Went to the midnight showing. Then went into work at 8am for an 11-hour shift. Yes, I am crazy. LOL.

My theatre sold out 10 showings at midnight. Lines to get in were wrapped around the building. I heard they sold out about 5 more showings at 3:15! Crazy!

Quick thoughts now. More when I am off work and have caught up on sleep.

I thought the movie was good. Much better than I expected. My biggest complaint is that the climax scene was a little underplayed. It is much more dramatic and tense in the book. I was hoping for a bit more.

Otherwise, pretty good movie.

quote:

Originally posted by stevie:
Don't mind BTN. He's been down on the Harry Potter franchise ever since Chris Columbus stopped directing. He's been bitter about it ever since. You won't catch him posting a single positive review.

Ebert's was three stars!

I think this is the toughest book to make into a film (especially since they are splitting the last book into 2 movies).

I thought the movie was really good, looking at it as a film on its own well acted, I finally enjoyed Gambon's Dumbledore! I also loved the cinematogrpahy and technical aspects. Overall Yates has grown in his way to craft these stories. I also agree that the ending should have felt more tense.

Now as a fan of the books. I really missed a lot that was in the book that was not in the film. I miss the exteneded Weasley brothers because without them a key scene in the seventh film has to be left out, and I am curious what they will do without the wedding scene.

I also would have liked them to show more of Voldemort's past.

I wanted more on Fenrir Greyback, who and what is he (I knwo as a reader) but as an audience member I know my father who does not read the books will ask me 20 million questions about who he is.

quote:

Originally posted by BTN:

quote:

Originally posted by stevie:
Don't mind BTN. He's been down on the Harry Potter franchise ever since Chris Columbus stopped directing. He's been bitter about it ever since. You won't catch him posting a single positive review.

Ebert's was three stars!

Okay, that's true. But you conveniently didn't mention that, did you?

Your exact words: "Roger Ebert has a review and I think he may be getting tired of the Harry Potter movies."

Negative spinmeister!

I thought it was a really superb film, though the climax could gave used a bit more "oomph" in it. Honestly, though, someone needs to give Alan Rickman an award for playing Snape. What an original, ambiguous, understated and sublime performance. Watching his multi-layered acting throughout a series in which the characters have frequently been far over-the-top (not so much in this installment, though the girl who loved Ron was a tad ridiculous), you really come appreciate his phenomenal ability to convey both everything and nothing about the character with a single deliciously drawn-out syllable. If the critics won't call for an Oscar nomination for him, we here at GoldDerby should.

I thought it was a solid film, by far the hardest of the books to make into a film. I thought that as a result of the difficulty it was rushed. There's no build up, it just starts in the action and moves through like lightning which is fun but i hated that it didn't linger on the moments where it should, like the climax for example.

The best of the film are Rickman and Broadbent. In one of those rare moments where the movie does something far better than the book, i thought Broadbents story about the fish and the lilly was superb. I also thought that Emma Watson and Rupert Grint were used appropriately and both used the best of their abilities.

I was sad though that the when they changed things from the book and made it into scenes that didn't add any new information to the characters or the story development.

Overall I think it was a good movie, the best acted of the bunch but i thought that it wasn't the most structually solid of the bunch.

saw the movie this morning (first time at the movies so early) and I thought the movie was pretty good but lacked a bit of excitement as you all have said.

it was extremely perfect for me to watch everything come to life, for the first time I read the book very very close to the movie, so everything was still fresh and I liked the book a lot (except for the ending)...

The movie needed a bit more build up to the whole Horrorcruxes thing because it was just barely mentioned before they go to the cave.

Same for the meaning of the Half Blood Prince which to be honest wasn't all that great in the book either, but in the movie it was even less, it was a blink and miss it moment. I bet more than one person will come out and say "so who the F is the Half Blood Prince?"

The super climatic scene between Draco and Dumbledore and then everybody else joining them was like 2 minutes long and yet Lavender Brown (who was fun to watch) had like 45 minutes of screentime.

