Harry and the Gang Ends 8 Films with a Whimper

As a die-hard Harry Potter fan, I went into the movie theatre 10 years ago to see the first film adaptation with scepticism. Like most fans, this feeling was purely that the film would not live up to my expectations, that something would be missing or changed which is blasphemy, and that the actress portraying Hermione Granger wouldn’t be cute enough. I walked out of the film a satisfied fan because the first film was almost scene-by-scene the book, almost nothing was changed or missing, and Emma Watson was cute and adorable.

One of the only reasons I continued to pay to watch mediocre sequels.

Over the years, my expectations that someone could fit 500-700 pages into a 2-hour movie without butchering the book went down and I let some things go without much criticism. And then I saw the trailer for the seventh film part deux. I was blown away by how awesome it was. The pace was fast, the scenes moving, and Mrs. Weasley fought like she meant to kill. After seeing the trailer a dozen times, I set a date and prepared to see the final film of the series in IMAX to end the series in style.

To get you up to speed: Harry, Ron, and Hermione are out to destroy several magical objects called Horcruxes so that they canfinally defeat the Dark Lord/He Who Must Not Be Named/Lord Voldemort. Thing is, they only have hunches of where and what these darn things are so they’re running around a bank (Gringrotts) and a school (Hogwarts) while trying to escape from everything that’s trying to kill them (a dragon, Death Eaters, Lord Voldemort, giants, etc).

“Why do I need glasses when I know magic?!?”

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 didn’t live up to the hype nor to how the trailer portrayed the film, the latter of which should have been obvious but I didn’t want to believe it. All the big scenes were covered by the film, even the moan-worthy 19 years later scene, but nothing was particularly memorable or rewatchable. 3D simply meant that the characters appeared to be 3 inches closer to my face, the pace was fluctuated between slow and slower, even the Battle of Hogwarts scenes, and none of the supporting actors could get anything more than 1 line or said something for cheap laughs which I didn’t laugh at. By the end I only felt a sense of relief that the movie wasn’t longer and agony that I spent $19 for a movie.

That being said,  I wouldn’t completely stay away from the film. Additional elements in the Battle of Hogwarts that weren’t in the book were fine by me, everything looked beautiful and Mrs. Weasley said her fan-famous PG 13 line. All in all, the franchise comes to a satisfactory end and thank-god the cast was perfect, save for Ginny Weasley. But hey, if JK Rowling supposedly says it’s awesome, who am I to judge?

The Curious Case of the Library Due Date Card

Cameron Public Library was and continues to be the ugly sister among the Burnaby library branches. Its walls are brown, as are the doors, book shelves and desks. The carpet is stained and grey, the lights yellow and dim, and the word “PUSH” on the unpolished metal bars that you, big surprise, push through to enter and leave the library is barely intelligible. But as a kid, you don’t care about these kinds of things. All you care about is going to the library every Sunday and reading about the adventures of some curious kids escaping from a malevolent man with a tattoo or inside a yellow grinning bus. It is because of this diligence that the bookshelf in my room contains all but 9 books I’ve bought for myself. Whatever books I wanted to read, I’d find them already there in the library because I had no idea when new books were going to be published. I’d take my stash of books, usually 4 each time, and the leave the library with plenty of stories to entertain me until next Sunday.

Reading Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping this past weekend, I flipped to the very back of the book and saw something that caught my eye: the envelope that held its library due date card.

I still remember bringing my books to the front counter and watching the librarian stamp the due date on the white piece of paper, put another inside the envelope and handed it back to me. This was before the library inventory was computerized and you can just scan the bar code on each book to keep track of which books have been checked out. 

Each day I’m reminded that technology has replaced almost every part of life, even borrowing books. I used to write things I needed to do on my physical calendar or planner. Now, it’s on my Google Calendar and iPhone. Talking to friends usually meant in person or on the phone. Now, it’s on Skype and we can watch movies together even though we’re not together in the same physical space. Pretty soon, people won’t go and borrow books, but get them online and onto their e-books or tablets. Just goes to show how long of a way we’ve come. Yet escalators still break down every other day. Curious, no?