Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Directed by David Yates
Starring Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint, Michael Gambon, Helena Bonham Carter
Rated PG
Release Date: July 15, 2009

With each new Harry Potter movie, one must prepare themselves to be deafened by the cries of the divide. People either want the movies to follow the books page for bloody page or they want a standalone movie that they can enjoy outright. At this stage in the game I’m afraid neither one is fully possible.

Before you walk into Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, you have to decide what it is you want out of it before you will be allowed to enjoy it for whatever it is you are looking for. The movie lover in me wants to be able to look at this or any film in the series as a singular unit and enjoy it for what it is and for what it accomplishes — as a film — but I am also a realist. The problem with this approach is that you are dealing with a canon of material that, to me, makes this an unattainable request. If you were dealing with a series of movies that simply involved central characters with a new story each time you might have a better shot at it, but the complete story of Harry Potter was told by way of seven books; each adding more layers and revealing more of the story as it goes along. You are almost forced to enjoy the arc rather than the individual pieces.

Here we are, kids. Next week, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince will finally be released to rabid fans — unless of course Warner Brothers decides to delay it again, in which case rabid fans would turn into riotous mobs.

For this glorious last storm toward their release date, WB has put out a gigantic pile of official images — many are official images, while a couple are behind the scenes shots. Even better yet, there’s a handful of pictures included that are quite interesting to those (myself included) who have not read the books yet.

This sixth installment in the franchise will see Harry Potter discovering a mysterious book with an inscription claiming that it is the property of the Half-Blood Prince which contains and teaches Potter some incredibly powerful new spells. At the same time, Dumbledore begins to personally train Harry and retrieves the dark memories of Voldemort’s past to show him.

You can see a bunch of the images by clicking over to the other side, and you can see them all by heading over to io9!

Now that Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is upon us, the focus will slowly begin to shift toward Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows — the final book in the series which is being turned into two movies. The pair of films will take the smart path and are filming right now, immediately after Half-Blood Prince so they don’t lose any more time or youthful looking actors. One of the big questions that has plagued fans since learning of the two-part finale is of course where do they stop the first part to cut them into two? Well, it seems they have a good idea where they want to slice it.

First off, producer David Heyman and star Daniel Radcliffe spoke to Empire, where Radcliffe claimed that the split would occur at a major cliffhanger. Heyman added:

Warner Brothers has sent out five new images from Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. After a mammoth delay that spanned long enough to conceive, develop, and deliver a newborn child, we are finally within one month of the film’s release on July 15, 2009.

Among these images, you’ll find a few shots of the boy wizard Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) filming various scenes; a peek at director David Yates walking through the library where Harry finds the book of the Half-Blood Prince; and a close-up of Hermione (Emma Watson) for good measure. We’ve seen many images and a trailers for this movie already, so these anti-action shots may not exactly make you dance; but again, with only one month to go now, the excitement is building and even pictures like this help to pass that evil thing we call time!

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince also stars Rupert Grint as Ron Weasley; Michael Gambon as Albus Dumbledore; Alan Rickman as Severus Snape; Helena Bonham Carter as Bellatrix Lestrange; Jim Broadbent as Horace Slughorn; and Robbie Coltrane as Rubeus Hagrid, along with all of your other favorite returning cast members.

Click to the other side for the rest of the images.