Our beloved Headmaster, John Granger, is in Scotland this week, giving the the HogPros on that side of the Atlantic a wonderful dose of his own brand of magic. So, if you are missing his voice here, hop a Portkey over to the wonderful MuggleNet Academic website, which has just put up its latest chapter. In this episode, the subject is very relevant, if a bit racy: sexuality and gender. Join me after the jump for more about the episode, and come back here to comment after you’ve partaken of this feast for the intellect! [Read more…]
New MuggleNet Production Features Our Headmaster and Edmund Kern
May 16, 2012 by 5 Comments
Hold on to your Quaffles–Competitive Quidditch is Getting Serious
May 12, 2012 by 1 Comment
In 2005, I had the great pleasure of presenting at the Witching Hour in Salem, MA. It was my first national Harry Potter Conference. I loved the sessions I attended, though I was quite baffled by one item on the program: Quidditch. How, I thought, can they play Quidditch without flying? I was really interested in seeing this spectacle, and sorely disappointed when torrential rain cancelled the outdoor events. Since then, I have been delighted to see Quidditch played at other events, including Infinitus and Leaky-Con 2011. This wonderful, wacky, wizarding sport has grown beyond being a convention conversation piece, and the International Quidditch Association is seeking greater recognition, regulation, and revenue. Check out this great article on the growing legitimacy of Quidditch, and then share your Quidditch thoughts! Do you play or watch? Or, like me, do you just explain any injury you may be sporting as the result of a rough Quidditch match?
H/t to James and my college colleague John (who was asking today if I could hide my broom and wand in my graduation regalia).
Even More Wizarding Worlds: Harry’s Coming to Osaka, Japan!
May 11, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Welcome back! HogwartsProfessor and our sister-site TheHogsHead went down yesterday for technical reasons I do not understand and cannot explain — but a very big “Thank you!” to the folks behind the curtain that brought us back up so promptly. Today’s news: Harry Potter in Japan!
I confess to having been surprised when Universal Studios announced that they were going to be opening a Wizarding World of Harry Potter theme park in Hollywood; dinosaur that I am, I imagined that landmarks were associated with one place, something like Mt. Rushmore and the Dakotas and the Eiffel Tower in Paris. You traveled to that place to see the landmark.
Not, apparently, when the landmark can be reproduced fairly easily (albeit with hundreds of millions of dollars) and make a lot of money (as in many more millions of dollars annually). Now we learn that not only will North America be bracketed by Wizarding World parks with rides in Florida and California but the Pacific Ocean will be as well with Universal Studios Harry Potter destinations on the ‘west’ (far east?) coast in Japan and in Hollywood on the east coast. Read all about the new Japanese park in the L.A. Times. (Hat tip, James!)
And soon the Wizarding Worlds will staddle the whole Muggle globe as well, with Universal Studios theme parks in “South Korea, Dubai, and Russia.” The push-for-parks seems to be tied to a drop in conventional toy and accessory sales for Warner Brothers’ marketing division: [Read more…]
The Divergent Trilogy: Twilight, MarySue, and Tris Prior
May 8, 2012 by 1 Comment
We are in the third day of ‘Beatrice Prior Week’ here at HogwartsProfessor and it’s the last day of comparisons with the three other popular series we’ve discussed at length here. Yesterday, it was Hunger Games, Sunday it was Harry Potter, and today we come to the neglected corner, Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight books. What could Veronica Roth’s Divergent trilogy have to do with the Paranormal Romance in Forks?
Quite a bit! Even some interviewers are talking about it with Ms. Roth, albeit only in terms of her movie deal with Summit, the makers of the Twilight films. From NextMovie.com’s interview with Ms. Roth (December 2011):
People inevitably will make comparisons to Stephenie Meyer, since you’re both YA novelists signed to Summit. She’s producing her first film now — are you planning to be Meyer-level involved in the making of “Divergent?”
Not really. At least, I haven’t really been involved with it for very long, so it’s hard to say. But I really just love books and I never really watch movies. I’m more into the slow, sort of meditative process and movies are like bam-bam! Bam-bam-bam! So I don’t know if it’s really the place for me. I don’t know, it’s been really fun to see “Twilight” from the inside, but I’m really just observing, I’m not really involved.
Ah. Ms. Roth… You have won my heart! Time is short, though, so let’s skip right to the five points of congruence with Twilight that I noted on my first trip through Divergent and Insurgent.
The Divergent Trilogy: Katniss Everdeen, Meet Tris Prior!
May 7, 2012 by 10 Comments
Yesterday we discussed the many similarities between Joanne Rowling’s Harry Potter novels and the first two books in Veronica Roth’s Divergent trilogy. As remarkable as those parallels are, largely,I think, because Ms. Roth has been a serious reader of the Hogwarts Saga for the great majority of her life (remember, she’s only 23 — do the math!), these echoes are not what reviewers are noting in their write-ups of Insurgent this month. It’s the kinship between The Hunger Games’ Katniss Everdeen and Divergent‘s heroine, Tris Prior, that I’m seeing everywhere.
What does the author think? In a USA Today interview she was asked about the comparisons being made:
Do the Hunger Games comparisons bother you?
The Hunger Games is pretty fantastic, so I always get a little scared when people make those comparisons because I think, “Well, I never tried to do that…” And it’s so good that it’s a little daunting to see those comparisons out there. But at the same time, it’s been pretty incredible what it’s done for the genre and for my book’s visibility. Also, if you’re going to be compared to something, it might as well be The Hunger Games because it’s really awesome. At least it’s not something I didn’t like.
Well, all right, then. The author says she’s on board with the comparisons, so let’s make a few of our own… I’ll go first, then you jump in! [Read more…]
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