Kind of sad that work and school starts today and tomorrow respectively so less time for Diablo 3, though thankfully I’ll be able to keep busy.

I’ve been neglecting this for a while. Ask me questions to keep me occupied.

I could get a lot of flack for saying this but honesty I don’t really like Dumbledore (as portrayed in the books) as a character.  I suppose I could amend that statement further by saying that I don’t like what people typically think Dumbledore is like, the good, perfect old wizard who is a fount of knowledge and wisdom who can do no wrong. Saying all this, I really preferred Michael Gambon’s portrayal over Richard Harris’. 

Obviously Dumbledore was meant to evoke other famous wizards like Merlin and Gandalf but where this character went into a direction I didn’t like was his portrayal as perfect and always calm.  I don’t like the perfect hero motif, the fallen hero has always seemed a much more complex and therefore interesting character and I know that is where a lot of my bias comes from and I can’t connect with a perfect character so why would I want to read about one?  I know there were moments when Dumbledore showed doubt in his plans and whether or not he was doing what was best when it came to Harry but that just wasn’t enough for me.  All this complex thinking took place off stage and we could only speculate on what was going through his head.  So while it is somewhat unfair to say that the books portrayed him as without error what they did show just wasn’t enough to throw off that aura of perfection he had previously established.  

And that is why I loved Gambon’s Dumbledore so much more than Harris’.  Granted I think that Harris did a great job in the first two books, where the sense of danger and undercurrents generated thereby were much more downplayed.  Books one and two were children’s books through and through where the Hero defeats the Villain at the end and we get to go off on our merry way until the next time.  So there Harris did a great job of showing the kind and gentle side that Dumbledore needed but I just have serious doubts that he could have given off the intensity that I believe he needed in the later books where evil comes to a head and things get so much darker.  I think that Gambon brought a nice bit of humanity to his character. Could someone argue that he was a bit too intense? Sure but that means less to me than having someone who’s only emotion that was shown was stony calmness.

In short while I loved both portrayals I thought that Gambon’s was good for the dark times and Harris was good for the light and without actually being able to see what they would look like in a role reversal I have to stick with was was shown and say that I like New Dumbledore so much better than Old.

I probably missed something and maybe you can changer your mind. Ask a question and I’ll try to cover it.

Art is inherently wasteful and I’m okay with that. It’s wasteful just because there isn’t a whole lot you can do with it. You can’t eat it, you can’t build with it, it won’t keep you warm at night but still we need it. Art is what separates us from any other species we know. Its really what makes us special. Other animals can use tools and communicate but I can’t think of any animals with art.