Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

If you were to ask me what my favorite Harry Potter book was, I think my gut reaction would be Prisoner of Azkaban. After reading and watching it again, I don't think that's entirely the truth. What is true is that this book features my absolute favorite character of the series, and that character is Remus Lupin.

My love for Remus can be simplified down to two reasons. For one, he's an underdog (no pun intended): poor, not particularly well respected, and has a rather large problem to deal with through no fault of his own. For another, he doesn't look down on the children at all. He's the perfect kind of teacher that we all loved growing up, the one who encouraged us to be the best we could be and made us really feel good about ourselves for trying even if we didn't succeed right away.

For the story as a whole, I can't say it's my favorite. I have one major issue with the ending, and another major issue with something they left out of the movie version. The story formula departs from the previous books. It's no longer a whodunnit, instead we're told straight from the beginning that Sirius Black is after Harry and we're brought through a lot of twists and turns until we get to the end. This is really far more a transition book than a stand alone story; we learn a lot about the events leading up to Voldemort's defeat and the end sets us up for some key events in the next book.

While Rowling lays out plenty of evidence for the true answer ahead of time, much like in Chamber of Secrets, we are once again left in the dark until the very end. While there are mentions of werewolves and animagi littered throughout the book, and of course the Marauder's Map, there's nothing really there to tie them all together until the climatic scene. The movie actually does a better job of providing us with a clue by showing Peter on the Marauder's Map ahead of time. It makes such sense that I was surprised when it didn't happen in the book. I also think the movie does a better job of simplifying the scene in the Shrieking Shack. It's long winded and a bit of a mess in the book whereas in the movie it touches most of the right notes with a great feeling of suspense.

One thing I noticed on this re-read is that Fred & George giving Harry the Marauder's Map is a bit too convenient. They want to help Harry so that he can sneak out into Hogsmeade, I get that much, but would they really need to give him the map for that? Couldn't they have just told him about the secret passageway? It would seem to me the map's real convenience is letting you know where everyone is at any given time, something that Fred & George could still use when conducting their own mischief.

Another thing I noticed, and maybe this was obvious from the get go but I just missed it before, is the obvious way that James and his friends tie into Harry and his friends. James is Harry, Ron is Sirius, Hermione is Remus, and Neville is Peter. There are some obvious differences between all of them, but she seems to go out of her way to make the comparison. It's the Neville/Peter comparison out of those I find the most interesting, as their stories end very differently.

I also still can't determine whether Snape knows who Mooney, Padfoot, Prongs, and Wormtail are. He definitely knows that Lupin is a werewolf, obviously, but does he know about the others being animagi? It would seem like he doesn't.

For the most part, most differences between the book and movie are related to the usual time constraints, though there are some very strange and blatant changes. Harry uses magic at home in the very first scene, which contradicts with the possibility of him getting in trouble for blowing up Aunt Marge in the next one. There are talking shrunken heads on the Knight bus and in The Three Broomsticks, apparently just for comedic effect. But the most aggravating part is that they leave out any mention that Mooney, Padfoot, Prongs, and Wormtail are Remus, Sirius, James and Peter. In fact, there is absolutely nothing in this movie to explain that James Potter was an animagis at all. It completely takes away the meaning behind Harry's patronus turning into a stag. It's also such a simple thing that could have been explained in one or two lines of dialogue. We wasted time on a made up bit where the boys are eating some kind of candy that makes them sound like animals, but we can't get actual real important plot details included? It's just silly.

The biggest problem I have with the book, and it's made even worse in the movie, is the fact that Sirius must remain on the run at the end.

"The words of 13 year old wizards won't convince anybody"

This infuriates me. Maybe things are different in Britain, but in America, there is a clear dividing line between the ages of 12 and 13. Child things are pretty much always marked "12 and under." It's an acknowledgment that as we hit our adolescent years, we are gaining much in the way of maturity as well as growth. To say that no one will believe a 13 year old is complete rubbish and an insult on the part of Dumbledore. It makes a little more sense in the books - Snape is claiming that Sirius put a spell on them, but in the movie we receive no explanation at all except "You're just silly little kids, no one is going to believe you." We're also told in the book that no one will believe Lupin because he's a werewolf, which is sort of like saying no one would trust the word of a leper in our world. It all feels way too much like "because I said so" rather than any real justifiable reasoning.

One more little nitpick and then I swear I'll quit: Harry gets awfully excited to go live with Sirius rather quickly. I understand that the Dursleys are miserable people and he wouldn't want to be around them anymore, but Sirius has spent over a decade in a jail that specializes in driving its residents crazy. He may not be the actual person responsible for Harry's parents' deaths, but he's also really excited to kill off someone else and thought it was justifiable to drag Ron around and break his leg just to get to Peter. The man's clearly got a screw loose.

Overall, there's a lot of fun in this book. The quidditch matches are kept interesting, it's really great to see them finally learn some real defense against the dark arts magic, and the scenes between Lupin and Harry in the books and in the movie both really make me happy. The places in Hogsmeade and the hippogriphs are all excellent editions to this fun magical world. It's just a little disappointing to find out that the book is not as strong as I remember it being.

I'm taking a short break to read Stephen King's On Writing before I dive into Goblet of Fire, which is of course a very long read in and of itself. So I imagine it may be a bit before I get to the next entry in this series. I have to admit, there's a part of me that's going to miss these short and sweet reads!

Waking Sleeping Beauty

I think most of you that read this blog are already aware that I've started a sketch diary where I am drawing a new sketch every day in an effort to improve my skills. But for the few who may not, please feel free to check it out if you wish. I mentioned over there that I watched Waking Sleeping Beauty last night. Since this movie is slightly flying under the radar, I thought it deserved a full post here.

The documentary uses old home movies and various stock footage along with audio interviews to tell the story of Walt Disney Animation from 1980 until 1994. As someone who grew up during this time period and has lots of memories about the films made during that era, both good and bad, I found it fascinating.

In the beginning I thought it was a little hard to follow. They toss a lot of names and history at you and I felt like they were moving a little too quickly. However the key players are all introduced in a much more detailed way and I think you won't have much trouble following it after the first few minutes.

There's something adorable about getting to see a very young Tim Burton. It's so telling that the first video we see of him is this very bored, slightly anti-social looking guy sitting in a dazed stupor at his desk. He's also shown smiling, so apparently the job wasn't all misery all the time for him. We also hear the voice of John Lasseter and see and hear a brief story of Don Bluth's time with the company.

I think the doc does a good job of expressing the emotional journey of the animators during this tumultuous time. You feel bad for them when their early movies flounder, and you rejoice when they start to reach success. Even if you're not a big Disney fan, I think following this journey is enough to make the film enjoyable.

As a Disney fan, it's incredible to get this very honest look behind the scenes. I gasped in horror when I heard that Jeffrey Katzenberg originally demanded that "Part of Your World" be removed from The Little Mermaid. It was also wonderful to see the moment where Howard Ashman was guiding Jodi Benson on exactly how to sing it. There are tons of these kind of behind the scene moments scattered throughout the film.

One of the things that kind of surprised me was when they said that Oliver & Company outsold The Land Before Time. I really loved Oliver as a kid (I'll admit I haven't seen it since) but I remember the latter being the much bigger deal. Merchandise everywhere and now it has so many straight to DVD sequels it's really not funny. Meanwhile Disney released Oliver & Company to DVD with hardly any announcement at all. I really need to get my hands on a copy and see how well it does (or doesn't) hold up.

I definitely think this documentary is worth a rent for anyone with an interest in animation.

