In this post ima talk a bit about the guys trip I did to a certain city of sin and then I think I'll take some time to talk harry potter, since that's been on a lot of peoples minds and I saw the movie [Sunday] today (no I didn't do the midnight show, i'm really not that obsessed). Fair warning there will be SPOILERS. Even if you've read the book, the movie does some things differently and so EVERYONE READ WITH CAUTION.
First, guys trip. While originally this was going to be myself, El Bandito, Dr. Beeker Flips, Dungeon Daddy, Heavy Spy, and Spam Boa. However, Bandito and Flips both had work. It just so happened that the four of us remaining were all English majors with similar interests personalities and senses of humor so it worked out just fine anyway.
Tenshi asked me what was so special about taking a guys trip, especially since we arent the type to hit the strip clubs and stuff. I pondered this question on the road and realized the answer: We can spend the entire trip talking about video games, comic books, sports, books, etc. We don't have to go to any nightclubs. And preparation/bathroom time per person is significant cut down.
Overall the trip was a success though we did experience our share of adventure. First, the whole purpose of our trip was to avoid heavy traffic. Yet we found every possible freeway that had construction on it from the beginning, make the journey feel delayed though it actually was pretty fast. This culminated in the last stretch of road, where literally the entire freeway was shut down and we were driving on the should of the road. Thank goodness it was 3am on a weeknight so traffic wasn't too hampered. Our trip back also had a stretch of traffic, from which we derived a series of Heavy Spyisms. It should be noted that Dungeon Daddy was driving.
HS: you think they'll stop us at the fruit and vegetable inspection if we fill our car with fake fruit?
HS: I'm going to play a racing game to remind me what it felt like to go fast... aah those were the days.
HS: hey DD will you give us an inspiring speech? The morale of your passengers is falling?
HS: if you look to the left you'll see people going faster than us
DD: if the day comes, HS, and I snap, you better hope you aren't nearby
HS. You can't snap? Its OK, I can't whistle. It's fine.
There were a few other Heavy Spyisms that I remembered for your enjoyment here:
Man: hey you wanna go to a strip club?
HS: But I don't know how to strip!
HS: Hey you see that building in the dark behind the Marriott Chateau? That's the Marriott Shadow.
Once we actually arrived at the city for the most part the trip was fun and full of the usual good times, but there were a few highlights. There was one point where Dungeon Daddy was playing (read: losing) at a Star Wars slot machine and I came over and got the Bonus on three different machines. He was a touch frustrated at my good luck, a theme that continued throughout my random video poker excursions where I'd make terrible bets just to see if I'd win. Spam Boa just shook his head when I did. Heavy Spy consistently only bet one dollar and would play to see how long he could keep betting that single bill. I think he made it last most of the weekend.
We also went to no less than 3 separate buffets, the last of which we were a little tired and in a daze of food coma, and I starting singing, Hon, Honey Dew, you know I love you... (to the tune of the Beatles Love Me Do). Heavy Spy joined in and Dungeon Daddy, who loves the Beatles even more than Spam Boa, started shouting "Stop I'm never going to hear the song the same way!" Naturally, I responded with, "What do you mean? I thought those were the words to the song." I had him convinced for 15 minutes that I actually thought the song was about honeydew. Heavy Spy and I also broke into a series of other great hits, like Strawberry Peels Forever. In retrospect, a big part of this trip was seeing if we could get under Dungeon Daddy's skin. I think it was a good show for Spam Boa.
Speaking of Spam Boa, on memorable moment occurred when he had woken up early, went down and had breakfast and coffee and read the paper and returned to wake the rest of us up. This prompted Dungeon Daddy (the elder of the group) to shout "You're like an old man!!" My how the tables had turned.
We did have one moment of dissatisfaction. While chillin' at the pool we returned to find only my clothes and wallet etc remaining. Someone had robbed Dungeon Daddy's backpack with his and Spam Boa's wallet, and took all three of their shirts and sandals and DD's glasses. Yes, they literally lost their shoes and shirts to the city. Very fortunately we recovered the backpack right away but lost the clothes. Also concerning, our driver, DD was without glasses for the rest of the trip, naturally prompting merciless barrages of sight-related jokes from Heavy Spy. We were really lucky on the last day, after relentlessly checking the lost and found, DD recovered his glasses and was able to drive us home. Otherwise, I wouldn't have been able to take that 10 minute nap during the drive!!
