Harry Potter 6 comes to the big screen

So, a few weeks ago my wife and I went and saw Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. I have to say I was very impressed with the movie, much more so than I have been with the last few Harry Potter film adaptations. I felt like they did a good job of keeping the important stuff in the show while keeping the superfluous added nonsense (like the third movie’s shrunken heads) to a minimum. I really liked the girl who played Lavender Brown. I thought she was very cute and did a great job in the role.

Being that I am such a big fan of these books I have had a hard time coming to grips with the fact that so many of my favorite scenes (like the scene in St. Mungo’s in book 5) and many of my favorite characters (like Peeves, Bill and Charley Weasley, Ludo Bagman and Rufus Scrimgeour) never make it into the movies. In addition to the obvious fact that it is simply not possible to preserve everything when translating a book to the screen I have concluded that the producers likely recognize the fact that most people who watch these movies have probably read the books and can therefore fill in the blanks for themselves without having to have everything shown on screen. Another thing that has often bugged me with these movies is the fact that you seem to see them in class so rarely that you tend to lose track of the fact that they are indeed going to school. OK, now time for Ryan to get on his soapbox and have a little rant. There seems to be an ongoing joke related to these movies that I find really annoying. I find it so irksome because not only it is so ridiculously inaccurate but the people who propagate the joke, for the most part, ought to know how ridiculous it is. The joke is about how the actors who play Harry, Ron and Hermione are getting too old to be playing high-school aged kids. In the really stupid film Epic Movie which spoofed a number of films there is a scene where the main characters end up at Hogwarts and meet parodies of Harry, Ron and Hermione played by fat, middle-aged actors. They continually rant about how it makes no sense that these three are still at this school while the balding Ron, the pregnant, smoking Hermione and crazy Harry insist that they are really teenagers. In the previews for the new Adam Sandler movie Funny People a character makes a crack about how these characters are so old that they must be going for a PhD in Wizardry and asks “how long are they gonna be at that high school.” Now, some of you who are not as big movie buffs as I am may ask yourself, “What’s the big deal? Aren’t they too old to play teenagers?” The answer is no!
The simple fact of the matter is this: In TV and movies high-school aged characters are almost never played by high-school aged actors. Let me give you a few examples to illustrate my point. In the movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Alan Ruck was about 30 when he played the part of Cameron Frye. Rachel McAdams was about 26 when she played Regina George in Mean Girls. Turning to TV, in the new FOX show Glee high school football star Finn Hudson is played by 27 year-old Cory Monteith and high school sophomore Rachel Berry is played by 23 year-old Lea Michele. I could give more examples but let’s face it; this post is long enough already. Anyway, how does this compare with our three Harry Potter stars? Well, Daniel Radcliffe who plays Harry Potter just turned 20 last month. Emma Watson who plays Hermione Granger is 19 (a whopping 2 years older than her character) and Rupert Grint who plays Ron Weasley is just about to reach the ripe old age of 21. So, the truth is, by normal Hollywood standards, these parts were actually cast a bit young. End of rant.

A Whole 'Nother Interview

Well, I must sound like a broken record but, I have a job interview on Friday morning. This came as a surprise to me because this was a company I had applied with back in January and had received a rejection postcard from. Well, whilst I was up in Idaho enjoying some time with my inlaws, celebrating Collin's first birthday and learning a great deal about the stock market from my father-in-law, I got an unexpected e-mail. As it turns out there are rare occasions when that whole "we will keep your resume on file" thing they say in those rejection letters is not just a big fat pile of bantha poodoo (that's a Star Wars reference. Ask a nerd if you don't get it.). They have another couple open positions and they want to have me come in to see if any of them will be a good fit. So, I am very optimistic about the interview on Friday. Wish me luck.

