Harry Potter by twilight

Pretty mini lights adorn all the leafless trees in
Penrith's outdoor restaurant precinct this winter.

I was heading back from my viewing of the latest "Harry Potter" movie, "The Half-Blood Prince", when I clicked off today's picture for my 365 Photos project.

Mmmmmmmm, bit of a mish mash of a film. The acting was fine. I certainly couldn't see it six times like I did JJ Abrams' "Star Trek" movie! Like the last "Harry Potter" film ("The Order of the Phoenix"), characters simply wander into a scene, briefly say something, and then swan out. The best one has been the one with the time travel conundrum, whichever that one was - "The Prisoner of Azkaban"? No, that was a fun movie, and a great use of the extended cast, and with an intriguing twist that took me by surprise.

Ah - deja vu! - I'm just realising that "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" was the novel upon which I was asked to do a professional review, when the book first came out. Now I'm remember why I felt like I already knew the fates of Snape and Dumbledore, and the newly-festering romantic entanglements of the kids. It's a bad thing when a film barely pays lip service to its source material; it's a long movie but I don't recall the book being as disjointed as this movie seemed to be. (I do own all the books but "The Chamber of Secrets" (on a friend's recommendation) and "The Half-Blood Prince" are the only two I've read.)

I'm sorta, kinda, looking forward to the concluding chapters of this film saga - it's been amazing to watch the child actors mature into adults before our eyes. Malfoy seemed like a grown man in this movie! I'm sure he was just a spooky, little, white-headed kid in "The Philosopher's Stone"...

Lighten up?

A collector friend asked, re Hallmark light-up Christmas ornaments: "Would tampering with the original wiring be destructive to the collecting value?"

Do you intend to sell them?, I wondered aloud.

Anyone buying such rewired ornaments will have their own agenda and they'll only be satisfied they've been rewired if they still work and they plan to use them exactly the same way. for some people, you rewiring them would increase the collectability because they won't need to do it.

Anyone seeking MIMP (mint in mint packaging) collectibles won't want your ornaments. They'll look elsewhere. Anyone wanting something pristine won't even be happy knowing you've hung your ornaments every Christmas for a decade before selling them, if they can find sealed, MIMP ornaments elsewhere.

Collectibles are always worth only what someone else is willing to pay for them. Selling them at a good priced depends on waiting for the right buyer with the right cash at the right time. Sometimes the planets align and you make a fortune (and then someone else will brand you a scalper!). Sometimes you're stuck with something you can't even give away. Sometimes people DO give things away, to a charity shop, and then some canny collector buys it from there, puts it on eBay and HE makes the fortune.

Luck, skill, patience, intuition, research, advertising, reputation... And hundreds of other factors.

The heading Lighten up also applies to the latest "Harry Potter" film, "The Order of the Phoenix", which I caught today. While it was a visual feast, and the tone was darker, was there any need for the cinematography to also be dark? I swear, many scenes looked like they were filmed in monochrome. I realise that this movie is based on the instalment with the biggest word count but it did feel rather disjointed. Maybe this was a case where you needed to have read the book before seeing the film? (So far I've only read Books 1, 2 and 6.) It seemed a lot of second-tier character interaction had to be swept aside.