PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince

I took in the 12:30 show upstairs from the LEGO Imagination Center in the Mall of America. There's a large theater complex on the fourth floor. I think it's the third owner since the Mall opened in 1992. AMC was in there before Theatres at the Mall, which had 4 or 5 screens running the new Potter movie. I figured to go early, partly to use up some left over vacation that I need to use before the end of the month, and partially to save a few bucks and beat the crowds in the evening. It's 6 bucks there for any show before 5 pm and $9.50 after. They have fancy shaking chairs for an extra 7 bucks and a VIP theater for patrons over 21 that adds 2 bucks to the ticket price. They serve beer at 6 bucks a bottle. I certainly didn't go for that. I don't even buy popcorn anymore. $5.50 for a small. That's just insanity calling. Don't listen.

They ran some trailers and forgot to turn the sound on for the Sherlock Holmes promo. Then a couple more played, with sound, and it was onto the movie. I enjoyed it for the most part but I liked the last one directed by David Yates. I think people who are purists will have some issues with the movies cut and past version of the story. There's so much of the book missing someone will have some complaint to make that's for sure. This morning the reviews have been mostly positive. It got a 95% on Rotten Tomatoes according to the theater reviewer on MPR this morning about 8:30am. I just looked about 7pm and it's down to 89%.

It doesn't bother me that the movie cuts some of the book out. It's a massive book and they just can't get every scene into the 153 minute running time. They've got the basic story down and it moves us one step closer to the last two movies. I miss some scenes that didn't make the cut. I alway have enjoyed the opening to the book when the Muggle Prime Minister gets a visit from Fudge, who pops in to explain the current, and rather dire, situation. He also introduces us to the new Minister of Magic, Rufus Scrimgour. Poor Rufus, just didn't make the cut in the movie. The movie makes me want to read the book again, but so does breathing. I was looking earlier at my list of books read and if I read the last three HP books one more time each I will have read the series 7 times. That's got to be lucky.

Luck, supplied by a magical potion, played a great part in Harry collecting an important clue. It gives him a way to defeat Voldemort. Who doesn't like that. Dumbledore shows Harry some memories that he's been collecting over the years. That was another part of the book, that I liked, that had been truncated. Harry & Dumbledore spend a large part of the novel viewing memories and discussing them and then supplementing that knowledge with a history of Tom Riddle and his family. There's a lot to teach Harry and it's like Dumbledore knows he hasn't much time. The movie reduces the memories to just a couple, one of which is the much needed clue from the mind of Horace Slughorn. Jim Broadbent turns in a great Slughorn, as do the rest of the cast in their roles. Some of them don't get enough screen time but no matter the part, large or small, everyone seems to be trying their best.

The movie looks pretty darn good. It's very bleak and dark and blue. At least when stuff isn't on fire. It seemed something was on fire every half hour or so. After Dumbledore takes Harry on his first apparition to meet Horace there's a bit of time spent at the Burrow, then it's onto Hogwart's. School life progressed along and Harry does well in Potions with the help of an old potions book. It's been written in by The Half Blood Prince. Who the heck is that. Most of us know. There's some Quidditch, all shooshing about. Dumbledore takes Harry to meet some inferi, which are animated dead people. Then it's back to the castle for the tragic confrontation between Draco, Dumbledore and Snape. The movie ends on more of a down note than the book which has more time for contemplation. It's not going to be until Nov 2010 that the first of the last two movies arrives. I know I'll read the books sooner than that. The dvd is announced as due Dec 7th, 2009. I know I'll pick one up. Might go see the movie again when it hits the Riverview. That's nice and cheap, only 3 bucks most nights.  

HP and the Half Blood Prince Trailer

 

I've been watching the new trailer for Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. I think it's great, especially the scene with a much younger Dumbledore, who's still over 100, and a 10 year old Tom Riddle. Riddle will become Lord Voldemort. There's a great whoosy scene with some fire. You can see the trailer everywhere I bet. HPANA has a page of links to all sorts of video options.

