Thoughts on Harry Potter

So we recently managed to watch Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince in the theater (shocking in and of itself I know!). It was decent. I knew about most of the changes made to the film going in so those particular shocking moments weren't particularly shocking. I was sad they left out a couple of the memories/trips that Dumbledore and Harry encounter that related to Voldemort's past, but overall it was a fine film. And at almost 3 hours I never really felt that it was dragging, so that's something. The kids seemed to enjoy it well enough so that's another point in its favor. I think the director is in dire need of another film filter as I'm a little tired of the bluish tinge he paints everything with (this is SERIOUS! the story is SERIOUS! please to pay attention to my SERIOUS film making and story telling skillz!) But yeah, certainly worse pieces of cinema out there.

Which leads into Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I decided to read through book 7 again as I haven't read it since it came out and I wanted to see how it held up. Not terribly well is the answer. Book 5 got a little better the second time through, Book 7 is definitely a little worse. Honestly the entire first half of that book could be ripped out, burned and otherwise deleted from the Universe and it would be fine. Things do get a little better in the second half, but only a little. I'm not crazy about the author wish fulfillment that turns Hermione into uber-witch Granger, the revisionist half hearted attempt at redeeming Snape (that still fails miserably in my book - he wasn't good, he wasn't really working for the good guys, he was basically a creepy stalker who with his dying breath wanted to see the eyeballs of said stalking obssession), the basic underwhelming-ness of Harry... Yeah I could go on. I think the publishers decided to just let Rowling write whatever she wanted. Editing? What's editing? Who needs a canonically consistent plot? Which is a shame as it is after all the end of the series. Oh well, chalk one up for the whimper column.

Which makes me worry about the movies. They're splitting the book into two movies. I've already made my thoughts on the first half of the book clear. This will not end well folks. Admittedly there will be a couple pretty nice moments. There are some flashes of brilliance throughout the book, they're just never capitalized on or used effectively. Oh well. I did actually like the whole Hallows subplot more this time around (and how crazy is it that a book named The Deathly Hallows relegates that bit to pretty much subplot status? Although come to think of it, it's happened before in the series - The Chamber of Secrets says "hi") .

We managed to make an actual side dish of the green beans from the garden over the weekend. Grilled some steaks and served them with said beans. They were yummy. Asparagus next year!

I finished up Confessions of a Part Time Sorceress. It was a fun little read. It's a girl's eye view into the world of D&D. Lovely wife read through it as well. It's a decent starting point for looking into D&D and you want a feminine perspective.

I'm very close to finishing The City & The City. Also an interesting read. But more on it later.

On podcasts

It's been a while since I've rambled on about the podcasts I'm currently listening to, so you poor souls get to deal with that for a post. The rotation has morphed a little, I haven't listened to Escape Pod or any of the spinoffs for a while. Mostly because the stories started getting too long. I had a hard time finishing them in a commute. That and I found a few others I liked listening to a touch better. Also I stopped listening to them at work. Old job used different parts of my brain or something so I could actually listen to them a little easier than I can now.

At any rate, the top dog is still Listen Up by the 1up folks (formerly 1up Yours). It's generally 2-3 hours of commentary on the video game world. They start off with what they're currently playing and then move to news and industry commentary. I really like several of the guys that are regulars and this is pretty much where I get my news/reviews type fix from. Although they can be a touch down on Nintendo.

In a related podcast (for a couple reasons) I also listen to What They Play. This one is also video game oriented, but the site is a parent's guide to video games type site. They let you know what sort of content can be found in the games your kids are begging you for. I started listening because I really like the host John Davison (formerly of 1up and still on Listen Up) but I've kept listening because I like their take on the industry. It's a little more geared for my life as a gamer at the moment. (i.e. the rug monkeys are playing all the games, when did that happen?! Gimme that controller back you rug monkey!)

For the analog equivalent (boardgames) I listen to Pulp Gamer: Out of Character and Myriad Games. I like Out of Character as that's the roundtable show where they cover a pretty wide variety of board games (as well as some industry news and listener feedback). They've since started building a boardgame podcast empire and Myriad Games is the other offering I really enjoy. This one is run by the staff of a game store and they cover everything from game reviews to rules to random solicitation of hate mail. Be sure to get your free pair of dice by leaving them a review in iTunes. Mine are a nice shiny blue color. Alas they're only d6's, but nobody's perfect.

Let's see, for music based podcasts there's Random Signal (they do geek stuff as well) and the Irish and Celtic Music podcast. TMBG have one (I'm getting tired of hunting links). I follow the Dungeons & Dragons podcast whenever the Penny Arcade guys are in a campaign (Acquisitions Inc! There's no dark magic like Jim Darkmagic.) The Retronauts podcast is usually a pretty humorous look at older video games. Hmm. Yeah, running out of stuff. Reality Break is an infrequent, yet enjoyable look at the sci fi industry. A Life Well Wasted is This American Life does video games. (Yeah, yeah I listen to a lot of gaming podcasts...) I'm sure there are others, but those are certainly the big names that take up my weekly commutes. So give them a look, you might find something of interest.

In other news, we picked up Dominion, this year's SdJ winner. It's a deck building card game. So far we've played a couple games (lovely wife, oldest rug monkey and myself) and I've not managed to win a game yet. Well ok, when it was just my wife and I, I did manage a rather stunning victory. But oldest rug monkey took us both to the cleaners the second game we played. Basically you try to collect cards that allow you to build your deck in such a way that you can buy the really good scoring cards so that you have the most points at the end. There's a decent amount of strategy involved as you can build your deck several different ways and there are (I believe) 20 types of cards that you use - only a game is just played with 10 of them. So lots of room for different types of decks and ways to keep the game from just being the same thing over and over. Nice.

Leverage is back on and that's nice. Eureka has started up as well. I believe Psych isn't too far behind.

Whiteout is a nice little murder mystery set in Antarctica. I believe they're turning it into a movie. And Confessions of a Part Time Sorceress is a fun look at the world of D&D through a woman's eyes. But that's enough of that. I believe this post has run its course.