** Some spoilers are below. **

I might be the last person on earth to see his first Harry Potter film in a theater. I’m not talking about seeing one of them on opening night — I mean seeing it in a theater at all. I’ve never done it. I’ve seen the majority of the movies recently, but until today, I didn’t see any on a screen bigger than my computer monitor.

Luckily, after spending most of my day filming then running to a book signing then running home to film more again, I managed to get to the theater and join my friend in line for the midnight showing of Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows: Part 1. The crowd was immense, even two hours early.

I don’t know how they do it, but each Potter film continues to surpass the previous. As I am also one of the few people who have not read the entire Harry Potter series yet (I am up to the second audiobook) I was not familiar with the full story. Each thing came as a surprise, besides those bits that were so newsworthy when the novel came out that it was everywhere. I sat in a stupor when He died. I think I sat in a stupor through most of the movie.

Perhaps the most evocative part of the film, besides the death everyone is dreading, is Hermione’s telling of the Three Brothers story. It was an unexpected twist into a sinister world that might have been unfitting in a live action film if not for its careful execution. Rarely does one find a well-written fable in a modern story, especially one with such a deeply interwoven moral.

Some of the story went over my head since I haven’t read the books. But my mind was awake enough to fill in the blanks so that I wasn’t lost along the way. There are plenty of laughs throughout, especially between Ron and Hermione (though one especially badly-written scene that just came off as hilarious when I think it was meant to be serious). Either I’m overly perceptive, or the screenwriter tossed in a Twilight reference in the dialogue (RON, paraphrased, when arguing what time of night the story begins with: “…I actually like Twilight. Twilight is good.”). It was there a few more times in the scene. The theater made weird noises. I thought, in the voice of an exhausted Bilbo Baggins: “No thank you. Let us foreverafter keep these two franchises on their own separate turfs, lest the world erupt into massive, fiery war ne’er seen in Mordor’s darkest days”. It was amusing, and not just because I was hearing Bilbo Baggins’ voice in my head.

(Added: the above has been disproven. I can now stop missing sleep over it.)

Speaking of the Bagginses, who caught the bits of this story that were inspired by Lord Of The Rings? Also, watch for the innuendo. It’s hilarious if you catch it. The Potter franchise has really kept in touch with their fandom that way.

Five stars to the boy named Potter. And six stars to Emma Watson, to whom I directed this tweet while still standing in the theater.

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Posted in Reviews
Tags: harry potter

Thanks to the enormous and wonderful readership that has graced my site TwilightGuy.com, I was asked to write an article about Stephenie Meyer for a large movie website called TheMovie-Fanatic.com. I tried to bring as much focus onto the actual words of Steph’s fans, since they are really the ones who can describe her best.

If you’d like to read my article, head on over to this page on tMF and check it out!

Also, there were so many positive responses from people wanting to help for the article (over 400!) that I couldn’t possibly get all of the best ones into the article. Thus, I posted my 25 favorites over here.

I find it very interesting to take a look at this, especially since I will be a very new author sometime late next year. There is something very different about Stephenie that sets her apart from everyone else, and I find myself watching Youtubes of her book signings as if they were videos in a class on How To Be An Author. Granted, I think I’ve already watched all the Lemony Snicket, JK Rowling and Rick Riordan videos as well– but unlike theirs, where the fans are simply fans, I find that Stephenie’s readers are something deeper.

It is a learning experience for me to see this, since for the years that I wrote my book, my mind was told in offhanded ways that authors must be reclusive, refuse fan mail, never appear without their publicist (and when they do, appear unkempt, drunk, and disorderly) and above all things: never, ever, ever have something like a Myspace page. I discovered Stephenie Meyer and all my old stereotypes for writers were gone: the same stereotypes I was dreading having to conform to. Here she was, knocking Harry Potter off the charts, and still being able to do fun things like music playlists for her books, a dream movie cast, a mega Myspace page and actually answer fan mail.

It was freeing, in a way, to learn that the best type of author was the real one: that before I went off and made myself a recluse because that’s what I thought authors were ‘supposed’ to do, the thing people really would rather is for me to be myself. For any writer out there, it is worth searching on Youtube ‘Stephenie Meyer Book Signing’ and really watching how it’s done like a professional (and the screaming crowds do loads to get you writing again ).

Also, my agent posted probably my favorite story from him ever. I originally read it in one of his books, but if you’re a writer and you want to know the secret lives of those great beings we call Literary Agents, as well as some of the many odd things agents do for their clients, you absolutely must read this article.

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Posted in Twilight, Writing
Tags: harry potter, JK Rowling, lemony snicket, rick riordan, Stephenie Meyer