praise for the 'prince'

I SHOULD'VE WRITTEN THIS POST AGES AGO, but given the crisis (I’ll probably talk about this one on my next post which will be posted only God knows when) my family and I are going through, I wasn’t able to do so. This blog is very lucky to be alive. If it weren’t for my drafts saved on my hard drive, which once included the last three entries you see here, this blog would’ve been rotting at this very moment—dead without any guarantee of immediate resuscitation.

If you’re a Harry Potter fan or just simply a curious fellow updated with the most recent flicks and blockbusters, you probably have already seen the Half-Blood Prince. You may have already written your own review of the movie but thought writing one would only be a waste of time because you found it ‘depressing’ and ‘sleep-inducer’. Well here is mine. I just can’t watch it and set my opinions aside. But I have to warn you that this post maybe a little biased, and way different from most movie reviews floating around. I’m a fan of the books (no longer a purist! Hurray!) and the movies, and thus, I just couldn’t get myself to hate this one. Or perhaps the long waiting and fanaticism for the ‘Prince’ somehow clouded my objective sense. But whatever! I like the Half-Blood Prince. Watched it twice in Promenade Greenhills and once in IMAX-SM North Edsa.

Here’s some ideas which I think would’ve made the movie better:

• They should’ve made the ending a little less ‘hanging’. It’s just a little disappointing to not see the wizard fight between the death eaters and Dumbledore’s Army.

• They should’ve explained why Snape became the Half-Blood Prince; I will not be surprised if non-readers would think of Snape as some sort of a wizarding royalty. Producers probably wanted them to think that Snape just took the title for personal use.

• They should’ve extended the cave scene, where Dumbledore conjures a firestorm to fight off the Inferis. I was just about to open my mouth to say “WOW” when the scene suddenly ended.

• They deleted the other Horcrux memories (i.e. the one concerning Ravenclaw’s cup.) I just wish they’d have a clever way to insert the missing pieces in the last two movies.

• They should've distributed the 30-minute (or less) 3D scenes all through the movie. I would've liked to see the Quidditch match and the "Firestorm" in 3D.
  

Here are the positive points of the movie:

• The dark tone of the movie reflected the ominous plot. The tone is somewhat reminiscent of Azkaban. I think it’s very artistic and dynamic. Harry Potter is no longer a kiddie movie.

• The visual effects were brilliant! The cave and Quidditch scenes were stunning especially the opening were where death eaters flew over the London streets and Apparated in Diagon Alley. I felt a little queasy watching this on IMAX which is probably the point. Bloody cool!

• The movie is teeming with hilarious romantic and comical sub-plots. I love the Luna-Lavender tandem. They somehow made the movie multi-layered. The train scene with Lavender was my favorite. Won-Won! :P

• Nicholas Hooper did a fantastic job with the musical score. Select tracks were very dark, but less dark than the Lord of the Rings’. But I somehow miss John Williams’ style.

• I applaud Helen Carter’s (Bella) nasty hag performance and Alan Rickman’s (Snape) ‘snake-acting’. Maggie Smith (McGonagall) and Michael Gambon (Dumbledore) were just stellar with their craft. The young Tom Riddle was really creepy. And how fitting that the child actor was Ralph Fiennes’ (Voldemort) nephew.

The Half-Blood Prince, I think, is the best Harry Potter movie yet, just next to the Prisoner of Azkaban. My brother and I share the same sentiment. :P

I opened a new poll by the way. Which Potter movie do you think is the best so far? Kindly check the sidebar. See you later! :P

forward to the edge

OLD GROWS THE NIGHT that I am trying to kill, but keeps on slipping away from my grasp like a fearful foe. The bottomless silence is an irony of what flourishes inside me—doubtful thoughts, masked questions, and meaningless noises; almost anything that speaks of unrest and of truths barren of peace.

I stand awake at the edge of the velvet black, trying to see beyond the lack of light, groping, silently screaming my prayers into hovering invisible dusts. The eerie calm teased my senses of every sound, of every moving shadow, of every sensation perceived by my brain that tells me that I need to sleep. But how can I? I can no longer blame the large doses of caffeine that runs through me. If I didn’t know better, I would think it’s caffeine that really lulls me to sleep. How I wish it didn’t fail me tonight. I just want to go into a deep slumber and drown myself with sweet dreams and nightmares. I do not know the difference between them anymore. It doesn’t really matter because in the end, when I wake up, they’re still dreams—mere figments of fantasy and imagination formed by a twisted mind. And because no matter how good or bad they are; I will still wake up to find myself dreaming. This is the reality I’m trying to endure.

The clock continues to sing its usual tick-tock song—a loop of sounds playing in the most boring beat. Every move of an arm across its face is a push closer to the edge of insanity. The edge is somewhere I don’t want to find myself standing but the cruelty of the night brings out old haunting ghosts, terrifying but real, each driving me an inch closer towards a unyielding darkness. I lay here completely naked to every stimulus, eyes wide shut, trying to taste the void into which I am succumbing myself.

A personal struggle is once again amplified; raging, like water and oil in a constant brawl. The heart fights for happiness while the mind stands firm for what it thinks is just. My beliefs are put to test but the bewildering emotion that challenges these beliefs remains as strong. No side is ready to give up. Each side is waiting for the other to waver. And this war is destroying me, tearing me apart from both ends. A decision on to which side I should kindle is inescapable. The torments of indecision, fear, guilt, and loneliness have proven themselves stronger than I am and every way out seemed closed shut. Deciding to which path I should wade is like barging against locked doors. The thought of escape though cowardly, is very seductive. This is a silly thought of course. How can a person escape himself? I am trapped.

