Hey guys!
In celebration of Jo releasing a new book, we’ve re-recorded and re-mastered For Jo and we’ve made it available for free download 🙂 Just wrock on over here and get your copy!
Ok dudes, this is a thing now! Sherlock Rock (SherRock) is happening because let’s face it, how could it not? I’m writing/recording a song at the moment about the Reichenbach Falls, though it doesn’t have a name yet (suggestions for cool-sounding names anyone?) Since it’ll probably only be a one-off I might put it up for free download, unless I’m struck by more inspiration, and I have plans to watch the first series again so that might happen yet.
In addition, other UK Wrock bands are getting involved including Siriusly Hazza P, Romilda Vane and the Chocolate Cauldrons, The Lost Diadems and more, and there’s a Twitter page @SherlockedMusic which is soon to be full of awesome Holmes-inspired music news and tidbits.
Farewell, 2011. I’ll miss you.
Yo! 2012, man! How’re you doing? Good? Good.
Plans for New Year include making more songs, updating this blog more often (‘orz), and just generally doing more Wizard Rock. I’m at college and the course is all about enterprise so I’ve decided to use my Wizard Rock band as a kind of micro-business (Ok, I just wanted an excuse to play Wizard Rock all day like I needed one).
Things I have already done include making a big list of Lyrics which you can find in the menu bar! This has a song of EVERY SINGLE RiddleTM song, so if you ever need lyrics for our songs or anything, it’s all right there. Easy as pie.
😀 Enjoy!
We managed to get into the Pottermore beta!!! I’m so excited 😀 I’m not sure how the community aspect of Pottermore works or how much we’ll be able to interact with other people, but our usernames are MagicFrog206 for Georgia and MistBlade158 for Vic :). I’m really looking forward to being let in. Congratulations to anyone else who made it in, and commiserations to anyone who hasn’t yet! There’s still 5 days to try, and the clues get easier in the last 3 days of the challenge. 😀
FINALLY! It’s been a whole week since the movie came out and now I have seen it! Hooray! After a bit of drama in the cinema where we discovered people had taken our seats claiming they didn’t know it was allocated seating (>_>), we settled down to watch! I’m going to count the different Crowning Moments of Awesome in this film. There were so many! Also I can’t really remember the exact timeline, so sorry if some of this is out of sequence, I’ll try to remember everything! FYI, there is a summary of this on Tumblr :).
The beginning was kind of rushed, I had to quickly remind myself where we were up to, but Shell Cottage looked beautiful anyway. Then we got HelenaBonhamCarter!EmmaWatson!Hermione!Bellatrix! and it was awesome (1). I love how she got the expressions and everything. All the recent Polyjuice Potion stuff has been great. The minecarts in Gringotts looked amazing. It took me back to the days spent playing Philosopher’s Stone on PS1, taking forever to get to the vault XD. I liked the little bits of nostalgia in this movie, all the familiar scenes from the earlier movies. Where as before it felt like each movie was disconnected from the previous ones, this one tied them all together, making the whole world seem much richer.
The multiplying objects in Bella’s vault looked great and were both funny and scary at once, kind of like how they were in the books, although I didn’t so much care about this scene because of what I knew was coming next. The dragon!!! It was so cool! And you could almost feel how happy it was to be free, the way it learned how to fly again, and that shot of them flying over London on a dragon having just broken out of the most well-guarded place in the Wizarding World was definitely a Crowing Moment of Awesome (2).
I’m not sure what was up with that scene with them drying off. I totally thought there’d be a punchline or something, but instead it just looked kind of awkward lol. Also, what was the stuff they put on their hands? Disinfectant gel?
The bloodshed at Gringotts really took me by surprise. The bodies of goblins looked so horrible, where once they’d been kind of cute :(. But it definitely hit home how horrible Voldemort was going to be this time.
I wish they’d explained Dumbledore’s past a bit more, but it might’ve been a bit too weighty for how much information this movie was already trying to cram in. So apparently there was Ariana who was Dumbledore’s sister (how did Hermione know this?) who loved him and now she’s dead. No mention of Grindelwald or anything. But I liked how Harry disregarded all of that and said, “I trusted the man I knew,” and when Hermione stood up for Aberforth “That doesn’t sound like a man who’s given up” (3). And then Ariana came back… with NEVILLE! (4).
I can’t say enough about Neville, except that he’s the biggest BAMF that ever existed. Seamus’ little exchange about the Horcrux (“That’s nothing to go on!”) and Ginny/Harry was hilarious. Then Snape held his ultra disciplined assembly, trying to spot the Order members, searching for somebody who knew about Harry’s whereabouts and Harry himself stepped out! O. M. G. (5) And then McGonagall pwned Snape’s ass in possibly my favourite scene in the film (6). Then she sent all of Slytherin House to the dungeons! (7)
But McGonagall’s badassery doesn’t stop there, oh no. Then she makes the stone knights come alive (8)! “I’ve always wanted to use that spell!” (9). That must be a 4x CMoA combo or something. The charms everyone put around the castle looked extraordinary (I’m definitely going to run out of adjectives at some point in this post). It was awesome seeing the Order Members protecting the school, protecting the children and their loved ones. So wonderfully powerful. It was almost like the love at Hogwarts alone was enough to keep Voldemort out (10).