EDIT: I watched Oliver & Company in 2013.  It's amazingly mediocre.  I recommend just watching a video of the Billy Joel song instead.

Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest

I've mentioned before that I actually owned very few games for the NES and SNES systems when I was young. My dad had owned an Intellivision and he knew enough about the lifespan of most video games that he wasn't going to spend so much money on games we would probably stop playing after a week or two. Of course, as technology leaped ahead, suddenly you could play games for longer and longer. When renting such games, it became an issue. Could we possibly finish it all in one weekend? If you didn't, it went back to the store, and most likely the next kid was going to erase your game file before you got a chance to rent it again. I think sometimes we successfully begged for an extension in order to finish.

I can't remember exactly where my love of RPGs began. I figure it has to be when we got Dragon Warrior for free with our Nintendo Power subscription. It was hard and I knew virtually nothing about where to go or what to do, but I still played it over and over again all the same. I plan on restarting it soon, this time turning to friends and online walkthroughs in order to actually make some progress in it. Don't hold your breath for my full review of that one because I imagine it will take quite awhile.

Obviously, my (and my brother's) enjoyment of that game lead to us renting other RPGs. I think anytime I saw a guy with a sword and armor on the cover, I wanted it. For whatever reason, I don't think I ever saw a copy of the original Final Fantasy on the NES in my youth. As far as I was concerned Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest was in fact the first, Final Fantasy II came next, and then Final Fantasy III all for the Super Nintendo. I'm sure someone explained it to me eventually, but it was a fairly logical conclusion given what I could see in front of my face.

We rented both Mystic Quest and Final Fantasy II (which is actually IV in Japan, and has been released under that number now in America) quite frequently. At the time, I didn't think one was better or greater than the other - just different. As such I've been very surprised to discover that popular opinion is that Mystic Quest is a terrible game, and even most Final Fantasy fans hate it. I found it for a reasonable price at the used game store, and I set out to play it - both for my own personal nostalgic enjoyment and also to see if I could realize just what everyone was so unhappy with.

The game is a very basic RPG. You only control two characters at a time, and you have the choice to put the second character (who rotates depending on what's happening in the story) on auto control if you want, meaning the game will play them for you. You can play with many different weapons (sword, axe, claw, bomb, etc.)that you can scroll through each round of play by pushing the L and R buttons. You can also use magic. Rather than have traditional MP (magic points) like many RPGs where different spells cost a different number of points, you simply have a number that counts for three different types of spells. You use one point each time you use a spell from that category.

Since there are only two of you, the enemies only come in groups of four or less, though some of them have the ability to multiply or regenerate. There is no such thing as random battles in this game (in other RPGs, you walk on the screen and are randomly stopped by the game to fight enemies) as all enemies are given tiny visible sprites and the overworld map has battlefields where you select to go in and fight the enemies there. As you level up, your hit points and magic points increase. You find spells as books or stones scattered throughout the world. You also very rarely buy your armor, often being given it in chests scattered in dungeons. Most of your money goes toward buying items, if you really need to, or staying in INNs to recover your life. Random boxes scattered about towns and dungeons also hold items, and these will regenerate the moment you leave the room. So if you wanted unlimited cure potions, for example, you could go into a house, open a box to get the three inside, walk out the house, walk back in, open the box, etc. until you reach 99. The potions seem to cure a certain percentage of your hit points, whereas the Cure spell in this game always brings you back up to full energy. In most other RPGs, there are multiple levels of cure spells that gradually heal more and more hit points as you earn them.

So yes, as you can imagine, this game is for the most part incredibly easy to play. On top of all that, if you die in a battle, either small time enemy or boss, a menu will come up saying "Give up?" and if you select "No" you will simply start the battle all over again. The second party member you pick up will always be a couple levels ahead of you, so that they will usually have little trouble killing things, often in one hit, and they all come equipped with the Life spell to bring you back to life if you die. The A.I. used if you put them on Auto can sometimes cheat. For instance, if you were controlling the character, you might choose to have them attack the enemies because your character was doing just fine. In the middle of the round, an enemy will hit you with a Doom spell that kills you. So now you'll have to wait an additional round to cast Life and revive yourself. If you have them on Auto however, the PC will cast Life in that same round, even though they couldn't have possibly known to do so ahead of time. Of course, sometimes they choose really stupid attacks rather than the powerful ones, so it's sort of a give and take.

I think it's this level of (non)difficulty that makes so many people unhappy with the game. There's no challenge, I guess they would say. I don't really see this as a bad thing though. As a kid especially, there was nothing more infuriating than having to play "Can I survive killing this enemy?" in Dragon Warrior over and over again. I made zero progress in that game. Meanwhile, I was able to beat Mystic Quest, something I hardly ever did back then. I got to see a full game and its ending. If you want to introduce a child to Final Fantasy, this is the perfect game with which to do so. Even though there's not as much a chance of failure and no real repercussions for death, that doesn't mean the game isn't entirely without challenges. The dungeons are set up as detailed mazes with switches to open doors and in one case, you have to take leaps of faith through holes to floors below. It does take a bit of thought and can be a little frustrating depending on your patience. Also, it took me a very large number of tries to beat the final boss because apparently I had avoided too many enemies along the way and hadn't quite leveled up enough. It took a bit of luck to help me get through it.

Its battle system makes for some really fun mechanics, in my opinion. I enjoy the lack of random battles. I've been watching Jak play through Dragon Warrior III lately, and sometimes he'll literally take one step before he's forced to fight again, and other times he'll walk in three circles while waiting for another encounter to show up. While playing Mystic Quest all the enemies are there, and you can often make a decision between a path of fewer enemies versus one with more, therefore letting you decide between speed or leveling up. Sometimes you have to get through a bunch of enemies just to open a chest. There are technically a couple of dungeons where the enemies are invisible until you get a certain item that allows you to see them, but overall I like being able to prepare. It also means you get to see some really cute looking sprites march in place on screen.

Speaking of cuteness, two of my favorite things appear in the battles. One is the sound effects made by your weapons. There's something ridiculously satisfying about the "thunk" of the axe hit, and I repeatedly found myself trying to mimic the "ruk-uk-uk-uk" of the ninja stars. The second is the fact that all enemies change appearance when they get closer to death. The default is two for most common enemies, but the bosses can have as many as four different versions before they dissolve with another satisfying sound effect. Some of these are extremely humorous as they either get bandages on themselves or this look of absolute horror. Check them out here at this fantastic site.

I suppose the other thing you could complain about is the story. I had to check a walkthrough once because there was a large gap between when I had last played, but beyond that exactly where you need to go is laid out before you. Since you can't walk freely on the overworld map, you generally just have to go to the end of a line in order to reach the latest town and then dungeon. There's a bit of back and forth, but the characters are telling you what to do. Essentially, the story boils down to "there are four crystals that have been stolen (based on the four elements), go get them back. Oh, there's actually one more crystal besides those, the crystal of light, and the dark king is trying to use it to take over the world. Go save us!" Honestly, this story isn't much different from the stories for Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy III (Japanese original), and Final Fantasy V, with only the last one adding a little more complexity to the storyline. It's also basically the same idea as a lot of other RPGs and the Zelda franchise - go collect a bunch of talismans before using their power to beat the final boss intent on destroying the world. Sure, it's simple, but is that really a bad thing?

