Skip to main content

Mischief Managed

Just try and keep us away from a Harry Potter opening night. This past Tuesday night, a few friends and I rushed downtown to brave the crowds to watch the midnight showing of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Dressing up was half the fun. The last one was during my sophomore year of college. We're such dorks:



Less of us this year, but still excited, and exhausted. Still dorks.



Fawkes, the phoenix.



Hephzibah Smith (a memory in the book, does not make it into the film), collector of trinkets, murdered by V.



Bellatrix Lestrange - you should have seen her Dark Mark.



Merope ( a memory in the book but not making an entrance in the film), heavily pregnant with Voldemort. Pillow was wonderfully comfortable to hold in the theatre, though it made driving very difficult. Also walking up stairs. Being pregnant is hard, man!



We saw several Gryffindor students, some Harries, Hermiones, a Professor Trelawney, Death Eaters (whose masks were terrifying), a house elf or two...

So by and large, we approved of the movie (though were somewhat nonplussed by some extra and not entirely canonical scenes). And now - hooray! - just another year or two until the next one.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

I’ve a short story in the latest edition of The Stinging Fly , which is a brilliant Irish literary journal. If you’d like a copy (or if you like Claire-Louise Bennett or Kevin Barry or Danielle McLaughlin or Colin Barrett, who’ve all been published by SF ) you can get it here Or, you know, go to Dublin.
There’s a sudden late surge of warmth in the rough winds today and it’s the perfect day to read one of John Clare’s best sonnets: November Sybil of months & worshipper of winds I love thee rude & boisterous as thou art & scraps of joy my wandering ever finds Mid thy uproarious madness – when the start Of sudden tempests stir the forrest leaves Into hoarse fury till the shower set free Still the hugh swells & ebb the mighty heaves That swing the forrest like a troubled sea I love the wizard noise & rave in turn Half vacant thoughts & self imagined rhymes Then hide me from the shower a short sojourn Neath ivied oak & mutter to the winds Wishing their melody belonged to me That I might breath a living song to thee

Monologuing

My previous experience of Rachel Cusk is restricted to her travel book on Italy, The Last Supper , which was withdrawn in Britain because of objections from individuals who found themselves featured, unflatteringly, within its pages. It's very difficult not to write a book about Italy without being smug. Then I read reviews (especially hatchet jobs) about her controversial divorce memoir, Aftermath . I confess I’m suspicious when a writer writes memoir after memoir, as if his own life is the only field of interest. I read memoirs – I am moved by the familiar voice – but I’m wary of their cultural predominance. Self-knowledge is a good springboard for knowledge of others. Orbiting one’s own life without ever calling into question the limitation of it seems myopic. (This, however, is not to say that personal writing can be divorced from art, or that it should be.) But Outline is an expose of how fascinating and selfish and dreary and inescapable monologues on the self can be. The