A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

(C) 2007 Scholastic, Inc. Harry Potter: The Complete Series Paperback Box Set (Books 1-7)   Although I’ve owned two of J.K. Rowling’s bestselling fantasy novels about the adventures of a boy wizard named Harry Potter ( Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone  and  Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix ),  I never really tried to read the entire seven-book cycle after I finished reading the first book.  In both cases, I had been given the Potter books as gifts, and though I finished  The Sorcerer’s Stone  and gamely gave  Order of the Phoenix  “the old college try” and got halfway through it, for some reason or another, I did not buy the other five books of the series.  Now, you might think that I had not enjoyed  Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone  or dismissed Rowling’s works as “mere” kids’ books, but you’d be far off the mark.  I like fantasy books quite a bit and I  did  like the first book a great...

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002)   If you have ever watched a film series based on a multivolume literary tale – like, say,  The Lord of the Rings  or Twilight –  you’ve probably noticed that the first movie is the “expository” installment in which we are introduced to the characters, settings and situations of the story.  Usually, these first movies are sometimes a bit long and leisurely paced so that we can get our bearings in their universe, especially if they take place in a fantasy Utopia with magical themes and otherworldly creatures.  Second films in  continuing sagas , on the other hand, tend to flow better and with a firmer grasp on the story and characters because the introduction of characters and the setup of the overarching tale have all been dispensed with.  The pacing of the story is usually brisker – even if the running time is not particularly short – and the writers, director, and actors can get on to the meat of th...