Now, I'll be honest. There were times where this simple gameplay did get a little tedious for me. The length of some of the dungeons, even with their puzzles, was getting to be a chore. But I still refuse to say that this is a bad game. It's not a great one, but I still think it's a great diversion when you just want to spend a little bit of time on a classic RPG. If you don't have a means of playing the original cartridge, it's available on Virtual Console on the Wii.

I noticed something else during my last round of play. There's a lot of parallels between Final Fantasy XIII and Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest. In both, you hit the shoulder buttons to switch between different types of attacks between rounds. You only control one character in XIII, and you have the option to do the same in MQ. Magic doesn't cost anywhere near as much. If one of your party dies in battle or you have a debilitating effect put on you, it will be magically gone when the battle is over. Weapons and armor are generally given to you in chests rather than bought. In some cases in FFXIII, when you "break" an enemy, their appearance changes. Both require you to walk a straight line for much of the story. I'm willing to bet there are more similarities that I'm just not thinking of. Please feel free to add them in the comments!

The ending of Mystic Quest has the hero decide that he's going to go sail off to find new adventure. After you talk to all the main characters again, they see you off and the ship sails away into the distance.. forever. If you don't turn the game off, you'll literally just watch the ship sail and hear crashing waves and crying seagulls into infinity. When I searched Youtube for this, all I got were "Let's Play" links.. so I decided to film it myself. I apologize that it's a bit shaky. Feel free to keep hitting play on the 30 second clip if you'd like to prolong the experience.
I'll replace this with the embed link when I get home today, but for now go straight to Youtube.

Inception (*Spoiler Warning*)

As much as I hate to turn readers away, I can't stress enough that if you haven't seen the film, you really shouldn't read this unless for some reason you never have any intention of watching it. I think the less you know the better you'll be able to experience this movie.

I think the biggest problem I had with the film is that the emotional aspect of it all falls a bit flat. Here's this woman who keeps showing up to sabotage things. She's dead and we're supposed to feel bad about that, but she was also a huge bitch and ruined his life toward the end. He's feeling guilty about causing her death. This wasn't shocking nor did it hold any emotional weight for me. Nolan, you already did this with Memento, you can't rely on this again and expect me to still care. When Cobb makes his big reveal to Ariadne, all I could say was "Well, yeah. I totally already figured that out. Thanks. Can we move on now?" For a writer/director who has caused huge emotional responses in me previously, in Memento, The Prestige, and even The Dark Knight, this was extremely disappointing. The place he did get an emotional response out of me was that ending. The emotion was anger.

Leaving the ending of a story open to interpretation always feel like a cheat to me. The one exception I can think of is Ghost World, where she gets on the bus and we don't know where it will lead. As a metaphor for a teenager entering adulthood, it makes perfect sense to me. Enid has had trouble deciding who she was and what she wanted to be for the entire film, so the fact that she chooses to hop on a bus to no where is absolutely in character for her. We don't know where she's going to end up because to know that we'd pretty much have to follow her for her whole life and the movie would never end.

For Inception, it was obvious fairly early on that all of this could have been further layers of a dream for Cobb. The seed was planted to make you think that Mal was right, that maybe she did die and get back to the real world. I even thought that this elaborate plot was all a way to force him to finally wake up. Perhaps I had Shutter Island too much on my mind. But we spend an awful lot of time being told that no, Mal wasn't right and she was really dead. So to leave it open and ambiguous at that end just feels like Nolan flipping the bird at us.

Having avoided any and all reviews and thoughts on the film before watching it, I scoured the internet today, and I see that the stress seems to be that since Cobb has chosen to leave the spinning top behind and is no longer concerned about whether he's in reality or the dream world - it shouldn't matter to us either. I can understand that message, but I still feel like I'm being let down to not get a definitive answer.

In the story I'm writing, I'm building a mystery. If I can behave myself, the answer to that mystery will not revealed for quite some time. I say "behave myself" because I'm not very good at keeping secrets and when writing I find that means I always want to hurry up and get to the big reveal. But my characters don't know the answer and I think it's important that the readers are also left a bit in the dark along with them. When the time is right and I finally do explain it all.. rest assured I will explain it ALL. Even if not in the story, I'd probably be happy to tell any readers who needed further explanation. I've got it written out in notes that I plan to expand even further, because I'm of the opinion that if you don't know the foundation you're standing on, your story can collapse under the weight of it. And I think when you tell a story you owe it to your readers/viewers to eventually give them that foundation. Doing any less makes it look like you can't make up your own mind about it, and if you can't make up your mind and you created the thing, that's not good.

In Nolan's case, it seems that he does in fact know, he's just refusing to say. So I can't accuse him of not knowing what he's doing, but I can certainly let him know he annoyed me.

Having said all that, it's time to focus on the positive. This is a beautifully built film and an awesome concept. The effects, both physical and CGI, blend so seamlessly that I can't tell you which is which in some cases. Its pacing is also pretty excellent. It would have been easy for a two and a half hour movie to feel as long as it is, but while I did make occasional glances at the timer to see how far along I was, I was certainly never bored. The action and thrill of the movie is pretty top notch.

Most of the cast is excellent. I particularly liked Joseph Gorden-Levitt and Tom Hardy. I really wanted to like Ellen Page in this, but her character's constant pleading for Cobb to resolve his issues bugged me. Why did she care so much and so soon? Running with the whole "this is all a dream of Cobb's" idea, I had this thought in my head that she was actually a grown up Phillipa (what an awful thing to name your daughter, by the way) trying to get her dad to come back home. That's about the only way her urgency made sense. If she was that concerned that his distractions would make the job too dangerous, she didn't have to be a part of it. I also think that the reason I wasn't so impressed with that love story may in fact be Leonardo DiCaprio's fault. He didn't strike me as a man struck with guilt at all.

Like Nolan's other (non-Batman) films, people say this one gets better with repeated viewings. I think the more time passes, the less I'll feel betrayed by that ending and the more I'll enjoy the movie.

My Top Ten Geek Moments of 2010

So it's that time of year where we look back and also look forward to the future. Instead of boring you with personal details, let's look at some of the geeky things I indulged in this year.

10. Star Trek The Original Series
I'm now 2/3 of the way through the original series. I'm enjoying the cast of characters immensely, even if some of the episodes just don't hold up. I'm learning that there are about two really bad episodes for every one really fantastic one. It's sort of amazing the series lasted as long as it did. The feature films are also about 50/50 in terms of quality, but the thing about this series is that when it's good it's really really good.

9. Castle of Cagliostro Dub
After years and years of searching, I was finally able to get my hands on a copy of the original Streamline dub on this movie. I did a comparison of the two dubs and found that they weren't as different as I was expecting them to be. It's still great to be able to hear the original movie I fell so deeply in love with all over again. This was also one of the more "professional" things I did for the site, taking the time to watch both in a row and compare them in what I hope is an informative and interesting fashion.

8. Big Bang Theory
After listening to Wil Wheaton talk about his appearances on the show, I decided to check out this series. The first season was completely hysterical, and so far seasons 2 and 3 are also great. My lack of cable service means I haven't seen season 4 yet. I have some occasional issues with the series and how it caters to stereotypes, but the actors and jokes usually make up for it, particularly Jim Parsons/Sheldon. I think the one joke that irked me the most is when Sheldon and Leonard couldn't answer any of the Trivial Pursuit questions Penny asked them. While geeks don't spend much time perusing gossip magazines, they definitely know their popular culture. Had she asked them sports questions, it might have made more sense.