So then it’s Horcrux hunting! Ron and Hermione make their way to ye olde Chamber of Secrets while Harry goes in search of the diadem, with Luna on his heels. “Nobody alive has ever seen it, so you have to ask somebody who’s dead.” Luna isn’t in Ravenclaw for nothing.
“Harry talks in his sleep. Haven’t you noticed?” said Ron. XD. Crowning Moment of Funny (there are a lot of those too to be fair).
Then the Quidditch grounds burned down. I think it was at this point in the film where it hit home how Hogwarts is so familiar to me, and seeing it being destroyed really is heartbreaking :(.
Neville again! Yay! The Death Eater splatter was unexpected and awesome (11). “You and who’s army?” (12). It’s also somewhere around here that Remus says “It’s the quality of convictions that determines ones success, not the number of followers.” (13) Bear that in mind, my Twitter friends.
Then Harry meets up with the Grey Lady. I liked that her face got all distorted when she started shouting. Poor Helena.
The way Harry notices each time they destroy a Horcrux is great. There’s a sense of foreboding that there is some connection between Harry and Voldemort’s Horcruxes. Then Ron and Hermione kiss (14)!
Then Voldemort attacks the barrier, making all the other Death Eaters look like they were trying to kill a giant with a flobberworm. Maybe they just made it easy for him. Whatever the case, the special effects looked stunning (15). And (I think) this is also the point they destroy the bridge. I like that it was Neville’s misfire that caused the bridge to collapse (16).
The Room of Requirement! Or, as doctorrif so wonderfully put it, “The Room of Junk and Pixies”. I like that there are pixies. The diadem is also really pretty *_*. And Crabbe is now a black guy. Maybe we could just say Crabbe doesn’t exist any more and it was actually Blaise Zabini or something.
So then Ron and Hermione turn up and a big chase ensues! Harry rescuing Draco is yet another CMoA (17). And the diadem got pwned (18).
Then… Snape. Ugh this scene was horrible!! A beautiful, horrifying death. Nagini’s attacks were terrifing to watch. I have to say I teared up when Snape died and Alan Rickman completely nailed it (19). Voldemort speaking in their heads was pretty insane too. They really stepped the magic up a notch in this film.
I found it easier watching the death in the movie than reading it in the book. I’m glad, because I can’t really touch the second half of Deathly Hallows for fear of becoming an emotional wreck. Even then Fred’s death still brought a tear to my eye. Twins are like a cross between a horcrux and a patronus, and killing Fred is not cool. Shame to see no Weatherby though.
Then Harry goes into Dumbledore’s office to see Snape’s memories. What was with the frisbee pensieve? Why not just use it where it was? Anyway, the memory was cute. But I wish they’d put in Snape’s Worst Memory. Much of the beauty of Snape/Lily was the fact that she gave him a choice and he blew it, with one word he destroyed his chances of ever being with her, and if he hadn’t everything might’ve turned out differently. But it didn’t detract from Alan Rickman’s wonderful performance (again!).
I am SO, SOOO pleased that they got the feeling of this movie right. When Harry realizes he’s the eighth Horcrux, and that he has to die, I actually felt it. I didn’t think it’d be like that, so props to David Yates!
And then he has to go to the Forbidden Forest :(. The Resurrection stone looked pretty. I’d like a Resurrection Stone necklace *nudgeEtsynudge*. Hagrid really ruined the mood, though. It looked like he’d been hanging out with the Death Eaters rather than being tortured, but whatever. Voldemort’s shout of “Aaahvahdakadahvraaaaahhh!!!!” made me laugh by accident. And then 9 3/4s! I liked this bit a lot. The Horcrux looked exactly like it had done in my head (i.e; really gross), although I felt the station could’ve looked more interesting, perhaps with ghost trains or something like that. “Help will always be given to those at Hogwarts who deserve it.” 🙂 That was heartwarming.
Yay for mothers! Narcissa was great, although why isn’t she totally blonde? Anyway, the fact she basically saved the day is a CMoA (20). Then comes my other favourite bit in the movie, with Neville being truly, wonderfully, beautifully fantastic. When he said “I have something to say!” I thought he was just gonna say “I am a bad ass mother fucker” and be done with it. Voldemort dies, end of story. Instead he delivered the most heartwarming, Gryffindorical (that is totally a word) speech in history. I love you Neville. (21) And then Harry gets up! (22) And everybody cheers. He and Voldemort have a pretty sweet duel and I really liked that. It was more cinematic than in the books and was super exciting! In the meantime I didn’t like the way Hermione and Ron were sort of baiting Nagini. I was glad when Neville chopped the snake’s head off (23).
