Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince

Hello, our ever so faithful readers. This is time it is I, Jo, who is doing the movie review, instead of our good sir Kody. Why? Because I found OH SO MANY things wrong with this one. I apologize that it's not in any sort of order- but I'm determined to get every last bit out. By the way, if you haven't seen this movie OR read the sixth and seventh Harry Potters, I wouldn't advise reading this, as it contains some spoilers.

Alright, the first thing I NEED to get out is, did they even take into consideration the book whilst writing the screenplay? It seemed as though none of the writers had even read it; almost like they grabbed some teeny bopper off the street and went, "Okay, paraphrase the Half Blood Prince in five minutes." There weren't ANY SCENES whatsoever that matched the book in any way! And, yes, I understand that they need to make some sacrifices, however, there wasn't anything that played off as it did in the book. At least with the previous movies they were able to keep true.

Alright, next thing. What happened to Dumbledore's funeral? One of the things that has always remained consistent with the books and the movies is that it begins in the middle of summer, and always, ALWAYS ends at the end of the school year. So... what? Are all the kids just going to hang around until fall for his funeral or what? Also... one of the last scenes was Harry standing in Dumbledore's office, and McGonagall is being all, "Blah blah blah Dumbledore loved you," and Harry is fondling Dumbledore's wand. Uhm.... Hello?? Isn't it kind of a BIG thing how Voldemort goes through all this trouble to desecrate Dumbledore's grave to GET to his wand. Wasn't this movie supposed to be setting up for the seventh?

A little thing, yet I still found somewhat important. Narcissa's hair. In the book, Narcissa has hair that is long, blonde and pale. In contrast, Bellatrix is "dark as his sister was fair." They got Bellatrix right. But WHY, oh WHY is half of Narcissa's hair brown? It makes no sense! The Malfoy family has ALWAYS been described as extremely pale, with straw blonde hair. Would it really have been that hard to just dye the entirety of her hair?

Which (kind of) brings me to my next point. The whole Borgin and Burkes thing. First of all, didn't Draco ditch Mummy dearest? I mean, the Dark Lord gave him a mission to kill Dumbledore. I don't think it would have been in his best interest to just waltz into a dark magic sort of store with a wife of an imprisoned Death Eater, plus a good four or five Death Eaters, and, oh! Let's not forget a werewolf too! Wouldn't people have noticed a huge group of people just sort of waltzing into the store, let alone waltzing along in Diagon Alley?

Next point- all this werewolf crap. This one is kind of tricky, as it includes two different story lines. First off, Tonks' and Remus' relationship. Well... isn't there not supposed to be one? And yet, she calls him "Swee' hea't" at the Weasley Christmas party thing. The reason Tonks CANNOT be with Remus is because he's supposed 'blending in' with the other werewolves, including Fenrir Greyback, and Remus believes that it's just too difficult, blah blah blah. Because of this, Tonks gets all depressed, and changes her Patronus. (Which, if I may add, wasn't even in the movie - Luna found Harry in the Slytherians compartment instead of Tonks. More about that later.) Harry misreads it and believes her to be in love with Sirius (who was only mentioned ONCE! COME ON!! They didn't even INFORM Harry number twelve, Grimmauld Place now belongs to him! Don't worry, I'll get to it.) which leads to all sorts of complications. Ugh. We'll get back to Tonks and Remus later. Let's move on.

Fleur Delacour... Uh... Wasn't she in the book? Somewhere? Just a little? Oh, yeah, THAT'S RIGHT, BILL AND HER ARE GETTING MARRIED! Wasn't that mentioned a little bit in the book? OF COURSE, THE WEDDING IS HOW THE SEVENTH BOOK STARTS, AND HOW THE DEATH EATERS TRY TO FIND HARRY. Man, oh man. Good luck, David Yates, you're going to have a helluva lot of angry Potter fans on your tail for this one. Fleur wasn't in the movie at all! And it's Fleur and Bill that finally bring Remus and Tonks together - Bill gets attacked by Fenrir Greyback, and Fleur declares, "I am good-looking enough for the both of us, I theenk! All these scars show is zat my husband is brave!" Which has Tonks crying and going, "You see! She still wants to marry him, even though he's been bitten!" Which sort of brings me to (one of) the last points - 

The end battle. In the book, when Harry and Dumbledore return from the caves, there's supposed to be all sorts of a commotion, which is where Bill gets attacked by Greyback. No, not in the movie... All the Hogwarts students are just sleeping away as their headmaster gets killed. 

