Personally I think Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is going to be the dog of the Harry Potter film franchise. Granted I didn’t read all seven of the Potter books (I skipped reading “Goblet of Fire” and “Order of the Phoenix”), but of the five I read “Half-Blood Prince” was easily the worst of the bunch. How Rowling managed to get 652 pages out of that simple story is beyond me, and the fact that she waited until page 579 to actually give us anything of value really bothered me since I was powering through it just to read “Deathly Hallows” the day it was released.
Luckily, for me at least, I think Book 7 is the best of the bunch even though I have heard “Goblet of Fire” is quite good (I may have to read it after all). It is obvious Rowling knew where she was going with “Deathly Hallows” as she penned “Half-Blood” because she held a lot back. One person it seems that is on my side is Harry Potter himself, Daniel Radcliffe as a new interview with the Edmonton Sun points out that Dan can’t wait to get to filming Deathly Hallows.
“Everyone’s ‘not’ delighted to be on this!” Radcliffe was quoted saying with regard to filming Half-Blood Prince. “I think the script’s great and I think it’s going to be a really great film. But I’m just one of those people that, in what I’m doing, I always lean toward the dark side and I really enjoy doing the dark stuff.” He continued, “I know Emma and Rupert really, really like the lighter stories and all that. And Rupert particularly is really going to have a field day on this, because he’s got fantastic comic timing and he’ll be able to use all of that to great effect on this film with his relationship with Lavender Brown.”
If anyone is with me on this you are thinking back to the great moment in Order of the Phoenix when Harry is writhing on the ground taken over momentarily by Voldemort (pictured above), that’s what I want and Dan does too. He comments, “I’m actually going to miss doing all the morbid stuff, I think…. [Deathly Hallows is] the one last hurrah, that film. That’s going to be great. I really am very, very excited about the whole thing. It’s going to be epic, I hope.”
Producer David Hayman says the humour in Half-Blood will be “slightly warmer” than seen in Potter before and Rupert Grint and Emma Watson also chime in on how light and fluffy the sixth film in the franchise will be. I guess it is the calm before the storm, and I can’t wait for it to rain.
To read the complete article, which you Potter fanatics really should, click here.
For more on Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince click here, filming is currently underway for a November 21, 2008 release.
