The Order of the Phoenix: don’t mess with wizards
Harry Potter 5 is now officially my favorite (both the book and the movie). I just saw the film on Sunday and it has proven that wizards don’t always have to look fruity when pointing wands at each other. On the contrary, this movie shows us some bad ass wizard skills. The third installment, the Prisoner of Azkaban is still a close second in both the book and movie categories, but it just doesn’t have the magical ass-whoopings that Order of the Phoenix has. The massive wizard battle in the Ministry of Magic alone edges this movie over all the others, in my opinion. Watching Dumbledore and Voldemort go head to head is, I think, what we’ve all been waiting to see throughout the whole series. I only wish Richard Harris hadn’t died after the second film… he was a much more authentic Dumbledore. He made Dumbledore feel older, wiser, and more respectable, sort of like the Yoda of the wizarding world. Imagine the shock and awe had it been Harris dominating Voldemort instead of Michael Gambon. It really would’ve been like finally seeing Yoda bust out his true Jedi skills in Attack of the Clones.
Though I loved Phoenix, I still think that all of the Potter movies suffer slightly from “bookish-ness” (sometimes you gotta make up words, right?), which is to say that it’s trying to be a little too true to the continuity, pacing, and storyline from the books, so the movie feels more like watching a book than watching a movie. In some ways this is a good thing, especially having read each book before seeing the movies. You get more of that fulfilling of expectations when you already know the story and events. But when it comes to watching a blockbuster movie, the bookish traits wear on me a little. It’s not that staying true to the novels’ events ruins the movies, it’s just something that I’m constantly aware of while watching them. I think given a slightly tweaked screenplay and a little different pacing/directing, you could achieve the same goal without making it so obvious that Harry Potter is a book first, and a film second.
I hope they can keep this stellar cast around for all seven films, even though Dan Radcliffe’s gonna be 35 by the end of this saga.
Product Props: Lightwedge
While reading the swissmiss blog today (an amazing design blog), I saw a post about the Lightwedge, so I thought I’d just give my accolades to this awesome product, as I’ve owned one for over a year. The ‘wedge is a flat, glass book light that comes in a couple different sizes (depending on the size you’d like or the size of the books you most often read). It’s amazing because it serves as both a light and a bookmark at the same time, just close up the book with the light between the pages. It’s also incredibly bright, thanks to LEDs, and much more comfortable to sit with while reading than most competing products.
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ProductWiki & OpenID
I recently stumbled across ProductWiki, a product review service based on the wiki model of users contributing items, writing reviews, and rating products that are on the site. Just browsing around ProductWiki, I really love the interface and the way their model works. You search for items on the site, either with a search field or a drilldown type method (similar to Newegg or Amazon). Once you select a product, you can either “love it”, “want it”, “have it”, or “tag it”… or any combination thereof. They also have links provided for purchasing products via the Shopping.com API.
My favorite aspect is that their service supports OpenID, which I’ve discovered an interest of late. For someone who has so many accounts at various services all over the web, the idea of consilidating authentication to one set of servers is quite appealing. The only other service I use that currently supports OpenID is Ma.gnolia, the social bookmarking service. After digg implements OpenID support, I’m predicting that it’ll really take off. For those folks concerned about security in the land of OpenID (which is a reasonable concern), I would say that I only support OpenID for services that just require a human behind an account, such as digg, del.icio.us, Last.fm, or any of the other hundreds of Web 2.0 applications out there; not for use with eBay, Amazon, or your banking information. My experience so far with OpenID has been a good one, and I hope it continues to improve convenience and accessiblity around the web.
Online Feed Readers
I just recently listened to Mike Arrington’s TalkCrunch podcast concerning their overall breakdown of the online feed readers. I decided I’d go check some out for myself.
I basically checked out all the readers they discussed, save Feedlounge, due to the cost factor. I had used the Newsgator product before, and I liked it alright, but it seems if I was solely a Mac user it would be more useful (considering their NetNewsWire product syncs with Newsgator online, but currently there’s only an OS X version). In the end I’ve decided Rojo is a great product. It’s fast, Ajax-y, and the social networking features really interested me. Lately I’ve been using reddit’s online reader (super-light and beta I believe) and the FeedReader desktop application, which is open-source and pretty slick, but I just use too many computers to not have the read/unread synchronization. I think it’s now safe to say that the combination of digg and my Rojo feeds will now waste a fair portion of my free time…