Harry Potter and the Half-Assed Movie

Wow! I thought, my mind racing as I watched the movie. I grabbed a mouthful of popcorn and settled comfortably in my seat. The cats in UIA have more charisma than Daniel Radcliffe.

Don’t believe me? Well, the tom cat that lingers outside the library has a vast vocal range, from low, sexy purr to a plaintiff meow. And don’t get me started on his 1001 facial expressions, including the classics Muka Manja and Muka Kesian. It’s enough to pull my tangled heartstrings every time I bump into him.

Daniel Radcliffe, with his monotonous voice, bad haircut, and exactly one facial expression, simply withers away like a dead leaf in comparison.

It’s moments like when the lead character sucks worse than a sparkling vampire with an eating disorder, that we movie-goers realize we’ve made a shaky investment. Without a proper hero to root for, we’re left to depend on the story and lesser characters to keep our interest levels from plummeting into the red.

Story? Did I say story? Because, despite its epic running time of two-and-a-half hours, nothing, like, actually happens, dude. Sure, there were sub-plots, but they were either hastily tied up with a messy bow in the end, or ended up being tossed back into the Ocean of Redundant Storylines.

Take, for example, the sub-plot of Hermione and Cormac the jock. There was a beginning, in which he was eying her with interest. There was a middle bit, when they both went to the party together. And then… he simply disappears after eating some dragon balls in the party (which are supposedly perilous to one’s breath… a point that was supposed to be funny, I think, but didn’t quite reach its mark, just like all the other jokes haphazardly thrown into the movie). And he never resurfaces again, either on screen or in conversations.

It made me wonder; did they throw in these pointless sub-plots to make us forget that the actual story is thinner than a starving model?

Ginny, by the way, is beyond annoying – on screen, she’s depicted even worse than in the books, which is an amazing feat I never dared to think could be achieved. Like, SUDDENLY Harry’s in love with this annoying twerp who’s been invisible for the past few movies, and we, as an audience, are supposed to unquestioningly accept that? It pissed me off in the book, and even more so in the movie. Because, as badly as it was handled in writing, at least JK Rowling showed the “romance” of Harry-Ginny (Hinny? Garry?) unfold. In the movie?

Harry hugs Ginny.

Harry thanks Ginny for making the Quidditch team shut up.

Harry sees Ginny making out with her boyfriend Dean.

Harry praises Ginny’s skin to her older brother.

Ginny ties Harry’s shoelaces.

Ginny feeds Harry biscuits.

Ginny orders Harry to shut his eyes, kisses him, and says it can be kept a secret.

Hermione says to Harry that Ron is okay with Harry and Ginny’s relationship.

Seriously! Barf all you like, but that is the step-by-step development of Garry! It’s like, one moment, Ginny the cheating slut is kissing Harry in a secret room and suggesting that they keep it a secret, and the next moment, Hermione exposits that Garry is now a fully-fledged relationship, complete with blessings from Ginny’s older brother! HUH? When did all this actually take place? The least they could have done was show Ron giving his blessings to Harry personally!

I don’t think Dean was the only one who felt cheated.

My brain turned into sludge as I watched the screenwriters’ miserable efforts at adapting the book to screen. Now, the book was definitely not my favourite in the series, but what the screenwriters did to the story was plain first degree murder. The script was awkward, stilted and short, which resulted in the actors looking like they actually wanted to say more in every scene, but could only resort to pained facial expressions because there was a character limit to the words coming out of their mouths. The end result? I felt like I was just watching a bunch of people simply going through the motions of acting. And badly, too.

Other pointless scenes and plot holes left me baffled.

They made such a big deal out of Malfoy fixing up the Vanishing Cabinet so that the Death Eaters could enter Hogwarts and wreck havoc. But if the Death Eaters’ idea of “wrecking havoc” is smashing some cutlery and burning Hagrid’s cabin (which, you have to admit, was actually doing him a favour), and then running back out, I fail to understand why everyone is so frightened of them. My one-year-old nephew could make worse damage if left alone in the kitchen. Even without a wand.

Why did the Death Eaters burn the Burrow? If there had been some follow-up scenes to it, fine, I’ll accept this divergent idea. But we’re just given a lingering shot of the Weasleys, before we move on to the story. And the burning of the house, which should be a big deal, is never mentioned again. Something tells me this time-wasting scene was for aesthetic purposes only.

