benn

I totally agree about the level of detail. Her notes from writing all of the books must be fucking epic. One day those are going to be auctioned off for an absolute fuckton of money.

Rowling did a huge online Q&A, transcript can be found here. There's a ton of info about what happened to the characters after Voldemort's defeat.

I wasn't really feeling the Dumbledore backstory. Sure it was necessary to properly understand everything about the Hallows, and its not like it bored me or anything, I just didn't really give a shit about it.

I'm not saying that Neville should have actually killed Lestrange, because then you have his character losing his innocence just like if Draco had gone ahead with killing Dumbledore. I just think it should have been him who took her down, whether he just disarmed her and was like "I'm not going to kill you because I'm better than you" or stunned her or whatever, it doesn't really matter. In my opinion his parents should have been avenged.

It was a great moment but I still think that Bellatrix's fate should have been up to Neville. It would have been better for Mrs. Weasley to take out Greyback making a pass at Ginny since there's also the history of him mauling Bill.

I read somewhere that she was planning to put out a couple of young children's books that she's been working on for a while.

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/19935372/ Why not milk this cash cow? Hell, I'd buy it.

I have no idea how they can trim it down to movie-length and still explain everything adequately. Maybe they should make it into 2 or something.

I'd fuck Ginny over Cho any day.

Kreacher leading the charge of the house elves was fucking great. Poor Dobby though, that had me almost crying. But he went out like a hero, so it's ok.

I was hoping for more of Ginny too, but after Harry broke up with her in HBP, it was pretty much going to be how it was with her just popping up every now and then, trying to be involved.

I read it in about 10 hours, thought it was pretty good. I pretty much agree with what's already been said. The camping stuff seemed to drag a little, but the last 1/3 of the book was exciting as hell.

We have spoiler tags for a reason, Mole. I agree, intentional spoiling without the tags should be immediately punishment. But we have spoiler tags for a reason. I thought that was what he was talking about.

It's released at 9am Saturday over here to coincide with midnight in London or NYC or something. I'm supposed to drive 2 hours for a wheelchair rugby training camp for the weekend and be there at 9:30. I'm going to pick up my book before I leave, and try and get my girlfriend to drive so I can spend the trip reading.

You're probably right, they're trying to have the movies stand alone for people who are too lazy to read the books. The problem that I had with this movie is just that a lot of the things that they changed and a couple that they left out, at least in my opinion, would have made it easier for people who haven't read the books to follow what was going on. It's the same kind of reason why I was pissed that they didn't explain that James was an animagus too, and why he, Sirius and Pettigrew became that way in the first place. EDIT: In the Prisoner of Azkaban movie, I mean.

I'm just staying away from the internet from a few days before it's released until after I've finished reading.

I just saw Order of the Phoenix and I agree with Mole and feel sort of mixed about it. My biggest issue wasn't so much them leaving things out, because OOTP is probably the most bloated of the books and its easy to get a little bogged down in it. And some of my favourite scenes were left out like Fred, George and Harry going apeshit after the first Quidditch match, and the reunion with Lockhart in St. Mungos. I thought that some of the things that were changed didn't need to be changed. They weren't any more difficult to film than what was in the film, and they wouldn't have dragged the film on much. As it was, the whole thing felt a bit disjointed because the first half of the story especially was so hacked up. I'm talking about things like: Henrietta betraying them to Umbridge rather than Cho, and Dumbledore's escape. Ron and Hermione being made prefects. Dobby finding the Room of Requirement and warning them about Umbridge coming. More detail about Hagrid and Maxime's trip to find the giants. More detail about Fred and George developing their joke shop products and Harry funding them. Ginny introducing them to Luna rather than Hermione. I also thought that they should have given Ginny a lot more lines. She's a secondary character along with Luna and Neville in the book, and more important than both of them for Half-Blood Prince, but she didn't do much except hover in the background for most of the movie. There were a couple of times where her looks and movements were hinting that she maybe didn't approve of Harry and Cho, and the scenes with the DA and in the Ministry where they showed how powerful she is, but she had practically no dialogue at all.

Bump. Less than a week now. I'm getting pretty excited.

Talking morbid, I keep wondering what I was doing during the same moments that a man I respected and revered was tying a slipknot to hang himself after murdering his wife and child. It almost seems like something that happened in a different world. If only it had.

I agree.

They'll cop a shitstorm of bad press no matter how this goes down.

At least they won't be doing offensive Vince shit.

I want to think that I'll still be able to appreciate his matches from a technical standpoint and to admire his perseverance in striving to live his dream and become a pro wrestler. I'm not sure that I'll be able to, only time will tell.

Bad marriage + unspoken "snap potential" + roid rage looks like the combination that's responsible, but it still blows my mind that he would kill his 7 year old son. I could see him going into a rage if Nancy was cheating on him and with that combination anything is possible, but his son? It's such a tragedy. Like I said before, I really feel bad for the young Benoit fans who don't understand the reality of the pro wrestling business. To them, Benoit was a real-life superhero. How can they understand something like this when they have no ability to separate Benoit the character and Benoit the person?

It just blows my mind to think of what could possibly have happened that would cause such a meltdown in a guy who was living his dream like Benoit. I know from time to time reports about their marriage problems cropped up, but everything I ever heard about him suggested that nothing meant as much to him in his whole life as his kids.