Harry Potter

I blame my friend Amanda for getting me into Harry Potter.  She did it way back in High School.  I had avoided all of the books, believing that with all the hype surrounding them they couldn't possibly be as good as people were making them out to be.  I didn't see the movie when it came out - and frankly my life moved on.  One weekend however we were hanging out in my parents basement, and decided to rent a movie.  Problem was, we did this a lot.  A group of us would get together, rent a movie (or 3 usually) and watch DVDs well into the wee hours of the morning.  When we got to the rental store, between the two of us, we had seen every new release currently available that looked even remotely good.  Manda had already seen "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" - but since I hadn't she convinced me it should be our movie for the night.  It looked fairly interesting, and since my only point against it was "it can't possibly be as good as people keep saying" we rented it.

Needless to say - I fell in love.  Enough to remember sitting in my parents basement watching it (since it happened so often those days, most of them run together into a conglomeration of friends, giggling, and chick flicks).  I know where on the couch I was sitting, where Amanda was sitting - and I remember thinking - but what happens next?

I became what I swore I would never be - a Potter groupie.  I went the next day and secretly stole the 4 books (all those currently published) from my brothers bookshelf.  To this day, I don't think he knows that I stole his books from him... sorry Rob! lol  I read all of them in a week, no small feat considering I was attending school all day, and working a part time job.  I'm sure my sleep schedule suffered - but it was totally worth it.

When the 5th book came out, I was in second year University.  A girl in my dorm had bought the book, and she lent it to me when she finished.  Just following dinner at the res cafeteria I began to read.  I read all night, and finished the 870 page 'Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix' just in time to shower and leave for my 8:00AM Computer Science class.  I don't think I had ever pulled an all-nighter with a book before (or since!) 

Needless to say, when I found out that the last and final installment of the movie franchise would be released while I was in Japan I began searching for movie theaters near me that would be showing the film.  Normally not a problem - Harry Potter is huge everywhere, not just in the English speaking world.  The trouble was to find one in ENGLISH.  Japan likes to dub foreign language films instead of just subtitling them.  Thankfully Travis and I only had to drive 25-30 minutes to a theater that was playing and English 3D version (with Japanese subtitles).  The theater was sold out - and I would estimate there were only 4-6 Japanese people in the theater.  A good portion of the military community had made the trek with us, making it obvious why this theater was showing a subtitled film over a dubbed one - clearly they profited from it!

It was a great movie, and a great story.  I'll admit I love the books more than the movies - but I hold the films in a special place in my heart, after all it was the first MOVIE that got me addicted to the series to begin with.  Now my mission is to get Travis to read the books... what do you think my chances are???