The Shack On The Rock

I spent most of the day saturday watching Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes and building this scene from the first Harry Potter novel. In the book Arthur Dursley takes the family away from their house in LIttle Whinging. He's trying to avoid Harry's Hogwart's letter. They race around the countryside, looking for some place that Mr. Dursley thinks will be safe from contact with the Wizarding World. He fails. Hagrid shows up and brings Harry the letter that changes his life.

 

Even though the book only mentions one fireplace I took the liberty of adding a second. It's going to be cold out on that rock in the sea. Why do people live out there? Punishment? I can see the need to get away at times. I worked on the rocks, tore them apart, and started again. I wish I had seen Rocks 101 the tutorial by Eggplant, or Brian in the real world. Be sure to check out his castles. Nice.

   

Christmas On The Closed Ward

I finally finished the LEGO moc that I had been wanting to do for quite some time. It's a scene from the fifth Harry Potter book. It's the blue one concerning the Order of the Phoenix. After Mr. Weasley is attacked at the Ministry of Magic, by Lord Voldemort's snake Nagini, he's taken to St Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries. After a bit the family goes to visit and Harry and Hermione come along. When Harry and the other kids need to slip out of Mr. Weasley's hospital room to give Mr. and Mrs. Weasley a chance to discuss stitches, they head for the hospital tea room. On the way they run into Gilderoy Lockheart.

 

He's a resident of The Janus Thickey Ward for permanent spell damage. He's learned joined-up writing and he still likes giving out autographes. There are a couple there and he knows that they will need several dozen more for all their little friends. His signing gets interrupted by the arrival of Neville Longbottom and his wonderfully formidible Grandmother Agusta "Gran" Longbottom. Lockhart is fogotten when the kids find out why Neville and his grandmother are there. Harry had known what had happened to Neville's parents but he had been sworn to secrecy by Dumbledore. The scene captures the moment Neville's mom Alice, silently and shly, hands him an empty Droobles Gum Wrapper. Neville's Grandmother tells him to toss it in the bin, but he secretly slips it into his pocket. For many reasons it's one of my favorite scenes in all the books.

That's supposed to be a vulture sitting on Agusta's hat. LEGO doesn't make a vulture. Go figure. And they had a Western theme too. So, I'm using Norbert, the baby dragon that Hagrid hatches from an egg. He's not doin' anything, he can use the work.

 

That's Broderick Bode in the first bed on the left. He'll be strangled by that plant soon. There's a lady named Agnus that got covered by fur somehow. I'm using the werewolf head for her. I wish it came in brown. Behind the flowery screens in the corner is Neville's dad Frank. He didn't feel like getting up. There's a shot of the room sans people and screens. Here's a close up of the clear tiles in the floor.

 

The New Seeker

That's Professor McGonagall looking out the window and seeing Harry Potter catch the Remembrall. You can just barely see him through the window. It happens in the first book by she who needs no mention. This is more like the scene in the movie. In the book you don't actually know where Professor G is when Harry catches the Remembrall a foot from the ground. In fact he rolls off his broom with the memory aid in his hand, a move that would be repeated in his Quidditch games, and as he gets up you read her yelling his name.

   

I had made a version of this scene a few years ago. I wanted to make the room more detailed.

   

I'm not sure if I like the new version better than the old version. I think my pictures are better.

Boy lies in dirt, News at 7

Just after I finished that train I still wanted to build something. But smaller. I always had this scene in my head. And I wanted to use some of that strange dark orange color for something. Most of it came from the Harry Potter Escape From Privit Drive set. I bought a bunch of them on clearance. I bet you knew I was going to say that. I like the blue color of the car. Medium blue. Nice. Good set for windows also.

