Shopping and a mini movie marathon

I finally got to pick up my copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows yesterday! Yipee! Now I can curl up in a chair and enjoy reading my own book at my own pace. I got to buy other stuff as well like a much needed USB-to-parallel adapter cable so that I can attach this laptop (Dell Inspiron 640m) to our Canon inkjet printer. I also found that Delifrance has their own version of the kopi bun I bought at the airport when I left for Toronto. The dough isn't as good though but it should do.

I also had my fill of movies yesterday at least for the current summer season. I was able to watch Disney/Pixar's latest animation Ratatouille which turned out to be really cute. I'd say it totally deserved the 96% overall rating it got at www.metacritic.com. The quality of rendering was much more superior than any I've seen so far. But at the same time the animation didn't detract from the charming and heartwarming story about a rat with an unusual talent and ambition to be a cook.

After watching the 11:30am showing of Ratatouille, I had ten minutes to catch the 1:30pm showing of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix two theatres down. The movie was rather fast-paced just like Goblet of Fire which meant unfortunately little room for character development. Tonks, for instance, didn't seem as cool as she was in the book with her metamorphosing abilities. It wasn't too clear either that Mrs. Figg being a witch was quite a revelation to Harry. And there were major changes made to the story, which for me as a purist, is a big disappointment: we didn't get to see St. Mungo's and Neville's parents and it was Cho Chang and not her friend who betrayed Dumbledore's Army. I also missed the scene where Petunia receives a howler from Dumbledore in the beginning. And it looks like everyone who went with Harry to the Department of Mysteries at the end heard the entire prophecy while in the book it was Dumbledore who let Harry alone hear it (with Harry telling only Ron and Hermione much later in beginning of the next book). The backstory omissions made by Cuaron in Prisoner of Azkaban were more forgiveable in comparison. To make things worse, the theatre sound system wasn't that great either despite the higher ticket price (Php20 more than the Ratatouille ticket price probably due to reserved seating) and the fact that the theatre is supposed to be equipped with an SDDS surround system. So I didn't enjoy this fifth installment of the story as well as I did the first three, especially the third one. But then the book wasn't exactly my favorite in the series either.