Movie Review: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009)

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For the non-readers, the excitement of the next cinematic Harry Potter installment has always been in the steady development of experiencing J.K. Rowling's mythology unfold on the big screen. And as such the films have served as a sort of conveniently abridged version of the works for those either too busy, not quite interested enough, or just seeking a perfunctory knowledge of the world of Hogwarts to fake their way through office conversation.

Yet this is a series that at its heart seems to celebrate its readers the most given its painstaking adaptations and the evidence of this is sometimes its downfall via the detriment of the yawn-inducing screenplays-- as each and every important building block has been included throughout the movies. And in doing so, the directors and strategies have changed throughout which has not only been a brilliant tool in tapping into the short attention spans of the youngest audience members but also ensuring that there isn't only one vision for the Harry Potter universe that's being presented on the screen since the boy who lived in the cupboard under the stairs belongs to everyone who carries him around in their bag.

Moreover, despite his great beginning-- thankfully we've come a long way from the extraordinarily dull first film from one of the great filmmakers of my youth-- Mr. Chris Columbus-- which was surpassed by his own second movie (although book-wise for Rowling number two had been a literary step backward) before Alfonso Cuaron released the masterful Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban which was and remains the crowning achievement of the works so far.

Essentially, while aside from one exception with Wonder Boys scripter Steve Kloves wielding the pen for all of the transitions from books to movies-- for viewers who know the source material before going in-- the main attraction is from the visual point-of-view and the way in which this franchise has managed never to grow stale is by constantly bringing in a revolving door of new directors, cinematographers, and editors and endless behind-the-scenes talent to switch up the look.

Some of the experimentation offered up has been ghastly in my opinion such as in Mike Newell's The Goblet of Fire wherein every cast member and camera lens looked like it had been dragged through the mud (purposely according to the director's desire for grubbiness) before he yelled “action.”

In terms of script, direction, cinematography, editing, and overall execution, the most successful adaptation all-around is still Azkaban as that final "Time-Turner "sequence has yet to be topped and Hermione was given her due for the first time in the series. And although I'd cite the first and fourth film as the weakest entries-- despite Newell's success in Harry's terrifying and violent showdown with Voldemort when death hits Hogwarts-- the one recurring complaint aside from the predictable format of "the end of summer break to end of school year standard structure" is the sheer length of the films themselves. Still, I'd like to throw one more problem into the pile-- namely Rowling's over-reliance on the “overhear” device which made more sense when the kids were younger since eavesdropping was conceivably the most reliable way for the trio to acquire information... but more on that later on.

And dropping extraneous details-- to the chagrin of some die hard fans-- Girl in the Café director David Yates (who had cited Cuaron's work as his own personal favorite) moved the series back in the right direction with the much faster paced fifth film which found Harry developing his own army on behalf of Dumbledore which leads to a devastating conclusion as his godfather Sirius Black is murdered before his eyes.

After being asked to return to helm the rest of the series including the final book which will be broken into two films--(although I'm not sure if that's wise and wonder if perhaps blending books six and seven into two films may have led to a stronger narrative)-- Yates reveals supreme confidence right from the start with a bravura opener unlike anything we've seen before in Harry Potter that's sure to dazzle in 3D despite my admitted weariness of the format. In doing so he offers audiences an entirely new visual look by bringing aboard Jeunet's Amelie cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel that adds a striking color palette and style to the work especially in tandem with veteran Potter editor Mark Day. And some of the sequences in this-- the sixth Potter film to hit the screen-- are so breathtakingly gorgeous that they rival Azkaban on sheer beauty alone.

Whether Delbonnel employs old-fashioned trickery to move easily into flashbacks from water drops in a cauldron into the past with a soft focus or words on a page that evolve from ink and font into kids walking in the snow-- it's always dazzling and just flows so well that an argument can be made for Delbonnel to receive a cinematography nomination for his mind-blowing work.

And it's a great thing too because while the film is sumptuous-- readers of Half-Blood Prince go into the theatre keenly aware that it's a very introspective, flashback heavy, chatty (a.k.a. not exactly action packed entry) which is designed to push everything in the right direction towards an unsettling “throw the uninitiated off a narrative cliff” ending as one main character is murdered and another we've been on the fence about is the one wielding the wand, thereby effectively leaving those breathlessly anticipating what's to happen next.

As a film, it's still quite good--if a bit too long again-- and filled with Rowling's structural Achilles heel as the trio and especially Harry this time-- since Ron and Hermione are busy obsessing over which one the other one is “snogging” (the Brit slang for kissing)-- are seen more than half a dozen times at least eavesdropping or listening in on conversations as if Rowling forgot that there were other ways Nancy Drew, Miss Marple, or any number of detectives could find clues.