Rothfuss Interview

So, while Patrick Rothfuss (Author of The Name of the Wind) was in London he gave an interview regarding his new and highly anticipated book The Wise Man's Fear. I found the interview fascinating and so I decided to post it. It is almost an hour long so I totally understand if you choose not to watch it.

Patrick Rothfuss Interview
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Harper's Island

Back in 1939 Agatha Christie published a book called And Then There Were None. In this book a group of people are trapped on a deserted island. Even though they are quite sure that they are the only people on the island one by one they start to be murdered. There was a great deal of fear in the hearts of each of the characters because they knew that the most likely scenario was that one of them was the murderer. But there was also the nagging fear that there might indeed be someone else on the island that they didn’t know about. And Then There Were None is considered to be one of Agatha Christie’s best novels and is by far her most financially successful. As a result of this fame there have over the years been numerous horror movies made based on the same premise of a group of people trapped on an island being killed off one at a time with no way of getting off.CBS just finished airing a single season, 13 episode show called Harper’s Island. When I first heard of this show it looked like just another cheap carbon copy of the template Christie employed in her classic novel. However, it turned out to be a very different and interesting take on the trapped-on-an-island-with-a-nutcase-killer story. The story is set on a fictional island off the Washington coast and features a previously supposed dead, serial killer named John Wakefield. The difference that I found so fascinating about this was the fact that this was not a deserted island. Harper’s Island was an inhabited island with hundreds of people with all the normal stuff that one would find in any other town. I found that way of doing things interesting because this type of story has so often depended on the fact that the characters are cut off from any help or escape. The way the creators of the show were able to make it all work was by keeping the first several murders secret from the characters. The people that were killed early on in the show were people who were supposedly about to leave the island anyway, flighty people who had a habit of taking off suddenly and without warning and people who most of the characters didn’t know were on the island anyway. One murder was even disguised as a suicide. Of course, eventually people start realizing what is going on and, like any good mystery, suspicion falls on several people before it is finally revealed who is behind it all.In the end, in addition to John Wakefield there was also a bad guy among the main group of characters that was committing some of the murders himself. Though this was a pretty good show, there were several things that I didn’t really like that much. First, when our crazy man finally shows his face and starts killing people openly you have one of the most annoying horror flick clichés. That is the whole thing where five people with loaded shotguns can’t seem to kill one kook with a long ugly knife even though he is standing ten feet away from them. The other thing that bugged me was in the second to the last episode when we found out who Wakefield’s accomplice was. I know with these types of reveals it is supposed to be a huge surprise but when Henry turned out to be Wakefield’s son and accomplice it was so unexpected and such a big surprise to me that it didn’t really seem plausible.

Job Search Update

For those of you who are craving an update on my happy joyous job search here it is. I had my interview back on Wednesday and I got a rejection e-mail on Friday. However, there is some good news. I'm leaving in about an hour for an interview with another company. It just goes to show that this whole "Networking" thing is pretty useful.

Another Job Interview

Well, I have another job interview tomorrow. I interviewed with this company before back in November but this is for a different position. Also, I had a networking contact that works for the company and recommended me to the person I'm supposed to interview with. So, I guess we'll see what happens.

Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen – Falls Flat

I am a huge fan of Transformers. I loved the first movie and I really, really, REALLY wanted Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen to be as awesome as the original. Unfortunately, it just didn’t deliver. The first movie was a little heavy on the adolescent, potty-humor but this one just took it to such an extreme that it became ridiculous and got old very fast. There also seemed to be a great deal more swearing in this one and not much of a plot.

Now, I don’t want to make it sound as though I didn’t like anything about it. The special effects were incredible and the first about 20 minutes of the movie was awesomely action packed. I liked how they expanded the mythos behind the Transformers and explained more about the interactions they had had with Earth before and the way that sheds some light on the whole Beast Wars Transformer line. Also, I thought it was nice how they showed that Transformers have the free will to choose which side they are on. Unfortunately, all this wasn’t enough to save the movie. I hope that they do better with the next one.