Well, what a day. Since our Fiscal year starts today at work, along with a new years worth of vacation, I decided to take the afternoon off and go see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. I couldn't make up my mind where to go. I finally picked the Mall of America to go see the 1:20 show. That way I could stop in to the Lego store and see if they had anything new on sale. There's a chinese place in the food court that has some ok Sesame Chicken and fried rice which has gotten more expensive since I was there last. $5.39 for a good size pile of fried rice and two meat choices from a steam table. I always get the Sesame Chicken and a beef skewer. It's nothing special but I like the sauces and they give you a good pile of food.
I liked the movie. It's dark and bleak and fast. So much has been condensed and I wonder if people who hadn't read the book would have a harder time understanding the story. I do miss some sections from the book that got cut. Harry and pals meeting Neville and his Aunt at St Mungo's, and finding out what happened to Neville's parents, is one of my favorite scenes in any of the books. It's my goal to build the scene out of Lego. Now that's some love. The special effects are pretty special and at one point I was wishing I was sitting a bit farther back than the fifth row. The big fight in the ministry was quite the wizard battle but there was so much going on it was hard to take it all in at one go. Especially those Death Eaters and their whoosh, whoosh, whoosh.
I really liked Evanna Lynch's Luna Lovegood. She does a great job bringing this delightful character to life. I would have liked to see her in her roaring Lion Hat but they cut the Quidditch scene. I think she has become a fan favorite all over, and she's certainly a favorite character of mine. I really liked her bedroom in the 7th book and her stiff upper lip in the face of adversity. Her patronus is a rabbit. The Patronus scene in the movie brought tears to my eyes as I shared the kids success. I like seeing a shared experience in a montage. Even after South Park's take on the montage. "It's a Montage!" "Montage!" That Delores Umbridge is a right nasty piece of work and she needs a good stabbin'. Every time she was on the screen I clenched my hand around the invisible knife of retribution. I was glad to hear she gets her's in the future. Saves me the trouble of stabbin' her. I enjoyed Bellatrix. I didn't think Helena Bonham Carter was too over the top. She fit the tone of the movie which was jazzier than the book. A new director and screen writer made this movie. Like the cover on the US Edition of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the movie was very blue, except for the Ministry of Magic, which was very black. That was a black marble cavern with the giant statue of a wizard lording it over the lesser magical creatures off standing in their own fountain with a witch. That set was 200 feet long and great looking. I didn't think the black was too much, it's the wizarding world, they do like to show off when they get together, and that black cavernous look turns up in real Muggle buildings around the world and here in our own St Paul. The Ramsey County Court House is very black. Lots of black marble, except for the Vision of Peace. This guy has a couple of nice pictures of the unique statue on his St Paul Pictures blog. I don't know who he is, but he has some nice pictures of other parts of the city, too. Like the Ministy with it's giant Wizard statue, the Vision of Peace is 60 tons and 36 feet high, making it the largest carved onyx figure in the world. It's very cool. And so was the movie. I liked the kids and wished I could have spend 4 hours with them. Too bad they won't pull a Peter Jackson and have the extra-overly-long version out at Christmas.
I headed home after hanging out in the Lego store a bit longer. I bought some Lego from the Pick-a-Brick display. You pick the pieces you want and put them in a container with a lid that looks like the stud on the top of the Lego bricks. It's a giant plastic glass when the bricks are out, although it really wouldn't be much good for that, it's too hard to clean the indented bottom of the container. It's a place for the stud of the lid to go when you stack them. If you have two. And you want to stack them. Actually, you could silicon the lid to the base and make a vase out of it. I stopped at the Rainbow to get something and wound up with all sorts of things. I don't know how that happens, I just go nuts in the grocery store. It was about 5:30 when I got home.
I made dinner and started watching the new Babylon 5 original movie that just came out on DVD. Babylon 5 - The Lost Tales. I don't think it played on tv at all. I liked it. It's pretty low budget and there are not many people in each part of the two part 72 minute long movie. Lockley and a priest confront a man who claims to be possessed, and Sheridan must decide if he's going to kill a man or not. Galen the Technomage is in that episode. They are the only returning characters from the series cast. I enjoyed both stories. They are pretty introspective and the first makes very conclusive statement about religious mythology. There are a bunch of great shots of the Station. The CGI is mostly a lot better than the series. There are featurettes glore on the DVD and nice memorial tributes to Andreas Katsulas and Richard Biggs. Their characters G'Kar and Dr. Franklin are also memorialized in a fun minicomic that comes with the DVD. It could actually be a fun comic series as the two of them make their voyage through space beyond the rim. Lot of cool things beyond the rim. Somedays I wish I was out their beyond the rim, but then I think, I'd miss this place.
Sometime during the featurettes and interviews on the Babylon 5 dvd I called up the internet and saw the headline about the bridge that collapsed in Minneapolis. What? Wow! Sure enough the 35w bridge over the Mississippi fell into the river. I talked to several people and we were all glad to be, not in the river. Seven dead and no one I know was envolved, at least not yet. Simba did report that she had been over the bridge just 15 minutes before. Nice to see someone is looking out for her. I had been by there yesterday but could not get on because the entrance ramp was closed. I had to detour onto the 10th avenue bridge and head home that way. I was thinking how it would be nice for that bridge to get the resurfacing done and I can quickly go home and not have to go over the 10th avenue bridge which I don't care for. Luckily I don't have to go that way very often. Luckily there weren't so many people killed.
A few days later: I find that one of the electricians at work, his girlfriend is one of the missing. Poor Greg.
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