Oh, practically magic..?

We all know movies are magic. But never is that magic more patent than when we realize that there really is magic present on everything movie makers do. Especially the places they create for us to inhabit for two hours. In cinema, I think there are many houses that become iconic and are essential to the plots of the movies they belong to. One of those houses for me is the house in Practical Magic. 

I love the Alice Hoffman books, both Practical Magic (the basis of the first movie) and The Book of Magic (which was the basis for the second movie). I have fantastic memories tied to the Practical Magic movie, though, because that movie literally means first year of college to me. When this movie came out, we went to see it in the movie theater in downtown Morgantown, WV. I think that theater does not exist anymore, though. Everybody used to go to the multiplex in the Mall but we did not have a car then and we stayed local and that made that movie even more special. We saw it in that old movie house, while eating a tub of popcorn and drinking coke. 

I remember we saw the 8:00 pm show and then we went to the gay bar that was just up the street in one of the alleys. It was our Friday ritual: a movie or the Mountain Lair (the WVU student union) and then the bar. I had read the first book and I loved the idea of them having adapted it to the screen so I dragged my friends to the theater and we all sat down and ahhh-ed and ohhh-ed throughout the movie. The story of the Owens sisters resonated with me, of course. I love me an outsider story and if you add witchcraft, you I'm there.  

One of the things I really loved was the Owen sister's house (or their aunties' house, to be more precise). It was literally perfect and how I had basically imagined a modern witch's house would look like. It had tons of character and it was the perfect frame for the events in the movie. Last week I went to see the Practical Magic 2 movie. And the house was there! Oh, I know now that the first house never really existed and that they tore it down when they finished the movie (that happens a LOT) but when we get to see the house again in the second movie, there it was. Beautiful and charming and special. And then I got this insider's look into the house they built for the second movie and I had to post it here.

Movies are magic.

XOXO