Now... It's been stated since the VERY BEGINNING that you cannot Apparate INSIDE of Hogwarts, correct? Hermione states it god knows HOW many times throughout the entire series. And, yes, I'm very aware they didn't even give the Apparation lessons in the movie. And yet, "Being [Dumbledore] has its privileges." OH COME ON. That totally RUINS the last part of the book too, where Dumbledore Stupifies Harry under the Cloak (which he didn't have) so Harry can watch all of this lovely Dumbledore-killing unravel. The book itself even states, "Dumbledore had wordlessly immobilized Harry, and the second he had taken to perform the spell had cost him the chance of defending himself." And doesn't someone question why there are two broomsticks up on the Astronomy Tower?

Alright, last complaint - Rufus Scrimgeour. Uhh... What ever happened to him? Regardless of the fact that there wasn't even a Minister meeting at the beginning of the movie, Scrimgeous was NEVER shown. Where's all the stuff about Harry being "Dumbledore's man, through and through"?

Okay, and this is my VERY last complaint - the whole Weasley house catching on fire after Death Eaters entice Harry into an open field. Um, what? Where did that even come from?

Alright, well, that's it. I'm sure I missed out on other things, but those are the majority of my complaints. I'm sorry it's so out of order, but I had a hard time trying to put it in order and it didn't do much good anyway. I was sooo excited for the movies; and now I'm just hoping they didn't butcher the seventh one(s) as well. Enjoy. I'd like to hear your comments on it as well.

- Jo

It's been a while...

Okay so I'm not very good at this whole weekly thing. I have been way busy this past week.

So far everything seems to be about the same. Dave and I are starting to write our first feature film which we hope to film later this year. Okay on to the movie review.

I've been pretty busy but I was able to see Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and boy do I wish I hadn't. The first Transformers was about a boy and his car, except the car is actually a shape shifting robot, stay with me on this one, that had come to Earth to stop the Decepticons from obtaining the all spark, a device with ultimate power. Transformers was an enjoyable film and that's saying a lot since it is Micheal Bay and it was a movie based on a wildly conceived toy line. Transformer: RotF however is a plot less, mind numbingly stupid film. The only parts of this film that I actually enjoyed were the ones when Optimus was kicking some robot ass, and even those scenes were stupefied with lines like, "You're a tin can!" or "You piece of scrap!" The entire movie completely offended me with how stupid it was. There's Sam (Shia LeBeof) who was a likable nerdy guy in the first film and has now become a complete whiny dick in the new one. There's Mikela (Megan Fox) who although a 2-D character, was at least strong willed and independent in the first movie, has now become a shriveling mess of boyfriend dependency. The robot's that were once cool and warrior like are now reduced to one liners and swearing. Now, I'm not against swearing obviously but for a kids movie this one has a lot of it, and I think it's completely stupid that the robots swear as well, come on!

Of course by now everyone has heard of the offensive twins, I can see why people would get offended. What I don't understand is why do some Transformers have accents? I think it is just lazy writing that the robots have been reduced to racial caricatures. And it makes me sick thinking of how much money was put into making those twins look like characters from the Homiez figurines. Oh and there is the mysterious disappearance of John Hurt's character, At least one actor was smart enough to turn this movie down. There is a lot of things that bug me about this movie, from the now dubbed 'Deceptislut' to the Transformer 'Scrotum' to Tom Kenny (Spongebob Squarepants) voicing seemingly every Transformer to having almost no plot at all. And as for the score, I feel bad that Hans Zimmer has been reduced to working around a Linkin Park song. Don't get me wrong, I liked old Linkin Park but they seem to not want to go away. All in all there are way to many things I hated about this film and I wouldn't suggest this to anyone. Save that $8 and go buy yourself a DVD of a good movie, or go see a much better film.

Well that's all for this week, I hope to have more to come soon. Until next time. -Ko