Mischief Managed, Mostly.
Mood:  happy
Topic: Sam
Harry Potter update: Sam and I had our movie date this morning. It was touch and go for a while. Upon waking him up, I crowed, "Sam! It's Harry Potter day! We're going to the movies!" to which he replied "No. It's scary." Well, shit, that was a fine kettle of fish. But since we were taking Matt to day care anyway, I figured I could just drop him off too, go by myself, and eat the extra $6.50 for the child ticket.

He waffled a bit at the day care and finally elected to go. And God bless his heart, he handled it like a champ. He wasn't scared, despite the seven alarming previews we had to sit through first, and the thundering sound system. What did him in, eventually, was this: A little boy of not quite three absolutely cannot, will not, sit still for two hours plus.

I believe the running time of Prisoner of Azkaban is 145 minutes. As you may know, the attention span of a boy of not quite three is about fifteen seconds. To be honest, he did great for about the first hour and a half, whereupon he started to fidget. Seriously to fidget, including things like kicking his foot repeatedly against the railing, making repetitive noise. And if there is one person I refuse to be, it's that woman you have silently vowed to strangle because her child is persistently doing something incredibly annoying in a public place, yet she refuses to stop him. I managed to keep him at bay for a while, but I knew time was running out.

So we were winding down towards the end, and we'd gotten past the bit where they use the Time Turner, and you are seeing the werewolf scene again, and Hermione (and her boobs!) are howling, when Sam suddenly announced, in typical Sam cut-to-the-chase fashion: "I don't want to be in this place anymore. I want to go bye-bye." At that point, I knew it was time to make our exit. And out we went, without further ado.

So, I missed the final fifteen or twenty minutes of a movie I have been waiting months to see. But that's okay. I've read the book; it's not like I don't know how it ends. I won't write a movie review here (honestly, I am on a few HP mailgroups, and I love you guys! but I have read too many minute dissections to have the stomach to write one of my own). I will say that I loved the Monster Book of Monsters, that was really well done, and the film was gorgeous and visually striking, and I really don't mind Michael Gambon, and I would have liked to see more Maggie Smith, and David Thewlis did an awesome job, and I wasn't as impressed by Gary Oldman as I thought I'd be, and Emma Thompson was hilarious. She's actually a good comedic actress. Did anyone see Junior?

I've talked to a few HP purists who didn't like the movie because it diverted too much from the book. Well, that, as they say, is showbiz. I am a huge fan of the author John Irving, and I have read his novel The Cider House Rules a number of times, and I adore the movie adaptation even though a whole bunch of stuff was cut out or altered, and a few extremely central, pivotal characters were eliminated entirely. But you gotta do what you gotta do (although, of course, John Irving himself wrote the screenplay and won an Oscar for his efforts). It's Hollywood, not some alternate John Irving universe. And so, if I may, for HP.

Apart from that? Sam and I had a super mommy and son day. We went to the playground, and a McDonald's with a playground, and Prehistoric Pets (local reptile shop/reptile zoo, where he got to interact with a giant monitor lizard which roams the place), and finally Toys R Us, where he persuaded me to buy him a Harry Potter playset, despite my certainty that all the tiny pieces will be scattered to the four corners of the globe by week's end.

But does anyone know when Prisoner of Azkaban is coming out on video? I hope it's not too far off. Having waited months to see the movie, I'll be waiting months more to see the ending.