So much of my existence would seem meaningless, only a bewildering blur of random events, without you, my dearest enemy. You bring “moral clarity” where there once was only the murk of self doubt. This new-found sense of certainty soothes the anxiety created by the falling away of so many of the verities of the past.

My finite existence, which before you came into my life seemed so confused and devoid of meaning, is now imbrued with mythic purpose. Because of you, meaningful narrative has been bestowed upon the vast, incomprehensible and impersonal cosmos. The wayward prince has become a warrior king.

~Phil Rockstroh, A Love Letter To My Enemy

Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter) and Ralph Fiennes (Lord Voldemort) in the 16 November 2005 premier of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

In honor of the final installment of the Harry Potter movie franchise, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Part 2), I would like to share the above quote and image.

What can I say, every time I look at the picture, I can’t help but think of numerous written and illustrated Harry/Voldie slash throughout the Web. Keep bringing them on, I say, while supplies last.

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The above image was posted just an hour or so ago at the Harry Potter Fans LiveJournal Community. It was credited to this website and is said to be a preview picture of the upcoming fifth movie installment of J.K. Rowling‘s phenomenal Harry Potter books.

When I first saw this picture, my reaction was: WTF?

Two (2) questions sprung to mind right away, as it happened and will most likely happen with other fans:

1. Where is THE scar?
The lightning-shaped scar on his forehead is not merely Harry’s physical identifier – it is a mark made by The Dark Lord himself that has impact on the entire magical world. Don’t tell me that it just, well, disappeared!

2. Why are his eyes BLUE?
Okay, aqua at best. But still. His eyes are green, as in the very eyes that a hell of a lot of people said he inherited from his mother Lily. “You look just like your father, but you have your mother’s eyes.” As in his mother’s green eyes.

Or maybe it is just all those lighting effects on the image, hence the screwed colors and the mysterious disappearance of otherwise very noticeable markings.

As for the shorter, barber’s cut hair: I have no problem with it. Perhaps Harry was over the Beatles by the end of Book Four and became a fan of, say, The Backstreet Boys or BoyZone when the OOTP arc rolled about?

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Happy April Fools’ Day 2006!

While at the mall today, I came across original video CD and DVD copies of the newly-released Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is, by far, the darkest and most fast-paced out of all the four movie adaptations of J.K. Rowling‘s bestselling children’s book series.

I must confess that I have not had the chance to watch the film during its theatrical release last year. As a result, over the months that followed, I picked up feedback pertaining to the way the movie allegedly “veered off” the book’s story.

However, I decided to watch Goblet of Fire without any biases, preconceived notions or towering expectations. I ended up being pleasantly surprised. Not blown away, but satisfied.

I liked the shadowy mood that prevailed throughout the film. It was well established with the very first scene wherein a poor, unsuspecting Muggle witnessed Voldemort holding a conference with his minions.

The underwater and maze scenes of the TriWizard Tournament’ second and third tasks were impressive with their special effects and almost claustrophobic feel. You can actually feel that you are Harry, performing the task with little to no idea what lies ahead.

The acting of the younger cast has generally improved since the last film. They were equally comfortable in amusing and awkward moments typical of teenage life as well as in life-or-death situations.

As for the adult cast, the additions of gossip-monger Rita Skeeter and Auror-turned-professor Alastor “Mad-Eye” Moody were not as compelling as the appearances of Marauders Remus Lupin and Sirius Black in the third film. Lord Voldemort did not appear long enough to carve a hauntingly fearsome impression onto the viewers’ minds, but perhaps he will be given more screen time in the fifth movie, as he should be.

There were just three notable differences between the book and the movie that I could not help but point out:

1. Hermione’s Yule makeover
It was more surprising and magical in the book, as she looked so different from the way she usually does, that is, her hair was no longer bushy and her teeth were smaller. This metamorphosis was not emphasized in the movie.

2. Barty Crouch Jr.’s identity
In the movie, his identity as an active Voldemort servant was exposed early on – at the Riddle house during the opening scene and at the Quidditch World Cup. In the book, no one suspected that this Death Eater, who supposedly died in Azkaban years back, was a major player in the Dark Lord’s Operation:Resurrection.

3. Neville Longbottom and the gillyweed
Although Neville possessed knowledge about gillyweed’s power to make someone breathe underwater, he was not able to share this with Harry because the latter did not ask for his help in the book. It was Dobby the house elf who found out about gillyweed’s properties and subsequently stole some for Harry’s use. In the movie, it was Neville who gave Harry the advice to take gillyweed.