That escape is from a different book. Lying in the dirt, or No News, is from HP and the Order of the Phoenix. Harry's listening to the news. Uncle Vernon doesn't think it was a good idea for young boys to watch the news and he makes him go outside. Ignorant old toss pot. So Harry's stretched out in the dirt. He's hoping to hear something about Voldemort. He won't. And soon he'll be off to the Black House, where he won't be allowed to join the Order of the Phoenix. It's not a very good summer for Harry, he's cut off, he's attacked by Dementors, he nearly gets kicked out of school, and he finally gets away from the Durley's, only to spend the summer cleaning. That's topped off with a trip to court. Luckily school is starting soon. Oh, wait, that's nearly worse. It's going to be a very yelley year for Harry. At least it's peaceful, there, in the dirt.

Quidditch at Vassar

I was over at Film Drunk just a while ago and one of the entrees was about college students at Vassar who are playing a Muggle version of Quidditch. There was a video from YouTube. The Film Drunk comment section, below the video, started off just insulting the Quidditch playing college students and speculating on their lack of life and or sex. It occasionally made me laugh. It sadly and rapidly turned into a hate fest. Over at YouTube the comments were more polite. No one mentioned your mother.

JHC comments at Film Drunk:

I would pay good money to see these fuckers actually talk to a woman that has shaved her legs and used makeup.

  Duh, um, hee hee, well, er, see, uh, gee, ahem, whew, you uh, you wanna maybe come over to my place and uh, like play Pokemon or uh, maybe we can sit around and talk about, uh you know how Dumbledore likes the cock?

GRRRRRR............Miniature golf!!!

That comment about going back to his place and talking about how Dumbledore likes the cock sure made me laugh. You need a laugh. Over at YouTube the latest comment is: "Hahahaha thats so awesome!!!!"

The whole Ukrainian cover

Here's the whole cover to the Ukrainian Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. If you look at it you might learn something about the story. I don't believe it matters to me to know something about the story before you see or read it. I know some people think the opposite, but for me I like to know what I can. I speculate why but mostly nosey I guess.

Perhaps it's because I don't like to go on adventures myself anymore. I like 'em in books. "What are those people up to?' "Let's have a look then." The kind of adventure I like is going down to Target and finding LEGO at 75% off, or a nice 50% off coupon at Half Price Books, which means I have to brave the Mississippi River and travel to St. Paul. It's almost as bad as going to Mordor, but there's a nice bridge.

Damn, Kitty.

That sure made me laugh. You can read more about Big Gay Albus everywhere else.

It was a good day for me

Well, what a day. Since our Fiscal year starts today at work, along with a new years worth of vacation, I decided to take the afternoon off and go see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. I couldn't make up my mind where to go. I finally picked the Mall of America to go see the 1:20 show. That way I could stop in to the Lego store and see if they had anything new on sale. There's a chinese place in the food court that has some ok Sesame Chicken and fried rice which has gotten more expensive since I was there last. $5.39 for a good size pile of fried rice and two meat choices from a steam table. I always get the Sesame Chicken and a beef skewer. It's nothing special but I like the sauces and they give you a good pile of food. 

I liked the movie. It's dark and bleak and fast. So much has been condensed and I wonder if people who hadn't read the book would have a harder time understanding the story. I do miss some sections from the book that got cut. Harry and pals meeting Neville and his Aunt at St Mungo's, and finding out what happened to Neville's parents, is one of my favorite scenes in any of the books. It's my goal to build the scene out of Lego. Now that's some love. The special effects are pretty special and at one point I was wishing I was sitting a bit farther back than the fifth row. The big fight in the ministry was quite the wizard battle but there was so much going on it was hard to take it all in at one go. Especially those Death Eaters and their whoosh, whoosh, whoosh.

