Muggled.

I hope you all had a great, festive, fattening Thanksgiving. I've taken a few extra days off to add to my Thanksgiving weekend just to veg out.

I got to do some excellent Star Wars gaming with my RPG group this past Saturday. Our gamemaster, Mad Mario, came up with quite the scenario with loads of political intrigue as well as ass-kickery to please us geeks. So much so that the time just shot by. I got there at noon, we started playing at 1pm and the next time I looked at a clock it was already 6pm. We play again in mid December to finish out the scenario. Should be something to look forward to! Good job, Mar!

With my Xbox still down for the count, I've found myself hearkening back to one of my old computer games... Diablo II. It's quite a fun and easy action, hack 'n' slash RPG. Very addicting.

I went out and saw "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" yesterday. Here are my thoughts. I've never been overly impressed with the whole Harry Potter phenomenon. I've read the first book and have seen all the movies. Though I do see it as a great escape and something to light an imagination fire under the rumps of the MTV / videogame generation, it's never grabbed me the way the Star Wars, James Bond and Lord of the Rings franchise have. But, I do have to admit that it is aimed at a much younger generation than my crusty, old geek sensibilities can tolerate. I've always found the movies and stories... cute. Not horrible or awful or bad or wonderful or excellent, just... cute.

Prior to seeing the film, I heard that this was the best Potter film yet and that things start to go dark in this one. So I was hoping that maybe this would be the one that would win me over completely. That this would be the one I'd want to see again and maybe even start buying them on DVD. That this would raise the bar out of the "cute" territory on plunk it solidly into the "must see the midnight showing" realm.

Well, after the viewing I can admit that this Potter film does raise the bar from being "cute" and slightly moves it to "starting to get interesting" mode for me. Like the previous films, the thing I was most impressed with was the art direction. They continue to bring Hogwarts and the whole Harry Potter world to life while wallowing in the wonderfully absurd and (with each new movie) creepy. It's like a little trip to Disneyland for me. One the movie starts you can really throw your cares away and fall into J.K. Rowling's world of magic.

I'm also getting a vested interest in what happens to Harry in the future of the films. The fact that the story follows the same formula the previous ones did (There's some sort of mystery going on at Hogwarts and the evil mage, Voldermort, has somehow infiltrated the magic school to try and kill Harry) is getting a little stale for me. Oddly enough, I was able to put that aside this time and focus on the character of Harry. Daniel Radcliff's acting maturity starts to really shine in this one, thus I really want to know what's going to happen to Harry in the upcoming films.

I wouldn't say that "...Goblet of Fire" is hororifically dark when put in comparison with "Revenge of the Sith" or "Empire Strikes Back" or "The Crow" (ok, I was going a bit overboard with that last one), but you do get the feeling that things do start to go downhill at the end of this one.

So, I felt that the Potter series still isn't going to sit along side the great fantastical franchises that I hold so near and dear to me, but I think I'm going to look forward to the opening of a Potter flick with a little more anticipation.

We'll I'm off for some more Diablo II. See ya.

Zangz.