I think they could've put more of the really exciting parts into the books and leave some things out. They burning of the Weasley house was made up for the film so it could explain the attacks from Bellatrix and others, but I didn't feel it was necessary AT ALL, they should've given more time to the death of Dumbledore and leave that whole scene out, and that's one of many examples.

But like others have said, it was extremely well acted, it was very funny (which is not common in Potter films), the Quidditch game was superbly done, the Ginny, Harry, Ron, Hermione romance aspect was done great, Lavender Brown was excellent too, and the adults did an amazing job and Broadbent was just hilarious, perfectly played just as good as Staunton in the last film.

But even though it was over 2 hours long...it was rushed.

From The Film Review.Com
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince smashes competition out of the box office
Despite the fact that a large majority of the film’s fans probably have a 9pm curfew, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince still managed to smash preview records at its midnight opening on Wednesday, raking in a mega $22.2 million and beating previous record holder, The Dark Knight (which took in $18.5 million during previews).

It’s now expected to beat first week records too – just as well given the intrepid promo duties carried out by Emma Watson, Daniel Radcliffe and co. However, expect the real records to come from next year’s final installment, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallow – and after that everyone can start watching them all over again…

A ***1/2 out of **** review from Peter Travers in ROLLING STONE...

Harry is better than ever, a triumph of visual wonder and emotional storytelling. Only Muggles, who wouldn't know Slytherin from Gryffindor, will dismiss it as kid stuff for the multitudes who drank the Kool-Aid of J.K. Rowling's seven books. The rap on Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, the sixth of Rowling's books to be filmed (number seven will be two movies), is that it's an interim tease, all buildup and no release. Like that's bad. Like character and motivation have no place after Michael Bay banished them in Transformers 2.


David Yates, who directed Order of the Phoenix in 2007 and will steer the Potter films to the finish line, energizes the quiet strengths in the Steve Kloves script. A major character dies. And a minor one — the half-blood prince who's been scheming behind the scenes — rises to the fore. Romance? Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) pines for Ginny Weasley (Bonnie Wright), and Hermione (Emma Watson) watches in jealous disgust as Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint), Harry's BFF and Ginny's brother, imbibes a love potion that makes him the sex slave of anyone he encounters. I exaggerated the kinky part — the movie is rated PG, though Grint is a comic delight in hormonal transport.

What makes Half-Blood Prince top-tier is the descent of darkness on the lives of these characters. The unseen Lord Voldemort cooks up fresh hell by planning to have Harry's archrival, the blond, bullying Draco Malfoy (Tom Felton), kill wise old Professor Dumbledore (Michael Gambon). And then there's slithery Severus Snape (the great Alan Rickman) making a deal to protect Draco. I'll never tell why, except to say that it's a pleasure to watch the mesmerizing Felton take the role to the next level, discovering a vulnerable humanity in Draco. And Rickman is a dynamo, lacing the Severus sneer with glimmers of conscience and moral doubt.

All the actors excel at pulling us into the film's mysteries. Radcliffe's growing maturity as Harry gives the role a touching gravity. His scenes with Gambon, superb as Dumbledore, exude ferocity and emotion, notably when they seek a Horcrux, where part of the Dark Lord's soul resides, on a lake teeming with undead corpses. It's scary, resonant magic, poetically shot by Bruno Delbonnel. The shadows, and the dangers lurking within, have always drawn me deepest into Potter World. Newcomers shouldn't worry about playing catch-up. Getting lost in the hypnotic Half-Blood Prince is what gives the movie its haunting power.

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quote:

From The Film Review.Com
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince smashes competition out of the box office
Despite the fact that a large majority of the film’s fans probably have a 9pm curfew, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince still managed to smash preview records at its midnight opening on Wednesday, raking in a mega $22.2 million and beating previous record holder, The Dark Knight (which took in $18.5 million during previews).

