Get Latest Headlines 'Harry Potter' star Rupert Grint has swine flu Jul 4, 2009, 05:13 PM | by Sean Smith
Categories: Film, Movie biz, News
Actor Rupert Grint, who plays Ron Weasley in the Harry Potter films, has contracted swine flu three days before the London premiere of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, AFP reports. According to his publicist, the actor took three days off filming Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows but is expected to join his co-stars on Tuesday for the premiere.
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That review posted above is crazy. LOL. He wonders if the movie could be a Best Picture nominee. Because, hey, the LOTR movies were all nominated. HA! Of course, I haven't seen the movie yet. But, if it is anywhere near as good as any of the LOTR films I will be very surprised.
Get Latest Headlines 'Harry Potter' star Rupert Grint has swine flu Jul 4, 2009, 05:13 PM | by Sean Smith
Categories: Film, Movie biz, News
Actor Rupert Grint, who plays Ron Weasley in the Harry Potter films, has contracted swine flu three days before the London premiere of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, AFP reports. According to his publicist, the actor took three days off filming Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows but is expected to join his co-stars on Tuesday for the premiere.
Hope they keep him far away from some of the older members of the cast, just in case it's more virulent than people think wouldn't want to wipe out some of Britain's most highly regarded actors and actresses because Rupert's sick
Originally posted by caresa: Actor Rupert Grint, who plays Ron Weasley in the Harry Potter films, has contracted swine flu three days before the London premiere of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, AFP reports. According to his publicist, the actor took three days off filming Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows but is expected to join his co-stars on Tuesday for the premiere.
Aw, of course, it would have to be Ron to get swine flu and not the other two actors. He's always getting the short end of the stick even in real life.
Kids' stuff is a thing of the past in "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince." Suddenly looking quite grown up, the students at Hogwarts are forced to grapple with heavy issues of mortality, memory and loss in this sixth installment in the series of bigscreen adaptations of J.K. Rowling's Potter tales. Dazzlingly well made and perhaps deliberately less fanciful than the previous entries, this one is played in a mode closer to palpable life-or-death drama than any of the others and is quite effective as such. Delayed by Warner Bros. from a late 2008 release date so as to spread the wealth after "The Dark Knight" scored so mightily last summer, this "Prince" is poised to follow its predecessors as one of the year's two or three top-earning films.
After sitting out "The Order of the Phoenix," screenwriter Steve Kloves happily returned to once again skillfully condense a massive book into manageable dramatic form; among many tough narrative decisions, he has cut back on the violent mayhem surrounding the murderous climax and put off the introduction of Minister of Magic Rufus Scrimgeour until the next episode.
Director David Yates, after a prosaic series debut on the prior film, displays noticeably increased confidence here, injecting more real-world grit into what began eight years ago as purest child's fantasy; messenger owls and chattering house elves have been superseded by a frank Underground tea-room flirtation, school security checks and raging teenage hormones. The sets have been stripped down to reduce Hogwarts' fairy-book aspects and emphasize its gray medieval character, and even the obligatory Quidditch match is staged with greater attention to spatial comprehensibility than ever before.
As the overarching story ramps up toward one major character's death at the end of part six and the final confrontation between Harry and archfiend Voldemort in the climactic "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," which is being shot as a two-part film, this increased seriousness is all to the good. It's hard to imagine watching "Half-Blood Prince" as a "Potter" virgin without a clue as to what's come before, but it's a formidable entry with a heft and cinematic texture compromised only by a certain lack of dramatic modulation.
With the villainess of the last picture, Dolores Umbridge, out of the way but the unseen Lord Voldemort in the ascendant, neither London, subject to a startling opening-scene Death Eater attack, nor Hogwarts itself can be regarded as safe from the Dark Lord's gathering storm. While Dumbledore takes Harry along to recruit former colleague Horace Slughorn to return to Hogwarts as new potions professor and, he hopes, to provide crucial revelations about Voldemort, Harry's student nemesis, Draco Malfoy, prepares to commit a heinous crime designed to pave the way for Voldemort's comeback.