I really liked Evanna Lynch's Luna Lovegood. She does a great job bringing this delightful character to life. I would have liked to see her in her roaring Lion Hat but they cut the Quidditch scene. I think she has become a fan favorite all over, and she's certainly a favorite character of mine. I really liked her bedroom in the 7th book and her stiff upper lip in the face of adversity. Her patronus is a rabbit. The Patronus scene in the movie brought tears to my eyes as I shared the kids success. I like seeing a shared experience in a montage. Even after South Park's take on the montage. "It's a Montage!" "Montage!" That Delores Umbridge is a right nasty piece of work and she needs a good stabbin'. Every time she was on the screen I clenched my hand around the invisible knife of retribution. I was glad to hear she gets her's in the future. Saves me the trouble of stabbin' her. I enjoyed Bellatrix. I didn't think Helena Bonham Carter was too over the top. She fit the tone of the movie which was jazzier than the book. A new director and screen writer made this movie. Like the cover on the US Edition of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the movie was very blue, except for the Ministry of Magic, which was very black. That was a black marble cavern with the giant statue of a wizard lording it over the lesser magical creatures off standing in their own fountain with a witch. That set was 200 feet long and great looking. I didn't think the black was too much, it's the wizarding world, they do like to show off when they get together, and that black cavernous look turns up in real Muggle buildings around the world and here in our own St Paul. The Ramsey County Court House is very black. Lots of black marble, except for the Vision of Peace. This guy has a couple of nice pictures of the unique statue on his St Paul Pictures blog. I don't know who he is, but he has some nice pictures of other parts of the city, too. Like the Ministy with it's giant Wizard statue, the Vision of Peace is 60 tons and 36 feet high, making it the largest carved onyx figure in the world. It's very cool. And so was the movie. I liked the kids and wished I could have spend 4 hours with them. Too bad they won't pull a Peter Jackson and have the extra-overly-long version out at Christmas.

I headed home after hanging out in the Lego store a bit longer. I bought some Lego from the Pick-a-Brick display. You pick the pieces you want and put them in a container with a lid that looks like the stud on the top of the Lego bricks. It's a giant plastic glass when the bricks are out, although it really wouldn't be much good for that, it's too hard to clean the indented bottom of the container. It's a place for the stud of the lid to go when you stack them. If you have two. And you want to stack them. Actually, you could silicon the lid to the base and make a vase out of it. I stopped at the Rainbow to get something and wound up with all sorts of things. I don't know how that happens, I just go nuts in the grocery store. It was about 5:30 when I got home.

I made dinner and started watching the new Babylon 5 original movie that just came out on DVD. Babylon 5 - The Lost Tales. I don't think it played on tv at all. I liked it. It's pretty low budget and there are not many people in each part of the two part 72 minute long movie. Lockley and a priest confront a man who claims to be possessed, and Sheridan must decide if he's going to kill a man or not. Galen the Technomage is in that episode. They are the only returning characters from the series cast. I enjoyed both stories. They are pretty introspective and the first makes very conclusive statement about religious mythology. There are a bunch of great shots of the Station. The CGI is mostly a lot better than the series. There are featurettes glore on the DVD and nice memorial tributes to Andreas Katsulas and Richard Biggs. Their characters G'Kar and Dr. Franklin are also memorialized in a fun minicomic that comes with the DVD. It could actually be a fun comic series as the two of them make their voyage through space beyond the rim. Lot of cool things beyond the rim. Somedays I wish I was out their beyond the rim, but then I think, I'd miss this place.

Sometime during the featurettes and interviews on the Babylon 5 dvd I called up the internet and saw the headline about the bridge that collapsed in Minneapolis. What? Wow! Sure enough the 35w  bridge over the Mississippi fell into the river. I talked to several people and we were all glad to be, not in the river. Seven dead and no one I know was envolved, at least not yet. Simba did report that she had been over the bridge just 15 minutes before. Nice to see someone is looking out for her. I had been by there yesterday but could not get on because the entrance ramp was closed. I had to detour onto the 10th avenue bridge and head home that way. I was thinking how it would be nice for that bridge to get the resurfacing done and I can quickly go home and not have to go over the 10th avenue bridge which I don't care for. Luckily I don't have to go that way very often. Luckily there weren't so many people killed.

A few days later: I find that one of the electricians at work, his girlfriend is one of the missing. Poor Greg.