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So today I recieved another card. This one is from R4 from Germany. As you can see, it features Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix which made me incredible happy because as it is, I am a huge fan of Harry Potter. I also loved this card a great deal because not only was it of Harry Potter, but there was a long story on the back about a trip to Sweden and some experience. It is always fun and interesting to read stories about others and their experiences and I get so happy :D
I guess you could say that I was rather bummed when the final book came out. You could also say that I couldn't wait till the final book came out. Then it did...I was like yipee...then after I read it, I was like...is it finally over? I don't want the stories to end.
I've heard about JK, I'll call her JK because I honestly don't know her real first name, creating future books that explore the lore of the HP universe. OK, that's cool and all if I want to find out what a snorgalmumph looks like or what a pimplidom tastes like but I want something more. So while sitting on the throne, it hit me, no not water, an idea. What if the story could go on? What if JK just never thought of the idea?
So here it is. Everyone keeps bugging her to create a sequel to the Harry Potter series. Basically to chronical the lives of an adult Harry Potter and his friends or the lives of their children. Don't get wrong, I'd love those ideas too. I do hope that she decides to write a bit about their family lives. What I'm suggesting has already been tested. Yes, you know it....a Prequel. Hey, the Lord of the Rings has one called the Hobbit, Star Trek had Star Trek: Enterprise, Indiana Jones had the Adventure of Young Indiana Jones, Star Wars had the whole 1,2,3 episodes, why not a Harry Potter prequel? What would she write about? The lives of Harry's parents and friends as kids, Dumbledor's youth, Severes' youth, Hagrid's upbringing, and "He who must not be named" whole life story. She could either write on each person individually and tie them together through links or write a 3 book series covering them all. Think of it...kinda like a Voldemort/Anakin Skywalker story line with a twist like Dumbledore/Obiwon. Doesn't that sound cool? I went to JK's website to see if she had some sort of email but never found any. Alas, maybe this idea was never meant to be. I know I'm not the only one to think about it, there must be others out there that are longing for more. Help me petition JK to keep Harry alive.
Holy Hogwarts! The final Harry Potter book will be split into two movies.
Part one of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows will debut in November 2010; the second will hit screens the following May, according to Variety.
That's good news for studios: To date, the Potter franchise has earned $4.5 billion worldwide at the box office.
But producer David Heyman tells The Los Angeles Times the decision "was born out of purely creative reasons.
"Unlike every other book, you cannot remove elements of this book."
Daniel Radcliffe and the gang began shooting the sixth Potter film, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, last September.
"It's been brilliant," Radcliffe has said. "It's also, I think, the funniest of the films so far."
Half-Blood Prince hits screens in November.
Star Daniel Radcliffe told the Los Angeles Times that splitting JK Rowling's final book in two was the only sensible option for the film-makers.
"There have been compartmentalised subplots in the other books that have made them easier to cut - although those cuts were still to the horror of some fans," he told the paper.
"The seventh book doesn't really have any subplots. It's one driving, pounding story from the word go."
The first instalment of Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows is due in autumn 2010, with part two scheduled for the following summer.
Cool!
No, Jo isn't writing another book (though she totally will do another installment in like 10 years), Warner Bros. is splitting Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows into two parts. I have pretty negative feelings about this. First off, I had major, major problems with the book, so I'm not looking forward to reliving every single moment of that over the course of two movies. Honestly, if there was one book that suffered from length, it was OotP. If there were two, add in Deathly Hallows, because there were long stretches of nothing, which really needed to be truncated... which is what movies are for!
Why do you think the LotR movies were so amazing? I have a confession, I couldn't get through the LotR books, mostly because of the chapters and chapters of walking, singing, and whining about food. The Hobbit kept those things to a minimum, but Tolkien felt the need to expand that in the trilogy. The great thing about movies is that they cut out the fat (well good movie adaptations, anyway) and leave the necessary good bits. If every one of those movies were split into two (which I know they could have been, since there are 4 hour extended editions), I probably would be annoyed by lack of action or furthering of the plot. I can't speak from experience, since I haven't seen the extended editions, for all I know they could be 4 kick ass amazing hours of footage that needed to be cut because 3 hours is enough.
To be fair, Warner Bros. isn't about to release a 3 hour and 20 minute Harry Potter, movie, and I guess a lot of fans still have problems with cuts to the Canon. I'm not one of them. Don't get the wrong, I was annoyed by the drastic changes from the books made in PoA (Marauders FTW?), but I learned to accept the movies and books as different forms of the same tale, adaptations, if you will. I guess the world isn't as enlightened as I am.
OotP benefited massively from cuts, I mean, Jo needed editorial cuts before sending that manuscript to the printing press. I understand that people had problems with that movie, non-readers were lost because of the truncation. So the writers need a little editorial practice, surely they'll figure it out by HBP, right? Why not put that to good use in Deathly Hallows? I mean, with the ability to make two 2+ hour long movies, they might have time to include... *takes inhaler*... the epilogue *GAGS*. And that may be the biggest tragedy.
Now, who will be directing these two potential turds? Rumor has it, it's David Yates, director of OotP. You'd think, since he directed my favorite film, OotP, I'd be elated. You could think that, but you'd be wrong. I had high hopes for directors: Spielberg, ... OK, mostly Spielberg. I kinda hoped for Guillermo del Toro to helm this, it seemed up his Pan's Labyrinth alley, but it wasn't meant to be, he caught a bigger fish: The Hobbit movie and prequel. I'm eagerly anticipating that endeavor.
