Kong Fever

Hey everyone!

Big Hairy Ape who loves munching on bamboo, watching sunsets, and occasionally wrestling dinosaurs seeks damsel in distress who will make him laugh.

Yep, we saw KING KONG this weekend! Thomas and I met Jen and Dave at Dave and Buster's and after Thomas and Dave prepared by bonding over Donkey Kong, we ventured over to the cineplex. As Dave said, we all had Kong fever (him especially - he spent the previous wkend watching the 30s and 70s versions). Thomas, Jen and I had all seen the 30's on the big screen in Telluride, so we got to feel superior about that.

The movie! This is THE event movie of the year. I don't care what other claims are made - this is it. It's not my favorite movie of the year, but it is in the top 10 - maybe 5. I could not rip my eyes away from the screen for the final two hours of it, even tho as Creede predicted, the last 30 minutes were nauseating to anyone who either has a fear of heights or a motion sickness problem (I have a little of the former and a heaping helping of the latter). I was willing to get sick for it - luckily that didn't happen though. The plot to this third Kong follows 1 and 2 fairly closely. There are some character differences, but this remains the story of Beauty and the Beast - Ann Darrow and Kong. Naomi Watts is radiant and utterly fetching as Ann Darrow, a vaudevillian actress with a gift for comedy trying to make it big. She gets her shot when director Carl Denham, played by the always funny Jack Black, casts her in his latest film, written by her dream playwright, Jack Tisdale (Adrien Brody). The first hour is all set up, but it's worth it just for the shots of 30s era New York. The skyline at night glimmers beautifully and all day long the streets are bustling with cabs and commuters. Director Peter Jackson proves once again his eye for detail. But the real action begins when the cast and crew set off on a boat to find the as yet undiscovered (and unfortunately aptly named) Skull Island.

Once they arrive on the island, all hell breaks loose. The natives aren't just restless, they're full on unhinged. Rarely is an eye seen that it's not rolled back in it's socket. Being female, blond and beautiful, Ann is naturally offered up for sacrifice to the mighty Kong. Ann's survival instincts kick in and she decides to try her comedy skills on Kong in hopes of entertaining him enough that he'll decide to keep her around rather than have her for dinner. This results in a charming and funny scene and sets up one of the more surprising friendships in movie history. Watts' skills as an actress are brought out in full force, but the scene (and of course the movie itself) would never have worked had the special effects designed by Jackson's Weta Workshop not been so jaw-droppingly good. Kong was 100% real to me. Not a facial movement, snaggle tooth or roar were questionable. It was that good. And Kong wasn't the only special effect. There were dinosaurs up the wazoo. There were so many dinosaurs, that there was an actual dinosaur stampede. You don't see that every day. We all agreed Jackson did go a bit overboard with a giant insect-riddled swamp scene that will likely haunt me for years to come. I guess he just threw that one in for his own amusement. I have no idea how they do it at Weta, but they do it well. Kong made Gollum look totally fake - and everyone remembers how people raved over Gollum. The other actors all deliver fine performances - particularly Black and Brody - but this isn't their story. The movie rests on the shoulders of Watts and Kong and they pulled it off completely. Back in New York City, where Kong was captured, displayed and then hunted down, I really felt for the big ape. My disbelief was fully suspended.

-sunday

Awards Season is Approaching - Golden Globes Noms!

Hey everyone, My all time favorite awards show, The Golden Globes came out with their nominations today. It's a mixed bag, but what else can you expect when you consider the nominees are chosen and selected solely by members of the Hollywood Foreign Press. Not the most reliable bunch I'm guessing. But they are brilliant in their plan to hand out awards for movies and tv at one event, thus trumping both the Oscars and the Emmys. You can see all the nominations here. Unfortunately, I have yet to see many of these film nominees, but Munich, King Kong, Constant Gardener, Match Point, The Squid and the Whale, and Mrs. Henderson Presents are all on my To See list. Following are my thoughts on the inclusion/exclusion of ones I have seen:

What They Got Right - Movies:

Best Actor, Drama - Russell Crowe for Cinderella Man, Heath Ledger for Brokeback Mountain and Phillip Seymour Hoffman for Capote all deserve to be on this list

Best Picture, Musical or Comedy - I don't really think of Pride & Prejudice as a comedy, though it is definitely amusing, but either way I'm glad for the nod. Not as glad though as I am to see Walk the Line. Still my #1 of the year.