While Harry remains mindful of his status as the "Chosen One," he is not entirely exempt from the lusts, jealousies and intrigues that preoccupy his fellow teenagers as never before. While Harry's growing fondness for Ron's sister Ginny is slowly developing, Ron is a sitting duck for the attentions of the irrepressible Lavender Brown. But, as we know, the brilliant Hermione unaccountably loves the comparatively slow-witted Ron, and she has only Harry's shoulder to cry on when he's not squiring space cadet Luna Lovegood.
But assessing the romantic entanglements is not nearly as much fun as simply beholding the big physical changes in the young actors, whose onscreen maturation will have been documented across the span of a decade when all is said and done. The biggest change since "Phoenix" two years ago has been registered by Tom Felton, who plays Malfoy; he's now a tall stringbean in the Jimmy Stewart mold, with a face that's come to resemble that of Jonathan Pryce, and he towers over Daniel Radcliffe's Harry, who looks to be the shortest person in the cast (not true when Imelda Staunton was around).
Rupert Grint, as Ron, has always looked a tad older than the others and continues to while showing more character. Emma Watson, perennially appealing as Hermione, has become a very attractive young woman, and Bonnie Wright's Ginny intrigues as the sort of initial plain Jane who keeps growing on you.
Joining such returning stalwarts as Michael Gambon, Alan Rickman, Maggie Smith, Robbie Coltrane and Warwick Davis among the Hogwarts staff is Jim Broadbent, who makes a terrific disguised entrance and is then simply grand as the eccentric old prof whom Harry presses for crucial insights into Voldemort; latter's student incarnation as Tom Riddle is seen in two crucial memory sequences.
It's this chapter in the Potter saga that obliges the always nasty but ambiguously motivated Severus Snape to show his true colors, and the indispensable Rickman delivers, as always, with line readings that are delicacies of the infinitely mordant kind. He is periodically egged on by the insidious Bellatrix Lestrange, a role Helena Bonham Carter plays with such mesmerizing abandon that one hopes the role fully pays off in the final chapter.
The particulars of Dumbledore's final quest with Harry could prove a bit confusing to the uninitiated, although there are unlikely to be many of those in the audience at this stage. Otherwise, the film is clear-headed and clean-lined; now that he's at home with the material, Yates has made a "Potter" picture that is less desperate to please than any of its predecessors, itself a sign of series maturity.
Among the always outstanding production values and top-drawer visual effects, special note should be made of series newcomer Bruno Delbonnel's exceptionally atmospheric cinematography and Nicholas Hooper's emotionally churning score, which contains only the slightest trace of John Williams' original themes.
After two PG-13-rated entries, this one has won a PG, matching the first three. At 153 minutes, "Half-Blood Prince" is the third-longest feature in the series and seems just about right; "Order of the Phoenix," at 138 minutes, actually felt too short.
Originally posted by LadyHathor25: That review posted above is crazy. LOL. He wonders if the movie could be a Best Picture nominee. Because, hey, the LOTR movies were all nominated. HA! Of course, I haven't seen the movie yet. But, if it is anywhere near as good as any of the LOTR films I will be very surprised.
A somewhat mixed review from The Hollywood Reporter:
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince -- Film Review
By Kirk Honeycutt
Bottom Line: A jerky start of exposition and backstory gives way to vigorous storytelling in the latest chapter of Harry Potter.
An air of foreboding has most definitely settled over Hogwarts in "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," the sixth installment of Warner Bros.' fabulously successful series. David Yates, in his go at the helm, throws the emphasis on the gathering storm clouds even as Harry and his fellow wizardry students make further discoveries involving the opposite sex.
In fact, the rapidly approaching confrontation between Harry and the forces of unyielding evil led by Lord Voldemort tends to overshadow moments of comic relief or romantic escape.
Yes, the end is in sight, and yet so much still needs to be developed and resolved for Hogwarts' students, faculty, friends -- and enemies. Which only means this picture, opening July 15 in select theaters in 35mm and Imax, will be eagerly greeted and dissected by millions of fans worldwide.
The movie begins in a rush. The Death Eaters lay siege to the realms of both wizarding and the Muggles. Diving from the sky in dark, spiraling vapor trails unseen by Muggle eyes, these demons wreak havoc on London, even collapsing the Millennium Bridge.
