Some movie news and notes...

I managed to catch the new Harry Potter movie tonight, and without going into great detail for those who're going to see it (or are current reading or re-reading the book), I'll say as a person who had just finished the book 2 days ago (albeit a quick read since I'm trying to get through the series so I can read through book 7 since one of my friends is having a get-together to read the new book), I felt that the new movie is too "short" even though it clocks in at 2 hours and 18 minutes since there were several scenes that could have been expanded upon to make the movie more filling, but it just quickly skips and moves to the next scene. In summary, if you haven't read the book, you'll likely enjoy it more although you might be confused at some points because you don't know full details of the story. If you read the book, you may be disappointed.

In the last two weeks, I also saw Live Free or Die Hard, Transformers, and Ratatouille, and I thoroughly enjoyed all three of them. Die Hard and Transformers won't win any awards for their respective story, but for pure unadulterated action and fun, these movies cannot be beat. At this rate, John McClane'll have to save the world given the progression of his character (Saves a building in the 1st movie, saves an airport in the 2nd movie, saves a city in the 3rd movie, saves a country in this one :P). I had doubts at first about Ratatouille after watching the initial trailers, but Pixar always manages to come through with a good story to back up their amazing visuals. The fur is especially well done this time around. The only picky thing about Transformers was that they tried to be too funny with it at times...

The last thing I'll mention is that the Kungmobile blew out a tire on its way to the theater today. I was on the way with a full van since David's parents, 2 sisters, and sister's fiance are visiting for the month, and on the highway, I don't know what I ran into, but it cause a pretty loud disturbing noise, and about 10 seconds later, it was *cluck cluck cluck cluck...* -_- Fortuately I didn't lose control, so I slowly worked my way to the side of the highway, and David and I quickly went to work putting on the smaller spare. Fortunately it was a lot cooler by then with the sun down, so it felt pretty good to be outside, although I was constantly reminded that there were cars zipping by 5 feet away from me as David and I changed the left rear tire. But we made it to dinner and the theater eventually, so all was good afterwards :)