Harry Potter – Back from the Barber

He’s back. And he’s got a new haircut

The 5th Potter film – The Order of the Phoenix – is said to be due for release by Warner Bros on 13th July 2007. Fans of the bespectacled teenage wand whipper will no doubt tattoo the date on the insides of their eyelids and in the meantime try to sate their Pot(ter) craving by frantically searching the www for sneak previews and trailers.

From the first official photos released from the shoot one can’t help but notice that HP has undergone a slight makeover in the hair department. Everything else seems to look more or less the same. Even Hermione’s boobs.

Some idiot decided to email me some photos from the movie and now that my dormant Potter-bug has been unleashed I feel the need to give way to a good old rant.

Not that I have any major issues with the HP books. I think JKR came up with a damn good plot and wrote 3 good books. And then she went a bit loopy and sent her editor on an extended vacation. Book 4 – Goblet of Fire was actually ok compared to what followed. Order of the Phoenix was a rambling mess – the actual content would have made a decent 200 page book. And of course there’s the killing spree. In Prisoner of Azkaban, poor little orphan boy suddenly discovers that he’s not alone in the world. Sirius Black turned up and we all breathed a sigh of relief that life was finally cutting Potty some slack. Then what does JKR do? She ruthlessly kills him off for no good reason. It’s like she was inspired by the movie version of The Shining. You know, when Halloran turns up at the Outreach after all the fuss and bother of getting there and is chopped down in his tracks before he is able to justify the screen time devoted to him. Killing Sirius was a bit like that. All that hope and then whoosh, hack, hack, splash, aaargh.

The best example of a good thing gone wrong however is Half Blood Prince. The darn thing was so badly written that it took me four days to finish it. I had to read it in conjunction with several other books just to keep my sanity in check. Most times, I just wanted to take a pencil to it and edit the fricking thing. It was horrible. Horrible. HORRIBLE. So what went wrong? It seems to me that when she wrote the first three books, she was writing in relative obscurity. But after everyone started getting dotty over Potty her publishers told her “hey, why don’t you make the books WAY longer than necessary and throw in a lot of stuff that’s irrelevant but magically cool? That way we can justify a price hike and they’ll take up more display space in stores! Oh, yes, we sacked your editor by the way. An author as famous as you doesn’t need to be corrected. And we save more money”

Sirius – gone. Dumbledore – gone. Snape – now there’s an enigma. After the events of the last book there are several theories we can propound re Snape. That (a) he was bad from the start and had Dumbledore well fooled (b) he was bad, then turned good, then was tempted by the dark side and turned bad again (c) he was always on the good side but was pretending to be on the bad side and killing Dumbledore was a trick and Dumbledore is going to turn up wounded but alive in the middle of WWII.

Rumour has it that more people are going to get kerplunked in the final book. Rumour (who seems to be a well informed brother) also seems to have it that it’s Potter himself. If that’s so, that’s the biggest rip off of the century. All that building up over the space of seven books and he just dies? Gimme a break. Even if he destroys Voldermort in the process, Potter getting killed would be the lamest thing yet to happen in the books.
Well, one can only wait and see.

ho hum

I haven’t written in yonks and don’t really see any point in trying to recap the last six months in this one post. So let’s not go there.

Only 5 more weeks (hopefully) to go till the sprog pops. Being a live incubator is interesting but I must admit, a bit tiring sometimes. Especially when you get periodically kicked in the soft bits. So am I nervous about bearing an offspring? Hell yeah. Which reminds me, it’s time coached myself to stop swearing. Bugger. Ahem, I mean, boulder.

Went to see Oliver! last Saturday. It wasn’t as good as I expected it to be but very well done nonetheless. I must say I was most impressed by the set and lighting. The sets conveyed such a sense of depth – especially in the opening scene. There were instances that made me wince but I’m happy to say they were few and far between. The most annoying thing about the play was not the play itself but the gaggle of international school kids who thought it would be a peachy idea to have a nice chat while waiting for the play to end. Was almost tempted to stand up and yell at them but didn’t want to be laughed off as a hormonal pregnant woman having a hissy fit. For more on the play itself, go here.

Am reading Tony Parsons' “one for my baby” at the moment. I loved his ‘Man and Boy” and this one is living up to my expectations.