Harry Potter Thoughts

Today I went and saw Harry Potter 7 Part 2 for a second time, with my Dad and my sister.  Being more awake than I was for the midnight showing, and having seen the movie once before, I was able to give more thought to various parts of the movie, beyond the general plot lines and suspense and excitement and whatnot.

I now give you some of these thoughts, in no particular order.

-Luna's opening statement about the shell chimes ("Muggles think these keep evil away...but they're wrong."):  Love it.  Chilling in its simplicity.

-Helena Bonham Carter acting like Hermione Granger acting like Bellatrix Lestrange: Brilliant.  Simply brilliant.  I'm 99.9% sure she's my favorite actress.

-It really is too bad that child Lily's eyes don't match Harry's.

-The rotating camera / shirt changing scene: Awkward and Unnecessary.  I guess that the director was trying to get a sense of the urgency of the protaganists' task by implying that they don't even have time to change clothes after jumping from a dragon's back into a lake before discussing their next steps to defeating Voldemort, but it really just highlights the pudgy-ness of the male characters' stomachs and kind of distracts from the intensity.

-The Snape flashback sequence: Perfect.  I love how they integrated clips from the other films.  Although, the de-aging (youthifying?) technology they used on Alan Rickman was just a bit strange...it was effectively done for the most part, I thought, but every now and then he had the look of an unfortunate botox patient...

-It's too bad that the kid who played Crabbe got caught growing/smoking/selling/doing illegal things with marijuana so that the kid who plays Blaise had to step in for the Room of Requirement scene...it takes away from the Malfoy/Crabbe/Goyle vs Harry/Ron/Hermione storyline that was sort of a mini introductory version of the good vs evil theme.  Oh well.

-The Gemino Curse: simple, but horrifying, if you think about it...

-Ron's facial hair disguise: a little too Pirate-Sherlock-Holmes.  But an effective disguise, it seems.

Ahoy, Watson.

-Why don't Americans use "brilliant" as a slang term like the British do?  Let's start that...

-Voldemort's laugh is ever-so-slightly reminiscent of a sheep bleeting.  Not as intimidating as it could be.

-The girls screaming in the Great Hall when Voldemort starts speaking in their heads: brilliant.  This is the first time that the rest of the school is coming into direct contact with Voldemort, and I loved the chilling way that that moment was introduced with the solitary and unexpected screams.

-Dean Thomas got over the whole Hogwarts battle thing WAY too quickly...sitting there with his cup of coffee laughing it up just minutes after the battle ends.

-I like how you don't really see any of the main characters die, but just see their dead bodies after the fact (the ones who die, that is)...my Dad pointed it out as a complaint, but I think it's more effective this way, to just happen upon the dead with no warning, like Harry, Ron, and Hermione are experiencing.

-Are there no Hufflepuffs in Dumbledore's Army?  All the kids seemed to be Gryffindors or Ravenclaws.  And I am ALWAYS a Hufflepuff whenever I take those online "Which House Are You" quizzes, no matter how complex or simplistic they are, and so I resent that a bit.  I mean, Hufflepuffs may be somewhat underrepresented and underdescribed in the Harry Potter series, but that does not make them any less present.  Even if all we really know about them is that they're loyal and good at finding things...

Harry Potter Hangover

I woke up this morning with a Harry Potter Hangover.

Or, I should say, I woke up this afternoon...at 12:30pm.  Apparently I slept right through my 10am alarm - I don't remember shutting it off, though I do remember rejecting a phone call from a friend around 9am (sorry Brandi).  I was kind of shocked to see that it was so late in the day; I really expected the clock to say 10:30, not  12:30.  Despite feeling like I could sleep the rest of the day, I hauled myself out of bed, and knocked on my sister's door to announce that it was already after noon.  Since she was planning to drive out to Columbia to visit friends in the "afternoon", I figured she better know that it was already the afternoon.  Hannah lugged herself out of bed shortly thereafter, and we went to Sonic for "lunch."  Although the timing felt more like breakfast, there was nothing breakfast-y about my New York style hot dog (spicy mustard, sauerkraut, and grilled onions) and tator tots.  Which, by the way, were delicious.  

