Mark's Blog

I just came back from seeing Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. If you haven't read the book (like me) or haven't seen the movie (unlike me, now), a Phoenix plays a small but crucial role in the movie.

This is probably another one of those movies that I'm sure most people had decided to see or not to see long before it came out. It's not a sleeper hit that you get swayed into seeing after reading or hearing great reviews. HP2 follows the same outline as the previous one. Obviously there is a new plot but so many of the scenes seem like retreads: the Quidditch game (why does anybody except the seeker even bother playing, when the seeker can win the game all by himself?), the visit to Hagrid's, the trip to the Dark Forest, the hiding in the Invisible Cloak, something about Voldemort but it's not really Voldemort that I didn't really get, Harry's uncle and aunt being all bitter, a few spell-casting lessons, and so on.

I'm the last person to be an "art snob" (seeing as I don't believe in "art", but I'll save that rant for another blog entry) but the real problem with Harry Potter is it's just so darn derivative. It's like an unholy amalgamation of Enid Blyton's books and The Lord of the Rings. It seems like J.K. Rowling has taken every fantasy element: basilisks, potions, mandrakes, invisibility, spiders (if that wasn't Shelob in the Forest then what was it?), spells, serpents, skeletons, petrification (don't tell the Slashdot crowd about that one), et cetera, and merged it into a standard children's school story.

Now, this is not meant to be a criticism, other than to say I don't find HP all that interesting, for the simple fact that it feels like I've seen it all before, when I haven't. I can see that it's popular, that it draws in kids and adults alike, and that is fine by me.

It's easy to pick nits in this movie because they abound, but it held a pretty decent entertainment value for me. The special effects are really quite amazing, and it didn't seem as long as its 2:41 length. My IMDB rating for the movie was a 7 -- right around average, towards the high end of my "7" ratings, but really not a movie that I'd need to see again. It's roughly comparable to the first Harry Potter (which I gave an 8), but we are not seeing anything new.

And a brief cooking note: I made my first stir-fry, which turned out surprisingly well. I followed the instructions on the back of some Teriyaki sauce I bought on Saturday and everything worked according to plan. It took about 35 minutes all told.