7. Sherlock Holmes
I was actually a little nervous about this movie before I saw it. We're all so used to that older version of Sherlock Holmes that this looked like it was just another attempt to remake an old hero into something "cool." But in the same way that he managed to make us care about as boring a character as Iron Man, Robert Downey Jr. brought a sexiness to Sherlock Holmes where we had never seen it before. I got the blu-ray of this for Christmas and I really need to sit down and watch it again.

6. Alice in Wonderland
People seem so divided on this movie - either you loved it or you hated it. Some seemed to not realize it was a sequel, and others seem to think the story was lacking. I loved it for what it was: a look into a fantastical world and the story of a young girl finding who she truly is.

5. Batman & Robin: Batman Reborn
Grant Morrison successfully made me want to read comics again. I try to keep up with whatever is going on with both Batman and the X-men, even though I hadn't read a comic from either one in years. A lot of what happens in the X-men storylines these days sounds like bad fan fiction to me, but the moment I heard my beloved Dick Grayson was assuming the mantle of the bat, I knew I had to read this. And it was amazing. I really need to pick up that second trade, now that's it's out.

4. Battlestar Galactica (Season 1, Season 2, Season 3, Season 4)
Oh, Battlestar. I'm so very glad I watched this after it was all over and didn't have to wait ages to find out what happened. I don't know if I could have done it. I wasn't crazy about some of the choices they made, but overall it was a fantastic series and I'm glad I gave it a chance.

3. Getting into horror (First post, Werewolves, Hannibal Lector, Hatchet/Gore, the start of my Dracula marathon)
Speaking of giving things a chance, I opened myself up to horror movies and discovered that I wasn't so much of a fraidy cat as I used to be. I'm having as much fun devouring the old classics as I am the more recent slasher films. The older movies appeal more to the side of me that has always loved fantasy. The slasher films are a new experience, one where more often then not you are actually rooting for the villain rather than the heroes. I suppose it allows us to indulge in our dark sides in a more healthy fashion. I'm looking forward to watching more next year.

2. Scott Pilgrim vs the World (movie, books)
I fell in love with this movie hard, and thoroughly enjoyed the books too. It hits right in that perfect spot of nostalgia and fun, and has lots of layers to it. The soundtrack is also fantastic.

1. Bill & Ted Marathon
I don't mean to toot my own horn, but this is one of the geekiest things I've ever done, and I'm really proud of it. I was proud enough to try to follow it up with my Dracula series, and I've already started work on another one. Bill and Ted were a huge part of my youth growing up, and the movies are just so much fun. I really loved getting the chance to check out and hopefully introduce others to some of the lesser known parts of this series. The comic book series is something I especially love, and I'm really happy that it seems to be the post that gets me the most Google hits these days. It makes me think there are others out there who are just as interested in it. Rest assured that if they do end up making the third film, or even a remake (UGH) I will add them to the marathon.

I did a lot of experimenting with the blog this year, and I think in some ways I'm still trying to find my exact niche. I hope you are enjoying reading it, regardless.

It looks like in 2011 I will be attending at least one real convention, quite possibly two. I'm not entirely enthusiastic about any of the movies coming out. In terms of superheroes both Marvel and DC seem to be covering characters I'm not particularly crazy about. X-men: First Class will be out in June, but after the lukewarm Wolverine movie, I just can't get excited about that right now. Of course there is Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 which should be well done. Am I forgetting anything?

Tell me what made you geek out this year and what you're most looking forward to next year!

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

Back before the Harry Potter series was finished, in the long gap I spent between Order of the Phoenix and Half Blood Prince, I had deemed Chamber of Secrets to be one of my least favorite of the series. On this re-read I did my best to keep an open mind.

While it's not going to move anywhere near my favorites, it was a bit more enjoyable. The problem is this book is a set up for lots of things coming in the series, themes and facts which do not show up again for a very long time. But for the moment, let's focus on how it works standing all by itself. The story sort of winds along and takes a long time to get going. Since everything has to happen over the course of a school year for Harry, the events get sort of drawn out and we end up with a couple diversions. As such an already short book actually feels like it could be a bit shorter if it wasn't forced to cover a certain time period.

Once again the mystery element is well executed, with us being led in other directions while the real answer is also being slyly hinted at in front of us. The problem is that there's really no way you would have possibly guessed the real answer ahead of time, because it requires additional knowledge of things in the wizard world that we have not yet been exposed to. One of the things I love about reading Sherlock Holmes stories is how you can usually figure it all out before Watson does, and you get an ultra sense of satisfaction as Holmes explains and proves you right. There's absolutely no chance of that happening here.

Spoilers for this book begin here.

I think one of the flaws is the way it's suggested that Hagrid was the one unleashing the monster. While on one hand plausible thanks to his love of large creatures, the fact is Hagrid is simply too kindhearted for such a thing. And would anyone really be OK with letting someone they believed kill a girl stay on the grounds? Honestly, re-reading it this time, I felt like she was also trying to make us think it might be Percy, and given the set up (ignoring what I knew as the truth) that actually seemed more plausible than Ginny or Hagrid with the clues that were being provided. While everything does wrap up into a nice neat package at the end, this certainly isn't her strongest work.

We get to meet four new characters of varying importance - Arthur Weasley, Lucius Malfoy, Dobby, and Moaning Myrtle. Arthur is immensely lovable, as pretty much every Weasley who isn't named Percy is. Lucius is one of those characters who you love to hate, and explains so much about who Draco is as a person. Moaning Myrtle is actually much more enjoyable in the movies than in the books. Shirley Henderson brings an extra amount of cheekiness to the role.

On my first reading, I found Dobby to be incredibly annoying. His actions simply don't make much sense. Why does he think Harry specifically is in danger? Sure, his mother was a muggle, but there's so many other students to worry about too. I also don't really see the logic in making someone's life miserable as an excuse to save their life. I suppose it's all supposed to seem cute and endearing, but I just don't care for him. Perhaps if they had made his design a little cuter in the movies, they might have been able to sway me.

On top of all this, I can't help but feel that both Harry and Dumbledore behave quite foolishly. Dumbledore knew that Voldemort was behind the original opening of the chamber, knew Tom Riddle was Voldemort, but he doesn't seem to share this fact with anyone. Harry had the opportunity to tell Dumbledore everything he knew, and he chickens out instead. After what happened at the end of Sorcerer's Stone, Harry should be able to trust Dumbledore at this point and not be afraid of him.

In terms of the movie adaptation, once again we have a fairly straight forward one. Things are once again compressed for time, and Nearly Headless Nick's death day party is dropped all together. The scene really doesn't have much to do with anything, and I can understand from a budget stand point why they would want to cut it too. They also stretch out and change some of the more action oriented scenes, which makes for better movie making. The voyage in the flying car is a bit more perilous and exciting, and Harry is left poisoned by the basilisk for a little bit longer, until after Riddle has already been defeated in order to increase the tension. They also switched the basilisk following his smell to listening for him, which allows for a good tense moment where Harry has to throw the rock and distract him.

While Daniel Radcliffe shows a natural talent for acting, I felt Emma Watson and Rupert Grint were somehow weaker in this one than they were in Sorcerer's Stone. Their lines seem more wooden, and Rupert Grint's facial expressions are over the top. Kenneth Branagh brings Lockhart's narcissism to life brilliantly. Jason Isaacs is absolutely fantastic as Lucius Malfoy. He seems almost like a snake turned into a man, he's so slimy. Yet also a bit sexy. I swear the casting directors were Slytherin fans, or maybe there was just some decision somewhere down the line that (ignoring Crabbe and Goyle) any male member of Slytherin must also be handsome.

