Movie Review: Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows Part I

I’ll admit it: I’ve never felt so bored or yawned so much in a Harry Potter movie. Not even while I was seated in the left-most seat on the first row at Prasadz IMAX for HP & TGOF…whilst my neck muscles sure needed some respite after that experience, I still felt excited at the movie & the happenings. Not so much this time around.

Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows or HP7 for short, feels like (to borrow a line from a sitcom) the stand-up comedian you’ve to sit through before Pink Floyd  shows up. Its just the prelude to bigger, and hopefully better, things in store. A tedious, slow and dragging build-up to an ultimate showdown – the finale. The Denouement. I know I said the same things after HBP but back then I didn’t know the finale would be a two-part one

With Albus Dumbledore now Avada Kedavra-ed, the Dark Lord and his minions train their sights on Harry Potter and the Order (of the Phoenix) try their bloody best to keep him away from the enemy’s clutches. Camouflaged subterfuge or not, the death eaters still find them out and after the death of one and injury to another member of the order, they find that the Ministry of Magic has also fallen foul of Harry and have branded him their Most Undesirable No. 1. Harry, Ron & Hermoine are forced to go on the run and try to find the rest of the Horcruxes, the things that hold the secret to Voldemort’s life/death. Wandering across forests, plains, grasslands, snowy villages, hillsides etc, they come to know of the story of The Deathly Hallows which probably holds the key to unlocking the mystery of the last Horcruxes. The movie ends with Voldemort laying hands on one of them…will Harry find the others in time for the great final showdown?

We’ll know in 2011.

Movie Review: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is the sixth instalment in the Harry Potter books/movies series and one which had wrapped up production and post-production back in 2008 itself. But with The Dark Knight having scorched the box office that year, Warner Bros decided to postpone the movie to the summer of 2009. This might just prove to be a masterstroke, considering that the movie may well turn out to be the best one in the series yet (according to some people, not including me!). Those who’ve read the books might feel that this one is better than the predecessors but as a sole movie-franchise-watching person, I feel that this one is a mere stop-gap stuff; something transitional…a gap-filler, call it that if you will!

The sixth year at Hogwarts starts with Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) being whispered about as the chosen one but Professor Dumbledore (Michael Gambon) knows that without being fully prepared, the battle is not to be won. He uses Harry as bait in order to coax Professor Horace Slughorn (Jim Broadbent) into retaking his position as potions teacher at Hogwarts coz he knows something that would be invaluable to defeat Lord Voldemort. Back at school, the teenage hormones are raging and just about everybody seems to be falling in love…either knowingly or unknowingly or even forcibly (er…love potions induced i.e.)! None more so than Hermoine Granger (Emma Watson) who starts feeling jealous of Ron Weasley’s (Rupert Grint) seemingly jovial escapades with other girls. Even Harry is not spared as he finds himself attracted towards Ginny Weasley (Bonnie Wright). Cho…who’s that? Amidst all this love and laughter (and yeah, Quidditch of course) Draco Malfoy (Tom Felton) has his own secret agenda, which despite Harry’s protests, is ignored and culminates in the ultimate revenge for Lord Voldemort. Hogwarts is, at last, breached and one of its faithful soldier falls. But not before unlocking a part of the secret of the enemy’s weakness.

Hari Puttar Wins…

…in the Hari Puttar Vs. Harry Potter battle that I was talking about some days ago. The Delhi High Court has dismissed a plea by Harry Potter copyright owners Warner Bros. against Mirchi Movies, the makers of an upcoming Hindi movie titled Hari Puttar: A Comedy of Terrors.

Dismissing the plea against the Hindi-language film, the court said Warner Bros., which owns the rights to Harry Potter movies, had made a “belated attempt to trip up” the film.

“Justice Reva Khetrapal said the class of viewers was such that they would not get confused with the title of the film,” Pratibha Singh, the defence counsel, told Reuters. “A Hindi-speaking, rural child would not have heard of Harry Potter, while the English-speaking, urban viewer would be so well versed with Harry Potter that there would be no reason for them to be confused,” Singh quoted the judge as saying. [Full Report]

Well, if you see the comments on my earlier post you’d notice that Liju had prophesied it spot on . But whilst it may be true that a “Hindi-speaking rural child” may not know who Harry Potter is, he is not the target audience of the Hari Puttar movie. It is the multiplex-going, popcorn-and-ice-cream-loving, pogo-and-cartoon-network-watching urban kid that the makers might wanna woo into persuading their parents to watch the flick whose name sounds like a desi version of the famous boy wizard!

That’s that then. Meanwhile, the fans of the boy wizard (including some grown up ones at the FreeHyderabad discussion boards) shall have to wait till 2009 for the next movie instalment. The studio have postponed the theatrical release of Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince from a November 2008 release to sometime in mid-2009 . Whilst I speculated it might have been done to avoid a clash with Quantum of Solace, other wiseheads are saying that the studio has already attained its financial targets for 2008 (owing to a certain Joker and a caped crusader) hence the postponement so as to ensure a rosy 2009 as well!!!

Harry Potter Vs. Hari Puttar

Was about to post a random() post about the theme change when this Reuters news item caught my eye:

India’s “Hari Puttar” caught in Harry Potter spell: 

Hollywood’s Warner Bros., which owns the rights to the Harry Potter movies, is suing an Indian production company whose new film is called “Hari Puttar: A Comedy of Terrors,” the studio said on Wednesday.

The studio had started proceedings against the makers of “Hari Puttar” over similarities to the international film and literary phenomenon, said Warner Bros. spokeswoman Deborah Lincoln.

[Full Article]

Now what can I say about this! The (apparent) similarity in the title with the famous boy wizard’s name is sure to raise a few eyebrows. But it is also true that Hari is a common-enough name in Hindi and Puttar is a Punjabi moniker for ‘son’. Say if a Punjabi couple’s son’s name is Harjeet Singh, wouldn’t his parents call him Hari Puttar?

But the conglomerate that is Warner Bros. might not understand it. Seen from their point of view, they’ve spent a huge amount in securing the copyrights and they have to safeguard it at all costs. Even if it means suing production companies who dare to title their ventures with names which are similar to populist ones.

As William Shakespeare once put it, What’s in a name?

BTW, the tagline of the movie is “A Comedy of Terrors”. Wonder if tomorrow any Shakespearean rights-holder would come forward and sue the makers for that!!!

Harry Potter & The Half-Blood Prince Trailer

Bulk email forwards (those of the chain e-mail kinds) have traditionally been involving African cash schemes, devotional pictures, motivational stories, get-rich-quick schemes etc. But today I got one which had travelled across many IT companies and email id’s and which contained few links and synopsis of the upcoming flick – Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and even contained a few YT links to the just-released teaser trailer!!! That’s a first for email forwards, methinks!

Anyways, here’s the so-called official teaser trailer of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince:

BTW, I haven’t read the books but have heard rumours as to who actually is the Half-Blood Prince. Is it true that its Snape?

More HP at IMDb | Official Site