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  • Raised by opera-loving parents in a rock ’n’ roll world, Rich Copley has parlayed his broad interests into his career writing about arts and entertainment. Since 1998, he has covered performing arts, film and faith-based popular culture for the Lexington Herald-Leader, the daily newspaper in Lexington, Ky. It’s a pretty broad beat, but Rich delights in finding influences of the past in the present and showing fine arts fans the value of pop culture, and vice versa. ~ Copious Notes is a blog covering that broad spectrum. If you want to read about specific areas of interest, such as theater or opera, click on one of the categories to the right and you will be whisked away to all posts in that category. Also, look around the blog for links; multimedia items such as photo albums, videos, and interviews with artists; and other nuggets. Have fun, and thanks for dropping in. The header for this blog was designed by Danny Kelly and the illustration was drawn by Camille Weber.

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« Library film looks at 'Lexington's Greatest Generation' | Main | Met's 'Peter Grimes' this weekend »

March 13, 2008

Splitting Harrys

There were seven Harry Potter books, but we'll get eight movies.

Rather than try to shove all of the exposition and explanation of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows into one either Harry_potter_and_the_halfblood_prinsuper-long or super-brisk movie, the folks at Warner Bros. have elected to end the cinematic portion of the tale with two movies, which will be shot simultaneously and be released within six months of one another, according to Variety.

Let me start or join the chorus of, "What a relief," if not, "Why just the finale?" Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, due at theaters in November, is going to take some work to bring it into one movie.   The last two movies have achieved a lot on style points and faithfully aging the teen trio at the center of the saga. But they have sacrificed large swaths of story, including entire subplots, and moved at such quick  paces there was little room for nuance or contemplation.

And Deathly Hallows needs that space. One of the big mysteries is, at what point in the story will they cut it, or will screen scribe Steve Kloves rejigger the tale a bit to give that first half a rousing finale?

Above: Daniel Radcliffe as Harry Potter in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Copyrighted photo by Jaap Buitendijk | Warner Bros. Pictures.

Posted at 03:01 PM in Film |

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PatGLex

I thought there was a lot of exposition in Deathly Hallows that would easily be cut (the continually apparating part was deadly for me as a reader) to make a single movie. OTOH, a lot did happen that affects the finale. And they better not diminish the finale like they did with the fight at the Ministry of Magic -- I was disappointed with that fight; I wanted more of a splash.

Posted by: PatGLex | March 14, 2008 at 10:01 AM

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