MAKSQUIBS CINEMATHEQUE: HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE (2009)

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DVDs: the latest opiate of the people meets the internet, where everyone's a critic.
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Friday, March 12, 2010

HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE (2009)

It's good news for Potter fans that scripter Steve Kloves has returned after the underwhelming ORDER OF THE PHOENIX/’07. Less welcome is the retention of David Yates who megs like a muggle. His main idea this time out is to (quite literally) drain most of the color out of the story in an attempt to capture the elegiac tone of J. K. Rowling’s penultimate volume. Glum is about all he can manage. The sole gag in 2 & ½ hours involves . . . gagging! Things pick up about halfway thru with a CGI-heavy Quidditch match that (almost) makes sense of the game, and there's a spirited return to form for Potter pals Rupert Grint & Emma Watson after their partial eclipse in the last pic. Daniel Radcliffe’s Harry holds to the standard he reached under Mike Newell in GOBLET OF FIRE/’05, but his challenge here is partnering Michael Gambon’s Dumbledore & Jim Broadbent’s Slughorn since Yates’ idea of characterization is to have them dozing off on screen. It fits right in with Yates’ sleepy ideas on screen composition. Luckily, Rowling’s narrative drive finally kicks in and the improved CGI effects work wonders as long as we stay in Hogwarts' wizardly environment.

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A last thought before we go.

Well, enough from me. But before we sign off, here's a great quote from Emile Zola's L'OEUVRE (THE MASTERPIECE), which is about painting rather than the yet to be invented medium of film, but which points a fine critical eye toward the whole idea of art criticism. It's a good, if chilly, thought to keep in mind, especially when you surf the net.

"Has it ever struck you that posterity may not be the fair, impartial judge we like to think it is?

"Suppose the artist's paradise turned out to be as nonexistent as the Catholics, and future generations prove just as misguided as the present one and persisted in liking pretty pretty dabbling better than honest to goodness painting. There are some accepted masterpieces for which I myself wouldn't give a twopenny damn.

"Classical training has given us a wrong view of everything and forces us to acclaim as geniuses a lot of fellows who are no more than well-balanced, facile painters, while what we might really prefer is the work of more emancipated but less even artists known only to an initiated few. Immortality at present depends entirely on the average, middle-class mind and is reserved only for the names that have been most forcibly impressed upon us while we were still unable to defend ourselves...

"Perhaps that's the sort of thing that's best left unsaid. It's certainly the sort of thing that gives me the shudders!"- Emile Zola

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Now Over 5500 Reviews and (near) Daily Updates!

Friday, March 12, 2010

HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE (2009)

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A last thought before we go.

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