davextreme: harrypotter

Showing posts with label harrypotter. Show all posts

23 July 2009

YouTube - Alan Rickman's Answering Machine

YouTube - Alan Rickman’s Answering Machine

From Family Guy, tangentially Harry Potter-related. I kept thinking about it during the movie.

My Deathly Hallows Impressions from July 2007

Having watched the sixth movie, I immediately started thinking ahead to the last book. Here’s what I wrote about it then, with one addendum about the epilogue.

30 October 2008

Barack Obama Has Read Harry Potter

In last night’s Barack Obama Variety Half-Hour, Michelle Obama mentioned that her husband read all seven Harry Potter books with their daughter.

Has John McCain read Harry Potter?

Whom do you trust to protect America from dark wizards?

We need to know the full extent of the relationship between John McCain and Tom Riddle. Frankly I just don’t think he has the experience to lead us through any sort of dementor- or inferius-based terrorist attacks.

12 June 2008

Harry Potter Prequel

J.K. Rowling’s short, handwritten Harry Potter prequel sold at auction for $49,000, the proceeds of which will go to a dyslexia charity. You can view the story by going to Waterstone’s website and clicking “Read out authors’ stories”. A mirror and typed version are available here.

05 February 2008

Types

I’m well into the fourth of seven books in Stephen King’s Dark Tower series. I got to thinking last night that his gunslinger characters are really cool, but that I think Star Wars has laid permanent claim to the “last of a dying breed of warrior” type. Just as no one will be able to write a book about a wizard school ever again without being compared against Harry Potter, I wonder if the Jedi is simply the winner in that category. Not that King is whatsoever ripping off George Lucas. I think that he started the early writing of The Gunslinger at around the time that A New Hope came out, and certainly he’s drawing from westerns which in turn drew from samurai stories. And of course it occurs to me that there in fact are Star Wars novels featuring Jedi wizard schools.

21 October 2007

Dumbledore

JK Rowling has revealed that she always thought of Dumbledore as gay. I like the words she used. She didn’t, as has been reported, say that he is gay. She said she thought of him as gay. There’s a distinction there. After The Deathly Hallows came out she gave out a few ideas of what “happened” to the characters after the story ended. The thing is, she didn’t write them into the story, just like Dumbledore’s sexuality. Whatever happens between and after the pages is still open for you to read and imagine whatever you want. An aspect of postmodernism states that literary analysis goes beyond even the intentions of the author himself. Such-and-such is what she thinks happened to the characters, but by not writing it into canon she’s saying that your imagination is just as good as hers.

01 August 2007

Final Harry Potter Book Blasted For Containing Spoilers | The Onion - America's Finest News Source

Final Harry Potter Book Blasted For Containing Spoilers | The Onion - America’s Finest News Source

23 July 2007

Deathly Hallows Impressions

I’ve written up some of my Deathly Hallows thoughts here. I’ll probably add to them as I think of more stuff about the book.

Seven

Harry Potter Books

I never understood people’s claims that they read entire Harry Potter books in one day. They must have skimmed, right? Yet here I am, 25 hours after I started, and I’ve just finished the epilogue.

22 July 2007

Love Advice for Wizards

“Wands are only as powerful as the wizards who use them. Some wizards just like to boast that theirs are bigger and better than other people’s.”

—Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, page 415

18 July 2007

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

We saw Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix last night, and it totally lived up to the hype. I had just a few minor gripes (why did they establish that Ron, Hermione, et al couldn’t see the thestrals and then not play that up for humor when they were flying on them?), but I think it’s my favorite of the movies to date. They mostly cut out the right things to cut to let the story move forward, though I’d maybe have liked a few scenes to be a bit longer. Another minute with Sirius wouldn’t have hurt, nor would have explaining a little more clearly why they all get mad at Cho. Rowling’s strength is not in writing action, and I found the ending battle to be more exciting on film than in the book. Like the cemetery scene at the end of Goblet of Fire, the end could have been scarier and sadder, but it worked. I especially liked the way the Order of the Phoenix and the Death Eaters flew around and flicked spells at each other, and then how the Voldemort vs. Dumbledore battle looked like they were conducting an orchestra with their wands. It was no Yoda vs. Darth Tyranus fight, but the following internal conflict between Harry and Voldemort was great. They’re lucky Daniel Radcliffe grew up to be a good actor.