Today, our good friends at the Harry Potter Automatic News Aggregator lead us to a very sensible explanation of why some actors avoid reading the novel a screenplay is based upon–to avoid the “heartbreak of exclusion.”

In this interview in METRO.co.uk actor Jason Isaacs (Lucius Malfoy to Potter fans) explains it as follows:

I stopped reading the books when the scenes I loved, usually involving me, stopped making it into the scripts. I’m waiting to read the script for the last one, then I’ll read the book. I don’t want to fall in love with particular sequences that don’t end up in the film. Obviously, they can’t include the whole story or the films would each be 20 hours long. I read the first four books all in one go, but haven’t read one since.

[Read more…]

Although supposedly buried in reams of notes and revisions of his forthcoming book, the Professor surfaced long enough to forward these musings upon a literary evaluation of the current political scene as inspired by an article called Sex, Race and Gen Y Voters by Rosa Brooks as published in the LA Times.

To read the article, click here.

After reflecting on the article, Professor John forwarded the following commentary speculating on how the current postmodern trend in American philosophy has extended itself even into our electoral process:

Just a simple post about the Democratic race shaping up about who is more politically correct, the cool black friend everyone wants (Jackie Robinson with no Duke Snyder…) or the steely eyed woman of purpose breaking through the ultimate glass ceiling, for the prize of winning the Presidency for the Political periphery and disenfranchised. [Read more…]

The Harvard Crimson reports:

Harry Potter never returned to Hogwarts for his seventh and final year, so J. K. Rowling never got to write a graduation speech for her magical protagonist.

“Perhaps no one in our time has done more than J. K. Rowling to inspire young people to experience the excitement and the sheer joy of reading,” said University President Drew G. Faust in the statement.

I assume Yale tried to get her to come to New Haven but that Harold Bloom might have expired if she had accepted. Harvard is much more Harry friendly…