One detail I noticed on this viewing is that Tom's memory is actually tinted slightly green, perhaps to give us a hint of his true intentions.

Once again the movie feels a bit long, though the CGI and special effects are greatly improved. The mandrakes look good though their screams put both my cats in a panic. I fell in love with the Cornish pixies the very first time I saw the film. I want one! I'll keep it in its cage, I promise. The basilisk and Dobby are both realistic enough looking that you believe Harry is actually interacting with both of them. I'm fairly certain that Fawkes was normally a puppet rather than CGI, which is probably why I loved him so much. While he's not what I think of when I imagine a phoenix, he's still a very beautiful bird.

The worst of the movie is the ending. As if the movie hadn't run on long enough already, we have to endure a very long scene for Hagrid's return, which turns into a big mushy love fest as the whole school claps for him. I like Hagrid, I just didn't need all of that.

Now on to spoilers for the rest of the series!

Like I said, it seems like a lot of this book is set up. We meet Dobby so we can learn about house elves, hinting at Hermione's forming of SPEW later on. We learn about polyjuice potion so that when Barty Crouch will pretend to be Mad-eye later, we'll understand how. And what we really don't know and what's absolutely most important, is that the diary is actually a horcrux and so is Harry. Dumbledore tells Harry that Voldemort put a piece of himself within Harry, even though he didn't mean to. At the time we think, ok, he knows how to speak parseltongue and he's probably a little better at spell casting now because of it. I think Rowling was counting on us to forget this, and I think really most of us had. I like this because it proves that she was fully aware of exactly where the overarching story of this series was going from this early on. The detriment is that this one seems a bit disjointed from all the other books until it's explained in book 6.

Also: "Dobby, do me a favor and never try to save my life again." Dobby's not a very good listener, is he?

Next up is Prisoner of Azkaban!! Can you tell it's one of my favorites? I'm really looking forward to reading and watching it again.

Toy Story 1-3

For whatever reason I never got around to seeing Toy Story 3 in the theaters. After watching it at home by myself on Christmas, this is probably a very good thing. I had so many emotional responses while watching this movie it was kind of ridiculous. Did you realize that the original Toy Story was released in 1995? It doesn't seem like it was that long ago. We've been knowing these characters for 15 years now. As such, I guess I shouldn't be so surprised that I was so attached to them and so worried about their fates. As someone who holds on passionately to my childhood, and has collected action figures since 1991, I have an extra special investment in these movies.

With the first movie, there was this great theme of old vs. new. I was Team Woody all the way. I think it was a brilliant bit of casting to get Tom Hanks and Tim Allen to play the roles of the main characters. Hanks represents 1980s comedy to me in a lot of ways, since I grew up repeatedly watching films like Splash and Big, as well as Bosom Buddies reruns. Tim Allen was one of the major comedy stars of the 1990s, thanks to Home Improvement and various films. While I wasn't particularly against Tim Allen, I was mostly against Buzz Lightyear. The "I'm Mrs. Nesbitt!" scene is incredibly hilarious, don't get me wrong. What I didn't understand was that this guy was basically a complete idiot for most of the film, but kids seemed to love him best and there were Buzz Lightyear toys and merchandise everywhere and no where near as much Woody stuff. I guess the movie was right.. cowboys just aren't as cool as astronauts anymore. I've never been a big fan of westerns myself, but Woody was just so cute, charismatic, and witty that I just loved him. Of course the point of the movie is that you don't have to replace the old when you get the new, and love and appreciate both equally. It just seemed like as far as Disney's marketing was concerned, that sentiment had been completely overridden.

It was four years later when we got a sequel, and in my opinion it ranks right up there with the original. I loved the point of the movie, that toys are meant to be played with, not kept in boxes and sold to the highest bidder. I may be a collector, but very few of my figures are still in their original packaging. I don't look at them as far as what they are worth - I choose them because they are models of characters I love. One day, I'm going to make a kid very happy.. whether that child is my own, or perhaps a niece or nephew I'm not sure, but the point is I'm going to gift them all to someone who I know will appreciate them - not sell them or destroy them. The other great thing about this movie is Jessie. I love her enthusiasm and the fact that she's such a rough and tumble action girl. The song, "When She Loved Me" makes me cry almost every time I hear it. It makes me want to run to the closet and pull out my special, well-worn teddy bear and tell him I still love him.

That's one thing at the heart of these movies that I think is what makes them so appealing. Is there anyone out there who didn't think their toys came alive when they weren't looking? A lot of my toys in my youth were arranged on shelves around my very small room. My Little Ponies sat on a shelf near my light switch. In the dim of the night, I thought I could see their mouths moving. The sad part is that I was convinced they were talking bad about me. I guess in my mind those ponies were ultra-catty. I did not have any such suspicions about my other toys, but I was convinced that all the stuffed animals were moving when I wasn't looking. I remember even trying to sort of fake them out by playing peekaboo, and that the reason I never caught them was because they were simply too good. If there's any real loss of innocence we experience, it's in when we have to accept the fact that this kind of magic just isn't real. Fortunately, the Toy Story films let us live it again, at least for little while.

Having now seen Toy Story 3, I'm impressed that the team managed to make an entire trilogy without any glaring weak points. Of course they got to take their time with this one, and obviously an additional film would not have been made if they didn't have a good idea. The fun aspect of waiting 11 years to make this one was that the actor who played Andy was still age appropriate for the role. The film once again brings back the theme of "toys are meant to be played with," this time asking it not in a collector's mindset, but whether it's better to hold on to them for future generations, donate them, or maybe just throw them away.

As I mentioned, I was extremely invested in what was going to happen to these characters. I was on the edge of my seat for a large portion of the film. I'd compare it to how I felt when I read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, it was that tense for me. They seem to be put in almost constant peril for awhile there. I had managed to avoid all spoilers before going into it, and I'm glad I did, because I really had no idea just what was going to happen to them. That's the hint that says if you haven't seen the movie yet, you might want to stop reading now so I don't spoil you.

I was so upset to hear that Bo was gone. It's logical that a kid wouldn't keep such a baby oriented toy forever, but still sad for Woody. My first real shout at the TV occurred when Woody was put in the college box and Buzz relegated to the bag with the others. It may have been a victory cheer of words that I should not repeat in polite company. I quickly switched to feeling horrible for Jessie, who was once again having to lose her playmate. I was glad they acknowledged that - I can't stand sequels that don't remember the things that happened before. Watching them all be treated so horribly by those pre-K kids was horrifying, though nothing could prepare me for the eventual scene at the dump. While part of me was thinking "surely they're not going to end it like this!" I also couldn't think of a way for them to get out of it and was really worried that was in fact going to be the end. Yeah, I probably should have seen the claw coming a mile away, but what can I say, I was in the moment.

As far as the ending goes, I had mixed feelings. Bonnie was an adorable character and she'll certainly make a great playmate for the gang. I do believe that toys are meant to be appreciated for what they are.. but as someone who does collect, I do sometimes take these messages a little personally. In the 40 Year Old Virgin, it is basically suggested that Steve Carell's character has to sell his action figures to move on with his life and no longer be a virgin. In Ghost World, Steve Buscemi's character reacts negatively to being complimented on his collection, saying he just obsessively collects things because he can't deal with the real world and the people in it. In an episode of Big Bang Theory, Leonard tried to sell his entire action figure collection in order to prove to Penny that he was a grown up. So now, Andy must also give his toys away, including Woody, in order to grow up and move on with his life, and doggone it, NO HE DOESN'T.

