Kyle Smith:

Compare [Harry Potter to] Luke Skywalker, who has to conquer his own vanity, laziness and anger in order to earn his powers. Harry, like many of his generation, is the Cosseted One from an early age. He’s told that he’s special, that he’s got awesome gifts, that those who don’t understand this are blind to the plain facts. Deploying his powers involves no more character or soul-searching than following a recipe.

The whimsical creations and the narrative pull — making readers beg to know what’s going to happen next — are all Rowling offers. The great kids’ works strike deep, satisfying chords. “The Wizard of Oz” would be just a Technicolor fun ride without Dorothy’s discovery that everything she always wanted was right there at home. “Willy Wonka” isn’t just a funny freak-out. It’s also a near-biblical catalog of sinners and punishment. The Potter tales are built on nothing. Inside them is a deathly hollow.

Is there any children’s writer more dismissive of morals? A Rowling kid starts learning at an early age that principles are adjustable depending on convenience.

Rowling ignores ethics to the point of encouraging dishonorable behavior. Harry spends “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” — the film version of which is raking it in this weekend — cheating out of a textbook that has all the answers written in the margins, causing him to fraudulently win a luck potion that he uses to solve the central mystery.

Read the whole thing here.

1:00am PST - Clock, The (1945) - A G.I. en route to Europe falls in love during a whirlwind two-day leave in New York City. Cast: Judy Garland, Robert Walker, James Gleason, Keenan Wynn Dir: Vincente Minnelli BW-90 mins, TV-PG

There are few actors more interesting than Robert Walker. A double feature of today’s pick and “Strangers on a Train” will reveal just what an extraordinarily talented and intriguing screen presence he was. In both roles, Walker’s about a half-measure off the rest of the world and quite capable of aw-shucks charm. From there they separate into the boy next door and a cold, psychotic killer. Which leads me to a larger point…

When it comes to acting, “range” is overrated. “Depth” is what matters. Accents and affectations are not acting. I’ve seen high school productions with actors more convincing than anything Meryl Streep’s done in years. Great actors and movie stars, like Walker, plumb the depths of their screen personas. Great performances comes from inside not outside, and, as we’ve seen from deteriorating talents like Julia Roberts, Streep and De Niro, that inside place can become less and less accessible to those who fall for their own celebrity.

You can say Cary Grant, James Garner, John Wayne, Joan Crawford, Lana Turner, Edward G. Robinson, and the like, all played the same person in movie after movie, but it’s what they found within that person that made them giants.

Robert Walker was interesting. You couldn’t take your eyes off him. In one film he’s digging his toe in the dirt, in the next strangling a woman he’s never met – but in both he’s absolutely convincing.

Not to take anything away from either Gene Wilder or Johnny Depp, but can you imagine what a great Willy Wonka Robert Walker would’ve created.