“Not my daughter you bitch!” (24) Perfectly delivered by Julie Walters!! 😀
And then we get to the final showdown between Harry and Voldemort. Harry snatches the Elder Wand out of the air (25) and Voldy finally dies. Just so cool. I liked that the Death Eaters turned to dust and bits of burning cloth. The good guys got bodies which could be buried, but the Death Eaters had no remains.
So that’s almost it. But first Neville and Luna (26)! That was so cool! Un-canon, but so cool!
In short, loved the film. It was awesome. All of it. I can’t wait until it comes out on DVD so I can watch it back to back with Part 1. For the first time ever I managed to eat my way through an entire large popcorn too, so that just shows how immersed in the movie I was :D. I’m sure I missed lots of other Crowning Moments of Awesome in this post, so if you have any, sound off in the comments :).
4 years ago today, Deathly Hallows was released. That was definitely a day of mixed emotions – excitement, sadness, foreboding, happiness, all rolled into one. For one thing, it marked the end of the Harry Potter phenomenon. It was the last time there would be queues outside bookshops stretching down the street, at midnight, with people dressed as wizards waving wands. It marked, in some ways, the end of childhood. Harry was growing up, leaving Hogwarts, defeating Voldemort and moving on into the big wide world of adulthood.
For some of us though, 4 years ago today actually became the beginning of the Harry Potter phenomenon. Certainly, it was only after Deathly Hallows that I started to get involved in the fandom outside of my little computer screen. It was when I sat down at the piano and wrote Look At Me because I couldn’t stand the thought of letting go of the characters I loved. Each one of them was, and still is, a little part of my soul. The series is so important to me, and so natural that I wonder how I could have ever not known of Harry Potter. And the Muggles all sound so much like Vernon Dursley, the way they talk about it as if it’s still just a fad, like we’ll all grow out of it if we just stay amongst “normal” society.
And 4 years on, I’m still finding it incredible that after all this time I still love it with the fervor I did when I was 14, sitting in the Library creating a Maurauder’s Map, memorizing every spell, roleplaying on MSN message boards and wondering how it would all end. No matter how much I feel like I’m growing up, no matter how much I have to look towards the future, Harry is still there beside me, anchoring me to the part of myself that loves to imagine, that knows the world is still full of hope and courage and magic.
Also in those 4 years my dreams have come true. I’ve been to America, played in front of crowds of people, seen my favourite bands, hugged them and just generally discovered a whole new world after the books, and this time it’s real. I’m often bowled over by other people’s stories though, I still feel like I’m barely a fan really. I’ve never been to a midnight show or a midnight book release, all I did was read the books and write a few songs about them. But I’ve come to realize that with Harry Potter, every fan has made a positive difference to somebody else’s life, whether it’s through organizing an event, writing a song, or even just sharing their love of the series. And that’s infectious. If shows like Doctor Who and Star Trek and Star Wars can keep going for however many years, so can Harry Potter.
Ok, I’m an awful person. I set this thing up a while back and was really excited to get going, did all the banners and the layout and everything… And then didn’t post. What, Georgia, what is the point of making a blog if you don’t post anything?!
So I’m going to aim to do at least 2 posts a week in the vain hope that I don’t have commitment issues. Good luck with that heh heh x_x
Hi everyone,
On December 10th we’re going to be walking on hot coals! We’re doing it to raise money for a charity called Women’s Environmental Network (WEN), which works to support food growing projects in London. The coals are going to be really hot, burning at 1200 degrees Farenheit, and we’re going to have to zoom across 20 feet of them!
If you’d like to help out an amazing charity and help out the environment, please donate for us to take part in this crazy adventure!
You can donate at: http://dft.ba/-wen and please let others know about it :).
Alright, this is it! Our brand new album is now available from our online Store 
. Both of us worked really hard on it for about two months, taking time off work and recording bits and pieces over and over again to get them just right, and we’re really proud with the results.
You can read a review of our album here.
1. The Boy Who Lived
2. He Doesn’t Love You
3. Through the Trapdoor
4. Forget
5. Dark Wizard
6. Shout It Out!
7. This Is Goodbye
8. The Sorting Hat
9. The Mirror of Erised
10. Hairy Heart
11. 9 3/4s
12. Up To You
Visit the Store now or search us on iTunes! 
Hey guys, We’re performing at the Snow Ball in Edinburgh on the 17th and 18th of December! Not only is there a super awesome show at the Lot like last year, there’s also a free Library show on Saturday! Also performing are Romilda Vane and the Chocolate Cauldrons, Siriusly Hazza P, and (all the way from the US) Swish and Flick! Visit the Facebook Event page to find out more!
RiddleTM.com 