Wednesday, November 19, 2008

New "Half-Blood Prince" trailer released

Just caught this on Huffington Post. Even though there were a couple of "Half-Blood Prince" trailers out there already, Warner Bros. has given us a new one two days before what was to have been the movie's release date. Now we have to wait until July to see the completed film, due to a bunch of behind-the-scenes studio maneuvering that I still don't entirely understand.

Couple of thoughts on this: "Half-Blood Prince" is my least favorite of the Harry Potter books, but I'm still incredibly excited about the movie. There's intense debate about the relative merits of the Potter movies but I love them all. Each one in its own way brings to light something that has enriched my subsequent readings of the novels. This is due in no small part to the near-miraculous casting of the once-child (now more or less adult!) actors who play the three key roles. Could Warner Bros. have found a more perfect Harry, Hermione and Ron? I can't imagine how.

So while it's enraging that Warner Bros. is making us wait until next summer for this one, I think the next couple of years of speculation on how they will pull off the final two-part blockbuster version of "Deathly Hallows" will be pretty fun to watch. The one thing I desperately hope they don't screw up in the final movie(s) is the "anteroom to the afterlife" scene where Harry speaks to the departed Dumbledore. That scene ranks right up there with the classic and incredibly moving "Mirror of Erised" chapter in the very first Potter novel, in my estimation.

If Virginia Woolf had written children's fantasy novels, she could have written that scene: heaven's entryway imagined as King's Cross station. Literary snob though she was, I expect she would approve of that.

(Here endeth the literary geekery.)

1 comment:

Misty said...

i love these movies... They are some of the only books turned to movie that haven't incredibly dissapointed me!
As geared up as I am for twilight, I will be thinking, tonight, of how this should be the day the new HP opened...