By itself, the movie was nevertheless enjoyable and entertaining. Its fairly lengthy running time was barely noticeable because the film was well-paced and there never were any dragging or boring moments.

The following is a plot synopsis from Amazon.com:

Harry’s fourth summer and the following year at Hogwarts are marked by the Quidditch World Cup and the TriWizard Tournament, in which student representatives from three different wizarding schools compete in a series of increasingly challenging contests. However, Voldemort’s Death Eaters are gaining strength and even creating the Dark Mark, giving evidence that the Dark Lord is ready to rise again.

In the unsuspecting lives of the young wizard and witches at Hogwarts, the competitors are selected by the Goblet of Fire, which this year makes a very surprising announcement: Hogwarts will have two representatives in the tournament, including Harry Potter!

Will Harry be able to rise to the challenge for the TriWizard Tournament while keeping up with school or will the challenges along with Voldemort’s rebirth be too much for the young hero?

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My parents and I are going to the town of Concepcion early tomorrow morning to visit my maternal grandparents.

They live in the barangay of Nino, which, all in all, is a good three hours away from Iloilo City. I am so looking forward to seeing Lolo and Lola again, after almost a year.

I am grateful that it rained tonight. This will make the roads far less dusty than usual, and that is a very good thing as we will be using an open-window jeepney for transport.

It is quite fun to travel long distances via jeepney because it really makes you appreciate and savor the entire concept of completing the journey from one place to the other.

Over the past 24 hours, I finished the second and third installments of Sophie Kinsella‘s Shopaholic series, Shopaholic Takes Manhattan and Shopaholic Ties the Knot.

These books were both fun romps, but I have to say that I still love Confessions of a Shopaholic best. It goes without saying that I plan to get the fourth book, Shopaholic and Sister, the next time I go to the mall.

Never mind that I go to the bookstore practically everyday, just to make sure that I get first dibs on Dan Brown‘s Digital Fortress the very moment it hits the shelves. It is left as the only Brown book I have yet to read.

In additio, have I mentioned that I have actually made a down payment on my reservation of the sixth Harry Potter book a week ago?

Here is a description of the second Shopaholic book from Amazon.com:

In this sequel to Kinsella’s bestselling Confessions of a Shopaholic, Becky Bloomwood, a personal finance “expert” with her own TV show, is more of a financial mess than ever: she can’t stop shopping, even though she can’t afford anything.

She’s even assigned her flatmate, Suze, to monitor her spending, but to no avail: Becky is full of cute rationalizations, like “Foreign money doesn’t count, so you can spend as much as you like,” and can’t stop herself from sneaking into posh boutiques.

Her work-obsessed boyfriend, Luke, runs a financial PR agency, and when he gets the green light to open an office in New York City, he brings Becky along.

Upon her arrival in the Big Apple, she euphorically discovers Barney’s, Saks, Sephora and sample sales but when wind of her shopping excesses gets back to the British press, she loses both her relationship and her TV job.

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The goddess herself says:

The best-looking, most rebellious, most dangerous of the four marauders…

And to answer one burning question on the discussion boards, his eyes are grey.”

Sirius Black has GREY eyes.

I can now die in ecstasy.

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Happy Easter to all!

Before the month ends, I will be getting a new scanner, the lovely CanoScan D646U ex. That is, if nothing comes up that will otherwise warrant my foremost fiduciary attention and priority.

With such an acquisition, there will definitely be loads of new photographs and scans up on this site. One of my intended projects is a gallery showcasing my labors of love behind the camera. Goodness knows I have a good number of prints all over the place, collecting dust and developing acid rot.

I am quite envious of those Wizarding kids in the Harry Potter mythology when Easter comes about. They get large chocolate Easter Eggs as gifts every year.

The very idea of getting a magical chocolate treat the size of a football is enough to bring tears to my eyes. I am assuming that majority of the Easter Eggs received by Hogwarts students from their loved ones are larger than this Muggle sporting good.

Even Ginny Weasley and angst-ridden Harry had a fairly good time sharing this sweet at the Hogwarts library, in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

You know, right now, I would gladly settle for a Chocolate Frog. One would be enough, provided that it has an Albus Dumbledore collectible card.

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I finished the fifth book of the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, late last night.

Yesterday, during my lunch break at work, I nipped off to the mall and zoomed into the bookstore as quickly as I could to get my hands on a copy. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was officially released on June 21st.

The book is the longest so far in the series and doubtlessly the most harrowing for our hero and his friends.