Best Actor, Musical or Comedy - Joaquin Phoenix for Walk the Line. He really was the man in black.

Best Actress, Musical or Comedy - Reese Witherspoon for Walk the Line and Keira Knightley for P&P are both great picks.

Supporting Actor - Matt Dillon for Crash. Pretty much anyone from Crash could have been on this list and I'd be pleased. But something tells me this is my favorite Outsider's first nomination (in junior high, I watched the movie over and over in vain on HBO hoping that things would turn out differently for Dally, but they never did), so I'm especially happy to see him get some recognition.

Screenplay - Hooray for Paul Haggis and Bobby Moresco for Crash

What they got Wrong - Movies:

Where is Upside of Anger? No love for this movie whatsoever. It is an insult that the movie wasn't nominated for Best Picture, Musical or Comedy and it is an outrage that Joan Allen isn't up for best actress. For shame! I would have been pleased to see Kevin Costner up there as well for Best Supporting Actor.

Including History of Violence (absolutely pointless and horrid) and Brokeback Mountain (too long and way too depressing) in the Best Picture category. Crash so should have been there in place of History.

Nominating George Clooney for Syriana and Maria Bello for History of Violence. Why, you crazy foreign journalists, why?!

What they got Right - TV:

Drama Series - Right on for Lost and Rome

Comedy Series - Entourage and My Name is Earl are both deserving

Actress, Drama - I was thrilled to see the delightfully evil Polly Walker on the list for Rome

Actor, Drama - Hugh Laurie IS House

Actor, Comedy - Jason Lee for Earl and Steve Carell for The Office both rock

Miniseries - I'm torn between Empire Falls and Warm Springs. Both were most enjoyable.

What they got Wrong - TV:

First off, due to HBO's bizarre scheduling, I'm not sure if The Wire or to a lesser extent, Deadwood qualified for Golden Globes this year, but if they did, the entire list of TV nominations needs to be used as birdcage liner. I'm going to go with the assumption that The Wire did not qualify so I don't have to boycott the Awards this year.

Drama - Commander in Chief, really? We watched a few eps and it was good but in no way great. I guess they had to replace The West Wing with something, tho thanks to the whole presidential race storyline, West Wing is back to being good and would make more sense on this list than Commander. I watched a few Prison Breaks and wasn't too impressed with it either. I'd have put Gilmore Girls here - tho it could go in Comedy as well - or even better this year, Everwood.

Comedy - Where's The Office? I'm going on the record right now by naming this show as my favorite of the 2005 Fall season. If you're not watching it, you are so missing out. There's so much going on for it besides Steve Carell. The true stars are those playing Jim and Pam, my fav star-crossed couple of the year, and doofus Dwight. The Office handily takes up the mantle of Newsradio.

Comedy - As everyone and their dog noted, Curb Your Enthusiasm kind of sucked this year. It totally stole The Office's space. I don't watch Two and a Half Men, but I'm guessing it stole How I Met Your Mother's space.

Actress, Comedy - Do we really need all four housewives? The four in question must terrify the foreign press, hence their bizarre decision to include them all. Beware the wrath of Nicollette Sheridan! The surprising comedienne of the show this year has been Eva Longoria's Gabrielle. She and perhaps Marcia Cross make a little sense. But where's Lauren Graham? Tho Gilmore Girls has been a bit off this year, her Lorelai is right on. Teri Hatcher so stole her spot. I'd also replace another housewife, yep that would mean you Felicity - with Pam from The Office. On second thought, I'd also rather see a nom go to the hilarious Jaime Pressley for My Name is Earl rather than to DH's Cross.

Miniseries - Thomas and I are probably the only two that made it through all of Into the West. If you didn't watch it, be very very grateful. It was tres boring. It's on this list for one reason: A Stephen Spielberg Production.

Jan 16 is Awards Day. You can be I'll bet tuning in.

-sunday

A Tale of Four Movies

Hey everyone! I am beyond thrilled that good movies are finally entering the theatres after this bleakest of years for moviegoers. The past couple of weekends I've managed to see four of them. All I had looked forward to, unfortunately all were not worth the wait.