Since the cast is getting older-- they're predictably more caught up with their raging hormones. To this end, Harry starts to return Ginny's previously unrequited affection only to realize that she'd moved on to the athletic Quidditch player Dean Thomas whereas Ron has caught the eye of a stereotypically clingy girly-girl named Lavender much to Hermione's wrath that he hasn't realized that girls with the ability to carry on a conversation are much more interesting than those who snog so much that poor Ron is going to have the market cornered on chapstick.

Yet, it's not all "The Young and the Hogwarts"-- as The Death Eaters have stepped up their fight on behalf of the Dark Lord and we learn early on that not only is Draco Malfoy to be an important player but that Alan Rickman's Severus Snape has promised Helena Bonham Carter's Bellatrix Lestrange to step in if he's unable to fulfill his duty. Likewise, Michael Gambon's Dumbledore has been turning Harry into a double agent to get close to one of Tom Riddle's old teachers-- Horace Slughorn (Jim Broadbent).

And despite the tradition that the final showdown is always the most exciting-- honestly the one captured in Half-Blood Prince isn't quite as memorable as some of the ones which have come before it. One of the reasons for this could most likely be because the events leading up to the big murder were executed with such overt Christian symbolism like we were watching a Charlton Heston movie to the point that afterward others including myself wondered when it suddenly became The Ten Commandments thereby in making these choices, it pulled viewers out of Harry Potter suspension-of-disbelief and into post-modern, pop-culture referential mode.

Additionally, in the book although Harry was outnumbered and out-wanded to help prevent a beloved friend from death, there was much more to the scene than having him stand there like yet another "overhear" in an anti-climactic fashion.

Despite this, there is one amazing sequence that keeps you in check within the film that I don't remember-- at least to this extent-- in the novel which takes place at Christmas at the Weasley household when Bellatrix Lestrange shows up and a huge chase through the cornfield ensues as though we were in a vintage horror movie classic.

Furthermore it's surprises like these-- unexpected, away from Hogwarts, brilliantly lensed and pieced together in the most dynamic way that heightens the tension which brilliantly keepsus watching even when we're left realizing that this time around, Ron and Hermione have very little to do (with the former given hardly anything save for the obligatory comic relief scene). And likewise the filmmakers will definitely have their work cut out for them in making us buy into the Harry and Ginny relationship in Deathly Hallows since the ultimate few second "snog" looked about as passionate as a walk to Hagrid's hut.

And in the end, for the readers who've been joyfully treated with Delbonnel's beautiful lensing, you'll find yourself growing excited and anxious for the plot division of the next book since obviously the big revelation that sets up the final quest for the end of the series is revealed in this title. Yet this one may be rough going for the non-readers given the lack of action in comparison to the rest. However, for the patient viewers who manage to watch all the way through-- the best achievement of the picture's final sequence (and indeed the film itself) is that the murder and perpetrator are so startling that you may find yourself going over to the bookstore to grab Hallows just to see what happens next.

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Ballet Shoes

After Tom Hanks and his “big bad chain store” force Meg Ryan’s sweet little children’s bookstore, The Shop Around the Corner, out of business in Nora Ephron’s 1998 cinematic charmer You’ve Got Mail, she visits Hanks’ business for herself in a heartbreaking scene. And in the film, inspired by not only Lubitsch’s original movie (The Shop Around the Corner) as well as Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Ryan winds up in the children’s department where her expertise on the subject matter is quickly required when a clueless salesperson is unable to identify a customer’s request for the “Shoe books” or their author. Immediately recognizing the source, Ryan snaps away from self-pity and into helpful attention, sharing through tears, “Noel Streatfeild wrote Ballet Shoes and Skating Shoes and Theater Shoes and Movie Shoes… I'd start with Skating Shoes, it's my favorite, although Ballet Shoes is completely wonderful.”

And ever since that moment, I’ve been fascinated by not only the Shoes series but Noel Streatfeild as well. Yet it’s always a sad fact of a hectic twenty-first century life filled with multi-tasking that there aren’t often enough hours in the day to squeeze in the reading we’d love to do with the reading we’re forced to do for school and work. Thus, I’d forgotten all about my promise to track down Ballet Shoes but was recently reminded this month by my mother who returned from the movies gushing about a trailer she’d seen for a cinematic adaptation of Streatfeild’s classic Ballet Shoes.

