<---- definitely NOT a fan.

I'm not going to go into my rant about this... don't have the energy right now, but I'm not a fan at all.

Arabin

You want time travelling? Back to the Future 1 and 2

I'm a big fan of timetravelling too... have enjoyed many tv series and a fair few films. We should start a thread collecting together time travel tales...

Arabin

Oh, come on. Are you guys gamers or aren't you?

The main problem with the Harry Potter books is one thing; the "rules" for Quidditch. They make less than no sense and would if implented lead to a game where only two players are active and the rest just wait for them - guaranteeing boredom for spectators and players alike.

Now, I know (from experience) that non-gamers find it really difficult to come up with workable or logical games rules, but that's why you have this little thing called "consultants". I was actually enjoying the first HP book up until Rowling decided to explain just how Quidditch worked.

But seriously, those "rules" are just insulting to the reader. Much more so than a vaguely defined magic system, because the act of defining it proves that there's not a second of actual thought behind it.

It would have been much better for both her and the reader if the rules were vague and maybe "too complex for anyone but the umpires to understand", say. That way, part of playing the game would also be figuring out how it really worked, which would have added an intriguing dimension to it. Kind of like she left the magic.

It must be a generational thing but every time my nephews made me watch Potter I almost without fail, fall asleep on each viewing.

I don't know what it is, the production values are good, the acting is passable, the stories creative but something about them just runs past me. Now give me the LOTR trilogy on the other hand and I can do repeated marathons. Or even place the old classic Conan The Barbarian in the VHS and I'll start to drool (Yes I know it's on DVD now...lol).

I think it may have something to do with the hyper-attention-deficit style that a lot of "Gen-Y" movies have adopted in recent years. Something about the pacing just turns me off and I am often left feeling that the director didn't take ample time to let certain scenes take hold emotionally. Sit one of your 14-21 year old nephews down to watch Blade Runner (the most amazingly timeless sci-fi ever made) and they'll literally vibrate out of their seat in a panic looking for the eject button (or the Playstation controller). I'm not sure what that ultimately means for Gen-Y but I think it's really sad for the future of entertainment.

I'm a big fan of the Harry Potter books. They started off poorly written, but with a good plot. They have become well written and entertaining. The movies...well, the first was decent. Second was good. Third was excellent. The fourth makes me very angry. I'm afraid to even look at the fifth...I've heard they edited out about 4/5 of the book.

Bladerunner rocked in the 80's... and if you saw it then, you can still appreciate it. Very different... but the style was incredibly cool back then.

I haven't watched it for a while now... need to dig out my dvd and watch that soon.

Arabin

My wife and I read the books to each other while on road trips (we just started on the most recent one a few months back), and we're finally catching up on the movies, too. We saw #3 last night, and we intend to see #5 in the theater - it might happen this time!

I have to assume there was some logic to the storyline. However, it definitely didn't translate to film. Also, the core ideas really were a bit thin given the events of the previous stories (e.g. the resourcefulness of the kids in previous episodes, their access to Hagrid and Hogsmead, and that many of them went home for Christmas).

Hp and the Order of the Phoenix really is the low point of the series for me so far, both for the book and the film. The next in the series (the Half Blood Prince) sounds like it is much better so I will read that one next and see how it goes.

It is a little hard to send a letter home to mom via owl when the torturer in question is censoring the mail against that kind of thing. The book is good but the movie sucked. Although personally I would have made sure a few fatal accidents would of happened to the b****! fatal accidental poisoning, fatal accidental petrifiction, fatal accidental stabbing, you know the usual accients that result in death by natural causes.

I don't know if its different for those who haven't read the books but I'm finding the movies increasingly annoying. Mainly because I keep noticing all the stuff they cut or changed.

Also I think that the movies are suffering because of the length of the books. They simply have to move from plot point to plot point in order to cover all the points that matter for the story line. They also have to cover all the stuff thats setting up for the next book/movie.

One of my big problems with that whole thing with Umbridge is Dumbledore. In the books he always knows everything thats going on in the school. In the book he steps in to stop Umbridge from shaking a student when shes in his office. But he never stops her when shes actually really hurting the students. I assume that he is simply supposed to be unaware of whats happening. But thats a hard sell for me because it would be pretty common knowledge among the students, he should certainly have known too.

Now I know that the owls were being censored but why wasn't anything done after the students went home for the holidays? Surely someone would have mentioned it, or at least refused to return to the school when vacation was over.

Love the books, love the movies. Will see the movie soon but first the book! Friday night / Saturday morning at the stroke of midnight I will be in line!