Went to see Harry Potter 5 (Order of the Phoenix) this afternoon with Beloved Blonde and family. Excellent movie overall! There were whole chunks of the book missing, but if they had tried to shove more in it would have come off piecemeal and rushed, so I'm glad they pruned as they did. Very impressed with the battle in the Dept of Mysteries scene -- extremely well done overall, but missed the statues getting in on Dumbledore's rescue act. Loved the first view of the outside of Azkaban also -- never imagined it quite that way but it made sense and impressed me. No Howler for Aunt Petunia, no Quidditch, no Ron and Hermione as prefects (and all the attendant pissing and moaning from Harry was missing), no visit to St. Mungo's to see Arthur and finding Neville and his vulture-hatted Gran visiting parents, no replacement of Professor Trelawney with Firenze (missed that one -- that would have been good special effects), no swamp in the front hall of the castle, and no disastrous lesson of Hagrid's with the thestrals. Excellent choices of actors for Dolores Umbridge, and for Luna Lovegood's part especially -- she came off with exactly the right intelligent spaciness. Harry was somewhat whiny but it was much more understandable in the amounts they put in the movie -- I didn't have the same "want to slap him into next week" reaction I did when I read the book. Dumbledore's Army was betrayed by Cho (who got grilled by Umbridge with truth serum in her office). In the book it was her friend. This sets up some interesting dilemmas, as Snape reveals she did it under duress, and therefore Harry could conceivably forgive her (doesn't get her out of the way for Ginny). The Half-Blood Prince movie will have to deal with that issue.
This is not in any way a stand-alone movie. It's one where you really have to have seen the other ones for it to make sense, and it does a solid job of setting up the continuing escalation of the conflict in the wizarding world. Can't wait to see what they do with Half-Blood Prince (which now I have to reread to get ready for next weekend's delivery of Deathly Hallows).
After the movie we went to the Mirage Cafe in Port Chester. It's like Piero's in that it is very small, but phenomenal quality. Excellent, excellent food and drink. I was very impressed -- have to take Hubby, FIL and GF there sometime just for fun.
One more day of LA dept curric work, which hopefully will mercifully end early. Today was righteous deadly as 12 English teachers debated the exact language they would use to describe curriculum tasks (do you say writing? editing? revising? composing? do we use nouns or verbs for this?) I ended up finalizing the summer book orders just so I'd feel like I'd done something worth getting paid for today.
Frankenstein came back with a carpet guy who took a sample, and they will be coming to patch the place in the rug where they removed the half wall behind the media desk. Hurray and hallelujah. Apparently Eeyore did not ever give Kanga final info on ordering encyclopedias so that didn't get done, nor did she do anything about ordering coffee tables/ottomans or sharing final info on bookfair. Big surprises all. Guess we'll see what happens in August but my guess is that the usual answer will appear: "I didn't know I was supposed to do that." Fearless Leader said this afternoon that Eeyore and I had both been officially transferred over to him for evaluation next year and his one comment was "she's not going to like it." Hmmmm. Guess we wait to see what that actually means.
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