I’m torn right now because The Prisoner of Azkaban has been my all time favorite Harry Potter movie but  Half-Blood Prince might just take it’s place.  Scott and I went to see this on Saturday and I have to tell you I almost screamed at one point and cried at another.  I know these books forward and back and this movie still elicited a very strong emotional response from me.

In the Half-Blood Prince Harry and his friends are much more mature than in previous movies.  They are making more adult decisions and faced with ever increasingly hard situations.  Harry faces another year at Hogwarts but this time Dumbledore is showing Harry more and more about Tom Riddle who grew up to become Lord Voldemort.  Dumbledore is preparing Harry for his destiny to face Voldemort and destroy him.

David Yates the director kept a lot of the same style that he used in Order of the Phoenix which I thought was so smart.  The way the Death Eaters fly around is truly inspired.  And the way the Pensieve works is amazing.  

Speaking of Death Eaters, Helena Bonham Carter is one of my favorite parts of these movies.  She is the perfect wicked witch.  And Mrs. Malfoy was superb.

The bits with Won Won and Lavender are disgustingly hilarious.  In fact Ron continues to be the humor in the film and it’s brilliant.

 Young Tom Riddle is so beautiful it’s hard to imagine the horror that he grows in to.  There are some bits that they threw in that weren’t in the book but believe me they only furthered the story and kept things moving.

I LOVE this movie.  I totally want to see it again and then I want to own it so  I can watch it over and over.  Now, the movie is rated PG but it’s very, very suspenseful.  My oldest is 8 and I would not even think about taking him to this movie.  I would rather wait until he was older and could really appreciate the beauty of the more mature relationships and the darkness that surrounds the whole movie.  The choice that Malfoy has to make at the end.  Oh man, there is so much in this movie that is just incredible.

As for my favorite  I think Prisoner of Azkaban takes it for beauty and style but Half -Blood Prince takes it for real life drama.  I honestly felt like I was watching real events, especially with the blossoming love in the story.

I know I’m not the only one that saw it this weekend.  What did you guys think?  

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is in theaters now.

Now it’s obvious by now that I love Twilight but is it as obvious that I absolutely adore Harry Potter?  Well, I do and I try to share my obsession with my kids.  My 7 year old has been watching Harry Potter since the first movie came out.  I would watch it with him before he even learned how to sit down and watch a movie.  He’s grown up with it and same with my 5 and 4 year olds.  The first two movies that is.  I made the mistake of taking the older one to see the third one in the theater.  Not pretty.

I’ve also been reading the books to them.  We got about halfway through the third when they started to revolt and wanted to read something different.  I’m sorry to say, that made me mad.  How dare they not want to know what happens to Harry and Sirius Black!  Shame on them.  So we’ve been in a Harry Potter hiatus for a while now.  I’m letting them get a little bit older so hopefully they can appreciate it more.

Then you wont believe what happened.  My baby.  My 4 year old little angel brought me the case for HP and the Sorcerer’s Stone.  He picked it out of all the videos and brought it to me to watch.  My heart swelled inside me.  I can honestly say that I loved him a little bit more at that moment.

He watched the movie and the next day he brought me HP and the Chamber of Secrets to watch.  He was actually enjoying the movies!  The day after that he wanted to watch the one with the dragon.  I told him that was number one when Hagrid gets a dragon egg.  He watched it and complained because he wanted to see the one with the big dragon.  What a great memory!!  He’s only seen that in commercials but he still remembers it!  Oh, I am so proud.  Just busting at the seams.

With all this great progress I decided it was time to try HP and the Prisoner of Azkaban again.  This is the one I took my oldest to when he was really young.  So I turn the movie on and wait for the kids to come running scared into my room.  The oldest one did.  He didn’t like the movie at all and in fact he has had nightmares about it.  So major bummer there.  I had no intention of scaring him so bad.  But the other two.  The other two loved it.  In fact the little one is watching it right now as I type.  The 5 year old asks to watch it every chance he gets so I got 2 out of 3.  That’s not so bad.  In fact, it’s pretty darn good.

Now I wont let them watch the latest movies because they are PG-13 but I don’t mind reading them the books if they ever want to get back into them.  And they better.  It’s just so fun to have something I love be something they are interested in too.  Do you guys have a book like that?  That you  want so badly to share with your kids that you’re probably pushing it on them a little too hard?

I walked into Costco the other day and this was just sitting there waiting for me.  I had seen the $100 version at Amazon and thought that was the only option.  I had no idea it came out in a standard version for us little folk who can’t spend $100 on a book.  I can not express how excited I was.  I could barely shop, I wanted to go home and read it so badly.

And the greatest thing is…it didn’t disappoint.  So here’s the story.  Beedle the Bard essentially wrote down wizarding fairy tales for children.  These are a collection of his stories.  The stories can be a bit gruesome but all have great morals.  My favorite tale is The Fountain of Fair Fortune, in which three witches and a knight are on a quest to find a fountain that will change the direction your life is headed for the better.  On the way they find strengths and opportunities they didn’t know were available to them.

Dubledore, written before his death, has his say at the end of each story.  Very funny, insightful stuff.  And yes, in case you were wondering The Tale of the Three Brothers (the cloak, wand and stone) is in there along with the funny symbol Dumbledore drew.  It isn’t where I imagined it being (I thought it would be near the title) but it’s there.

My oldest is seven and I don’t think I’ll be sharing these stories with him.  Then again I don’t share our normal weird fairy tales with him.  Totally appropriate for a little older kid though and definitely appropriate for adults.

JK Rowling is one of my absolute favorite authors and I love and will cherish the newest edition to the Harry Potter world.  I wish she would come do some kind of book signing.  Has anyone met her?