I don't recall Harry Potter being passive in Prisoner of Azkaban, or there being any exposition cut out, or - - as it was the only stand-alone film since the first - - there being any need to be familiar with either the other films or any of the books. Nor was there anything untight about the story construction.

This is before we get to the beautiful art direction, winning performances, terrific score, and creative directorial choices.




After also reading about your "horrible" experience ducking into Barnes & Noble last night, Alex ... I don't know what weirdly alternate Harry Potter universe you exist in ... but I'm glad I don't inhabit that one.

It was "horrible" because I went in needing a specific book and could barely get through the store because of people just sitting on the floor lounging about and generally being indifferent to anybody who might actually be there to shop at 8 p.m. (and also, to manage the midnight queue they had rearranged shelving making it nearly impossible to get to the cash registers without an overhead view of the store). I knew there was going to be a lot of people there but I expected there'd be more order to things (I didn't know they had a wristband system that didn't require queuing. Harry Potter was not the specific reason it was horrible, just the thing that caused so many people to be there. If they'd all been there for a Philip Roth signing it would have been just as horrible.

Yes, I find the 50-year-old guy wearing a what looks like a $4.99 Harry Potter costume they bought at Wal-Mart earlier in the day to be somewhat silly. If you're going to go all out, go all out and put some effort into it.

Azkaban was the most filmic of the movies but I still found seriously flawed as a story (I can't defend this position anymore since I barely remember what happened in the movie but I know that is how I felt after seeing it).

You and I agreed on Transformers and disagree on Potter; such are the trials of individual taste.

zomg the cat plates!

I wish we could get a set of those for Not Afraid.

the entire theater giggled when the one cat went through the cat flap.

Oh, I'm sure the political allusions were intended to satirize any number of tryannical bureaucracies and governments. That our particular one did not exist when Rowling wrote the tale does not make it any less the target of her quill.

Then again, the novel was written in 2002 ... and I doubt much prescience was needed to project the trajectory of the Blair and Bush regimes. Perhaps Rowling had no specifics in mind .... and perhaps she did.

Saw it at the Kabuki yesterday. I thought it was great, many fine touches. I did not mind the plot change, at least it was Cho spilling the beans because of veritaserum and not plain nastiness. And I did not really miss all the sub-plot that was axed, because I had such a hard time with the book, the movie sped along at a nice clip.

Love Staunton as Umbridge, loved the heavy victorian furniture in her rooms, and the cat plates were just awesome.

I also like Gwarp, not as fierce, but much more cute than in the book.

Shows what a week, and the day of book 7 release will do for the crowds at the movie, maybe 30 people in the theater.

I think my favorite touch about Umbridge's headmaster office was not the cat plates, but that she'd "dyed" the stone walls pink.

I need to see it again, obviously! I missed that!