A Letter to Optimus Prime from His Geico Auto Insurance Agent.

but as with a lot of my highschool reading I can't bear to read it now I'm no longer in highschool.

Man, this is so true.

I was not (and am still not) an Angsty Spy Novel person, so when I picked up the first Bourne novel, I pretty much put it down immediately. I gave it a running shot (this would have been mid-school? 6th grade?) but, no love.

Adore the movie, though. The fights are realistically brutal and quick (if often poorly filmed), and the settings look like they really look, not like James Bond-ian glitzy glam.

The Flick Filosopher also likes Harry:

this may be the best straight-up horror movie of the year -- I was riveted by the sinister sophistication of it.

I like that she focuses on what I think is the most significant of Harry's issues:

As Harry gets older and more conflicted, and Radcliffe matures into a fine young actor upon whose shoulders falls the tricky task of giving expression to Harry’s wounded inner psyche -- which Radcliffe does very nicely here -- Harry’s isolation, even among his closest Hogwarts friends, is more poignant, and more disturbing, than ever.

The still she chooses to use for the review is something I'm both looking forward to seeing and expect to be absolutely wrecked by.

The still she chooses to use for the review is something I'm both looking forward to seeing and expect to be absolutely wrecked by.

Crap, I'm tearing up a little even now.

*makes grabby hands at movie*

I'm bummed because I'll have to wait until either Friday or Saturday to see it (gotta work at the bookstore Wednesday night, and am on call for the store Thursday night).

I also might have to wait until the evening of Saturday, the 21st, to read Deathly Hallows, which ticks me off, but it looks like they're going to put the most recent hires on to open Saturday since most of the long-time employees are the ones working Harry Potter night. Oh, well, at least if they do that it means I'll have Sunday off to finish reading it/reread my favorite parts, as I always do.

Roger Ebert's review of OotP is enough to make me want to thwap him on the head. He spend it whining "Where's the whimsy?" and "My hope, as we plow onward through "Potters" Nos. 6-7, is that the series will not grow darker still. Yet I suppose even at the beginning, with those cute little mail-owls, we knew the whimsy was too good to last."

He insists on reviewing the story he would prefer to have seen rather than the one he did see, just like he did for LotR. Drives me crazy!

LE SIGH. I love a lot of Ebert's reviews, but, geez, has he read the books? The series has been growing darker since BOOK TWO. And for many people, that's a good thing.

I'm seeing it tomorrow night. Going to get tickets tonight after work.

Wow, that review demonstrates an epic lack of cluefulness. I hope to God Ebert really has never read any of the books past Sorcerer's Stone, because if he has then there's truly no excuse. Where's the whimsy? Er, crushed beneath the boot of the writer since roughly the midpoint of Chamber of Secrets.

Also, this caption to the still accompanying the review:

"Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" is filled with British actors solidly established long before Daniel Radcliffe (seated) landed the role of Harry.

irritates the fuck out of me. What, they should have cast an experienced RADA-trained Shakespearean actor of 11 in the role to match up with the rest of the cast? What the fuck does that even mean?

Clearly I'm in need of either lots more or lots less coffee. I really shouldn't be sitting here itching to slap an oldish man who's been recently ill. But, really, Ebert is too intelligent and too film-literate for this review. It's beneath him.

It isn't like Radcliffe had no acting experience whatsoever--he was the title character in David Copperfield, after all. And, like you said, where does an 11-year-old (not named Christian Bale) get Shakesperian experience at that age?

"Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" is filled with British actors solidly established long before Daniel Radcliffe (seated) landed the role of Harry.

I wouldn't blame Ebert for a caption. The review, yes; the captions, no.

Wow, that review demonstrates an epic lack of cluefulness.

He does this often. I often get eyerolly reading him (much as I like lots of his writing, especially in his Great Movies books, and even in his two books of trashing reviews) because he seems to be deliberately and willfully not getting things at times.