Syriana: After all the fantasy and adventure movies that have been out, I was ripe for a good political thriller. Syriana looked to fit the bill. Great cast, I thought. But I was a little hesitant that it was written and directed by Stephen Gaghan, Oscar winner of Adapted Screenplay for Traffic, a movie I enjoyed but found overrated. Gaghan's win looked especially suspicious to me after seeing the original version of Traffic, a BBC miniseries about the UK’s war on opium with Afghanistan. Gaghan's version was basically just a rewrite subbing in the US and Mexico. Almost all of Gaghan's characters, flaws and all, were lifted directly from the original Traffic. He won his Oscar simply because he was a recovering drug addict who wrote a movie about the perils of the US war on drugs. The irony, you could practically hear all the Academy members sing! Gaghan then went on to write and direct the extremely bad Katie Holmes thriller, Abandon. Any thoughts that Abandon was some kind of sophomore slump were erased by Syriana. Yep, I hated it. I really hated it. And it's pretty much impossible to hate anything George Clooney is in, but I did. It wasn't the fact that he was bearded or overweight either. It was the fact that he was boooooooring (when we was even onscreen, because despite the previews he isn't even in it all that much). As was everyone else in the movie. They acted in some kind of emotional vacuum. Not a facial expression was seen for 95% of the movie. For the first 75 minutes absolutely nothing happens except for the knee-jerk outpouring of grief that results from the accidental death of a six year old. If all else fails, I guess killing a kid is the card you have to play. The movie picks up a bit when all parties descend on Beirut and an extremely graphic torture scene livens things up. Though it was so graphic, I covered my ears and hid in my coat, so I didn't get too much enjoyment out of it. If killing a child and torture weren’t going to do it, the only thing Gaghan could do to give Syriana some depth, some meaning, some gravitas was to make it deliberately confusing. Like Traffic, it follows around ten different characters all tenuously connected to the US obsession with oil. You've got the stock parts: evil oil executive, valiant CIA agent, selfish government bureaucrat who cares only for his talking points, poor embittered Islamist, and the deal-making out for himself lawyer. There was not one scene I marveled at or enjoyed in the movie. I could have dealt with the fact that it was blatantly anti-American (America uses lots of oil, ergo America is bad, ergo all the world’s problems lie at our feet even though we've only been around a measly 230 years. Forgive me, but I'll start paying attention to the proselytizing of Hollywood hotshots when they start turning down rides on gas guzzling private jets. Until then I'll continue driving my 10 year old Saab, recycling every bizarre item Thomas comes up with (e.g., yesterday I recycled the paperboard aluminum foil container and diligently detached and disposed of the teeth-edged tin cutting strip. I was later informed by Thomas that this strip should have gone in with the aluminum cans. Who knew?) and sleeping well at night)), had Syriana not been dull as dirt. Rating: Must be paid to see.

Aeon Flux: A few years ago Thomas introduced me to MTV's animated show and I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. Aeon was extremely visually creative and just could not be called a cartoon. That didn't cover it. We were both excited when we heard Charlize Theron would be starring in the movie version. We realized something was amiss when the movie was not released for critics, but that didn't stop us from going. It probably should have. Where the animated tv show was visually creative, the movie, not so much. It felt like I was watching some combination of a dream and a videogame. The set up for Aeon Flux is a bit Oryx and Crakeish and timely thanks to the media's obsession with the Asian bird flu: A disease wipes out most of the world's population. A cure is finally found and the remaining survivors all live in a Utopian enclosed community. Weird things start happening, people have flashbacks that make no sense and others disappear entirely. A rebel group, including Aeon, forms to fight the government. Theron does have chemistry with relative unknown Martin Csokas who plays the leader of the government and shares a mysterious past with Aeon. Some of the visuals in the movie were interesting, the sets had a kind of Japanese elegance, but the special effects were just plain weird and v unrealistic. I cannot recommend Aeon as I was bored by a good bit of it (though not as bored as I was in Syriana). Rating: Wait for cable