It’s now expected to beat first week records too – just as well given the intrepid promo duties carried out by Emma Watson, Daniel Radcliffe and co. However, expect the real records to come from next year’s final installment, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallow – and after that everyone can start watching them all over again…

This was covered already in the box office thread, and has been superceded by its opening day gross, which was 3rd best for a Weds (behind DK and Trans 2). It is far from a certainty that it will break the 5 day record - they are just making that up, like so many sites that claim to know something about BO do.

The industry projection - and clearly there is a margin of error (maybe +/- $10 millon) is $200 million, which would be short of a record. Yes, it has a chance to be the biggest, but the above item is not remotely credible in making it certain.

Well I went to see this today. I have to say that I really, really enjoyed it. It's probably my favorite of all of the movies, which is saying something because Half-Blood Prince was definitely not one of my favorite books.

Alan Rickman was especially good as Snape here. I also thought that Helena Bonham Carter was very compelling in her role. The acting in the film really was tremendous. One of the best aspects, for sure.

Overall, I really enjoyed this film, and it has gotten me excited to see how they're going to adapt Deathly Hallows next.

A mixed review from Joe Moregenstern in THE WALL STREET JOURNAL...

Latest ‘Potter’ Is Long on Buildup, Short on Magic

By JOE MORGENSTERN

Potions play a pivotal part in “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” and I wish I’d been able to find one for patience.

The filmmakers have certainly honored the book, which is famously dark, though with bright spots provided by the stirrings of teenage romance. And that chiaroscuro is enhanced by some very funny moments in the movie; the director, David Yates, has lightened his touch since the previous installment. But the book’s dramatic challenge is its overall sense of incipiency, rather than immediacy—great events aren’t happening quite yet, they’re soon to happen. (While the death of a major character is momentous, it’s mainly symbolic as a passing of the torch.) In a mythical analog to “The Gathering Storm,” the stage is being set for the final, epic battle between Harry and Lord Voldemort. For those who’ve lived with the series for more than a decade, this fateful pause may heighten the suspense. For a Muggle like me, the storm does gather slowly.

You wouldn’t guess it from the excitement of the first action sequence. With Voldemort returned, as if from the dead, an unholy trio of Death Eaters terrorize London by reaching down with invisible black fingers—they’re scarily visible to us—that wreak chaos in the streets and turn the Millennium Bridge into a metallic pretzel. Soon afterward, however, the pace slows to a saunter as Hogwarts’ headmaster, Albus Dumbledore, enlists Harry in a mission to seek out the school’s former Potions professor, Horace Slughorn. Dumbledore is played, as before, by Michael Gambon, a great actor who has finally settled fully into the role. Slughorn is played by Jim Broadbent, another great actor —the adjective isn’t used loosely in either case—who gets to do a wonderful drunk scene that turns into something more serious and poignant. (The screenplay was adapted by Steve Kloves.)

The whole antic mission to find Slughorn turns into something serious and genuinely intriguing. It’s always tempting to lapse into plot summaries when dealing with a Harry Potter movie, since the plots are so elaborate and the details are so much a part of the story’s spirit as well as its substance. Instead of jumping into that rabbit hole, I’ll simply say that Slughorn’s role involves recovered memory, that the recovery process involves advanced potions, that the memories are meant for exploring Voldemort’s vulnerabilities, and that some of them, just like those of eyewitnesses in courts of law, turn out to be entirely unreliable.

“Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” may suffer by comparison to visual memories of the first film, which wasn’t all that wonderful but teemed with wondrous images—a first look at the Great Hall, a first trip on the Hogwarts Express, a first game of Quidditch. That was all about the thrill of discovery, of course, about first steps on a long and winding road. Now that the series is near the end of that road—two more films will be adapted from the final book—the original fun-house tone has given way to complexity and maturity. Daniel Radcliffe, a sweet-faced preteen when the first movie was released, has become such an engaging young man that Harry’s attraction to Ron’s sister, Ginny (Bonnie Wright), seems less a matter of heedless infatuation—Slughorn’s most dangerous home brew is an infatuation potion—than the early onset of love.

