Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince

Image via WikipediaChecked out the new GSC cineplex at Tropicana City Mall to watch Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince (HBP) last night. There's nothing like the smell of new cinema - as far as GSC cineplexes go, this one's smaller than the 1U's, which I don't really mind. Plus: Wednesday tickets are only RM6!!

I've already heard all the possible spoilers and stuff the last week, so I had low expectations of the movie.

At 153 minutes (or 2 hours, 33 minutes), it's a standard-length Potter movie. Even with the movie running that long, they still had to nip and tuck the story to keep the pace. I agree with some of the things they cut out, but I'm (as usual) pissed at some of the other cuts.

Yay moments

• Seeing the Weasley twins again (even if it's only for a couple of minutes), and their joke shop, which reminds me of the toy shop in Mr Magorium's Wonder Emporium. Too bad about them later on...
• Dumbledore's ring of fire to repel the Inferi.
• Daniel Radcliffe - ^_^;; - 'nuff said.
• Tonks and Lupin for longer than 30 seconds - Which I guess is sort of necessary for the next two movies...
• No Dursleys.

Why bother? moments - stuff they could've taken out :P

• The attack on The Burrow: it SOOO did not happen in the books. I get why they put it in the movie - something about the lack of action in that part of the movie, among other things - but STILL... I didn't really watch this scene as I had to use the loo.
• The bridge attack.

Did I miss it in the books...?

• A pair of unaccounted for female twins; they're credited as Twin Girl #1 and Twin Girl #2 on IMDb.
• I was under the impression that Jim Broadbent's Slughorn would a little more walrus-y; by that I mean the facial hair :P Oh well. The man was pretty amusing all the same.

I heard from a podcast (or two) about how Alan Rickman (as Snape) says his lines so slowly that he even pauses between syllables in a sentence. They might have exaggerated a little bit cos I didn't hear anything out of the ordinary like that.

You can find the nitpicky book-to-movie details here; I don't want to bore anyone by rehashing all of them. All the same, I can't help but notice that Harry and Dumbledore Apparating from the Astronomy Tower when it's been said time and again in the series that you can't do that within Hogwarts. Their explanation?

Dumbledore: "Well, being me...has its advantages".

*Sound-o'-crickets* WTF, man.

The kids they got to play young Tom Riddle are not bad to look at - one of them is actually Ralph Fiennes's nephew, Hero, the younger one of the two. And the guy who played McLaggen kinda reminds me of a younger Ryan Philippe, circa Cruel Intentions.

I guess the movie's a little scary (for under 10s and also certain adults...:P) but if you've read the book, you're already ahead of those who haven't. I personally thought it was just okay only - I wasn't too overwhelmed or anything.