Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Pt. 1 Premiere Reflections

Warning: Contains some spoilers.

My friend, Natasha, and I went to the theater two hours early. We expected a lot of people, but it didn’t seem so crowded because they were letting people into the theater already. Only one line, for a later showing, was still outside. It seemed like they were playing Harry Potter on all the screens, with a showings starting ever five minutes after midnight.

Our theater was only half full, but more and more people came in as the minutes passed. A few dedicated fans were dressed in costume and others had drawn lightning bolts on their foreheads. Natasha and I had used make-up to make our lightning bolts look more like real scars. She had even put fake blood on her forehead to make it look like an open wound. Three girls in front of us were dressed as the characters Moaning Myrtle, Professor Trelawney, the Dobby. They were homemade costumes but they were very well made.

When the movie started, everyone applauded, but their cheers faded when the first scene began. This movie was so different from the rest of the series. It had a darker tone and the whimsical joy was almost completely drained from the story. But Rupert Grint’s Ron Weasley kept some scenes light. He really shined as the comic relief and he also came out as the best actor out of the three main stars. There was this monologue he gave after he returns to help Harry, that sounded ridiculous in the book, but he pulled it off and managed to give it some weight.

Towards the end of the movie, there is this scene that caught me off guard. I had forgotten that Dobby, a minor but popular character, dies in the book. His death scene in the movie hit everyone hard. I heard people sniffling all around me, especially the three girls in front of me. I choked up too and I looked at Natasha and saw that she was wiping her eyes.

When the movie ended, everyone clapped and cheered. We made our way out of the theater and overheard everyone talking about what we had just seen. They were also talking about how only one more movie was left. Natasha and I talked about how much of an event this was for our generation. It seemed special to us because we had grown up with Harry Potter, from the age of eleven into our semi-adulthood. I didn’t think I was going to see this type of loyalty and love for a pop culture event again.

Inception Review

Note: I've left out many details (and whole characters) in this review so there isn't much as far as spoilers go, but if you don't want to know anything about the plot then don't read beyond the first paragraph.

I just got back from watching Christopher Nolan's most recent mind bending creation and his trademark complex story telling skills are still as acute as ever. Inception runs a bit over two and half hour, but it felt like a thrill-filled five. Nolan manages to pack so much into a plot that builds up speed until it takes off into a sprint before it literally falls off the edge. The acting is very sharp; many of the actors, including Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Ellen Page, draw you in and make the world believable with virtually no back story. And the accompaniment of Hans Zimmer's score moves with the action, making you hold your breath in dramatic anticipation.

The story revolves around the concept of a technology that allows people to share and construct dreams. Leonardo DiCaprio plays Cobb, a man hired to extract secrets from a mind through dreams. Saito, played by Ken Watanabe, instead hires Cobb to plant an idea in Robert Fischer's (Cilian Murphy) mind.

The film begins like a heist movie, which in many ways it is, gathering a crew and setting up a plan. And like a heist movie the characters are fleshed out as they try to accomplish their respective tasks, but the aspects of the dream setting add a complexity to each new revelation. Cobb's emotional journey parallels Fischer's as they go deeper into there own minds and the dream makes it more difficult to determine which is really real and which is the fabricated real.