Why were Lupin and Tonks even in the movie, if they only had two lines each? Are the actors that desperate for money, causing the director to take pity and conjure up a miniscule role for them in this movie?

What was the point of the Half-Blood Prince with the whole story?

Harry himself summed up the movie best in his final words before the credits rolled: “It was all for nothing. Everything was a waste.”

I whole-heartedly agree.

HELLO EVERYONE

Haven’t updated in a month, and obviously my status of “the bookaholic is studying for her finals” is a downright LIE as I have actually been on holiday these past two weeks. Not that I intended to lie. I was just… lazy, you know? Lazy to edit the status. Lazy to update. Lazy to go online.

I’m lazy. So sue me.

Not that my two-weeks holidays have been just about laziness. Aside from making up for sleep I lost during revision period (which resulted in nothing – have I ever mentioned how I hate lecturers who expect you to answer based on their answer scheme, and if you don’t, they’ll just give you a crappy grade, even though you wrote your ass off really convincingly in the exam? Or how about lecturers who refuse to give their students A, and instead give them –A even though the students deserve the damn A. AAARGH. Okay, I’m rambling), I’ve been playing Sims 3 non-stop, to the point that, in the game, I am now married to a hot power broker named Daniel Idris, and have a pilot son named Yusof. HAHAH SAH AKU TAKDE KERJE.

I also went to KL UrbanScapes last week. We didn’t pay for the ticket to watch the concert because, well, I’m more broke than Humpty Dumpty, so we instead wandered around the colourful bazaars. Besides, because the concert area was open-air and enclosed by a flimsy metal fence, you could hear the bands warbling away from a mile off for free, so what’s the point of paying? And I would NEVER pay good money for such rubbish performances – rather, I’d pay them good money to shut up. It was noise pollution, for god’s sake. I know Yuna was supposed to be performing in the evening, but meh, her songs are so flipping boring, and I had to be at home before Maghrib anyway. And Sentul is like jauh giler from my house y’all.

But we really enjoyed the free performance. The KL stompers played amazing beats using glass bottles, black bins, ladders, metal chairs and whatever nonsense you can think of. There was also this Sabahan duo who played Blues music using just an acoustic guitar and percussions-or-whatever-you-call-’em. My favourite song by them was “Anak Babi” (which, come to think of it, was probably a foreshadowing of the swine flue scare that occurred there later in the day).

Unfortunately, the other free performances were just plain rubbish, especially one by a band named Furniture (I shall not kutuk the name, I shall not kutuk the name... *inhales and exhales deeply*), which is supposed to be famous for appearing on Kami, or something like that. (I'm not so well-versed in the local Indie scene. Sorry.) They were rubbish because the sound-checking (also known as masturbating by music buffs) took ages, and they even conducted an interview there and there which no one could even hear because the sound system was awful. I felt like stomping off -- it was boring like mad and I was freaking hot, plus I wasn't wearing any sunblock at all) but I stayed because they were supposed to be *popular* (or however popular Indie bands can actually be) and that must be for a reason, innit? But I was fooled. They sucked.

Finally met the parents on that same day as well, which was nerve-racking and awkward and nerve-rackingly, awkwardly silent for a while… Seriously. You could only hear the sound of everyone at the table chewing on their food. I mean, I’d prepared for an onslaught of questions about what I’m studying, where I live, what I want to work as… basically, a killer interview where I was to prove worthy of their trust. So finally, after several bites of my Carbonara Spaghettini and darting subtle glances at everyone else, I mustered this really awkward laugh and lamely said “kenapa semua orang diam…?” So that started the conversation ball rolling. Albeit haltingly.

I wasn’t sure how off I come as (especially as there was one part where I was making really stupid faces at him – the inflation and deflation of the nose -- to lighten up the mood, when his mum’s back was turned, only to figure out later that she’d actually caught it in the mirror that Delicious hangs around the whole walls of the restaurant. She even asked him about it later. How embarrassing! Jatuh air mukaku!). But apparently they approve of me. THANK GOD I passed the mother (and father) of all tests.

Well, that’s it for now! I’ll see some of you guys in Gombak next week! :)