...while waiting for Hagrid "delivering" baby Potter...

McGonagall, "Are the rumours true, Albus?"
Dumbledore, "I'm afraid so... the good and the bad..."
McGonagall, "... and the boy?"

Hmm. Better start with The Good (rumour) first: Nodame Cantabile is going to have a two-night special live-action in New Year 2008, with Ueno Juri and Tamaki Hiroshi reprising their roles as Nodame and Chiaki Sinichi. I should keep my expectation under control and excercise patience but... hurray! And The Bad one is that I am still (willingly) lost and stuck in between good and evil. So, I am quoting Mr. Gibbs, "the world seems a bit less bright..." at the possibility of a future where personality and conciousness can be switched on and off at will... This is why I've been taking a daily dose of Mitsuda Yasunori-san's Gnosis. Hmm, and why, whenever I hum Gnosis, Ravel's Bolero frequently comes up?... in a way, the end turns to Bolero's dum-dum-dum-ba-dum... aneh, deh...

And The Puffed-Up Popinjay... or, according to McGonagall, The Boy. I had just seen Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Else, why would I recall the first film.

Spoiler Warning...

The things stuck in my head from the fifth book is summed up by the following banter...

“You know,” said Phineas Nigellus, even more loudly than Harry, “this is precisely why I loathed being a teacher! Young people are so infernally convinced that they are absolutely right about everything. Has it not occurred to you, my poor puffed-up popinjay, that there might be an excellent reason why the Headmaster of Hogwarts is not confiding every tiny detail of his plans to you? Have you never paused, while feeling hard-done-by, to note that following Dumbledore's orders has never yet led you into harm? No. No, like all young people, you are quite sure that you alone feel and think, you alone recognise danger, you alone are the only one clever enough to realise what the Dark Lord may be planning —”

“He is planning something to do with me, then?” said Harry swiftly.

“Did I say that?” said Phineas Nigellus, idly examining his silk gloves. “Now, if you will excuse me, I have better things to do than listen to adolescent agonising... good-day to you.” And he strolled to the edge of his frame and out of sight.

“Fine, go then!” Harry bellowed at the empty frame. "And tell Dumbledore thanks for nothing!"

(Christmas on the Closed Ward, OotP)

Harry is in frustration for being deprived of explanation, left in the dark and "left out" of whatever plan and action, fed up for being treated like a child. Harry is frightened by the thought of the beast he might possibly be. He doubts himself and, to an extent, his best friends and the grown-ups he looks up to. Harry is, as Phineas Nigellus said, having his adolescent agonising moments. And this is where Harry (and the readers) finds out there's more than meets the eyes... in his scar, Snape loathing the Marauder, politics in the Ministry of Magic, etc. He can't confide how he feels witnessing a friend dying, or sharing mind and mood with Voldemort, as the world thinks he's unhinged. What's more... Harry learns an uncomfortable truth that his father had been every bit as arrogant as Snape had told him.

Since getting all the 950++ pages into two-hour film is out of question, and as the predecessors have shown, cut is expected. Yet, I wished THAT scene would be included, just to see Harry condescended... hehehe, because when I was reading the fifth book, I frequently had the urge to shake our dear poor puffed-up popinjay up for being stubborn and snappish. Heh! Maybe, just as Dumbledore put it, "... Youth cannot know how age thinks and feels. But old men are guilty if they forget what it was to be young..." (The Lost Prophecy, OotP), I might have forgotten what it was to be young and fifteen too.

Anyway, I have mixed feelings about the fifth film. But one thing for sure, this time around, I don't care if non-reader folks won't understand the film. THIS is the fifth of seven books. It has passed the setup stages. It's BOUND to take the major plot that the first four have established further. So, if one wishes to understand, read the book!

This fifth film instantly reminded me of Alfonso Cuaron's PoA. The roller-coaster broom ride to Grimmauld Place had similar feel to the Knight Bus ride in PoA, so did the juxtaposition of muggle and magical worlds. There was less spells and charms to enthrall the audience. Well, there's no need to because it's time to see beyond the magical exterior, into something common: human bond.

And just how puffed up our dear popinjay has been? The "Harry" in the fifth film is less angry and more thoughtful than what I had imagined. For a while I thought the angry "Harry" in Cuaron's PoA would suit the fifth film better. But on second thought, considering the truncated background, this "Harry" shows the isolation much better.

Just as Cuaron's PoA, there is huge liberty in adapting the book. Everything is altered. Yet, unlike PoA that messes up characterization, despite the absence of detailed character-defining moments (Prefects, "Weasley is Our King", Phineas Nigellus's "adolescent agonising", Snape and the Marauders, The Longbottoms at St. Mungo's Hospital, the significance of the lost prophecy), the fifth film still gives out vibes of the fifth book: Harry in isolation; attachments among characters; Hogwarts in order bordering chaos; sense of dread and anticipation of something that has long been brewing, threatening to erupt; and the bleakness.

Though, yeah... once more, I wonder why they excluded the Marauders and Snape's ambiguity as spy for both the Order and Voldemort... hmmm, keeping it for HBP, eh, Mr. Yates? Still I have yet to decide whether I like it or not, though I don't think it matters. In the end, even with these massive adjustments, I think the Director David Yates and Screenwriter Michael Goldenberg got the spirit of the fifth book (mostly) right. Evanna Lynch as Luna Lovegood and Helena Bonham Carter as Bellatrix Lestrange (can't believe she's Charlie Bucket's mum) are refreshing.

There's a lot of shattered glass... hmm, wonder if it meant what I thought it meant... Hmm. I just had one strangely funny moment though. The moment Percy Weasley showed up restraining Harry... Why on earth did I suddenly remember Lord Percy Percy (Tim McInnerny) from Blackadder? I wonder if it's intentional. Hahahaha....