A gift in the form of music, again ;)

Mr M delighted me by getting tickets to Imelda May’s concerts as my birthday gift. I wouldn’t have thought that I would have the chance to return the favour by gifting him his very favourite musician’s live concert. Mr M is an ardent fan of Gary Numan. He has almost all of his records on vinyl. When he was checking out Numan’s home page, playing his latest album, he saw that Numan was touring and that he would be in London in October. Since he hasn’t been to Numan’s concerts all these years, I thought it would be a very memorable gift on his big 5 O 😉 You should see him getting all excited when we got the tickets.

We saw the concert at the O2 centre in Brixton on the 14th of this month. When we got out of the tube station, all we had to do was to follow all those folks wearing a Gary Numan T-Shirt. It was amazing. The arena was fully packed and we had to stand in the queue for almost 20-30 minutes to get in. We got very good seats where there was an unrestricted view of the stage. Jayce Lewis opened the night. I should say that except for the first song, he didn’t manage to capture our attention.

Around 9 pm Gary Numan came on stage and was welcomed very grandly. Honestly, I had listened to only a few of his songs and I don’t remember them all, except for the one I posted for the Tuesday Tunes (My name is Ruin) that week we went to the concert. But then, this concert was for Mr M and I can tell you that he totally enjoyed it and I saw him singing along to almost all the songs. It really felt very good watching him enjoy the show. Numan also played the songs from his latest album for which he was accompanied by his daughter Persia. She did very well, that cute little girl.

The show went on until almost 10.30 pm. It was close to midnight when we reached home. The gift was almost a month delayed, but I am glad that I got the opportunity to gift him that. Thank you for that Mr M and may you have truly wonderful years ahead with good health, happiness and opportunities to make your dreams come true.

 

Fantastic Beasts

The first movie my husband took me to, the next day I arrived in London was ‘Fantastic Beasts and Where to find them‘. Both of us are huge Harry Potter fans (I am glad to say that he joined the Wizarding World quite recently…better late than never..and oh! he is a Ravenclaw by the way) and we were glad that we were able to see this movie together instead of Skyping about how the movie was.

I am not entirely happy about all the extensions to the Harry Potter and the Wizarding World after the series ended. I am sure I am only the minority in this. I would never take up the Fantastic Beasts book series and read them. Thankfully, neither does my husband. We both have decided that henceforth we will just watch the movies and be done with it. It is quite hard to give up on them as of yet. We did, however, watch the Order of Phoenix the other day and enjoyed it immensely.

Coming back to the movie. It was not a disappointment, but it wasn’t a great success either.  Eddie Redmayne might do more loud talking instead of mumbling. I could hardly understand what he was trying to say. I think Collin Ferrell and Ezra Miller did much better jobs in this movie than the rest. And (Spoiler Alert) I so did not expect Johnny Depp as Gellert Grindelwald in the end. That was a “gasp” moment for me. I read a news article about his involvement in the project, but I thought it was only in the upcoming movies. But the best of the lot was Dan Fogler as Kowalski (Incidentally I liked the same named character in Penguins of Madagascar too and it’s a cute name too) He was amazing and very funny. He was the one who kept it all together and real for us. I would give a 3/5 for this movie. I might sound an old person who doesn’t want to get away from the original series, but that is OK. The more it goes on and on, the more it gets thinned out and there wouldn’t be any personal relationship with the characters at the end. For me, that is more important with a series. I love that personal connection, even if it is fictional. Don’t know if it makes any sense…but that is how it is.

 

My house(s)

I had registered with Pottermore a couple of years back. But I forgot my password to login. When I tried to use the ‘Forgot the password’ option, they informed that I wont be able to retrieve it since the site had changed after I had registered. Of course it has. But thankfully when I reregistered it I was able to use my username and associate my house to my account. And I also figured out my Ilvermorny House and more about my wand too. Here is what Pottermore told me about my houses and my wand. Which house(s) do you belong to?

There are Fans, and there are SuperFans…

Recently one of the blogger’s asked me about a movie that affected and changed my life and I replied in the comments about Harry Potter and how I wrote an article about it as part of my series ‘Portable Magic‘. Even though that series was more about the books that made an impact on me as a person and the various genres I love and like, Harry Potter was an exception where I started the book because of the movie. And well, everyone who has read my ‘About‘ page knows why I have got that G as part of my pseudonym KG.

And very recently, I got someone else also interested in the Harry Potter series, just because I called myself <XYZ> Granger in my Skype ID  and that person found it rather interesting instead of finding it a little freaky 😀 (even though I did get the question ‘Is Granger a common Lastname in India ??? 😯 ) and went on to get the first Harry Potter book.

So yeah, I am a big fan of Harry Potter as are so many millions of others. But there are lot of people who are ‘SUPER’fans. They take the meaning of the fandom to a whole new level. We do see a lot of things from a reader’s perspective, a fan’s perspective about fandom and all. But how do the people who play that character feel about the fandom. We have heard a lot of freaky and scary stories about fans who become stalkers and all. But that is just a minuscule percentage when compare to the whole lot. Who is a SuperFan ? And what happens when one actor decides to find out why these SuperFan’s do what they do. To figure out what makes them follow the people they follow and why ? To understand why would they dedicate and spend so much time and money just to get an autograph or  to know about an actor whose played a character from their favorite series and all about their life ?

Just recently, I guess last Sunday , if I am not wrong, my friend and I were discussing about Harry Potter movies and were talking about Neville , Ron and Draco. How we loved the way Neville / Matthew Lewis has totally transformed to this totally new person, so different from what we saw in HP movies, how we both loved Draco’s  / Tom Felton’s acting and how awesome he was as the bad guy (I always think that it is very difficult to play the Bad Guy at such an young age) and how Ron/ Rupert Grint is still the cute and insane person as he was in the HP movies. We both disagreed on Hermione / Emma Watson, because I thought she was awesome both as the character and as a person and my friend thought she was pathetic as the character and grew up to be awesome as a person. So we agreed to disagree 😉

And today I saw a news article, about a Documentary series made by Tom Felton (aka Draco Malfoy) called ‘Superfans! A Tom Felton Documentary’. I couldn’t see the 2nd part though. It wasn’t playing in the playlist, but the rest was wonderful. I liked it and here I am,  sharing it with my fellow Harry Potter fans. Enjoy the documentary 🙂

Wingardium Leviosa!