Watched the Harry Potter DVD this weekend. And, y'know what? It wasn't bad.

I had a memory of the film as a largely sterile, faithful-but-heartless rendition of the book.

But now, having seen Attack of the Clones, I have a better sense for what those adjectives actually mean. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone is no Citizen Kane, but it's fun, it's nicely done, the fx were decent and the story, if a bit disjointed, still has some moving moments. The infuriating injustice of the Dursleys. Harry's longing for his parents. Ron's sacrifice. If the movie really needed to be three hours instead of two in order to get all the good stuff in, that's the fault of the Hollywood Bean Counters, not the producers or director.

All the nice things I have to say about the movie go away on the bonus disc, which has most of the bonus material (including the inevitable, interesting, but still sketchy Deleted Scenes section) hidden behind the World's Most Frustrating and Confusing Interface. Lots of fun for little kids, lots of muttering-under-one's-breath for adults.

Still, a good addition to the Shelf of Many DVDs. And I suspect Katherine will like the movie, one of these days, if not the bonus materials.

(And now I need to find an opportunity to watch the next to Roughnecks DVDs ...)

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Thank you for the re-review.
Glad you reconsidered.

When we saw Diagon Alley open up, Dave and I talked about how the affects had a similar look and feel to Labyrinth. This help true to for the goblins and several other affects. For me that link improved the re-watching. I think seeing the movie the first time it was harder to get into because it had to get past all of the book induced images in my imagination.

i still have problems with the ending -- too many cute moments -- but otherwise i still like it muchly. it would have been better as a BBC miniseries, but there you go.

and speaking of the grand tradition of the BBC miniseries, i was struck by the the crossover from gormenghast. swelter, cora, irma prunesquallor -- at least those are the ones i found. and the owls. but if you have no idea what i'm talking about, then...nevermind.

I agree fully with a BBC production, maybe 3-6 hours in aggregate (the Narnia adaptations come to mind). Much lower tech in the fx, but focus on the story of the characters.

Interesting. We watched it again last night and also liked it better than we did at the theater. I'm not sure why, maybe because I had only read the first book at that point?

In any case, we also thought Will would like it eventually. He has been very into owls lately.

Margie and I were chatting about it last night, and one thought she had was that, on first viewing, it's full of visual distractions, whether it's zooming brooms or moving pictures. The producers definitely wanted to have the "magical" aspects of Hogwarts constantly in mind. But that, in turn, distracted from the heart of both Rowling's story and, at least in places, the movie -- the human relationships, the personal challenges facing Harry, etc. Hence the thought of a low-tech BBC production.