Turkey Day

November 23, 2001

Happy Thanksgiving. I spent the day bumming around with friends, living halfway between consciousness and tryptophan delirium. Isn’t that the way it should be? Goofy photos here. Not really worth looking at, but hell, I took the pictures.

I do like this sunset though, don’t you?

Belated commentary on the latest zeitgeist monstrosity, Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone, coming right up. I haven’t read any of the books, so I went in cold to the film. I caught the premiere in Westwood, so it was fairly freak-laden, with bunches of folks in cloaks and house gear and an occasional one with a staff or a broom. It was definitely an event, and you anticipation from the audience was tangible. As for the film, I dug it. It’s not the greatest thing ever, but I could definitely see why people were going ga-ga over it, especially young kids.

As a film, the narrative jumps around quite a bit, and it feels like Chris Columbus tried to stay a little bit too faithful to the book. If anyone would have been daring enough give something that didn’t follow the book so literally, they might have been onto something really good. Of course, the chances of them screwing that up would have been fairly high too. These are the risks of adaptation. Potter takes the safe route and delivers something that feels a bit too much like the Cliff’s Notes version of the book.

That said, the makers of the film did an amazing job creating Potter’s world of magicians and monsters. By the time Harry gets to Hogwart’s, everything feels fully realized and cut of whole cloth. There are many times where you could see the audience was as wide-eyed as Harry himself, and that’s about as big a compliment I can pay.

I’m not fully on the Potter bandwagon, but it has my support. Unlike your average kids phenomenon, Potter gets kids to read and use their imagination, to be better thinkers and believers. I think that’s something I can get behind. My understanding is that the books get significantly better, and my hope is that the following movies get better too. I’d like a little more for the adults in the audience. Once the film franchise gets that done, I’ll go buy my Gryffindor polo like everyone else.

Posted in Endless Whining, Moving Pictures