My last tale from that weekend occurred on the last night, after Spam Boa left. The three of us decided to kill time and traffic by watching Harry Potter. We googled the theater and still wandered around the casino for half an hour hunting it. After finding it and watching the movie, we tried a shortcut back and ran into a dead end, resulting in us convinced Dungeon Daddy it was a good idea to climb the wall into a nearby parking lot to reach our destination. Finally, the parking lot we were in was eerily like the Twilight Zone, with no clearly designated exit only signs that literally led us in circles before we escaped. Overall, I think that captures a theme of the trip: sometimes you just have to climb a wall.
Now on to Harry Potter. Again WARNING!! THERE ARE SPOILERS FROM THIS POINT ON.
SPOILERS I SAY!!
SPOILERS AHEAD!!
If ye brave or fool enough to face the spoiler curse, carry on...
OK Let's get these out of the way...
Snape kills Dumbledore (sorta)
Harry is a Horcrux
Harry dies (sorta)
Fred dies (not sorta)
Dumbledore is gay (not in the movie or the book)
And some things to spoil for those of you who read the book but didnt see the movie:
Luna and Neville get together.
Most people including Fred, Lupin and Tonks do not get on screen deaths.
Prof. McGonagall (Maggie Smith) and Severus Snape (Alan Rickman) are especially awesome in the movie.
They change the King's Cross scene a little.
They don't change anything in the epilogue.
The movie is really pretty and very good.
These are the things I want to talk about but first some prefaces.
It's really hard to do justice to a book in the timespan of a movie. Most people will generally say the book is better and that's not a bad thing. A book can go into depth and take the time to do a lot more things than a movie. The only movie I ever saw that I felt truly capture most every scene in the book was the Watchmen, and many people didn't like that either so the moral of the story, noone is going to be happy with the movie version of the book if they expect to relive that exact same book experience.
With that in mind, know that I consider the 7th Harry Potter book one of the best conclusions to any series I've ever read and if I were to write a series of books, that would be the one I look to to how to do it. I really appreciated the mastery, attention to detail, and no stone unturned approach that J.K. Rowling achieved in that final book.
I also haven't really been too sucked into the movies. I've seen them all once (though I saw the 5th one a year after it came out) and maybe seen Chamber of Secrets and Prisoner of Azkaban twice, cuz those were ones that we had the DVDs for.
That said, I really enjoyed this last movie. Most people have marked it as the end of Harry Potter outside of going to the theme park and lament this closing of an era. I agree though this hasn't hit me nearly as hard as many other Harry Potter fan boys (is it correct to call them Potheads?) I think the book ending was much sadder than the movie, but as Clark pointed out when talking to me about it, this marks the end of 13 years of new Harry Potter somethings and even when the books were finished we were going, well we still have the movies. And now that's over.
So because of the impact and the fact that I've felt compelled to continue analyzing and discussing this movie two days after I've seen it with most everyone I talk to, I think I will do a bit of a movie/era review here.
First I just want to say that the opening scene before the title is really great. The movie started suddenly for me, as I was still in elation from the new Dark Knight teaser trailer and suddenly I'm getting a repeat shot from the last movie, with Voldemort stealing the Elder Wand. Then we great this amazing shot of Hogwarts, with dementors flying around it and students being prison-marched into campus, culminating with a long, lingering shot of a hallow-faced Severus Snape. Then comes the title, with literally a shadow of the traditional Harry Potter jingle playing in the background. From this point on, I was sucked in. Even as the many great scene speed by at a hurried rate to get them to Hogwarts rather quickly, it was that mood-setting shot that carried us through.
They make some smart changes in the movie. Harry reveals himself to the entire school rather than getting caught in the Ravenclaw tower, setting up an epic battle between Maggie Smith and Alan Rickman. Luna and Neville getting together was a nice little touch that I'm sure made Micki Granger ecstatic. Hermione and Ron killing the Hufflepuff Horcrux on screen resulting in them conveying their love to each other was kinda funny and made them feel more a part of the hunt.
