Then and Now.

When those 3 unknown kids signed on to do the film Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, they probably had no idea what they were getting into...that this film would change their lives forever...that children (and adults!) all over the world would "worship" them...

And now they are super-rich teenagers plugged into a literary and film phenomenon so colossal that they can easily retire from the business and never have to work again, should they choose.

I know alot of people (read:adults) avoid reading the Harry Potter series. Some because it's just too popular or too "kiddy". But as an avid fan of the series, I can tell you that the books are some of the finest ever written in the fantasy fiction genre. They grab you from the first page and keep you guessing until the very end. The multitude of characters are fully fleshed out and attach themselves to your psyche. They also contain more "adult" storylines than you can imagine. Remember, children live in an adult world, and in J.K. Rowling's brilliant universe, they are frequently confronted with adult quagmires.

As the series progresses, the "children" grow up. By book 5, they are teenagers fighting along side the adult wizards against evil forces and magic that surely seek to destroy them. The wizarding world they live in is so fantastically imagined by Rowling. No detail is left undescribed. And it also mirrors the real world...containing frequent allegorical tales of politicians and governments gone bad. There are also tales of love and loss, of triumph and tragedy...They are the kind of books that when you read them, you think about them for weeks afterwards. This is no small feat.

I will definitely be going to see the 5th film this week. I try not get frustrated by the fact that due to the number of pages of the 5th book, Order of the Phoenix, the movie will undoubtedly have to skip over alot of material in order to tell the story in just under two hours. But no matter...just being able to see that fantastical world brought to life on film is satisfying enough.