Chronicles of Narnia: Like most people who read the Chronicles of Narnia as a child, they remain some of my all time favorite children's books. And after seeing previews for the film, I absolutely could not wait to see the movie. Thomas and I caught a Saturday matinee and I was thrilled that we did. The movie follows the book to the letter. The characters, the sets and the plot are uncanny in their ability to replicate what I imagined from the book. The four human siblings who visit and must then save Narnia are all very convincing. Edmund is a little jerk from the start and Lucy captures your heart and holds it with a surprisingly nuanced performance for a nine year old. Given that the movie is targeted at children, I was afraid they'd cheat us on the ending battle scene, but instead the last thirty minutes were my favorite part. They manage to capture the urgency of the situation. However, there were a couple of things that kept Narnia from being this year's LOTR. As stated above, the movie is definitely aimed at kids, kind of like the first 2 Harry Potter movies. And because of this, I got a little bored in the middle. It doesn't help that the movie is 2.5 hours long. Narnia could have been tighter and the boredom factor would have been eliminated. But I think they really wanted to be true to the book and not cut a lot. So I can understand. My other objection is with the White Witch played by Tilda Swinton. I thought Swinton was perfectly cast in this role and she does look the part. But she just wasn't that scary. Nowhere near as terrifying as Sauron from LOTR or even the Queen from Snow White. They need to up the fear factor on future movies. What I really would have loved is to have seen this movie at age ten. I'm betting my ten-year-old self would be utterly enthralled. Unfortunately, I don't run with too many ten year olds, so I can't confirm their appreciation of the film, though the ones in the theatre with us seemed to really enjoy it. And Narnia had a $108.8 million dollar world wide box office opening this weekend, second only to the final LOTR for a December weekend, so I think we can be assured that they will be filming the other six books. You can bet I’ll be in line for them. Rating: Matinee

Pride & Prejudice: Of the four movies I saw in the past two weeks, there's only one that I am tempted to return to immediately: Pride & Prejudice. However, I am just as tempted to rent the BBC version and curl up on the couch for six straight hours watching it. I don't know what it is about this particular story that I just can't get enough of. They could make ten versions of it a year and I would go see them all. Let me start out by saying that the BBC mini-series starring Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle (paired both on and off screen during filming, resulting in all that lovely chemistry) is the definitive filmed version of the book. The story requires six hours to capture all the narrative and nuances in Austen's work. And no actor ever has or will embody Darcy like Firth. Ask any woman who's seen it and you'll get an earful. Jen and I went to see the latest P&P directed by newcomer Joe Wright last Sunday. It enthralled me from the get go. I've liked Keira Knightley ever since Bend it Like Beckham, but I was a little worried about her ability to be Elizabeth Bennet, one of the best roles of all time. However, Knightley handily portrayed Elizabeth's wit, amusement, loyalty, pride and yes, prejudice. She was a wonderful Elizabeth. Matthew McFayden starred as Darcy and this could not have been an easy role for anyone to take given the public's abject love and devotion to Firth. And it must be said that McFayden is not the best looking guy to be seen in front of the camera. His was a very brooding Darcy, fortuitously balanced by the equal amount of passion beneath the brooding. There was great chemistry between the two leads. Whenever one is anywhere in the vicinity of the other, the antagonism/attraction is palpable. The other standout in P&P was Donald Sutherland as Elizabeth's father, Mr. Bennet. His is now the ultimate Mr. Bennet. His love for his daughters (especially Elizabeth) and his crass, overly dramatic wife is apparent. But Sutherland does a brilliant job at making known Bennet's flaws as well. The two actors playing Jane Bennet and Mr. Bingley are also very good and good looking. Due to the length of the movie, many parts had to be cut down dramatically, particularly that of the evil Mr. Wickham and his effect on the Bennett family. For the most part the directing was well done. There are some amazing scenes of the English countryside and the director went out of his way to make his version more realistic. Befitting their financial situation, the girls' dresses are not so fine and the county balls are more rough-hewn. I personally like the pretty dresses, so this desire towards realism didn't really improve things for me. The director also tried a few fancy camera tricks that succeeded only in distracting me. But these are mere quibbles. The meat of P&P - the story of Elizabeth and Darcy - is all there and wonderful. It definitely sated this Austenatic's appetite for a short while. Rating: Night time movie

Boulder Bumpersticker of the Day: No war. No KKK. No fascist USA!

-sunday

Get on the Bus!

Hey everyone! You know it's bad when 20 degrees looks like a manna from heaven. This is the situation we've been here in the front range for about a week now. It started with crazy winds, turned into negative degree weather and just stayed that way for days. Now it's finally warming up, and by that I mean a balmy 22 degrees. But thanks to the sunshine and lack of wind it feels warmer.

All of this was made much worse by the snow that came on Tuesday. Single digit temps and snow tend to create one of my top ten fears: driving on ice. Tuesday would have been the first day I was forced to attempt it in a while and I just wasn't up for it, so I decided to catch the bus. This was made much easier by the installment of a bus stop pretty much right outside my door, meaning I could hop on the bus and be dropped off at the Flatirons stop. It's then about a 10 minute walk (all uphill, but still) to work. Sounds easy, right?