Originally produced for Granada Television for the BBC and adapted by screenwriter Heidi Thomas and director Sandra Goldbacher (Me Without You, The Governess), Ballet Shoes premiered during Christmas of 2007 to great success in the UK. And it’s getting the royal treatment for its American debut, opening in limited theatrical release this week before its DVD from KOCH Vision hits shelves on September 2. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that despite its late summer release that the film's popularity should build steadily not only as there’s so few worthwhile films for young women but it also stars Harry Potter’s very own Hermione Granger (Emma Watson) in a refreshingly feminine and challenging period performance.

Although in an intelligent and thoughtful twenty minute interview included on the DVD, Emma Watson admits that she’d never read the 1936 classic, she phoned her grandmother who shared her own love for Ballet Shoes as a girl, saying that it was not only a personal favorite but changed her outlook on life in its illustration that everything is possible. And it’s that message that still shines through more than seventy years later in this delightful and high quality adaptation.

In its opening credit sequence, Shoes is reminiscent of The Secret Garden as we encounter the young Sylvia Brown who dressed in dark mourning wear arrives — with her devoted Nana in tow — to live at the house of Sylvia’s only living relative after the death of her parents. Although Sylvia’s uncle, Professor Matthew Brown (Richard Griffiths), an eccentric paleontologist and globe-trotting explorer, is initially hesitant to let a child into his life, they soon grow attached to one another. And just as quickly, after she grows into a young woman in her own right (now played by Emilia Fox) and his travels continuously take him away from home for extended periods of time, she’s startled when he begins sending back his own version of “fossils” from his expeditions.

For — unlike traditional fossils — the eternally caring professor, who seems to be always in the wrong place at the right time, first rescues an orphaned baby aboard the Titanic and sends her back to be raised by his own charge and Nana (Victoria Wood), only to repeat the process two additional times before he disappears altogether. Soon without the means to send the three girls — Pauline (Watson), Petrova (Yasmin Paige), and Posy Fossil (Lucy Boynton) — to receive a traditional education, Sylvia has to rely on her ingenuity and determination to keep things afloat.

After taking in a group of free-spirited boarders, including two elderly female professors, she’s able to entrust their academic math and literature-based education directly to them. However, in realizing that the world isn’t kind to girls who can’t support themselves, Sylvia takes the advice of her bewitching and bold boarder, the former dancer Theo Dane (Lucy Cohu) who encourages Sylvia to enroll the girls in the Children’s Academy of Dancing and Stage Training.

While Posy Fossil, who had arrived special delivery with only her birth mother’s pair of beautiful pink satin ballet shoes to her name, shows a naturally prodigious aptitude for dance, Pauline finds herself drawn to the stage. Soon, the girls begin earning enough money to help out their beloved caretaker “Garnie,” who seems to be increasingly stressed by not just the financial and time-consuming struggle and poor health but also fear that too much ambition and fame isn’t the right thing to encourage for her adored girls.

Yet even though Posy and Pauline seem thrilled by their feminine and artistic studies, the tomboy Petrova is far more hesitant, going along to auditions out of duty and loyalty, but with a serious passion towards finding “roads in the sky” in becoming a female pilot like her hero Amy Johnson. Her love of engines is encouraged by Sylvia’s charming male boarder Mr. Simpson (Marc Warren), for whom Sylvia seems to have developed romantic feelings as we realize that much to our heartbreak—in a life spent in service to the three bright girls—she’s never been able to allow herself to consider her own wants and needs.

Ballet Shoes: The Official Theatrical Trailer

With gorgeous cinematography by Catherine Ashmore (view the photo gallery), Ballet Shoes is one of those enchanting movies that, although set in the 1930s, seems all the more incredible for the vital pre-feminist messages set forth by Streatfeild in her text. As the girls routinely state on their birthdays and Christmas that “we three Fossils vow to put our name in the history books, because it is ours, and ours alone and no one can say it’s because of our grandfathers,” they truly seek to achieve their dreams on their own terms, never taking shortcuts or depending on a man to get them there and it’s all the more amazing when you realize the original publication date of the novel.

Featuring subtitles for the deaf and hearing-impaired along with deleted scenes, the beautiful DVD transfer also includes a valuable interview with Watson sure to impress her fans as she compares and contrasts working on this film with Potter and reflects on the film itself, as well as an audiobook excerpt (read by Elizabeth Sastre) and limited edition mini-poster.

Recommended by The Dove Foundation as worthwhile “family entertainment,” and highly recommended by this enthusiastic reviewer, Goldbacher’s film is the best one I’ve seen aimed at young female audiences this year, surpassing even the superlative Kit Kittredge: An American Girl Mystery (which incidentally took place in the same era except here in the states). Additionally, Ballet Shoes is one sure to touch the hearts of viewers — especially females — of all ages whether they’re just getting their first pair of pink slippers, taking aviation lessons, running a shop around the corner, or tucking their grandchildren in at night.