban. What I like about the third Harry Potter movie is the way it handles time. A huge pendulum clock and gears dominates the movie's set. A major theme of The Prisoner of Azkaban is time, and the movie makes an exciting sequence out of Harry and Hermione's challenge to go back and change the past.

The 2007 The Order of the Phoenix was the first time my throat didn't catch when William's leitmotif, "A Change of Seasons," was used to mark the passage of time. Director David Yates didn't know how to use the music- not that he had much to work with. As I said, the soundtrack wasn't so hot- it was flat, generic movie music that I wouldn't have known belonged to the Harry Potter universe without the track info.

My husband gave the expectant movie-goer outside Loews' an "above average" rating (given in his charming New Yorkese). Our questioner immediately asked:

"But I heard it was all talk, no action!"

This comment stunned us- we'd been struck by the fact that The Order of the Phoenix was an intense action experience. We heard this "all talk, no action" meme on the street, in the subway, pretty much wherever we went. Somebody had gotten the idea there was a scene between Harry and Dumbledore with too much exposition, and had cast the entire film as talking heads.

Ten days after the opening of the movie, the seventh and final volume in the Harry Potter series arrived at our door by priority mail. The USPS box containing the book had been specially printed to accommodate the huge Amazon.com Book 7 pre-order turnout.

For the seventh time, my husband and I sat down and began the Harry Potter adventure together. He probably deserves a purple heart for the damage to his vocal chords. We finished about a week after the book came to our door, at two in the morning. The ending was so intense, we wouldn't have slept if we didn't see Harry and his friends through to the end.

A lot of interesting stuff happened this summer: Live Earth Concerts for a Climate in Crisis, the release of the iPhone. But I'll always remember summer of 2007 as the Harry Potter summer, and picture the photo in The New York Daily News- a whole row of commuters on the subway, noses buried The Deathly Hallows.

Harry Potter 7 to be Released on July 21st!

I was still bleary-eyed this morning when I was inundated by announcements about the seventh of seven books in the Harry Potter series. The final book's title had been released over the holidays in a puzzle on J.K. Rowling's website, leaving fans eager to know when they could get their hands on it. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is already available for pre-order on amazon.com. If you're anywhere near as excited as I am to get your hands on this book, pre-order and avoid long lines and sell-outs in June!

There will be lots of speculation today about how Rowling will end the series, but I hate spoilers. I'm all for the buzz, but I really don't want to know what happens until I get to the last page. I feel so strongly about this, that my husband lost his voice reading Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix in an attempt to finish before we accidentally heard anything about the ending on the news.

What I'd like to talk about is how the Harry Potter series fits into spec fiction. Harry Potter is fantasy, one of the three major genres of SF. Rowling used some pretty conventional fantasy staples- fantastical creatures from Anglo-Saxon lore, magical spells in Latin, the idea of witches and wizards- and made something magical of them. She isn't the most original or inventive writer out there, her prose style isn't head and shoulders above the rest- but she sure does understand story. Rowling brought fun and adventure back to the mainstream perception of reading a book. That isn't the only key to her success. Her world building skill is absolutely head and shoulders above the rest. Think about it, wouldn't you love to take your next vacation at Hogwarts? The Harry Potter world is real to anyone who has read even one book in the series.

So, not only has Rowling captured a huge audience and been translated into at least 47 languages (I've even seen a copy in Latin), but she revived the spirit of storytelling. I have fond memories of sitting in rapt attention with my equally enthralled sister-in-law and mother-in-law while my husband read Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Book 6) aloud. The Harry Potter books speak to the spirit of wonder in all of us, regardless of where or when we were born, or whether or not we're diehard SF fans. I think that's quite an accomplishment, and I can't wait for July 21st, so I can hear the rest of the story