Last night, Harry Potter fans around the district lined up in a now years-old tradition of festive midnight releases of the latest cinema installment. Full disclosure: yours truly was among the eager fans at the midnight showings at Gallery Place. I say showings, because at Gallery Place alone there must have been 6 or 7 “midnight” showings, staggered minutes apart: 12:00, 12:01, 12:02, 12:03… you get the idea. Tickets to showings were sold out last night, though the Cleveland Park screening sold out over Fourth of July weekend. (They did still have tickets to their 3:30 a.m. screening as of last Tuesday, however. Appealing.)
‘YIP 193 – Potterpalooza’
courtesy of ‘(afm)’
According to the photographer who snapped this pic of the line outside The Uptown, the first girl in line had been there since 5:30 yesterday morning. There weren’t as many kids or (visibly) diehard fans at Gallery Place, but there were definitely some. Reading the reaction of the theater after the credits rolled and viewers filed out silent (no post-screening applause) circa 2:45 a.m., I’d say we were all under the emotional equivalent of a “stupefy” spell. It’s a dark movie and long, but good despite its awkward tween romance (hey, we were all there once) and deviations from the written plot. As The Half-Blood Prince numbers 704 pages, this is hardly unexpected.
Read: “I Speak Parseltongue” and “Make love not horcruxes”
