Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

[Ms. Jellybean]

Forget just book 5, man, I'm going to do a marathon-read of ALL of them. Seriously. It's a tradition.

[siegeshot]

i've seen all 3 movies, havnt read the books, i'm not a huge fan or harry potter nut or anything, but snape is awesome. so i vote for snape. and i vote he gets his complete own series of movies. maybe with j and silent bob in them... and george carlin

[Lissa]

You need to read the books then! The movies are pretty good, but the books are about 20 times better. At least.

And there's MUCH more Snape....

[tara]

Vorlina said:

Some gossip that I've seen, which is remarkable in that it shows the RIDICULOUS amount of thought people put into these things:

Apparently in Book 5 Harry mentions that Dudley was beating up this kid Mark Evans who is about 10. Evans was Lily Potter's maiden name. The gossip runs that this chap is likely to be relevant, as being 10 he would just be about to come into his powers.

Probably tosh, but who knows?

[Magill]

Lissa--I just watched Prisoner of Azkaban. I remember that you were rolling your eyes at the way Lupin seemed to be fawning over Lily. However, some of the trivia says the director leaked hints of future books. Could that be one of them?

[Lissa]

I concede it could be, actually, because Lily does seem to be a pretty decent person. (I'm just hoping he wasn't in love with her, because that's nausaeating and starts making Lily very Mary Sue-ish. But JKR doesn't usually seem to go for really melodramatic romantic plots.)

The thing is though, Steve Kloves put that bit in about Lily and Remus. Maybe there is something about their friendship that's important later, or just you really needed to know Lily really was a great person, and perhaps JKR told him that needed to be emphasized at some point. I'm still puzzling over it, because PoA was when we learned about JAMES and how great JAMES could be, and James didn't even exist in the PoA movie. But the quote was Alfonso Cuaron put in things (inadvertantly) that foreshadowed the next books, and that was definitely the work of Kloves, not Cuaron. Kloves did mention that he thought Remus was in love with Lily. Cuaron's interpretation of Lupin was- and I quote- "your favorite gay uncle on smack".

I don't think we really learned much new about Lily that book readers haven't known, but maybe it was very important for movie-goers to know that Lily was very accepting? We see that in the Pensieve scene in Order of the Phoenix when she defends Snape, and that's a scene I'm willing to bet money will get cut from the OotP movie. But she said it's something that inadvertantly foreshadowed the books and the director couldn't have known, and we all know Lily's pretty cool. (Although we've yet to see much of how she related to Remus, or for that matter Sirius or Peter.)

My theory is that the thing that was foreshadowed was when Harry returned the crystal ball to Trewlawny and saw Sirius in the ball. I think Harry will be able to communicate with Sirius again, and it's going to be via divination methods. (My pet theory is Sirius is going to start spelling out dirty words in Harry's tea leaves, because I could TOTALLY see him doing that.)

Not that I think about this at length or anything

[dajaymann]

I figured I'd throw my two cents worth in here (from someone who is halfway through Order of the Phoenix as we speak) - I think one of the foretellings (and I'm surprised noone mentioned this) from Alfonso is Ron and Hermione's hook-up. That is, their subtle little hand-holding episode when they're introduced to Buckbeak. I mean, in Goblet of Fire Ron is all ticked that Hermione goes the dance with Viktor. Plus, they hardly ever get along before Prisoner of Azkaban, and their personalities are polar opposites. And as we all know, opposites attract. Just ask me and my wife.

Jus' my two cent's worth...

[Lissa]

I've seen that too. The only reason I don't pounce on it is because, well, I think it's pretty obvious from the books as well. (Apparently it's not, as there are many readers who are convinced Hermione's going to end up with Harry, but hey.) The way JKR said it implied (to me) that the things Cuaron foreshadowed are things you couldn't have remotely guessed from the books published so far.

Somewhere else someone mentioned the crows around Fudge, and that being foreshadowing that Fudge was going to die. I could see that.

[Ms. Jellybean]

Fudge dying? I know this sounds sadistic and evil, but as the books wear on I'm warming to the idea...

I've been tooting the Ron-Hermione horn for years now, and seeing how Cuaron put that in the movie helped reawaken my promotion of the theory.

[Lissa]

Heh. I'm kind of rooting for Fudge to die, too. If someone's gotta go... I'd rather him than his lovely assistant Percy. (I really don't want Percy to die- at least not before he's made up with his family.)

Ron/Hermione just seems so, well... obvious, I guess, to me. I think they're cute- very teenager-ish. (Ron's cluelessness cracks me up, as does Harry's, because I so remember being that age. The best is when Hermione explains everything that Cho is feeling and the boys just goggle at her.)

I'll stop my procrastinating now and get back to work. ::sigh::

[Ms. Jellybean]

Well, Ron/Hermione seems much more likely than Draco/Hermione... but that's my fanfiction habits playing into it again.

[Lissa]

Ms. said:

Well, Ron/Hermione seems much more likely than Draco/Hermione... but that's my fanfiction habits playing into it again.

Heh. I've tried to be really really good and keep my fanfiction habits out of anything I write for this site that's HP-related, but it's not easy- especially since Cuaron seems to agree with me.

But my Lupin obsession is invading my long-talked-about-and-one-of-these-days will be finished Harry Potter article. I think he's found his way into 3-4 of the drawings.

Ah well.

[TheLuckyOne]

[glow=red,2,300]2[/glow] days.....

Lissa's keyboard just shortcircuited from all the drool.

-D

[Lissa]

About 40 hours, I figure, before I have the book in my hot little hands. (We have it pre-ordered from Amazon.)

Not that I'm counting, or anything....

40 HOURS!!!!!!!! (or so.)

[TheLuckyOne]

Wait... 40 hours? But... but then how could I possibly have a copy of it in my greedy little hands right this very minute? Why, that would just be impossible, unless...

oh! Unless I happened to walk into a random drugstore and happened to walk into the periodicals section, and then happened to glance down and happened to see a forbidden, open box full of that-which-shall-not-be-sold-yet. And then happened to snatch a copy at lightspeed and happened to walk up to the front register, which happened to be manned by a stoner-looking kid who happened to not know or give a crap that the book isn't to be sold just quite yet. And then happened to chortle gleefully all my merry way home.

And you all thought it was just a clever message board handle. Man, I just can't believe the part where Harry... ah, but that would be telling. And Ginny... whoo! Girl's got some spunk!

(And, just to prove that, in this one circumstance at least, I'm not just a lying git, the first sentence of chapter 2: "Many miles away the chilly mist that had pressed against the Prime Minister's windows drifted over a dirty river that wound between overgrown, rubbish-strewn banks.")

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go home and read. I'll tell you all how it is tomorrow.
;D

EDIT: Okay, I lied, I found the Spoiler Zone.

EDIT 2: And yes, of course I'm lying about having lied; yes, I've got it. Thanks for the tipoff, Liss, but if the Man can find me in the next 3 hours, he can HAVE the dang book.

-D