Abruptly, Professor Dumbledore (Michael Gambon) appears on a railway station platform to intercept his prize student, Harry (Daniel Radcliffe, looking older but more unsettled), who is on the verge of an impromptu date. Dumbledore demands instead that Harry accompany him on an urgent mission.
Holding on to the professor's arm and traveling in a kind of "Star Trek" warp speed, they arrive in the dead of night in a small, isolated village and enter what appears to be a thoroughly ransacked house. Here Harry meets the new guest star/visiting professor of the upcoming school year, Horace Slughorn (Jim Broadbent), a former potions professor.
Dumbledore means to lure Slughorn back to Hogwarts so that Harry might dislodge a key clue regarding the Dark Lord from the professor's resistant mind. Seems Slughorn once had a star pupil named Tom Riddle, a child wizard who turned into -- you guessed it -- Voldemort.
All this has a hurried feeling. Shouldn't there be repercussions to the collapse of a London bridge? The movie never stops to ask. Steve Kloves, who scripted the first four installments but skipped the fifth one, is back to scoot audiences through major events that transpire in a twinkling.
This film series always has been marked by a tension in its filmmakers over how to address an audience larger than novelist J.K. Rowling's readership. The early films feared to leave out a semicolon. The middle two -- directed by Alfonso Cuaron and Mike Newell, respectively -- discarded chucks of bloat and sought out the emotions. The most recent two, under Yates, have boiled and distilled with abandon, but the nonreader often is left puzzled.
There seldom is a quiet moment of reflection here. Those that do occur are devoted to unfulfilled romantic yearnings more than the contemplation of an oppressive destiny.
But those romantic yearnings do offer up relief from the dark doings. Harry is growing closer to Ginny Weasley (Bonnie Wright), but a boyfriend stands in the way. Among his best friends, Hermoine's (Emma Watson) secret admiration of Ron (Rupert Grint) has developed to a full-blown crush. But Ron is too smothered by his romantic "stalker," one Lavender Brown (Jessie Cave), to notice.
Over on the dark side, Harry's longtime nemesis Draco Malfoy (perennially glowering Tom Felton) is acting strangely even by his standards. Charged with an unnamed task by the Dark Lord, he sneaks off to a lonely storeroom in Hogwarts castle to experiment with an ancient Vanishing Cabinet. The task so weighs on him, causing his smug veneer to all but melt away, that his mother intervenes and asks Severus Snape (Alan Rickman) to help her son. Severus scoffs, as only Severus can.
In the second half, with a few revelations behind us and battle lines taking shape, the film finds better footing. Harry's identity as the "Chosen One" is firmly established, while Dumbledore increasingly puts the burden on him to defend both wizardry, and presumably the Mumble world, against the Dark Lord.
This reaches a climax when the two whisk away once again, this time to a cave deep inside a windy and forbidding sheer cliff. Their pursuit is ill defined, and the whole episode is something of a cheat because it's really a false climax leading to the real confrontation between Dumbledore and Malfoy and Severus, who no longer troubles to disguise his true allegiance.
This does put Harry on the bench, at it were, for the confrontation. Dumbledore has forbidden his involvement. This will all pay off in another couple of films (the last Rowling novel will throw off two films), but for now he has been left in a physically -- and narratively -- weakened position.
Composer Nicholas Hooper, cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel and designer Stuart Craig deliver a singularly muscular and vigorous chapter while all the visual and digital effects have now blended seamlessly into the package.
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I know that this film's Oscar-chances are slim to none, even if it is as great as some of these reviewers are calling it, but something inside of me keeps telling me that perhaps Alan Rickman may be able to sneak into the supporting actor category for what is sure to be his greatest turn yet as Snape in a Snape-heavy film. He has been universally praised for his brilliant, understatedly sublime performances in the other films and it seems that the reviewers are once again enthralled with him more than any other member of this awesome cast, and rightfully so. And Alan Rickman is a well-respected actor who is long overdue for an Oscar nod. Perhaps with this film's more serious turn, his amazing work in this series will finally be recognized. If the critics call for it and he wins some critics' awards and gets in at the Globes, well, I don't know, but, like I said before, something's telling me he could have a shot. Thoughts?
