Posts tagged as "harry potter"
Double Trouble
John Williams
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Eye of newt and toe of frog,
Wool of bat and tongue of dog,
Adder's fork and blind-worm's sting,
Lizard's leg and howlet's wing.
Double, double, toil and trouble
Fire burn and cauldron bubble
Double, double, toil and trouble
Something wicked this way comes.
Along with Alfonso Cuarón’s clever direction and Stuart Craig’s arresting production design, part of what made the third Harry Potter film not just a good Harry Potter film but a good film, period, was John Williams’s refreshingly mischievous score, a soundtrack that was quite removed from his previous efforts in the franchise. Double Trouble, a reworking of a famous spell cast by the Weird Sisters in William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, instantly became one of my favorite tracks in the entire Harry Potter film series of scores. The playful music coupled with the children’s choral singing was unexpectedly unforgettable. No wonder it ended up being the leitmotif for the soundtrack and hence one of the great composer’s most brilliant, if unfamiliar, accomplishments.
1 November 2009 · Comments · Permalink · http://aldr.in/229392237
BoxClock
If there’s one thing I really like playing with, that is, besides my navel, it’s time.
I’m a sucker for stuff that deal with time, or rather, the amazing ways by which it is manipulated and by which its tremendous power is utilized for whatever reason. This is in part why a number of my favorite things happen to each have time at its core. My favorite movie? Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, with its time-turning deus ex machina. My favorite television show? Lost, with its time-traveling penultimate season. My favorite book? The Hours, with its time-skipping storyline. My favorite song? Time After Time, obviously. Kidding.
I love playing with time. That’s the bottomline. And I particularly love playing with time on this little iPhone app called BoxClock. Nice segue, huh? And a long, fairly time-consuming one at that.
BoxClock was developed by David Wicks originally as a Web toy. Taking advantage of the iPhone platform’s multitouch and accelerometer features, he later succeeded in porting the Web app into a working iPhone app, available in the iTunes App Store for less than a dollar.
BoxClock is so named for the obvious reason that it displays boxes and for the not-so-obvious reason that it is, in fact, a clock. To read the time on this peculiar timepiece, you must correctly count the shaded bars in the background and the boxes currently displayed. The number of bars is the present hour while the number of boxes is equal to the minutes past the hour. Try the screenshot above. You should get 8:24. Got it? Awesome.
However, I doubt you’ll turn to this thing to confirm if you’re indeed running late for an important date or if it’s almost time to watch another episode of Glee on JackTV. I myself don’t find it particularly useful as a clock. But as an iPhone app per se, I find it to be quite well done.
The color scheme of the boxes and the background can be set on the app’s settings page. There you can adjust a set of sliders to come up with your color preferences. You can go plain black and white or you can just go crazy. The boxes can also be swiped and flicked around the screen. This is where the iPhone’s touch and tilt capabilities really come into play, and the resulting movements show just how meticulous the consideration of physics that went into the development of BoxClock was.
No, with all due respect to David, BoxClock is far from being my favorite iPhone app. It is, however, my current favorite weapon in killing time, with its time-telling gradient bars and gravitating boxes.
5 October 2009 · Comments · Permalink · http://aldr.in/205064479
The Rotten Tomatoes Show recently posed the question, “Are you pleased with your current situation?” Well these movie characters were more than happy to respond, each with his own unique, deeply philosophical answer.
- Marty McFly: NOOOOOOOOOO-OH!
- Harry Potter: NO!
- Capt. Steven Hiller: NOOOOOOO!
- Sam Witwicky: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no!
- Kevin Ward: No, Daddy, NOOO!
- Derek Zoolander: (in slow-mo) NOOOOOOOO!
- Dr. Otto Octavius: NOOOOOOO!
- Woody: No, no! No! No…
- Frodo Baggins: NOOOOOOOOO!
- Henchman Flattened by Steamroller: NOOOOOOOOOOOOO-AH!
Appreciate the input, guys. And oh, good luck on that steamroller!
13 August 2009 · Comments · Permalink · http://aldr.in/161873984
A Window To The Past by John Williams
Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban
Yet another proof to the Maestro’s musical mastery, this beautiful (there’s just no other word to describe it) recorder solo piece is my absolute favorite track from the entire Harry Potter series.
Also, current mood.
10 August 2009 · Comments · Permalink · http://aldr.in/159832269
Win Some, Lose Some
My first ever memory of winning something was in third grade. A Milo caravan of some sort visited our school to serve free cups of the tonic chocolate malt drink as well as to give away some promotional novelties to schoolchildren. Our names were entered in a raffle. Up for grabs were Milo notebooks, pens and pencil sharpeners. I won a sharpener-cum-Alvin Patrimonio action figure.Three points!
Three years later, I won some money. I took home P2,000 cash after winning at an inter-school poster-making contest promoting environmental consciousness. Soon after that, I won even more dough in a nationalistically themed collage-making competition. Whoever said there’s no money in art obviously didn’t know how to make green drawings and patriotic arrangements.
Fast-forward to my senior year in high school, I was editor-in-chief of our school paper. I was sent to a press conference where the supposedly sharp pens of budding journalists from other schools in different towns and provinces clashed with each other. My editorial piece on jueteng impressed the judges. I won a shiny piece of paper with my name on it.
Attending university the following year found me abusing my thumbs for the sake of winning. I spent my free periods joining countless text-in promos from my then cellular service provider, Smart. For my first over-the-air triumph, I won a Nokia 3530, one of the first ever color phones tp be released, for being the top scorer in a The Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring trivia contest. Afterwards, I claimed a sleek Samsung DVD player, the top prize in a similar contest for The Matrix Reloaded. Then came the greatest point thus far in my ongoing winning streak. Coming in first numerous times in a daily speed-texting/word-building game, I managed to collect, by the end of the promo, 7 Nokia 7250s and 33 P500 prepaid cards. Whew!
I graduated from college, and my interest in text-in contests carried on. I won heaps of stuff from radio contests, including my copy of Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows. I also bagged a total of P50,000, give or take, after outsmarting other eager texters on an almost daily basis in yet another Smart speed-texting game. I thought of opening an account at Gringotts.
Now, I’ve become one of those hapless board-certified professionals. At some point, my job became so increasingly taxing that my preoccupation with joining contests began to wane. That my luck was evidently running out didn’t help either. I tried several rounds of speed-texting but, alas, my mind and thumb coordination wasn’t as quick as it used to be. Now, I’m working my bottom off full-time, trying hard to make ends meet. I wonder, where have all my luck gone? And, more important, whatever happened to my seminal Milo sharpener-cum-Alvin Patrimonio action figure?
31 July 2009 · Comments · Permalink · http://aldr.in/152359505
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Written by Aldrin Calimlim
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