Dumbledore double

We've reached the third third of our trip, arriving in Los Angeles yesterday for the final eight days in the U.S., so I thought it was long past time to check in with you.

Fortunately, my in-flight entertainment from Boston to LAX gave me just the sort of excuse I like to write a quick something: a coincidence.

It was rather unlikely, you will agree, that I would watch two movies in which Albus Dumbledore, the Harry Potter character who has now appeared in more movies than any other, would appear, or at least be referenced.

This would not be unlikely if I had chosen to revisit one of the ten other Harry Potter movies available on my American Airlines flight, to accompany the newest, Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore, which I didn't manage to see in the theater. 

The second movie I watched was, indeed, a revisit, but it was a revisit of last year's Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar.

Why Barb and Star? Well, although I really appreciated that movie the first time -- it ended up at #32 out of the 170 films I ranked in 2021 -- my affection for it didn't land in the same vicinity as that of its most ardent fans, so I wondered what I'd missed. In fact, I remember not long after thinking that I could only remember a few jokes that had really worked for me. I remembered marveling at the absurdity of the whole thing, but was it actually hilarious? I didn't know.

I only laughed once or twice on my second viewing. I still appreciate the movie quite a bit -- like I still really enjoy Jamie Dornan's dramatic ode to the seagulls, and I love that both Barb and Star come up with lies about what they were doing that involve turtles. But it isn't the home run for me that it is for others.

However, it does contain a reference to Dumbledore. When Dornan's character says something about a phoenix to Barb (Annie Mumolo), she shouts out "Dumbledore's bird!" And then says "Dumbledore" again more quietly when she gets a perplexed look from Dornan. 

The movie that features a lot more Dumbledore was a minor comeback for the Fantastic Beasts series.

I really liked the original, And Where to Find Them, but The Crimes of Grindelwald was bad. I don't intend to revisit it to find out, but I suspect the difference in my affection for the two movies has something to do with not being burned out by digital wizardry (so to speak) when I saw the first. Of course, sometimes a reboot/prequel/what have you works for you because you realize you longed for a return to that world, and it got a lot of things right. But the freshness of that return is no longer there with the second movie, so it has to stand on its two feet, and proves ill-equipped to do so.

My feelings toward The Secrets of Dumbledore don't approach my feelings for And Where to Find Them, but at least this movie is solidly in the three star range, meaning I would recommend others see it. Grindelwald had been a two-star experience -- competently made, I suppose, but entirely lacking in anything that excited or thrilled me.

Of course, the difference could just come down to them replacing Johnny Depp with Mads Mikkelsen. 

It won't be a Dumbledore triple as we have chosen to go to Disneyland (on Tuesday) rather than Universal Studios, as my wife had hoped, where there would be plenty of Harry's wizarding world. I have to see the new Star Wars rides, and besides, we went to Universal on our last trip in August of 2019. We haven't been to Disney since January of 2017.

Before then, we have to clean out the garage of our house in Van Nuys, which we have been renting for nine years since we moved. We'll be shipping some things, donating others, and throwing a third group in the garbage, in all likelihood. And while that will make for a busy next few days before the shippers come and box up our stuff on Monday -- we can't pack it ourselves so as not to try our hand at international drug smuggling -- it may feel like a breeze compared to two solid weeks of seeing family in Indiana and New England. Which went as well as can be expected, maybe even better than that, but I need a bit of a change of pace that isn't so emotionally demanding and fraught with potential hurt feelings.

So it's really nice to be sitting in the backyard of the house where we're staying in the Hollywood Hills, a bit of a treat to ourselves in expectation of turning a healthy profit on the house we're about to sell. Here, check out my view:

With any luck I'll be checking in with you a bit more regularly before I fly back to Australia next Thursday night.