As the story progresses to culminate in Harry’s seventh year, events just get darker and darker and, lately, have been ending in painfully tragic deaths.

The much-hyped “death” in OOTP made me cry. J.K. Rowling killed off the character with whom I fell in love, since I first read about him.

For sure, I will mourn this loss not only today but in the weeks that will follow.

Rest in peace, my brightest, dearest star.

Amazon.com has this excellent product description and review:

Harry has just returned to Hogwarts after a lonely summer. Dumbledore is uncommunicative and most of the students seem to think Harry is either conceited or crazy for insisting that Voldemort is back and as evil as ever. Angry, scared, and unable to confide in his godfather, Sirius, the teen wizard lashes out at his friends and enemies alike.

The head of the Ministry of Magic is determined to discredit Dumbledore and undermine his leadership of Hogwarts, and he appoints nasty, pink-cardigan-clad Professor Umbridge as the new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher and High Inquisitor of the school, bringing misery upon staff and students alike.

This bureaucratic nightmare, added to Harry’s certain knowledge that Voldemort is becoming more powerful, creates a desperate, Kafkaesque feeling during Harry’s fifth year at Hogwarts. The adults all seem evil, misguided, or simply powerless, so the students must take matters into their own hands.

Harry’s confusion about his godfather and father, and his apparent rejection by Dumbledore make him question his own motives and the condition of his soul.

Also, Harry is now 15, and the hormones are beginning to kick in. There are a lot of secret doings, a little romance, and very little Quidditch or Hagrid (more reasons for Harry’s gloom), but the power of this book comes from the young magician’s struggles with his emotions and identity.

Particularly moving is the unveiling, after a final devastating tragedy, of Dumbledore’s very strong feelings of attachment and responsibility toward Harry.

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I watched The Fellowship of the Ring for the second time at SM City Cinema between classes yesterday.

Between shows, I was able catch the trailer of Star Wars Episode II: The Attack of the Clones. It was not very lengthy but the sequences were quite intense, in terms of both fights between Jedi and Sith and the developing relationship between Anakin Skywalker and Padme Amidala.

The actor playing Anakin Skywalker was just stunning in the sequences where he appeared in the preview. He also had this dangerous, bomb-waiting-to-explode aura about him that we all know would lead up to his transformation as the fearsome Darth Vader.

I thought at first Anakin was being portrayed by Sean Biggerstaff, who plays Oliver Wood in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.

The actor, however, turned out to be a relative unknown, Hayden Christensen. He is a Canadian actor who has appeared in some critically-acclaimed performances on television. Well, he is certainly appealing and menacing, from what I saw.

Fantasy movies do have the most good-looking guys, maybe that is why they are called that.

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Giverius Navarroy and the Chamber of Surprises was recommended to me by a school friend, Meileen.

Right now, the site has an Oliver Wood poster feature, As Wood As It Gets. Droolworthy Oliver never fails to complete your day.

The site creates poster parodies from popular movies such as I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, Planet of the Apes and The Lord of the Rings, among many others.

Wish they would make the parody posters as big as those in the cinemas and sell them commercially. You can also send spoof postcards right from the site. Naughty and nice.

In other book-related news, is Stephen King really that determined to give up his gory quill for a more quiet and less suspense-ridden life?

Come to think of it, the past few years have been eventful for him, and most likely draining as well. He had an accident and was convalescing for quite some time. He published a semi-successful e-novella and wrote a slew of books that still became bestsellers.

Presently he pens a show called Rose Red. What a life he leads indeed. He admits that he does not want to end up like Harold Robbins, who suffered a stroke and promptly burnt out in both his life and writing career.

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The fifth book in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series has no set date of publication, it seems.

Last year, word was out that Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix would be released by November, but then the date moved to January 2002 to give more attention to the first Harry Potter movie.

Looks like there will be another postponement.

In several interviews, Rowling said that there was indeed no set deadline for her to finish Book Five.

Considering the clincher ending of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, the series’ commercial multimedia success, and countless fan speculations on the backgrounds and futures of the different characters, the pressure to rise to expectations and exceed them by springing surprises is indeed great.

Let us just hope that whatever will come out would be worth the wait.

Maybe Snape will end up with Trelawney.

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I finally got to buy two soundtrack albums that I really wanted: The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.

I went to the mall this afternoon and was very glad to see that the music store people have already put up the newly shipped-in tapes and CDs up on the shelves.

