Mailbag: Harry Potter’s Spotted Dick!

December 3, 2010 by 1 Comment

I learned last week that the ‘contact’ tab at HogwartsProfessor.com was broken and, hurrah, the web guru who maintains the site was able to fix it quickly. The good news is that I’ve been receiving on average one note a day from readers and speaking venues. The bad news, alas, is that I’ll never know how many folks, libraries, churches, and schools wrote to me here in the past year and whose notes I cannot recover.

Most of these contacts have questions or invitations even the most devoted All-Pro would not be interested in, but some are treasures. The stand-out for sheer self-promotion is this one, from a YouTube cook and Harry Potter fan:

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Filed Under: Mailbag

Shared Text: “Ze Who Shall Not Be Named”

December 2, 2010 by 3 Comments

Filed Under: Shared Text

Deathly Hallows (Part 1): A Reader’s Movie Notes

December 1, 2010 by 16 Comments

I really struggle with writing movie reviews.

I don’t know about you, but I roll my eyeballs at film criticism written by serious book readers in which the reviewer just doesn’t get beyond a throw-away acknowledgment that screened images and printed text are different media so the stories are necessarily different. Reading all the changes made in the jump from page to celluloid, be it in the Potter and Twilight franchises or in Narnia and Middle Earth, especially when these changes are noted with disapproval, disappointment, and a dismissive dismay at what the film-going reader experiences as something like heresy or sacrilege, leaves me marveling that anyone in the 21st Century still doesn’t understand that the movie experience is not and cannot be the reader’s experience of story. (Prof. Baird Hardy, of course, gets it just right.)

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Filed Under: Deathly Hallows Discussion Points, Movie Thoughts

Deathly Hallows Movie Notes: The Dance Scene

November 30, 2010 by 3 Comments

“Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1“ has opened to great box office success, as we knew it would, and it’s about time I wrote something about it, though I’m not a big movie goer. I want to note first that ‘Twilight: New Moon’ still holds the record for a November opening. I confess that startled me, as much as I admire the Twilight books (having written a book on the Forks Saga, right?), I didn’t think the fandom’s devotion to the cause or just sheer size were comparable. Wrong, again, it seems. Check out Box Office Mojo.

As predicted, the latest addition to the Potter series worked its magic on the box office, raking in a $125 million in ticket sales — a figure that includes it’s midnight/early Friday showings. But while the series topped itself, outpacing its last pre-Thanksgiving opening — 2005’s “Goblet of Fire” — “Twilight: New Moon” still holds the November opening title with $142.8 million…

What I want to write about, though, before sharing some book points is the Dance Scene in which Harry and Hermione ‘cut the rug’ in the tent playfully for a moment just after Ron’s departure. Some folks like it, others don’t, all, I think, miss the Big Movie allusion or hat tip to the Martin Scorsese classic, Taxi Driver.

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Filed Under: Movie Thoughts

Mailbag: Links for Serious Readers and Gift Givers

November 30, 2010 by 11 Comments

Riddled With Gilt: Gilded Books for the Lover of Truth and Beauty on your Gift List (especially if you have extra gold for such things!)

The Harry Potter Alliance has a Gift Shop! Who knew?

Amazon.com’s ‘Best Literature and Fiction’ Top 10 List for 2010. I’m confident Mockingjay outsold each and every one and the Deathly Hallows paperback outsold the lot combined. ‘Best Fiction,’ though, means ‘Best Selling Psychological/Literary genre piece.’ Go figure.

The new Hunger Games? Matched, published today and an Amazon best seller right out of the gate, features a girl-two-guy threesome, a dystopian setting, and a movie deal with Disney (just in case it’s the new Twilight, too).

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Filed Under: Hog Pro Notes