The Nature of Things

I long ago fell under the spell of J.R.R. Tolkien and his hobbits and so I was a prime candidate to enjoy J.K. Rowling's world of wizardry when it came along a few years ago.  I have read and liked all of her books and most of the movies based on them and now, like millions of fans around the world, I'm ready for the final movie which opens today in the United States .  I won't be waiting in line at midnight tonight though.  I'm too much in need of my beauty sleep for that.  No, I'll wait a few days and hope the pandemonium dies down a bit. As a Tolkien and Rowling fan, you would think I would have heard of George R.R. Martin and his work, but I admit I had not until this year.  Then the HBO series "Game of Thrones" started.  My propensity to like fantasy kicked in, and I was quickly hooked. Martin had written four books in his series about the fantasy world of Westeros and the HBO series was based on the first.  After just one episode, HBO realized th...

My daughters have been big Harry Potter fans virtually from the publication of the first book. They grew up with Harry and, in a sense, I did, too. I read all the books and I've seen all the movies along the way so I was very interested in the opening today of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1. Of course, I had to see the film and so did my daughters and so we went together to wallow in the Harry experience along with other besotted fans. We saw the movie at a mid-day showing at an IMAX theater, which was a bit overwhelming actually. The theater was perhaps two-thirds full, so crowds were not an issue as they will be for later showings. If you have followed the saga of Harry, then you know that this movie is based on the last book in the series, but only part of that book - thus the Part 1 of the title. The last book was the biggest and darkest of the series and trying to fit all of the action into one movie would have made for a very long movie. Besides, dividing ...