I have a boyfriend. I have friends. I have a successful job and a home. I have close contact with my family. And yes, I obsessively collect things. I have comics, I have figures, I have a wall's worth of dvds and games. I have posters of bands and characters that I love. I have a vast amount of toys from my youth, and I mourn some that I have lost. All those people I mentioned? I frequently discuss these things that I obsess about with them. We share in the love for these things together. I am so sick of popular culture telling me I am missing out on something because of the things that I care about. Yes, in some ways, I am a huge kid, but I fail to see where that kind of enthusiasm for things, that sense of adventure about the small stuff is a bad thing.

It's possible I'm taking it far too personally. They may simply have wanted all the toys to have a happy ending, and splitting Woody from the rest of the group would not have given them that. I guess in my mind the perfect ending would have been if when Andy had seen all the toys magically returned to him, he would have suddenly realized how much he loved them all and taken them all to college. There they would be displayed proudly on a shelf, where he could tell his friends about how awesome they were. While he was gone, the gang would all still get to hang out and be friends, and one day, they would go to Andy's kids. But hey, it's a story. So I'll just pretend that eventually this is exactly what Bonnie will do, and we'll all live happily ever after.

A Garfield and Claymation Christmas

As a child, one of the best things about holidays beyond getting the free stuff was watching the various cartoon specials that would air in the weeks before the holiday arrived. Easter, Halloween, maybe Thanksgiving, and definitely Christmas. There are so many Christmas specials that there's usually at least one TV channel that airs them night after night in December these days. We all know the Charlie Brown Christmas Special, with its commentary against commercialism and C.B.'s poor little tree. We've all memorized How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Your age determines just how many of the Rankin/Bass specials you're familiar with, but Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer is definitely the most well known and popular of the lot. I love all of those and could probably recite them to you I'm so familiar with them. But I also have strong memories of another series of specials that seem to have fallen by the wayside, and honestly I don't understand why. I'm talking about the Garfield holiday specials.

There were three Garfield holiday specials in total, made for Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. The good news is that you can still get them by purchasing Garfield's Holiday Celebrations, but I really think it's a shame that they don't show these on TV anymore. The Halloween and Christmas ones in particular are excellent, and it seems to me like Garfield is still a viable character. He's still in the papers, isn't he? They made movies about him just this past decade. Ok, they weren't very good, admittedly. But if they can air a Shrek Christmas special, it seems to me like Garfield is still worthy too.

I watched the Garfield Halloween special this year in time with the season, and I can tell you without a doubt that it still holds up. It's a perfect balance between spooky and funny and has some fun songs besides. The Thanksgiving special on the other hand, much like the Peanuts version, is forgotten for a reason. It's more about Jon and his attempts to woo Garfield's vet. You would think they would have saved that for Valentine's Day. So I decided to sit down and watch the Christmas special again and see if the reality matched my memory.

At a half hour long, it really keeps things moving. We get an opening of Garfield dreaming of getting every present he ever wished for, but then he wakes up and they're off to the farm to go see Jon's family. There's a cute song where Jon talks about the joys of Christmas and Garfield counteracts it with all the negatives. The absolute best part of the special is Jon's grandmother. She's a sassy lady who shares most of Garfield's philosophies and the two of them bond immediately. There's a lot of cute jokes mixed in with the sentimentality of the special. I really love the way that Jon and his brother Doc Boy act like small children all over again, forcing their dad to read them a story and waiting anxiously to open their presents on Christmas morning. There's a cute side story as Odie secretly builds a present for Garfield. The main story is mostly about Grandma and how much she misses Grandpa. Garfield stumbles upon some old love letters Grandpa sent her when they were dating and gives them to Grandma as a present. It's sappy, but there's enough humor mixed in so as it's not sugary sweet.

In writing this I realized there's another special I used to watch that even I had nearly forgotten: Will Vinton's Claymation Christmas. Perhaps the most obvious reason that this is no longer shown is because its most well known section features the California Raisins, but that doesn't mean this isn't quality entertainment. It's a collection of Christmas carols put to various claymation sequences.

The special is hosted by two dinosaurs, one a straight man and the other an idiot. They provide the comic relief in between the carols. The stop motion animation is still high quality and great to watch even after all these years. I really enjoy the Carol of the Bells. There's something about watching those bells smack themselves on the head that makes me giggle. The absolute best is the Joy to the World sequence, which uses a 2D surface rather than 3D figures. It has the look of an animated watercolor painting, and its just gorgeous. While most kids these days won't have a clue just who the California Raisins are, their Motown rendition of Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer is still pretty good. Unless kids are too "cool" to appreciate Motown these days. While I understand why someone wouldn't want to shell out the money for the DVD of this, you should be able to find it on Youtube.

What's your favorite Christmas/holiday special?

Idol Chatter

Sometimes I don't know whether something is appropriate for this blog, mostly whether it's "geeky" enough. But at times like that I probably need to remember that this is my blog and I can write whatever I like. At least I'm fairly certain there aren't blog content police that are going to come and take me away if my posts don't fill some magically assigned criteria.

I have a personal philosophy that may sound a bit pessimistic, but it works well. This philosophy is "Everyone will let you down eventually." Think about nearly every friendship you've ever lost, every relationship that has ended, really any time someone has hurt you. Chances are, it's because you thought the other person was going to do, say, or react a certain way, and they didn't. It's also possible that suddenly the other person got really mad at you and you didn't understand why, and chances are it was because you did something contrary to THEIR expectations. So when I expect someone to let me down, what results is that when that disconnect between what I expect of them and what really occurs happens, I am now less likely to write that person out of my life forever. "Oh," I think, "I thought our friendship was on this level, but in reality, it's a little lower. That's fine, carry on then." This level of expectation can also apply to our idols and fandoms. When a celebrity you admire lets you down, this is probably a really good thing. We tend to put these people on far higher pedestals than they should be on.

Since I had foolishly walked away from comics for the sake of my high school boyfriend, my main obsession in high school was music. Not playing music, but listening to it. This happens to nearly all of us, of course. Our emotions are running high thanks to the overproduction of hormones, and most music deals with overly emotional issues, so suddenly that singer who seems to be transcribing our thoughts into words for us becomes really, really important. We draw lines in the sand based on the type of music we listen to. For my experience, the people who liked metal were called freaks and the ones who liked popular music (rap was grouped into this at the time) were called preppies. When my friend Melanie died in a car accident, someone at my mostly preppy high school was actually known for saying "Oh well, one less freak in the world!" In my junior year religion class, a group of preppy girls chose for their group topic to prove how movies like Pulp Fiction and The Crow, and music like Slayer and Nine Inch Nails were evil and made you a horrible person. They had to show examples, and the girl who played the music clips was all apologetic "I don't want you guys to think I'm a big freak or something, I got this stuff from my brother." She then went on to explain that the hard to hear lyrics of the song "The Downward Spiral" were "He put the gun to his head, bang, so much blood for such a little boy..."

Of course, at that point I was listening to so much NIN that I knew she wasn't playing the album version of the song, but the remix on Further Down the Spiral. I NEVER spoke in class, yet I blurted out, shaking with anger, "It's HOLE, not BOY. It's about suicide, not killing little children!!" Of course my point that if you're going to bash something you should at least get your facts straight was completely lost on those morons, and I'm sure if they hadn't already labeled me as "one of those weirdos" that event certainly solidified it. I had one other friend in the class who chimed in and tried to help but it was pointless to even try, really. Funny how they didn't pick any gangster rap for their examples, either.

