Good Movie, Good Book, Good Life

We went to see the new Harry Potter movie today. We decided to see it in this new fangled 3D that everyone seems to be talking about.

I had purchased passes from the AMA a while back. You can get a couple of bucks off of the price. When I say that I bought the tickets, I meant that I had my buddy buy them for me. I gave him the cash and he went in and bought the tickets since he is the one with the AMA card. I felt like a 16 year old kid waiting outside the beer store, while a kindly older stranger went in to the store to get the beer. You never knew whether the guy would stiff you for the money or come out with the beer. I was pretty sure that Ken wouldn’t stiff me for the tickets, but you never know. It turns out that his actions were as good as his word. If you have to have older friends, make sure they are honest or too stupid to be criminal. I don’t mean you Ken! (yes I do)

We went to the theatre and lined up to get our tickets. When we got to the front of the line, the teller told us that the passes are good for the regular movie, but it would cost us three more dollars for the 3-D. WTF, for the glasses? Okay, it is going to be great. We take the two steps to the girl taking our tickets and giving us stubs and she asks us if we need glasses or did we bring our own? Just give me the glasses honey! I paid six bucks for them.

We go into the theatre, pick our seats and watch commercials for twenty minutes. I’m old school and “back in the day” if you didn’t get two movies you would get a short and a chance to see clips of five or six movies that are soon to be released. Good thing they advertised the snack bar, I could have missed the smell of freshly popped corn, the flashing lights and lines of ravenous movie goers. The movie began and I have to admit the glasses and 3-D effects were pretty cool. They weren’t as good as I had hoped they would be, and I doubt I will go to another one until the technology improves. I tend to have a pretty good imagination so for me less is more.

I am a big Harry Potter fan and have read each of the books more than once. The problem with film adaptations is that they have time constraints and are subject to the director’s interpretation. I understand why parts need to be left out, but why the parts that I think are key? The same thing happened with the Lord of The Rings Trilogy. What bothers me about this is that there are many people out there that don’t read and think they know the book because they watched the movie. They know the movie! I remember having a conversation with a young man about LOTRs and he didn’t know the book at all.

We all have things that we think are important, and in the universe does it really matter about a movie? I guess not. If you really like a movie though, go to the library and take out the book. I am sure you will like it and you might just find out some things that the author wanted you to know.

Good movie, good book, good life.