The arms continue to move clock-wise as the earth turns westward. Sunlight will soon pour from the east and the night will burn into day. Shadows will retreat against the twilight but the dawn will never heal the lasting scars forged in the dark. My heart longs for the warm light of a new day, but time crawls when you want it to fly. I only need to suffer a few more hours before sunrise. I hope it comes soon before I run out of solid ground and fall completely. I’m nearing the tipping point. The edge is close… very close…

half-moon

HALF OF THE MOON HANGS LOW ON THE HORIZON; it’s golden light waging war against the deep purple and black colors of the evening sky. The great slab of rock floats in space as it sends ripples of mystique and melancholy unto anything its borrowed light touches. You can sense the nameless mood stirring, and churning, and spreading like a disease in the cold calm air, moving in stealth without a cure into unguarded and broken citadels of hearts.

Shadow come out to play hide-and-seek, gathering on the empty street’s stretch of concrete, occasionally retreating away from passing vehicles’ headlights that slices the dark. The haunting majesty of the moment is adorned by a faint smell of fresh flowers hovering in the soft wind. The tranquil silence is sporadically broken by the sounds of cats moaning like infants deprived of milk, provoking angry barks from dogs denied of sleep. Lizards with their feet on the ceilings performed their throaty songs in an attempt to outstand the crickets’ monotonous version of Ave Maria. It is a serene night.

Somewhere along the sidewalk, a boy sits alone with his guitar, beholding the beauty and sadness perfectly painted before his eyes which reflected the misty glow of the moon and the stars peeking through the clouds. Skilled fingers start to pluck the strings of the instrument he is hugging like an old friend or perhaps a lost lover found. Each vibrating string sends out a note. The notes finally choose to freely fly from his pockets, to his guitar, and towards the invisible musical measures stretching out into the dark, amplifying the magnificence of the night that it already has.

Sounds escaped the boy’s lips, unintelligible and trembling at first, but slowly transforms into melodic words. He begins to sing the song he wrote on a piece of tissue paper five days ago over a mug of creamed coffee. He speaks the lyrics with care and gentleness as if reading a firsthand poetry to the girl of his dreams. It is a happy song that defies the miserable mood; a bright light in a world of eternal shade, sending blissful and lonely entities into collision; crashing into each other and plunging the night into a chaotic symphony—strange but nonetheless a beautiful blend.

Tonight, half of the moon smiles to the world in a deep slumber as the boy bathed in its light, uttering the verses of a prayer written on a tissue paper crumpled somewhere in his side pocket. With eyes to the star-spangled heavens, he strikes every chord, ever wondering where in the world the other half of his heart might be. It’s there somewhere, lost but finding its way back. Like the dark side of the moon, the answer still masks itself, mysterious until fate decides to unveil itself to him—the other side where the vital piece lies; the chorus of his song; the missing half that would finally make his heart complete and his existence whole.

resting place

IT IS WHEN I SEE YOU that I can freely breathe, inhaling gusts of wind that replenishes whatever part of me that decays. But it is when you’re away from my sight that the same wind is sucked away from my struggling lungs. Just like tonight, and what it will be like tomorrow, and the night after this. I have to gasp because I want to know how this ordeal will end. I know when the end comes; you’ll not be here with me holding my hand. I can’t fully fathom the thought but it’s a truth that I’m trying to learn and to accept. I want to know the greater purpose for this loss; the grand plan behind your permanent absence, from me and from this world.

What measure of time will it take to escape the agony brought by grief and sadness? Will absolute healing come hand-in-hand with acceptance? These questions reels in my head in every moment I succumb into that pure solitude, looking deep into the sharp eyes of melancholy, trying not to flinch against the pain nor blink in the overwhelming darkness in front of me. Stifling a moan and faking a smile are some of the skills that I have yet to master. But what’s the point of doing so? I can be calm as the deepest ocean on the outside, but my insides is harboring a gathering storm, so destructive that I am surprised that my heart can still have the strength to beat, expelling blood through veins. And because I thought it had already shut down, the same moment yours had stopped, never to beat again.

I’m here, standing once again on the ground of your final resting place—that will become mine too when my life finally ends one day. I can’t wait for that day to come, not because I want to die, but the thought of embracing death is very seductive thinking it’s the only way to linger in your presence once more. I know you’d want me to walk the face of this earth for as long as I can, and to find my purpose besides the purpose of loving you for the rest of my life. For this, I’ll continue to walk for you, and breathe for you, and live—looking upon those memories; vivid images that inspires and crushes me at the same time.

The drizzle softened the grassy earth beneath me, falling and gliding like stardust in the yielding evening air. I am holding a bouquet of white calla lilies you loved so much, scalding my hand in a desperate hoping that it is your hand in mine instead. My eyes burn in my losing fight against the inevitable stream of tears. I called out your name in the wind, breathing it in; breathing what was left of your existence lost in the even flow of soft moist air. My eyes gaze upon the blurring lights of the stars and to the wet granite carved with your beautiful name. I whispered the name as my voice trembled, broken and stained with longing and powerlessness. The resonance of the words felt painful on my throat and tasted bitter on my tongue. My body shook and my knees buckled, landing on the moist ground. I let the tears fall—crystal droplets silently hidden in the darkness, drunk by the ground that covered your bones, and obscured by towering tombstones of the dead. You are now one of them, hence, these death-scented lilies. I will receive this kind of flowers someday when I become the ash that will hover above you-- my true resting place.

I will be forever thankful for the love that had awakened my heart but unfortunately, had stopped yours.