Beyond NIN, my main love was Tool. I discovered them at 17 and was fascinated by them. I found the music far more intricate and complex than any I had heard before, but more than anything else, Maynard James Keenan's voice blew me away. I even remember which song did it first: H. It's a very soft and delicate song that builds to something powerful, and the emotion in his voice struck me, even if I didn't really know what he was singing about at first. From there I went deeper and deeper.. buying all their albums available up to that point, looking at the lyrics online, reading the brilliant FAQ on toolshed.down.net that touched on the meaning of most of their songs. I was a full blown card carrying member of the cult of Tool. That's actually pretty literal, as somewhere in my house I still have the card that shows I'm a part of Tool Army, their fan club. I loved them so much that in college, I used to try as hard as possible to get other people into them, and I'd get really hurt when people told me they hated them.

The majority of Maynard's lyrics, particularly beginning with Tool's Aenima and also continuing into his work in A Perfect Circle, are all about personal growth and change. For whatever reason, I've found that I learn these sort of lessons better when the advice is put to music, as compared to just a person actually telling me what I should do. As such, Maynard helped me a lot, and in some ways saved my life. Since college was the absolute most turbulent time for me, it makes sense just how personally I used to take the whole thing.

Then 2004 came along. I'm pretty sure Tool Army already existed by that point, and I had been shocked and appalled when Maynard put up a drawing that was little more than a doodle and they put prints of it up for sale for over $100. And people bought it! But the worst came through A Perfect Circle, who were going strong at that point while Tool was on hiatus. I have a strict no discussion of politics policy, so I'm trying my best to not offend anyone here, but we all know how explosive that election was. Suddenly, this man who had been a part of a band who had always stressed "think for yourself" was putting out a remix album that was basically one giant sign of "If you vote for Bush you're serving the devil." I'm not saying they didn't have a right to express their own opinions.. everyone does. It was the constant barrage of emails "promoting the album" I was receiving at the time that kept telling me who I was supposed to vote for that infuriated me. After seeing how many people jumped at the chance to pay large amounts of money for a frickin' doodle, I didn't have any doubt in my mind that they were also going to do as he wished in the voting booth too.

But that wasn't his greatest sin. I expect liberal bias from musicians, along with other celebrities and most of the internet. My main problem was with one of the songs on that remix album, eMotive. Specifically, a cover of the John Lennon song, "Imagine." See, while music was my main obsession in high school, it was not the first time I had fallen in love with music. In 1994 The Beatles Anthology had aired on television, and that cool band my dad had played the records of when I was young became my main obsession. I scoured the library for every book I could find, bought magazines featuring them, got the CDs of their albums; anything and everything I could to learn more about them. I had taped the special off the TV, but I always looked lustfully at the large box set they sold in stores that was told to feature even more footage than was aired. It was too expensive for my budget back then.

Pre-Anthology I had had a bit of a thing for Paul, but post, I was all about John. So very, very much in love with him. His goofy smile, his sharp wit, his passionate vocals and honest lyrics. My love for him was near unconditional and though he wasn't perfect, he had always been so honest about the mistakes he had made, it was easy to forgive. Had I been alive Dec 8, 1980, I would have been devastated. "Imagine" is considered by most to be John's crowning achievement, his message of peace and hope for the world.

I first heard APC's cover of the song thanks to one of those many emails they were sending me on a regular basis. They were urging everyone to watch the video, as it contained footage of the Iraq war that supposedly was not being shown on news stations. I honestly don't remember anything about what was in the video, because I was too busy being horrified by what I heard. Minor chords played on a droning guitar, Maynard singing in his best sad voice, turning this message of peace and love and hope into a funeral dirge. It was horrifying, it was disgusting, it was the exact opposite of everything that John had meant the song to be.

And so, the mighty had fallen. Maynard was no longer this paragon for me to admire and look up to.. he was just another human being that happened to have a nice voice and occasionally wrote some nice lyrics. I didn't stop liking Tool. I loved Lateralus when it came out and at least two of the songs on that album were even more helpful to me personally than some of the others in the past. But this strong burning desire to make everyone else love Tool was suddenly gone from me. So I was able to look at other fans and become ever the more horrified. I have a live recording from one of their shows.. before the song starts, you can hear this girl shout out "You're a god!" and I almost always yell back at her "No, he's not!" unless I have the chance to fast forward through it.

Last week, I watched Blood into Wine. It's a documentary both about the Arizona wine industry and about Maynard himself. If you're like me and know next to nothing about wine, wine making in AZ is a fairly new endeavor, and those involved are not particularly well respected yet in the wine industry as a whole. So the doc is sort of a combination of how these guys are trying to earn respect, and also how everyone knows Maynard as a musician, so are they going to take this whole thing seriously? I personally found most of the wine stuff to be fairly boring. I also think it's disgusting that wine tasters spit the wine back out into the glass. It was seriously starting to make my stomach turn after awhile.

Maynard is a pretty private person in general, so if you're expecting something really in depth here, you're not going to get it. But he does make a few statements throughout that I found interesting, particularly related to making art and how one's art should grow and change along with them. I was also very touched when he talked about his mother and the wine he created as a tribute to her. If you've ever listened to 10,000 Days, then you have an idea of just what he thought of his mother. She spent a good portion of her life completely paralyzed on the right side of her body and yet still had a lot of faith and courage.

It's not a straight documentary as there are interspersed in the film clips from this supposed cable access type show of these two guys generally interviewing and making fun of him for choosing to make wine. It's obviously fake and not a real show. It's a bit over the top at times but I have to admit that the extremely dry humor of it made me laugh. Maynard was a comedian before he was a musician, and he's had some experience with acting as well, so this goes over fairly well. There's also a strange part where the two directors start talking to Maynard about the possibility of turning the doc into a reality series, and they lie to him and tell him the camera is off when it really isn't, as if they're trying to be sneaky and gauge his reaction. He tells them he's not interested.. and then turns to face the camera directly and talks to it while he walks away from them. I didn't really see the point of blurring the line in such a way.

The absolute worst part is in two scenes where they talk to fans who are waiting in line to purchase the wine and get it signed by Maynard and the poor other guy who helps him that no one actually cares about. These people made me sick. First off, the ones that they talked to, you could tell that there was very little chance that any of them actually drank wine normally.. they were only there for the chance to meet him. A couple proudly proclaimed that they had named their kid after him. I don't remember all the things that were said but it was generally a lot more proclamations of godhood and how he's the best thing ever and they were all dying to meet him. It scares me that I was ever even remotely associated with these people. The fact of the matter is, it proves that half the point of the documentary is moot - people don't have to take him seriously as a winemaker, because there are idiots like this who will buy anything he sells them no matter what. He knows this and takes advantage of it frequently.

When he first opened his Puscifer site, he used to sell used targets from the gun range. I'm not even sure he signed them. But he actually admitted that each time they sold out, he would raise the price on them. And people kept buying them. They're not there anymore, so I guess he eventually either had a crisis of conscience or maybe it finally got too expensive for people to stop. If he was giving the money to charity, he never actually said so. He's also got this "velvet slipper club" where people can drink his wine and be in the same room as him at special events. What boggles my mind is why these people even want to. I used to have a transcript of this online chat he did with fans once, and he spent pretty much the whole time mocking them. It's hilarious to read from the outside, but personally I have no interest in meeting a guy who's most likely going to be rude to me in some manner. I'll just enjoy his music from afar, thanks.

