No Yankee game last night so I went to see Harry Potter 7, pt. 2 last night in all its whole imax 3D thing. And this is not a pan by any stretch of the imagination, but it's not really a rave; the whole question of imagination became very glaring to me during the course of the long movie. Although with the 5 mile power ride to the theatre and the refusal to but the 44oz coke to get me through it, I didn't have to leave my seat once.

But nor was I really transported to another world. I was struck about halfway through the movie with a kind of discouraging thought: now that all the books have been turned into movies, will people read the novels the way they have? I really do wonder if lazy parents will now just plop Junior or Sis down in front of the netflix box and let them just watch the whole thing unfold rather than reading them the seven, increasingly lengthy tomes chapter by revealing chapter? I have this fear that is exactly what is going to happen.

And whilst Miss Rowling got a lot of say as to how the screenwriters adapted her words for the screen, they're only that: adaptation. There is so much lost in that translation I find - and I don't really mean plot points; I don't care as much about that as I do the magic that is on the page.

Over the course of the years that the films have been made technology has added many tricks to a filmmaker's palette - none as obvious as the IMAX 3D with which I saw last night's edition. But here's the thing: for all the special f/x and optical enhancements, none of it is as good, as special, as magical as what we paint in our minds. I may be biased but still and all with all this technology, I can create something far more wonderful, enchanted and never before seen in my mind. How about you? Will you re-read the books or will you just watch the movies? Will you give the dvd or the collected novel collection to that special young friend or niece or nephew? It will be interesting to see which way the tide rolls...

Go read a book instead of watching the movie!

Thanks,
Brian