i’m really close tonight

!/images/hp4.jpg!

I went and saw the new Harry Potter movie at a midnight showing this week. i was originally planning on going to see My Morning Jacket that evening, but I hadn’t actually realized that the tickets were $25, and honestly, Harry Potter sounded like more fun once I weighed the options. (I also began to imagine that the MMJ show might be like when I went and saw Built to Spill live. They’ve made some damn good albums, but the reality of them live wasn’t that exciting to me.)

HP4 was good, but not, in my opinion, the Best Harry Potter Movie Yet, as some critics have dubbed it. It was well-made and nicely dark. They cut out all of the fat in the storyline (how else could they fit a 700 page book in two and a half hours?), and it was definitely better than the first two movies, but it didn’t really break any new ground, in my honest opinion. I know that it wasn’t as good as Prison of Azkabana because when I left the theatre after _that_ one, I was ecstatic, completely jazzed about the movie I had just seen. After this one, I was just… well… I thought it was good, but it didn’t leap from the screen like the third movie did.

Other than that, I’ve got a week off from work! This little vacation has come just in time, too… So far I’ve just done my normal weekend things, i.e. watched some TV, caught up on sleep, and spent an afternoon reading. My plans for the rest of the week are pretty wide open, other than a trip to San Antonio for Thanksgiving.