Not quite. On Tuesday after work, I left my car in the lot and had Aida drive me to the Flatirons bus stop. I was there a good five minutes before it was due, so I thought I was sitting pretty. Instead the bus was ONE HOUR late. This meant that me and two other frozen popcicles had to stand at the stop in - not kidding - 2 degree weather for one hour. 50 minutes later when no buses had appeared AT ALL I broke down, called Thomas and told him I was getting on the next bus no matter where it was going. I just had to get warm! I could not feel my fingers or toes and I was ready to break. Amazingly ten minutes later the next bus appeared and it was actually the one I needed. I've never been so glad to be on a bus in my life. The guy I sat next to told me that he caught it in Denver and that the line wrapped around the building. Looks like it's going to be a fun winter.

Boulder Bumpersticker of the Day: Stop hiding behind your bumperstickers!

A Week of Feasting

Hey everyone! First, the pic to the left is Thomas (looking oh so thrilled) wearing the scarf I knitted Creede for his birthday . He requested orange and black stripes. These are the colors of OSU, so he'll be very spirited indeed when donning it. It was my first time making stripes and fringe, so it was a good learning experiment. When we come home for Christmas, he'd so better be wearing it!

For Thanksgiving, Thomas and I went to Jackson, MS to visit his family. Click this link to see all the pics. Once again, I've never had so much good food. I got to eat all of my favorite things - catfish one night from the Cock of the Walk (if you're ever in Jackson this is a must stop as they also have the best cornbread, hushpuppies, turnip greens and fried pickles imaginable), ribs another night, and finally Thanksgiving dinner itself. However, the best treat of all turned out to be growing in Allison and Jess's backyard. My new favorite fruit, the persimmon. I've never before had a persimmon and this is just a crime against nature. They look like a cross between a mini-pumkin and an orange tomato. They're very pretty, great texture and extremely sweet. Marlene sent us home with three and we shared the last one last night. I miss them dreadfully already. As a shot in the dark, I asked Thomas to see if Whole Foods had any. They did! They were bigger, so I was a little suspicious. And rightly so. These persimmons were v bitter and seemed to coat my mouth with a chalky substance. Also the texture was much less crisp. Allison must have seeds to the the most magic persimmon tree in all the land. We kept our seeds from the three sent home with us and hope to plant them on our deck. I'm not holding my breath, but here's hoping.

Also over Thanksgiving Thomas and I made Bobbi's kiffles recipe. I'd never heard of kiffles before last Christmas when Thomas had a hankering for them. They take a few hours to make, but are worth every minute. They're basically a slim pastry stuffed with a sweet walnut filling. I guess they're well known back East, but no one in Oklahoma had heard of them. They were a huge hit both there and in Jackson. We'll be making them again in a month.

During the trip we also introduced Allison and Jess to Settlers of Catan. I was a little peeved that Allison won her first game ever while I'd yet to win a game, but later that week, my win finally came and boy did it feel good. I think we have two more converts to Catan now.

Finally, I got to meet Thomas's imaginary friend, Mark, who proved to be quite real indeed. We met him and his Argentinian girlfriend Kendela at The Two O'Clock Bayou a cajun joint in Jackson and then got to spend some time on Mark's sailboat, The Silver Fox 2. That was it! I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving.

-sunday

Fall Movie Reviews

Hey everyone! Wow - where did November go? It honestly feels like I wrote a blog entry like one week ago and I look and see it's been a month. I guess it's just that time of year. Utter and complete craziness. Thomas and I have done several things worth blogging about. The first is our venture to the Denver Film Fest with Jen and Dave (the above pic is from the Telluride film fest, so its presence is not quite as random as it seems). We saw two movies. The first was From Subway with Love, a Czech romantic comedy. Since romantic comedies are probably my fav genre, I'm pretty easy to please with a movie like this. The film is supposed to be the biggest Czech film of all time and 600,000 Czechs have seen it. Not sure what this translates in box office numbers but they're quite excited about it. The story revolves around a 20-something girl who gets involved with an older guy (so old he actually dated her mother). All the actors were good and the directing was fine as well, though he did make a few bizarre choices, one involving a fake bear. I was a little disappointed that there weren't more cityscapes included in the movie, as Prague is one of the most beautiful cities in the world. It would have been interesting to see what scenery, buildings, etc., a native Czech would want to show off. But this is really my only complaint. From Subway was very enjoyable and I'd recommend it if you're a fan of romantic comedies or foreign films or both, of course. A highlight of going to the festival was that the director came up after the movie to take questions from the audience. Most of the questions were pretty dumb (except for Thomas's of course), and most he answered in pretty good English. But the question of the fake bear came up and he gave an answer in Czech that lasted like five minutes that his interpreter answered it in about 10 words. Talk about being lost in translation.

