Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

2002-11-16 / 2:21 a.m.

Just settling into the now comfortable spot right in front of the computer. Headphones on, sitting indian style, in my rolly office chair. Just coming home to process my viewing of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.

Initial impressions:

Good. Really good, actually. As expected though, it's better if you've read the books, or at least seen the first film, so I'd recommend doing at least one of these before viewing (cough cough, Will cough) :) I liked it much better than the first. The expectations were certainly not as high this year, so I think I could relax and take it more at face value. It was wonderful just to sit back and enjoy a movie as just plain magical and fun as this one It definately flowed better, and didn't feel as rushed--probably because the introduction of characters and exposition of scene were kind of out of the way, ya know? There was more meat to the plot, and the effects were crazy awesome. I mean, SS had pretty need effects, but CoS was something else. The Quiddich was better, but what I was really really impressed with was both the spiders, and the final scenes with the Basilisk.

Just like last year, I thought the acting was great. The three kids--Radcliffe, Watson, and Grint-- are great...Ron being my personal favorite. But no one, no one, could compare to Kenneth Branagh as Lockhart: KB was wonderful. He was almost exactly the Gilderoy Lockhart I had imagined when reading Cos.

On the more superficial end, both Oliver Wood (Sean Biggerstaff) and Tom Marvolo Riddle (Coulson) were both hotties. ha ha ha

Speaking of hotties, all personal biases aside, I think that Ewan McGregor would make an excellent Lupin for the next film. Again, this isn't because I'm super in love with him...it's because I think he would rawk the part. HP people chew on that, and comment about it in the message board! woohoo!

So you may be asking yourself right now, what didn't I like. There were a few things, but on the whole, I really enjoyed HP2. I have very very few complaints...but one thing that comes to my head is this: I do not like the fact that they made Ron's feelings for Hermione so obvious. I mean, I think anyone who was reading the series got that feeling...but not this early into it. I dunno, maybe I just need to re-read book two. It's quite possible that there was that obvious connection, and I just don't remember it. Still, I hope it's an isolated occurance that she gets ahead of herself like that.

Oh kids. I'm so sleepy. Have a good night.