OK, well, why not get Alfonso Cuarón? Sure he raped PoA and stole out Harry Potter childhood innocence, but he excelled in artsying up the HP franchise, and set the standard that future directors of the series worked from. Think about it. Also, any of you see Children of Men? His long, tracking shots would be brilliant during the many DH chase and action scenes. I would have loved to see his interpretation of the battle at Hogwarts. I guess I'll just have to imagine how awesome it would be.
So overall, I understand why WB did it. I don't believe it was a greedy move to make money, I really think they were thinking of Joe Moviegoer and how he would react to a truncated final installment. They need to approach the franchise as its own Canon and treat the ending as such, so people like my sister who hasn't read the books, will feel satisfied with the resolution. Though, if the movie watchers were anything like the book readers, they probably will leave the last movie feeling empty, which will evolve into anger and bitterness. I guess where the end of the series goes, nobody wins.
Looks Good Folks!
In curiosity of why Daniel Radcliff's role in Equus just had to be naked and frolicking with stallions, I made the "quickie wiki" search, cause hell its 8:50 on a Monday morning and this is less of my worries. But now I dont know whats more creepy.. the story line of Equus or the secret society of bestiality. Wait.. no, its not so hush hush. There was a climax in my wiki search folks, which led me to google zoophiles and lo and behold, guess the first site that happens to be listed...oh. my. god. Zoophile.net: Animal Sex Guides. Are they serious?? No seriously! They cant be serious! There are How-To's for garden goats and freakin dolphins!
Am I this ignorant and just not aware of this? Its apparently legal.. yet I still feel like the feds are coming for me right now cause I clicked into that site.
Straight off of wiki,
"Currently, the legality of bestiality varies greatly around the world. It is legal in some countries, such as Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands, while it is illegal in Great Britain (for penetrative acts), Canada, and much of the United States, Australia and New Zealand. Countries such as Belgium, Germany and Russia are in between the two as they permit sexual activity with animals but strictly prohibit the promotion of animal-oriented pornography.[13]"
Frankly, right now, I dont want to know what other folks are doing around the world with their animals, just as long as theyre far far away from me. But there were keywords in there.. much of the United States?
But this made my morning actually (but to think its actually REAL ><!):
"In some countries laws existed against single males living with female animals. For example, an old Peruvian law prohibited single males from having a female alpaca.[15]"
Well, I will now have a bitter taste in my mouth for the rest of the day..
Not much. Went to work. Author came to sign stuff, Tracy Lewis is her name. Our Friends Group actually came through and brought lots of food. However, turnout sucked. All in all, about 10 people stopped by to see the author. I think that either the community we serve doesn't give a damn, or they are just a bunch of frelling *****. I am not sure. It's pretty sad. Anyway, we have another author, Mary Anna Evans, coming next month. Frelling people better show up for this.
After work, went home and ate leftover pizza - tasty. Then watched Groundhog Day! Then went see movie - Cloverfield. Cloverfield was quite well done and quite good.
Currently watching Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. It's funny, but I am starting to like the movies a lot more than the books. Rowling dropped the ball on book seven in my opinion. Hopefully, the movies will correct that.
Good night.
Until tomorrow and the Super Bowl - go Giants and/or Patriots. I really don't care who wins this year.
FACT: I dig Harry Potter.
FACT: I feel no shame about this liking Harry Potter-thing I have going on.
FACT: I really wanted to play Tonks in the movie.
FACT: I believe Order of the Phoenix was the best book. I believe this because J.K. Rowling created a wonderfully rich and frightful vision of what Soviet style totalitarianism would be like in the wizarding world. I simply adore the fact that this book's villain was not some scaly dark wizard but a power-hungry bureaucrat (read: Stalin) who used torture, suppression, censorship, misinformation to enforce the Ministry's authority-- there's even a show trial for Harry! I also adore this character and the entire plot line of Harry being persecuted by some chronically strict and arrogant instructor who hands down decrees without the slightest concern for their impact.
After spending 15 plus years attending Los Angeles' public schools, I myself was subjected to the petty abuse of authority of insane and incompetent teachers. One in particular threatened to file a harrasment charge aganist me because I made a casual reference to her in our school's newspaper. She was eventually reprimanded by the principle for terrorizing me. She's cunt. She made me sad. I probably make more money than her now, which in turn makes me a better person.
Ok so here's why the movie was no good:
- Too short. Too simple. No texture. No nuuuu-ance.
- They did not create enough ambiguity around Snape's motivations for instructing Harry in mind control
- Voldemort = not that scary! He actually looked kinda good in that black suit.
- NOT ENOUGH SIRIUS BLACK!!! Ughhhh Sid Vicious as a long-haired wizurrrrdd is so hot. Why so little Sirius action? His death was intolerably anti-climatic. I was weeping when Sirius died in the book. The manner in which he was killed in this flick was so cavalier! It's like when Ratner killed off the Professor Xavier in Xmen 3. Wow. I just realized that this was possibly the unsexiest thing i have ever written. Here's something to give me back some street cred.
- The link between Harry and Voldemort was totally botched. The director's use of quick cuts and flashing lights did nothing to establish the fact that HARRY WAS IN VOLDEMORT'S HEAD. Bad! This drained all of the urgency out of the final battle.
- A waste of talented British actors with adorable accents.
- No Kreacher!!! He's the most awesomest elf since Denis Kucinich
What's the best gift you received this year?
I love all I recieved this year, in pure physical gift, I would have to say the box set of the Harry Potter books!
In more realtions-like, I got to snuggle with my 2 month-old nephew while his mommy (my sister) got to eat Christmas dinner like a normal human being.
He is SO CUTE!