Taking away the death scenes from the characters was sad but also wise. Rather then having a battle for each of the characters in Hogwarts, the movie shows one pre-battle scene of each of the characters in the calm before the storm, including most of the professors, Fred and George, Lupin and Tonks, and many of the students. These short, snapshot moments captured the trials of war and also served as a tribute to those who fought, without being overly violent, heartwrenching, or losing focus of the main story.
There were several shots of wounded or dead bodies, conveying the horrors of war, just like in the book. There was also an interesting added scene where Voldemort kills everyone in Gringotts after they let Harry escape with the Horcrux. This is one of the few scenes where you really feel the evil and the terror that is Voldemort. That and the Snape scene. Otherwise, Voldemort actually feels a bit vulnerable and not all powerful. They tried to find a balance between him being the most powerful wizard of all and one with a terrible weakness. Sometimes it is effective and sometimes it makes him seem too weak. Still, a bunch of bloodied and bleeding bodies does send a message.
Lots of people hated the epilogue of the 7th book. Well the movie does it just about the same. In fact, I think it captures the feeling I felt reading the epilogue perfectly: A little awkward but not unacceptable. Seeing Harry Ron and Ginny all looking older (and Hermione looking the same) does detract a little from the satisfactory ending of the children's stories. It's a book about kids and seeing them as adults pulls you out of that world a little. But is also provides closure and the feeling that this was a whole world and life goes on. And nobody mentions Ron or Hermione's kids' names. Which is good.
I want to reemphasize how good Maggie Smith and especially Alan Rickman were in this movie. I heart Maggie Smith and she's a bamf in this movie. But Rickman stole the show. They do the pensieve scene as kind of a montage, with clips of him going to Harry's house they night Lily dies split throughout the revealed story. And man, seeing Snape cradling Lily's body was rough. It was really well done. And that was after a very violent death scene. Whew, those scenes were super powerful, for a "kids" movie too!
Add to the the subsequent scene with the resurrection stone and I definitely had the thought "I didn't cry in Up or Toy Story 3 I'm NOT going to cry here" although dead parent scenes do tend to get me more than most. I think what was especially amazing was just how much they did visually, with very little dialogue. You really FELT it. Which is probably the first time in a Harry Potter movie I had some real true investment in what was going on...
I have one more thing to talk about: The King's Cross scene was the biggest change in the movie I thought. It is probably my favorite chapter in the book and Michael Gambon does a good job with him. However, they changed the dialogue a bit, mostly because they really moved away from Harry questioning Dumbledore and why the man put him through all the things he did. Harry simple says he is loyal to Dumbledore trusting him regardless (when talking to Aberforth) and that thereby resolves the issue. In the book, the scene is a reunion, a change for questions and apologies, and really brings a sense of closure between the two. Instead this was more of one last lesson from Dumbledore and a chance for him to congratulate Harry. Fortunately they kept my favorite line in the series.
I want to say I really liked the movie and now have been having ongoing discussions on whether its good to open up the universe to more interpretations (ala Star Wars Expanded Universe) or keep the mystery and thus the magic alive. And when it's appropriate to do both. I agree with Dungeon Daddy that the world she made is as yet truly untapped. I mean I'm sure a story about an Auror chasing Dark Wizards around the world could be cool. James Bond meets Harry Potter. Something like that. Leave the Harry Potter story intact and un-touched (I'm looking at you George Lucas). You could even do a prequel if it didn't follow Harry's family directly. I'd also love to see Grindewald fight Dumbledore with today's special effects. Yes... that would do nicely. But really break away from this magical story and just play around the the Harry Potter world. I also agree with Clark to not try to mess with a good thing. So it makes for a good thought provoker and as the era of Harry Potter changes (I don't think it ends just takes new forms and new generations), it will be exciting to see what new story captures our fantasies and shapes our world.
"Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?"
-JTY
Reading: my grandma's memoirs, gotta get on transcribing those
Listening to: Carl Sagan "A Glorious Dawn" ft. Stephen Hawking http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSgiXGELjbc
Playing: Chrono Trigger... SO GOOD even the second time!
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