The LOTR album sounds very grand, with powerful choral voices thrown in during intense bars, not to mention Enya’s fantastic theme song, May It Be.

The Harry Potter album sounds a bit tame, I suppose, but I think it goes with the territory. The movie was pretty much General Patronage in nature, unlike LOTR which was considered by certain Filipino religious groups as violent and not suited for young children.

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I watched the movie Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone this morning!

My friend Chrisna and I were among the first people in town to be treated to the film’s “premiere” here in town. The theatre gates opened at 10:45 AM but we already had our tickets by 10:30. Heh. Segurista.

The movie has a really beautiful soundtrack. It is the first good thing I would say when someone asks me.

And who could ever forget the breathtakingly realistic and dizzying-fast Quidditch match of Gryffindor and Slytherin? It puts to shame even the most heated FIFA World Cup encounter!

The giant-sized chess battle sequence was simply spectacular. It was, without a doubt, my favorite scene in the entire movie. Ron definitely stole the thunder from Harry with his heroics.

As I said to a bunch of friends whom I talked with right after watching, there was something about the first Harry Potter movie that leaves you wanting more. In our language, that would be nabitin. Left hanging, so to speak. A lot of people agreed with me, especially those who have read all four books.

I am still waiting for the soundtrack to arrive here in our local stores.

Finally, here is a picture of the aforementioned chess battle sequence, featuring Ron. This is from the movie’s exclusive Vanity Fair shoot.

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For the past 24 hours or so, I have been rediscovering the sheer power of the music from the anime soundtracks of Virtua Fighter.

I ended up cajoling a bunch of online and RL friends to download some of the mp3s, especially the OP songs Wild Vision and the really awesome Ai Ga Tarinaize (Love is Not Enough). Mitsuyoshi Takenobu could really give a song life, making you want to dance right along.

I am currently listening to Kyouhansha (Accomplice), the second VF anime ending theme. Both this song and Kuchibiru no Shinwa (Lips’ Mythology), the first ED song, were sung by Vivian Hsu. Really good stuff, but I like the second ED more. It is much faster and, as usual, nicely danceable.

And who could forget what today is?

The opening of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone in most of the countries in the West!

The movie will be shown here in Iloilo on November 21st, so the wait is not that long anymore. They have already posted at SM City that the first screening date is on the aforementioned date, so they had better made good on that promise or ELSE!

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Happy birthday, Harry!

Today, Harry Potter from J.K. Rowling‘s phenomenal wizarding series turns 21! Break out the fireworks and crackers for The Boy Who Lived!

We were supposed to hold a birthday party in Harry’s honor at school, but it seemed that everybody has been very busy lately and did not have the time to put it together as we have liked.

Instead, we put up a bulletin board of sorts last Thursday for anything Harry Potter-related, where we die-hards and other interested parties can post stuff.

Myself, I printed out movie still downloads and had them up for the ogling pleasure of fangirls (who thought that Snape/Alan Rickman is hot – and I totally agree).

It’s too bad about the party, really, because I was planning to wear a Sibyll Trelawney costume: beads on a 1920s sheath dress, bangles, oversized cat sunglasses and lots of scarves.

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I have been reading Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets for, like, the fifth time this month, and I remembered a poem that I read in Brief Lives, a story arc from cult hit DC Vertigo Sandman comic book series penned by Neil Gaiman.

This poem was written by a character named Destruction, and he read it aloud to his pet dog named Barnabas.

Afterwards, wise-ass Barnabas commented that this supposed literary masterpiece was “Doggerel…rubbishy doggerel.”

Of course, who better to recognize doggerel than a dog itself?

The basilisk and cockatrice are wizard-legend beasts who are fabled to be capable of killing with just a look at the victim. Basically, their stares petrify or, simply put, “freeze” the unfortunate receiver sans the ice (think Sub-Zero of Mortal Kombat fame).

Both beasts are hatched from the egg of a cock. However, some describe the basilisk to be more lizard-like, while the cockatrice has the form of a serpent.

Have fun, everyone. It’s Friday the 13th!

Basilisk and Cockatrice
A Moral Poem

I dreamed I saw a basilisk
That basked upon a rocky shore
I looked upon the basilisk
With eyes of stone I looked no more.

I dreamed I saw a cockatrice
A-chewing on a piece of bone
I gazed upon the cockatrice
One cannot gaze with eyes of stone.

To look upon a basilik
Is really never worth the risk
To gaze upon a cockatrice
Is permanent and never nice.
For it can never be denied
Life isn’t pleasant, petrified.

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