I think that whole experience really cured me of being obsessed with celebrities as a whole. The list of celebrities I'd like to meet is actually very small. All of them are people who seem really down to earth by nature and seem to have enough in common with me that if we were stuck in an elevator together, we'd have something to chat about. I always figure most celebrities get their asses kissed on a regular basis so meeting someone just to tell them how awesome you think they are is pretty pointless. I don't know what I'm going to end up doing at Nola Comic Con this year, since it seems like such a huge part of these cons is meeting celebrities. I'm always scared to meet anyone for the first time, be they celebrity, like when I took my picture with Penn Jillette after a Penn & Teller show, or just average every day friends of friends that I'm being introduced to. I suppose the nice thing to be said about the celebrity encounter is that it's over quicker.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

Before I begin on my review of this first part of the series, I want to talk a little bit about the series as a whole and why I find it appealing. I was attracted to the stories originally because of the fantasy elements.. basically everything but the people in pointy hats waving wands appealed to me. In Sorcerer's Stone by itself, we get to see trolls, unicorns, dragons, ghosts, goblins, and centaurs beyond the magic users. While some of them don't always make the most sense based on established mythology(goblins are clever? that's a new one) I think J.K. Rowling takes those creatures and weaves them into the story very well. Her characters are also extremely vivid and strong individuals. None of them feel like carbon copies of the other - a certain set of twins excluded of course. You will love some characters and hate others depending on your own similarities and tastes. Beyond that, she's a master at setting up mysteries, both in each single book and over the length of the series as a whole. It's always important to me that stories with mystery or twists hold up on repeated readings/viewings, and you have to poke pretty hard to find them here. If you've been writing off this series for whatever reason (like, say, you used to work in a bookstore and had to work the day one of the books came out) and any of those elements appeal to you, I'd really recommend giving it another try.

Beyond a few minor changes, the book and film of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone are nearly identical. It's a fairly short book and a fairly long movie, which equates to them being able to fit in nearly all the major points in the film adaptation. There are a few changes, but I'll get to them later. This story is nearly all introduction - here's this boy named Harry Potter, here's why he's special, here's the wizarding world he's now a part of, this is what going to wizard's school is like. It's all framed by this object the Sorcerer's Stone, and how Dumbledore, head professor at the school, is trying to prevent it from being stolen and used by the wrong person. This stone is actually the philosopher's stone a legendary alchemical object that has been used by various forms of fiction for a while now. Here, it grants unlimited wealth and eternal life.

This large amount of exposition is really normal for a book, so it doesn't feel the least bit strained and as this is a young adult novel, it's a very easy read. The only chapter I have a hard time with is the Quidditch chapter, because I simply don't care about any sport, imaginary or real. Everything else is told in an imaginative enough fashion to keep you entertained. The movie by comparison can seem to drag a bit. I think a child would be more easily caught up in it as seeing all these things come to life would capture their imagination, but it's possible an adult may start thinking "get on with it!" Of course if you're an adult who enjoys faithful adaptations, you probably won't mind it as much. I also realized while watching the movie again that at the time this movie was made, extra long movies were a bit of a trend. Sitting down to watch a two and a half hour movie (or sometimes even three hours) was pretty normal at that point. Yes folks, 2001 is now far enough in the past that we can recognize it as a past era and not now. It also means that if you sit down to watch this now for the first time, you're going to realize that the CGI is really awful.

When I first got into this series I was reading a forum discussion that I thought was safe, but ended up spoiling a major plot point for one of the books I hadn't gotten to yet. Given the many details and how attached you can get to these characters, I'm going to give a spoiler warning as early as possible, even for as simple a book as this one, to not ruin it for anybody. So, from here on there are spoilers.

A large portion of the changes from the book to screen are simply related to time constraints. A lot of the moments with the Dursleys get cut or smooshed together, but for the most part it works. They kept in Aunt Petunia's speech about Harry's parents, which is just so vile and cruel that I always want to strangle her when I hear it. The Dursleys take over the role of the wicked stepmother from fairy tales, but when set in modern times as this story is, they come off particularly horrifying.

Draco's role is shrunk down a bit, but Tom Felton really manages to embody the nasty little slimeball that Draco is that you still hate him appropriately. Looking back on the series as a whole, I was surprised to see Draco attempt to extend a hand of friendship to Harry. Of course even Voldemort attempts to recruit Harry, so I guess no one was assuming that he was going to end up on the side of the righteous just yet.

The changes result in Hermione becoming even more of a know it all than she already was. I remember when I first started this series, I really didn't like her. I think this was intentional, but I've also heard that Rowling considers herself to be most like Hermione, so it's an interesting choice to make your self insert so annoying from the beginning. Also, since they throw out the potions room at the end, I think her figuring out who Flamel is on her own works out ok. The only part I don't really get is Hermione showing Harry and Ron the trophy. I understand why they did it to move things along, I just can't see Hermione's studies going so far as to memorize every single trophy in the trophy room.

Speaking of their search for Flamel, the wizarding world's complete ignorance of technology is kind of ridiculous to me. They've been recruiting from the muggle world for long enough that there's no reason to not adapt and learn their technology. Most libraries had computer databases by 1997.

The change that really drove me nuts was the Devil's Snare trap. They had already shown Hermione doing her fire spell, so she could easily do it again, they could keep the same rhyme from the book and not have to completely make up a new spell. The leaving out of the potions challenge is also problematic. Hagrid tells the kids that Snape was helping to protect the stone, yet none of those traps/puzzles are particularly characteristic of something Snape would do.

Snape in general is a bit of a divided issue for me. In the books, Snape is a viciously cruel character. He repeatedly shocks you with his biased, unprofessional ways in which he attempts to make Harry's life miserable. He's still a jerk in the movies, but he's also Alan Rickman. With that hair, he's like an older Trent Reznor if he had kept his hair long, not lost his neck, and had an even sexier voice. I think he almost can't help but be at least a little charming, and in my opinion, the Snape of the books is anything but.

Quirrell, as a character, is a little too much the stereotypical villain, and I'll admit that making the wimpiest character actually be the guilty one is slightly expected. However, I think it's executed extremely well, with plenty of red herrings leading you toward Snape and yet just enough clues to prove that it was Quirrell all along.

Since this is my first time going through the whole series again all the way through, I spent a lot of time looking for early clues and any possible inconsistencies this early on.

Set up for future books:
1. I was surprised to see that Sirius, Aunt Marge, and Bathelda Bagshot are all mentioned here. I suppose it's possible she didn't know exactly how she was going to use them in future books, but it's pretty neat if she did know.
2. Hagrid tells Harry he's not allowed to cast spells, meaning she definitely knew how she was going to include him in Chamber of Secrets.

Possible inconsistencies:
1. The only one I could find was the mention that Harry's parents were once head boy and head girl. I can believe this with his mother, but since we find out later how much of a rebellious youth his dad was (and in one case, incredibly cruel) I find it hard to believe he got to be head boy any more than Fred or George would have ever been picked for such an honor.

Characters introduced in this book that I love:
1. Fred and George - As comic relief, I suppose it's natural to love them, but I really really do and even this early on they're given their time to shine. About the only complaint I could have about them is that there really is no way to tell them apart (barring the mean mean things she does to them in Deathly Hallows anyway.)

2. Neville - Is there any character who tugs at your heart strings as strongly as Neville? He starts out so timid and shy here and you can't help but be so proud of him when he gets to be partly responsible for helping win the house cup. Of all the characters I think he's definitely one of the ones who grows and matures the most, and I've definitely been cheering for him from the very first moment.

Chamber of Secrets currently ranks pretty low for me in the series. I'm looking forward to seeing if the revisit will change my mind.