Life is what happens when you are making other plans~ John Lennon
An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind~Gandhi
The time is always right to do what is right~ Martin Luther King Jr.


Friday, October 28, 2011

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Potter_and_the_Chamber_of_Secrets_(film)


-Made in 2002
-Directed by Chris Columbus
-Follows Harry's 2nd year at Hogwarts. The Heir of Salazar Slytherin is back to try and open the Chamber of Secrets, to unleash a deadly monster upon the students.

Plot

-Preparing for a visit from Vernon Dursley's boss, the Dursleys send Harry to his room. There he finds a house elf named Dobby, who wears a filthy teabag as clothes. He warns Harry about returning to Hogwarts. Dobby then frames Harry for runing Vernon's meeting with his boss for refusing to stay. Angered by what has happened, Vernon locks Harry in his room and also installs bars on his bedroom window. Late one night, Ron, Fred, George arrive in their lfying Ford Anglia to rescue Harry. They pull the bars off the window and this wakes up the Dursleys. They bust into his room just as he's escaping out the window and Vernon ends up falling into the garden below. The Weasley brothers take Harry to the Burrow, which is the home of the Weasley family. While there, he meets Ginny, Ron's younger sster who is shy and also has a crush on Harry. He also meets Ron's parents, Arthur Weasley, Ron's dad, and Molly Weasley, Ron's mother. Harry and the Weasley clan travel to Diagon Alley to do their school supply shopping. While there, they run afoul of Draco Malfoy and his father Lucius, who slips a book into the cauldron of Ginny's. And also there they meet the man who is going to be their new Defense Against the Dark arts teacher, Gilderoy Lockheart, who thinks the world of himself and also as a great wizard.
-At King's Cross Station in London, the rest of the Weasleys make it onto platform 9 3/4, but for some reason, Harry and Ron can't make it through due to the wall being solid. So they decide to give it a running star but end up running headlong into the wall, crashing and attracting the attention of a nearby conductor. Then Harry says "Well, we might as well go wait by the car" and that gives Ron the idea to use the car to get to school. When they take off in the flying car, they attract the attention of a British police officer sitting in his car who sticks his head out the window to make sure he isn't seeing things. When they finally reach the school at night, they crash headlong into the Whomping Willow, a dangerous tree that attacks anything that gets near it. when the car, bruised and beaten, finally gets to the ground, it ejects Harry and Ron and all their stuff violently and bounces off towards the Forbidden Forest. The scene then moves to Snape's office, where he is scolding them for being seen by 7 Muggles, which in the world this book takes place in, is non magic folks. He then nearly expels them but Professors McGonagall and Dumbledore arrive to tell them their punishment.
-Shortly after the term begins, Harry begins hearing an ominous, suspicious voice. And when returning to their dormitory one night, they see a message written on a wall in blood, that reads "Enemies of the Heir beware. The Chamber of Secrets has been opened". And right nearby, they find Mrs. Norris, a weatherbeaten looking cat that belongs to the caretaker, Argus Filch. The cat has been petrified, meaning it is paralyzed by a spell. While in Transfiguration class one day, Hermione brings up the subject about the Chamber and learns from Professor McGonagall that the Chamber can only be opened by the true Heir of Slytherin, that inside rests a creature so horrible that only the true Heir can control. Harry suspects almost immediately that the heir is Malfoy. Their new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, Gilderoy Lockheart, then offers a dueling club to teach disarming spells. When Malfoy conjures up a snake and it goes after a student named Justin, Harry then speaks to the snake and it is destroyed by a professor's spell. Then everyone knows that Harry can speak a language known as Parselmouth, meaning he can talk to snakes. And one day, while going to Quidditch practice, the Gryffindor team comes upon the Slytherin team, all of them holding brand new looking brooms which they are more than happy to brag about. Hermione then insults the Slytherins by saying "At least the Gryffindor team doesn't need to buy their way onto the team. They got in on pure talent." And that's when Malfoy calls her a Mudblood, which in this world it means dirty blood. She runs off crying and they comfort her in Hagrid's cabin, where she tells him what Malfoy said and it shocks him. After Hermione leaves, Ron tries to curse Malfoy with his wand, which is broken and it backfires, sending Ron flying backwards and suddenly he's throwing up slugs, leaving the Slytherin team in hysterics. Harry asks what is a Mudblood and then Hagrid tells him that the Malfoys think they're better than anyone else because they're "pure-blood", all while Ron is puking slugs. The 3 then come up with the idea of interrogating Malfoy, disguised as 3 Slytherin students named Vincent Crabbe, Gregory Goyle an Milicent Bullstrode. Hermione conjures up something called Polyjuice Potion, which gives a person 1 hour to to be disguised as someone else. Harry and Ron disguise themselves as Crabbe and Goyle, Malfoy's best friends and also cronies, and when they interrogate him, they learn he's not the heir.
-Harry finds a soaking wet notebook on the floor of a bathroom referred to by the students as 'Moaning Mytle's Bathroom'. He looks at it one night while everyone is asleep and discovers nothing in it. He looks on the book and sees a name, Tom Marvolo Riddle. That is until he starts writing. Then the book takes control and takes him to a date in time, and he sees Tom holding Hagrid at wandpoint, saying that he can't release a dangerous creature into the wild. That's when he discovered that the Chamber was opened 50 years ago and that Tom incriminated Hagrid as the Heir.
-Over the course of the semester, various students, such as Colin Creevey, a first year, Justin Finch-Fletchley, Hermione and the Gryffindor House Ghost Nearly Headless Nick are all petrified. One night, Harry and Ron take the Invisibility Cloak and go see Hagrid. While there, they must hide from Lucius Malfoy and Minister of Magic Cornelius Fudge, who are there to tell Hagrid that Dumbledore is being suspended and that Hagrid is being sent to Azkaban for suspicion of opening the Chamber.

