Harry Potter & The Order of the Phoenix (DVD) #2

Wow. I took my son to see this in the Theatre, last year, and watched it with him, again, when the DVD was first released, but either he and my daughter are much more distracting than I realized, or I just wasn't paying attention the first two times I saw this movie. I remember being a little disappointed at the changes that had to be made to accommodate the transition to teleplay, but being pretty happy, over all. Well, finally after watching it the way I really like to watch moves (i.e. totally alone with absolutely no distractions) I have to say this movie is just fantastic. Yeah, there were some harsh cuts and changes, but it still carried the emotional punch of the book. That's saying something. I was a tearful mess pretty much from the point where the Order arrived to fight the Death Eaters in the Department of Mysteries. At times I found myself almost at 5 hankies. When Sirius was killed, and again when Voldemort possessed Harry and Harry was reliving the loss of all his loved ones. I feel like I've been through a wringer. I enjoyed it, though. I really, really enjoy these stories.

Whew. That was almost cathartic. I feel more calm and relaxed and ready to sleep than I have in months (I'm a bit of an insomniac).

Harry Potter & The Order of the Phoenix (DVD)

In the beginning of the movie, when Harry goes to 12 Grimmauld Place and is reunited with the Weasley's and Sirius had me worked up a bit. This is a hard time for the character of Mrs. Weasley. She has so many loved ones basically putting themselves in the line of fire, and knows that it'd be wrong to try to keep them out of the fray. Sirius, as well, is such a tragic figure. Reuniting with Harry makes him the happiest he's been in years, but it's only for fleeting moments. 3 hankies

I knew this was going to be a difficult movie for me to watch.

Harry Potter & The Order of the Phoenix (Wii Game)

I guess I have to finally publicly disclose my love of the Harry Potter books. When the first movie came out, I'd never heard of the books but my wife and I were completely taken with the movie. So I decided to buy the books available at that time (1, 2, & 3) and see what I thought. I read a few pages of the first book and put it down. I never put books down. I usually will finish even bad books by force of will if for no other reason. This was a kids book, though, and at the time those few pages read like a children's book to me. I just didn't see how a 500 page Dr. Suess book was going to keep me entertained.

Fast forward a few years. The kids and I are back in Arkansas and we're grocery shopping and I see a DVD bundle of the first four Harry Potter movies. I picked them up, and we just loved them. At this point, wheels started turning and I thought to myself, "these are movies based on novels. If the movies are this good, there has to be something more to the novels than I assumed..." So I went back and gave book one another go. Loved it. Moved on to Chamber of Secrets and ended up going onto amazon to order books 4, 5, and 6 (which were all that were available at the time). I was hooked.

Well, now I've read the whole series and I even have the magnificent Jim Dale read Audiobooks for the whole series. I've read each book twice and listened to them twice, as well, over the years, so I'm pretty conversant with the story. And, yes, there are points in the story arc that make me cry (especially in the last two books).

(Finally all this preamble pays off...)

Today, I was playing the Order of the Phoenix Wii game that we bought last year but never got around to playing until I started, yesterday, on a whim. Today, I got to a point in the story where Harry'd just had his vision of Mr. Weasley being attacked and he and Ron warn the Headmaster then are sent on to Grimmauld Place. Well, the first thing you see when all the cut-scenes finish is the living room of Grimmauld Place and standing there are... Lupin and Tonks. Thinking of Fred Weasley and Sirius Black usually makes me teary, but every time I bump into Lupin and Tonks in the stories I just lose it and really start crying. I'm crying as I type this. The fact that they found each other, were so good for each other, had a child together yet were only together for a such a brief time before Harry lost them both... well, it really rips me up. Two lovable characters that absolutely didn't deserve the fate they got. 4 hankies (seriously)

(I made a tactical mistake when looking for an image to use with this post - I followed a link to YouTube with "Lupin Tonks" search criteria. There are some very lovingly made and touching fan videos out there, and they absolutely tore me apart...)