At its worst, the movie feels less like a labor of love than a labor of labor —industrialized enchantment with an elegant veneer that’s compounded of, among other elements, Stuart Craig’s production design, Jany Temime’s costumes, Bruno Delbonnel’s brooding cinematography and a seductive array of special effects supervised by Tim Burke. But the pace quickens and the intensity grows toward the end. (In the film’s most impressive sequence, strongly reminiscent of “The Lord of the Rings,” Gollum-esque monstrosities rise up from the sea to pull Harry under and down.) And the enterprise continues to be blessed by veteran English actors who lend authority to their every scene: Mr. Gambon, of course, whose Dumbledore is a mere century and a half old; Mr. Broadbent, to be sure, and the supremely acerbic Alan Rickman, whose Snape figures intricately in the proceedings. They’re the authentic wizards of the piece.

I just went to see it. Quick Thoughts:

I really liked it. Definitely the very best of the series so far and I'm now confident about Yates and the last two movies. I loved the darker tones. The Cinematography was excellent. The acting overall better, especially Rickman, Broadbent and Gambon. I like Harry the character a whole lot more. The humor definitely enhanced (some of it the little kiddies won't get). I thought the audience would think it was too long as there were quite a number of people heading for the toilets round the two hour mark. I was really surprised that there was applause at the end. It was definitely captivating.

I watched thursday night and loved it. my favorite movie thus far along with the prisoner of alkabaz. I keep getting surprise by how good these movies are i mean this is the sixth harry potter movie and its one of the best if not the best and keeps me coming for more. there were some great scenes and lots of magic being used around, and i though the acting was excellent from a very big cast. This movie i though was excellent bridge it kind of brought a lot thing from previous movie and close some loose end and now all that is left for harry and friends to meet voldemort. Also this movie was very funny more than i expected which made it a lot more enjoyable. Like rockstitution said there were also a lot of applause at the end in the theater. The only bad thing i can think of is that it leaves you wanting to see what next, after this movie you want more harry potter at least i do.

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I saw it last night...

As someone who's read the books, and this particular book was my favorite, I have very mixed opinions. It felt like 2 different movies to me...the first half with the awkward teenager bit, and the second with the suspense and the horocruxes. However, the book balanced them in one thread. I thought the transition to searching for the horocruxes was extremely awkward, and not well explained, and I thought the final act was given short shrift. I remember getting very antsy after about 40 minutes, wondering when the main story would kick in.
That said, the direction and especially cinematography were stunning!

Fan of the book grade: B-

My partner has not read the books. This was his favorite of all of the movies. He would give it an A.

Jim Broadbent should get nominated.

Okay, now that I am not sleep deprived, further thoughts. Though, I think I am echoing what is already being said.

The acting in this is really good. Very surprised at what Tom Felton pulled out for this. The movies FINALLY treated Draco the way the books did. (This has been one of my long running complaints about the movies.) Glad to see Felton stepped up.

Jim Broadbent was great in this. Really great! How wonderful to see! Michael Gambon did an excellent job playing Dumbledore in this. And Alan Rickman is.... just amazing. What is truly amazing about his performances in these movies is that he is getting Snape so right, even though the scripts are giving him so much less than the books. This movie utterly gutted a lot of Snape material (as they all do, sigh), and Rickman still conveyed absolutely everything that was necessary. Sometimes just with his eyes. Great job!

The cinematography was great. Effects were good. Sound was good. Music was good.

Story was... a mixed bag. The teen romance stuff was played well, but it took up too much time in the movie. (And now I have an even harder time understanding how Manohla could say the film was too dark in the NY Times review.)

This book had to be extremely hard to adapt. It is not cinematic in structure. Not at all.

Even though the movie is 2.5 hours, it still felt a little rushed to me. The book is one of my favorites in the series. I just loved the tension, mystery and dark drama in it. I felt like the movie tried to hit all the major plot points, and did, but missed a lot of the tension and dramatic impact.

