Like thousands of other across the country, I dressed up and stood in line to see the midnight showing of the latest Harry Potter flick; Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.  In sixth grade, my homeroom teacher, Ms. Rupp read us the first Harry Potter book, and found it fascinating!  I bought the first three and plowed through them at record speed, and purchased the rest of the books the day they were released, going to two midnight release parties at the local Borders.  For the most part, each of the Potter flicks has left me feeling pretty good.  With spot on cast movie after movie, I had little to no reservations about the latest film installment come midnight this morning.  Getting in line around 9:30 (with several news vans outside the cinema), all 14 midnight showing screens at the local Regal were sold out, and four 3:15 am showings had been added.

The film itself held up expectations, and I think was the most beautifully filmed of the six made so far.  There were also many, many funny parts which had me laughing (”Especially the pincers”).  There were several new character introductions that matched their book counterparts perfectly, however, several moments from the book that I was looking forward to were cut, and the ending changed dramatically, in my opinion.  But, needless to say, I’ll be seeing it at least one more time before it hits DVD.  The sad thing is, we now have to wait until November 2010 for the first film of the final book, which has been split into two films.  So…pretty much Harry Potter has spanned my entire adolescence, and then some.  But I’ll still be in line at midnight two more times – it’s worth it!