Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

I watched HP and the Half-Blood Prince yesterday! I've been waiting for this since last summer. I agree with all the critics that said it's the best HP movie yet.

The movie was amazing. I enjoyed it immensely. Everything was great. The comedy (hilarious!), the action, everything worked and no part was ever boring. I liked how the younger cast got a lot better with their acting! Rupert was impressive in the comedy scenes, and Daniel was excellent as Harry. In Order of the Pheonix, I felt that Emma Watson's acting was a little strained, but it was more natural in this movie. Tom Felton (Malfoy) awesome in all his scenes. I also liked that Bonnie Wright (Ginny) had a larger role in this one. The adult cast is great as usual, but I was sad that Hagrid was only in one scene and the Dursleys weren't in there at all!


The only two problems I had with the movie, was the romance and the battle at Hogwarts at the end. The romance wasn't bad, but sometimes it felt forced. You don't actually know when Harry starts liking Ginny in the movie. Maybe it's just me, but I don't think they handled it correctly. The Lavender/Ron/Hermione triangle was cute though. :) They also didn't have the battle at the end! It was only Harry chasing Snape for a while calling him a coward, and then Snape just runs away. I think they put in the scene with Bellatrix and Greyback at the Burrow to make up for the battle.They didn't have Dumbledore's funeral, but I agree with the producer,David Heyman, about how it would've ruined the tone. I thought the scene where they all gathered around him and lit up their wands was perfect. I'm going to miss Dumbledore a lot. :(


Overall, I loved this movie a lot! They captured the emotions of all the characters wonderfully. Now we all have to wait patiently for the next two parts. Oh my, they are going to be so intense and emotional...

The funny part is that after the movie, I couldn't stop thinking in British accent for a while. Does that happen to anyone else? After watching Australia, I started thinking in an Australian accent...

Let me introduce you to Kevin the Owl

See that little creature hiding behind the heating thing? That's Kevin the Owl (click here to see a larger image). Our group named him Kevin, because he seemed very much like a Kevin to us for some reason. He lives on the back roof of our church. We saw him everyday as we went outside to play some VBS games. He's been in that exact same spot from Sunday-Thursday, staring at us while we were doing chariot racing (with flattened cardboard boxes and that was hilarious), playing with hula hoops, and pretending to be ancient Rome firemen (that soon turned into a huge, ferocious water fight and almost everyone got soaked!). Poor Kevin. I don't think he liked us very much. We were probably too noisy for him. I hope Kevin finds some good, tasty mice to eat when he's hungry.

Flipped in Ann Arbor!!!!

Eeeek!! I'm sooooooo excited!!! *takes a deep breath* Ok, I just found out yesterday evening that the movie adaption of Flipped will be shot in Ann Arbor!!!!!!!! They're planning to shoot in Thurston Elementary School, Virgina Park, and Clague Middle School (most of my friends in high school went there!), and several other places!

Flipped, the movie adaption of the book with the same name written by Wendelin Van Draanen will be directed by Rob Reiner (When Harry Met Sally, The Princess Bride) will be directing the movie and it's scheduled to release in 2010. When I checked on IMDB, they've only cast Juli, the adults, and some minor characters, but according to Movieweb, they've also casted Bryce, and he's coming all the way from Australia to play him. :-D

Well, the only problem with this movie adaption so far that I see is that it's being set in the 1950's and 60's! Isn't it supposed to be in modern times?? So will Juli and the rest of the women be wearing skirts and dresses all the time? Hmmm....That'll be wierd.

Well, despite that little problem, I'm very excited for the movie!!! I couldn't believe it yesterday! I was literally jumping up and down! Flipped is one of my favorite books, and who knew back when I first read it that'll get shot in Ann Arbor? Hopefully we'll get to see the shooting. That'll be very cool. :)

The Mysterious Benedict Society

By Trenton Lee Stewart Isn't the cover quite exquisite? It caught my eye several months ago in Barnes and Noble and I finally got to read it!


Basic Story
After passing a series of mind-bending tests, four children are sent on a secret mission to the Learning Institute for the Very Enlightened to find out the evil headmaster's secrets.



My thoughts...
This story was brilliant! It was clever and throughout the whole story, I was gasping and found myself saying "ooohh" and "aahh" whenever one of the characters solved a problem. It's a bit lengthy but the pages fly by quickly because it's very engrossing. I really loved Trenton Stewart's writing. It's unique and is like a blend of JK Rowling, Lemony Snicket, Roald Dahl, and Blue Balliet. All the characters (Reynie, Sticky, Kate, and Constance) are lovable and you connect to them quickly. There's comedy, a teaspoon of horror (I admit, some parts were kind of creepy), mystery and sometimes you just feel like giving the characters a big hug after reading about what's happening to them.

I throughly enjoyed this book, but I think I would've enjoyed it more if my health exam wasn't looming over me. While reading this book, I couldn't stop thinking about my exam and felt guilty about not studying. So I have decided to read it again after it's over. Anyways, if you haven't read this book yet, I suggest that you stop what you're doing and get it now! It's really really good. It's really, really really....aah, you get my point.

The Poison Tree

I was angry with my friend:

I told my wrath, my wrath did end.

I was angry with my foe:

I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I watered it in fears,

Night and morning with my tears;

And I sunnèd it with smiles,

And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night,

Till it bore an apple bright;

And my foe beheld it shine,

And he knew that it was mine,

And into my garden stole,

When the night had veiled the pole:

In the morning glad I see

My foe outstretched beneath the tree.

-Wiliam Blake

I feel bad for his foe...

Well, this is one of my favorite poems. We had to write an analysis of this poem in English a couple of months ago. It's really interesting with the apple, the anger, and the weird guy who wants to kill his friend. William Blake writes a lot of crazy poems (we learned that he went through a lot of agony in his life) but they're all amusing and they actually make analyzing poems fun.

Adventures in this week

This week I:

• Played Badminton in my friend's backyard. It was my friend Grace and I against her brother. Grace and I were talking throughout the game so sometimes we didn't notice when the birdie came on our side. :)


• Studied for my health and wellness exam- My exam is on July 16th. Nine more days until the test...I'll be so glad when it's over! Then I can finally stop writing reports and reading about fitness. Reading all these things about health problems are causing me to be a health freak. Now I'm being really careful about what I'm eating (not that that's a bad thing, but sometimes I really want to indulge in sweet stuff without thinking about the serving size and how many grams of fat it has).


• Watched Hoot, the movie adaption of the book Hoot by Carl Haissen- I watched it because it had Logan Lerman in it. He's playing Percy in the The Lightning Thief movie, so I just wanted to see if he was any good. He was good, and the movie wasn't as boring as I thought it would be! Some parts were funny, some parts were cute, and the last scene where they stop the bad guy from bulldozing where the owls were was kind of touching.


• Watched National Treasure II: Book Of Secrets- I liked National Treasure better. This one was just like the first movie, except it had different villains, and a sort-of different plot. But did you ever realize that Riley knows something that Ben or Abigail don't know in both movies? The twist in the story comes from his knowledge. In the first movie, he knew about the daylight savings time and in this movie he knew about the Book of Secrets.


• Joined Goodreads! Yay! I joined it so I can keep track of all my books and I also get the cool widget that I can put on this blog. Now you can see the ratings I give my books, if you want. Here's my goodreads profile.


• Found out from Ally Carter's blog that there's a perfectly-to-scale replica of the Parthenon in Nashville, Tenessee!!! Now that's on my "future destinations" list. If I never get to go to Athens to see the real Parthenon, at least there'll be a Plan B! :-D