Mainly in that climax scene. Whew. Gutted. And I am very sad about this. The ending of the book is actually the only part of it which seems very cinematic to me. In the movie it is far too rushed. The moment with Draco is lacking real tension. Scenes between Snape/Dumbledore and Snape/Harry are terribly rushed. Oh, what a loss. The climax scene of this book is maybe my favorite scene in the entire series. Oh, I find it wrenching that it was so underplayed. I am so surprised that the filmmakers actually underplayed one of the most dramatic scenes in the entire series.

My roommate's comment after the movie was "I loved about 2/3 of the movie. But, it was the wrong 2/3. Wish they hadn't screwed up the ending." LOL.

So, yeah. Pretty good movie overall. Story structure was the weak point.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: LadyHathor25,

why the **** did they burn down the burrow, I mean dude! Aguamenti!!! even Fiendfyre can be stopped at least. Also its funny how Bella and Fenris are apparatin' all around Harry and Ginny and Remus runs to get to them.Where's Bill's wedding gonna take place now. And the invisibility cloak can cheat death but not Luna's wrackspurt glasses???

I completely agree. The battle at the tower was one of the most awaited scenes for me after reading this book. I thought the entire Dumbledore's Army coming together while the other things were happening in parallel was crucial to the movie. I guess I could have lived with less of the romantic stuff, I would have played down the Quidditch tryouts with Ron in replacement of possibly a crazy 30 minute ending. I can't really complain because the movie seems anticlimactic because this book basically sets up the finale of the series so the entire film almost looks like a set up for what happens next after the ending and why such characters did so.

I was happy to see the film because it was, like many people, my favorite book in the series. I guess being a fan of the book it was just disappointing seeing the end play in such a way. 2.5 hours wouldn't have done the entire book justice anyway.

Oh wait... I know how, maybe if Alfonso Cuaron directed, just maybe. Wishful thinking. That's all.

^Meh. Prisoner of Azkaban is actually my favorite book in the series. I think Alfonso Cuaron did a great job with it. However, that movie also had a somewhat gutted ending. What made the book so wonderful was the reveal about the previous generation. The scene in the Shrieking Shack was so wonderful for the glimpse it gave into the relationships between James, Sirius, Lupin, Pettigrew and even Snape. Almost none of this survived into the film. Neither did Snape's epic meltdown in those ending scenes. The movie actually makes Snape look *better* than he does in the book!

Basically, I felt that the Shrieking Shack scene in POA film was as rushed and chopped up as the Astronomy Tower/Death Eaters escape scenes were in Half Blood Prince.

I also think this film version of Half Blood Prince did almost nothing to set up the last story. In this film, Harry has no idea what these horcruxes could be. The movie cut out the Tom Riddle memories that gave Harry the clues he needed to solve the puzzles in book 7. In book 6 Harry even sees one of the horcruxes in the Room of Requirement, which enables him to remember its location in book 7. This scene was also cut out of Movie 6. Also, the films haven't really done enough for Harry to understand who R.A.B. is, and how this person could have found and stolen the horcrux from the cave. Though, that is mainly a flaw from the Order of the Phoenix film, since that is the story in which this information is originally divulged.

Whew, if I thought Harry's task in finding those horcruxes in book 7 was tough, imagine how tough it will be when he doesn't even know a few crucial bits of information thanks to the cuts in movie 6. LOL.

I also wonder if film 7 is going to explain what happens to Dumbledore's body and possesions. Namely, what happens to his wand??? The location of that wand, and who possesses it, become a bit crucial to the plotline of book 7.

Oh, and like Hybrid, I was a bit mystified that Harry's Invisibility Cloak can hide someone from Death, but not Luna's x-ray glasses. LOL.

Okay. Thus ends my Harry Potter obsessed nitpicking. Truly, though, I don't see how anyone could really understand these films if they haven't read the books. There is so much plot detail left out that the films are left with these gaping plot holes and leaps of logic. I swear, I am dying of curiosity now to find out how Harry is going to be able to identify the remaining horcruxes with absolutely zero knowledge of what they could be. As Dumbledore states in the movie, they could be *anything*!

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