After that, we saw The White Countess, the last Merchant Ivory film, starring Ralph Fiennes and Natasha Richardson. It's set in the late 30s in Shanghai, the same setting you'll note as the beginning of Empire of the Sun. Unfortunately this movie does not compare in the slightest to Empire, one of my favs and the debut of Mr. Batman himself, Christian Bale. If you haven't seen it (Empire or Batman Begins really, run don't walk to your nearest video store. Anyway, back to the boring topic of Countess. This should have been a good movie. I'm a huge fan of Merchant Ivory (Room with a View, Howard's End, Soldier's Daughter Never Cries, and Mr. and Mrs. Bridge, to name a few). Merchant just died though, so this is the denouement of the famous production duo. Fiennes plays ex-American diplomat, Todd Jackson (doesn't that sound like a character out of a John Hughes 80s movie or at least one of the Todds I dated in the 90s, for in those decades all guys seemed to be named either Mark or Todd) a blind guy who lost his sight and his family in various Shanghai bombings. This depresses him, but doesn't deter him from staying in Shanghai (full of ex-pats from all sorts of countries all hobnobbing together) and opening his dream club. He befriends a Japanese man of similar sensibilities, Mr. Matsuda and hires Countess Sofia Belinsky (Richardson) to be the club's hostess. Sofia, her daughter and various other family members (played by Richardson's real life mother, Vanessa Redgrave and aunt, Lynn Redgrave) are Russian émigrés who've fled Russia thanks to the Communist revolution. They've fallen on hard times and now rely on Sofia to bring in the cash for the family, all the while judging her harshly for her shady occupation. The movie drifts along for a good 2 hours before the Japanese finally start bombing Shanghai and Countess picks up a bit. I enjoyed the last 30 minutes but in no way can I recommend this dullest of films about what should be a very interesting subject.

Since the Film Festival, we've tried desperately to see some other films as the good ones are finally being released. Circumstances have intervened and though we've made it to the theatre several times, we've only actually seen one other movie in the past month. Quelle horreur! That movie was of course, Harry Potter 4. Once again we had a new director. I was a bit upset about this given my fondness for Alfonso Cuaron's (Great Expectations, A Little Princess) brilliant job in Harry Potter 3. But at least they didn't reinstate Chris Columbus. 4 was directed by Mike Newell another good director (Four Weddings & a Funeral, Pushing Tin, Donnie Brasco, etc.). His talent at pacing well served the film as it moved swiftly along and managed to capture all the key scenes from the book. The book is very long so there were some harsh cuts that were made, but they were understandable. For example, the highlight of the movie for both Thomas and me was the challenge where Harry has to capture the golden egg from the dragon. The action scenes were breathtaking. We were both disappointed that they didn't show the other three champions' battles with dragons, but I'm guessing the special effects budget for this was too steep. There was a lot of media attention on the fact that this is the first HP movie to get a pg-13 rating. I was thankful for this. Just as the books have progressed in complexity and maturity as Harry's aged, so should the movies. There's a good deal of focus on the romantic ordeals of Harry, Hermione and Ron. All of this I enjoyed but Thomas was bored by. The dance was especially fun, though I thought Hermione was quite overwrought both in this scene and throughout the movie. She didn't seem so emotional in the book to me. Ron, as usual, is the weak link. I'm not sure what will happen to his whiny character in book 7, but the only fitting end for him will be death or conversion to the dark side. I also have to say the kid who plays Harry isn't aging too gracefully. Perhaps it's just an ugly duckling phase, but a hottie he is not - so will he be replaced come HP 5, 6 or 7 due to his "age"? We'll just have to see. The actor, Danielle Radcliffe, does have some chops though. He brought the high emotion needed to the finale when the infamous first Hogwarts death occurs. So, Harry Potter 4 was awesome - it wasn't as visually interesting as Cuaron's 3, but the story, the effects and the pacing made for an exciting film that did not disappoint this fan of all things HP.

Next time, a Thanksgiving wrap up and pics, provided I can remember how to get them off my camera.

-sunday