Shortly after our breakfast/lunch outing, Hannah set off on her weekend trip to Columbia, and since my mom is out of town having a girls' weekend at the lake, it was just me and my dad - which is actually really nice, because I rarely get to see my dad anymore living 10 hours from the family homestead, and it's even more rare that we get to spend time together just the two of us.  We spent our daddy-daughter evening having dinner at California Pizza Kitchen and watching The King's Speech.  It was a really fun evening!

Then Dad went to bed around 9:30, and I began to consider how best to handle my Harry Potter hangover.  Although the tiredness may have worn off, I was now faced with the fact that it was approaching "bedtime" and it felt like midday.  Since I'm determined not to get myself onto some weird sleep schedule, I decided the best thing to do would be to watch a little TV and do a little writing, and then plop myself in bed with an audiobook and listen to it until I fell asleep.  So I watched a couple episodes of Friends, wrote an email to a friend, wrote this blog post, and soon I will grab the iPod to tackle the audiobook, and hope that sleep finds me somewhere in the meantime.  

I am actually feeling somewhat sleepy now, so I have high hopes for a good night's rest.  I've gotta be all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for my friends' wedding tomorrow - which I shall tackle dateless and with great amounts of finesse and grace, and for which I shall look hott (with TWO t's) in the infamous zebra dress.  Should be a good day.

I'll leave you with a couple pics from last night's premiere...observe the finished t-shirts of two posts ago... :)

Harry Potter. It Happened.

Yes, I midnight premiere-d it up with my best friend Jessica and my sister Hannah.  We arrived at the theater around 8:30pm, sat in line for about 2 hours, were ushered into the theater around 10:30, briefly met Curt Copeland of Z107.7 radio fame (it was exciting), lost a costume contest, sat through preview after preview...

...and then we watched the movie.

Then the movie ended, and we went to Steak and Shake (at 3am), where we, along with other fans, shocked the establishment with unusually large crowds for the understaffed restaurant to handle.  But we were patient, and our food was good.  Nothing like a Frisco melt and cheese fries in the wee hours of the morning.  Then we all tipped the waiter over 100%, because he was the only one working and obviously really stressed out (combined, we left him a $25 tip for a $16 bill).  Good deeds make my heart happy.

And now I'm home, and it's 4am, and I'm going to bed.  Pictures will appear tomorrow.

I'm getting too old for midnight premieres...

Arts and Crafts: Fail.

So today my sister and I decided to make some T-Shirts.

The Harry Potter midnight premiere is tomorrow night, and Hannah took it upon herself to make "Homemade Dark Mark" shirts (a Very Potter Musical reference) for the two of us and our friend Jessica to wear to the premiere.  It's going to be all nerd-tastic.

The problems arose when Hannah and I got just a tad too ambitious in our T-Shirt creation efforts, and wanted to put a quote on the back.  We were going to just get some iron-on letters, but we would have had to buy something like nine packs in order to have enough "N"s.  So, instead, we got some big iron-on sheets and printed off the words, intending to cut out each letter individually.  This was already a STELLAR idea (sarcasm), and it got even better when we realized how tedious it was to cut out each letter.  But things were still going well...until Hannah realized about an hour into cutting out letters that she had neglected to tell me to peel the backing off first, making it impossible to iron on the letters without peeling each letter apart individually...which is impossible to do after they've been cut out.

Happily, out of the three shirts we're making, the victorious one is the one that we're making for my friend Jessica, so at least our failure has only affected ourselves.  The new plan is to go buy more iron-on stuff tomorrow and change our technique to be more creator-friendly.  Hopefully we'll have more success...gotta look all Harry Potter-tastic for the movie premiere tomorrow night!

And now, for your enjoyment, some evidence of our struggle...

Contemplating our efforts

The face of defeat

Defeat soon gave way to hysteria

Tune in tomorrow to see the finished product...since I'll be at the movies until like 3am, don't expect a super-long post, but I'll definitely try to throw a photo or two up here (if I remember in my delerium).  I hope you're doing equally nerdy things in the name of Harry Potter!