As the DVD and Blu Ray for Half-Blood Prince comes out this week, some of the extra features have sprung up on the web and it blew up the #harrypotter stream in my Twitter feed! Below is a roughly two minute video from Daily Motion with a quick look at some of the scenes and settings for Deathly Hallows. You won’t find anything terribly revelatory, but you will see a few quick glimpses of the tent, Olivander, Griphook, and a couple of scenes I didn’t quite recognize.
Thoughts? Ideas?
Half-Blood Prince’s final chapter opens with a favorite device of Ernest Hemingway, the simple declarative sentence:
“All lessons were suspended, all examinations postponed.”
It really is one of Rowling’s finer moments as a writer, poignant and rich with subtlety. In this one statement, she wipes away all the carefree wonderment of childhood with pointed irony. Hogwarts shifts in symbolism from a place of comfort and safety where the worst worry was two parchments on werewolves for horrible Professor Snape, to a place in which parents are spiriting their children away as fast as possible because Snape has murdered the headmaster.
We see the Centaurs and Merfolk gather and pay their respects in ways I believe would have left Dumbledore deeply honored. His entombment is rich with symbolism, as Harry thinks “for one heart-stopping moment, that he [sees] a phoenix fly joyfully ino the blue.” Yet, the “next second the fire had vanished,” and a brilliant “white marble tomb” sits in its place.
In Dumbledore’s death, Voldemort has seemingly gained a devastating victory. Harry and Hogwarts no longer have their protector. The last bastion of paradise is now vulnerable — very vulnerable. Hogwarts has become, in one sense, a graveyard. [click to continue…]
Chapter 29 of our Half-Blood Prince Read-Through is brought to you by Arabella Figg!
Shock and grief define this chapter’s mood. In addition, we have three betrayals that took place before Dumbledore’s death on the tower.
We don’t get a Dumbledore denouement in Half-Blood Prince, but we still get a book-ending data dump in the hospital ward and Headmaster’s office, as the characters deconstruct the evening’s events.
As we move alchemically from white to red, moisture continuously flows—tears, blood, sweating, and ointment. Silver-haired Phlegm’s frozen expression upon seeing Bill melts in a red-hot passion as choleric as that of any Weasley. Rubedo elements abound: a lot of Hagrid, the Weasleys, Gryffindor rubies, bloody Bill, Gryffindor’s sword, Rufus Scrimgeour, battle blazes, and recounted wounds. In the heard but unseen presence of red and gold Fawkes throughout, and Dumbledore snoozing in a golden frame in the Headmaster’s office, there is promise. [click to continue…]
Travis Prinzi on 
Jeremy on 
Honest Joe on 
Jessica on 
revgeorge on 
Red Rocker on 
Fricka on 
Loading ...