-Harry and Ron learn from a piece of paper that the horrible creature in the Chamber is a basilisk, a giant snake and that it has been using the school plumbing to get around unseen. And they come across a message written in blood on the wall, reading "Her skeleton will lie in the Chamber forever". Lockheart valiantly suggests that he will go into the Chamber and when Ron and Harry go to get him, they find him packing rather quickly. Harry asks him "Are you going somewhere?" and he tells Harry that he has urgent business to attend to. That's when they discover he's been lying all along. He used memory-erasing charms on witches and wizards and took credit for their accomplishments. The 3 go to Moaning Myrtle's bathroom and discover that the entrance to the Chamber is hidden beneath a sink and when Harry talks Parselmouth, the sink moves, revealing a large, gaping hole. They send Lockheart down first and then they go down. When they hit the bottom, they find the floor covered in bones of small animals and eventually find a massively huge snakeskin. Lockheart tries to stop Harry and Ron by using Ron's broken wand to put on them a memory-erasing charm, but all it manages to do is send him flying backwards onto the wall, thus waking the creature and creating a rock fall, separating Ron and Harry. He goes through the various little tunnels of the Chamber until he comes to a large open area with a statue of a bearded man's head and sees Ginny lying unconsious nearby with Tom Riddle's diary near her. Suddenly Tom comes upon them and takes Harry's wand. He learns that Tom is taking over Ginny's soul so he can come back to life. And that's when Harry learns that Tom Riddle is the Heir of Slytherin and also Lord Voldemort in teenage form. Riddle summons the basilisk and suddenly out of nowhere, Dumbledore's phoenix Fawkes comes, dropping the Sorting Hat at Harry's feet. The bird attacks the snake's eyes, and flies off. Harry then sees something glittery in the hat and when he picks it up, he learns it's a sword covered in rubies and on the hilt is the name GODRIC GRYFFINDOR. And when Harry gets to the top of the statue, he impales the sword in the mouth of the creature, killing it and also putting one of it's fangs in his arm.

-Harry manages to destroy the diary by sticking the fang into it repeatedly. Ginny regains consciousness and finds Harry dying form the poisonous fang. That's when she says that Tom was controlling her, and Fawkes comes by, shedding his tears on Harry's arm and that's when he remembers Professor Dumbledore saying that phoenix tears have healing powers in them. Fawkes then rescues Ron, Professor Lockheart, Harry and Ginny and safely carries them out of the Chamber.

-When they return to the school, they learn Dumbledore has returned, Hagrid is back and when Harry is in Dumbledore's office, he tells Harry that only a true Gryffindor could have pulled that sword out of the hat. Lucius Malfoy comes in, to tell Dumbledore about the Heir and when Dumbledore tells him that the situation has been handled, he leaves, with Dobby following. Outside in the hallway, Harry manages to catch Lucius, telling him that it was he who slipped the book into Ginny's cauldron that day. And when he tells Dobby to open the book, he is ecstatic with joy at finding a sock. Because in this world as well, if a house elf finds any kind of clothing, they are free. An when Lucius sees this, he tries to attack Harry, telling him "You cost me my servant!" and out of the cane he carries he produces a wand and Dobby stands in front of Harry, telling him "You shall not harm Harry Potter!" and he uses a spell to send Lucius flying back. Towards the end, the school is having an end of the year feast in teh Great Hall, and everyone who was petrified is up and moving again and Hagrid makes an entrance to the school once again.

Cast
Production
-for the Hogwarts castle, it was Gloucester Castle, in southern England. And also other scenes, such as the train to school was filmed at King's Cross Station, a famous train station in London(which is one city I really really want to see!!!!) andfor the scene at the Dursley's house, filmed in Surrey.

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