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Every time there is a Harry Potter film, a fan comes here and says "You know, Rickman is a veteran actor and much loved. And he's getting good notices. I'm getting this feeling he'll get nominated for this. It is a possibility you know."
Every. Single. Time.
And then he doesn't get nominated for the Harry Potter film. Every. Single. Time.
Several of the Harry Potter entries have been really really great films. Why is it that they seem to struggle when it comes to Oscar outside of the tech categories? Is it that the material is deemed "too light"? That always seemed like a ludicrous excuse. I'm really hoping that this new film is good enough to garber that awards attention thet entire series deserves.
Hahahaha okay. I haven't been on here for long, so thanks giving me the history. The only reason I was feeling that perhaps this movie might be a bit different is because Snape plays a far larger part in the overall plot than in the previous films, and because the film itself is much more grown-up than its predecessors. Also, the fact that people have been saying this about him throughout the entire series is an indicator that maybe there is some sort of feeling that he is overdue, and for the reasons that I just listed I just thought this may be the chance to finally reward him. But, believe me, I hold no delusions about the difficulties of an actor in a fantasy film being nominated, even after Heath's win last year (the circumstances surrounding which were far different.) Thanks for your blunt assessment though hahah.
The biggest thing that works against the Potter films in the craft categories is that the crew is entirely British, as are most of the above the line people.
The Jamez Bond films - which have included terrific editing, often great art direction, major special effects - also have been wildly underrecognized by the Academy for the same reason.
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Originally posted by AT: Well Variety likes it too
Of course, there is a difference between liking a film and comparing that film to LOTR and saying it should be nominated for Best Picture. I have liked a couple of the Harry Potter films. But I have never thought any of them should be nominated for Best Picture. (Nor have I thought any of them were as good as any of the LOTR films.) Although, if there were 10 nominees the year "Prisoner of Azkaban" came out..... Nah. I still don't think so.
That said, I am glad Variety liked it. I am really hoping the film is good. "Half Blood Prince" is my second favorite of the Harry Potter books. I think it has a stellar story to tell.
I get what Coolio1 is saying about Rickman. "Half Blood Prince" is a very Snape-heavy story. I have been greatly looking forward to seeing Rickman in this movie since seconds after I finished the book. The shock I felt at the Snape material at the end of the book gave way fairly quickly to a desire to see Rickman play this scene. I am very much looking forward to it.
I do want to say that it is odd that the Hollywood Reporter is complaining about fast pacing. They think the movie should take time to address the collapse of the London Bridge? Why? The book doesn't. And the book is much slower paced than any movie should be. A fast pace is not exactly what I would be complaining about in a Harry Potter movie. LOL.
It wasn't the London bridge that collapsed in the book, is it? Did they exaggerate the novel's events for the screen?
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Originally posted by puxzkkx: It wasn't the London bridge that collapsed in the book, is it? Did they exaggerate the novel's events for the screen?
It's to be the Millennium bridge in the movie (it certainly couldn't be the London bridge that was sold and transported to AZ years ago- the bridge you might be thinking of is the Tower Bridge) and no they didn't exaggerate what happens in the book they just bring it to life
By the By, books are almost always better than the movies made from them and the Harry Potter Books are no exception, they are certainly worth the read, especially the latter books (though can't say I like how Rowlings ended the series)
Originally posted by puxzkkx: It wasn't the London bridge that collapsed in the book, is it? Did they exaggerate the novel's events for the screen?
It's to be the Millennium bridge in the movie (it certainly couldn't be the London bridge that was sold and transported to AZ years ago- the bridge you might be thinking of is the Tower Bridge) and no they didn't exaggerate what happens in the book they just bring it to life
By the By, books are almost always better than the movies made from them and the Harry Potter Books are no exception, they are certainly worth the read, especially the latter books (though can't say I like how Rowlings ended the series)
As to what others are saying about Rickman's possibility for an Oscar Nomination, I think that would be a long shot as they haven't expanded the performers' categories. Would be nice though as it would round out his awards list; he's won almost all the majors (Golden Globe, Emmy, SAG, BAFTA) and been nominated twice for a Tony. WEll I suppose he'll get a BAFTA nomination this coming year along with everyone else in HP & the Half Blood Prince
