The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit

If it accomplishes nothing else as a film, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince provides plenty of grist for the mill of debate over the pitfalls of translating literature to the big screen.  Because I think how you feel about this movie will hinge in large part upon your expectations of its fidelity to the source material.  So let’s get this right out of the way, in case you’re one of the dozen or so people who haven’t seen the movie or read J.K. Rowling’s book – this film is more of an interpretation of the sixth Harry Potter novel than a straight adaptation.

I took a rather forgiving approach to the omissions, additions, and changes made by screenwriter Steve Kloves but even I must admit to some puzzlement over some of his decisions.  For the sake of brevity I’ll mention just a few – having Dumbledore meet Harry at a Muggle train station rather than at the Dursley household, and leaving Harry free to help Dumbledore as he faced death but seemingly unwilling to do so.  I could go on, but there enough alterations (some pointless, some understandable) present throughout the entire movie that keeping track of them became impossible.

…keep digging GFS at the Movies: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Of course you can.  At least you’ll have to, since the movie’s release is inexplicably being pushed back until July 2009.  Thanks a lot, ignoramus studio executives!

Oh yeah, the trailer.  It looks even darker than the previous movies, which of course is to be expected, but the touch of humor at the end is most welcome.  What’s not welcome is the continuing de-evolution of Rupert Grint (aka Ron Weasley), whose face looks like it continues to suffer the ravages of the full moon.

Courtesy the MTV Movies Blog, we’ve got four new stills from the upcoming Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince film.  I’m sure it will just as entertaining as the previous five movies, but you wouldn’t know it from these shots:

THRILL as Draco Malfoy broods in a corner!

…keep digging Geek alert – new Harry Potter movie photos!

District Judge Robert Patterson Jr., who admitted (without embarrassment, presumably) that he found the “magical world” of the Harry Potter book series “hard to follow, filled with strange names and words that would be gibberish in any other context.” (Judge Patterson, by the way, presided over the recently concluded copyright trial involving J.K. Rowling and RDR Books, would-be publishers of the Harry Potter Lexicon.)

Now this is a first – an adult actually claiming that Harry Potter is too confusing. And not just any adult, but one who presumably graduated from law school at some point and is capable of reading and comprehending rather complex legal briefs and literature. And a quick check reveals that, indeed, the Hon. Judge Patterson graduated from Harvard and Columbia Law. Of course that was during the Truman administration, so I guess I can see why he might be so confounded.

So to help the judge to render a fair verdict, I’d like to publish a mini-lexicon of my own for his personal use (please don’t sue me J.K.)…
…keep digging And the idiot of the week is…

There is no shortage of press and academic research covering the topic of so-called Internet Addiction. Of course, the first reaction of any true addict is “not me!” This denial is usually followed by surprise, realization, and then descent into an all-too familiar shame spiral. In the interest of science and self-improvement I’ve spent the last few weeks keeping a meticulous log of my daily activities, in order to better understand just how the Internet fits into my life.

The results, needless to say, confirm that I totally have this thing under control. Just take a look at last Thursday’s log (time spent is total throughout the day, not consecutive):

• 45 minutes spent updating my Wikipedia watchlist to make sure some snot-nosed high school punk hasn’t vandalized one of my favorite articles.
• 1 hour 20 minutes spent participating in and refreshing various message board threads to see if anyone was able to recover from any of my scathingly sarcastic rejoinders. (I totally blew away that one jerk with the picture of the Comic Book Guy saying “Worst post ever!”)
• 15 minutes spent checking to see if my charts on last.fm have been updated.
• 25 minutes spent reviewing my blog traffic figures, and thinking of ways to increase said traffic. (Note to self: More posts about either Harry Potter or porn. Or Harry Potter porn.)
• 50 minutes spent scouring the far reaches of the Internet for anything related to David Hasselhoff, William Shatner, and the Burger King.
• 1 hour spent checking my Yahoo! email account, only to find it full of nothing more than dozens of seemingly legitimate ads for dirt-cheap copies of Photoshop CS3.
• 2 hours spent reliving my childhood by searching for and reviewing material even tangentially related to it (G.I. Joe, Transformers, Garbage Pail Kids, Atari 2600 games, old issues or Thor and The Avengers, Wacky Packages, V, The Karate Kid, etc.).
• 35 minutes spent racking my brain for material for this stupid blog.

So how do you stack up? Of course, I don’t expect anyone to display the incredible level of self-restraint I obviously do, but now at least you have something to shoot for. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go see if there are any new lolcats out there.

So it has come to this. After ten years and seven novels the magical saga of Harry Potter has finally reached its conclusion. The countdowns are over, the hype begins to subside, and the biggest question surrounding J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (besides whether Severus Snape is indeed friend or foe) can be answered – was it a worthwhile journey?

…keep digging Book review: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

I’m a pretty jaded person when it comes to really popular things, so I tend to avoid them regardless of the actual quality of said popular things. And yet there I was (with Mrs. Suit by my side) at Borders on Friday night, standing in line with a few hundred teenagers dressed in robes and wizard hats – not waiting to buy my reserved copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, but to receive a colored wristband that would allow me to stand in yet another line to buy my reserved copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

Yes, I am now officially one of those people, even if I was not in costume. But the thing is, I didn’t really care. For once it was nice to part of a huge pop culture movement instead of casting derision on it from the outside. I just wish this particular movement didn’t make me stay up so damn late.

We arrived at about 10:30 and got into the first line that wasn’t headed either for the coffee bar or the bathrooms. Having no clue what we were supposed to be doing (I had imagined a more disorderly scene, along the lines of a food riot) we asked a kid standing behind us, but he was no help. Damn punk kids. After about 20-30 minutes on line, we received our wristbands (blue, by the way) and were told that our color would probably be called at 2:45. As in 2:45 a.m.

So we had a critical choice to make – stay awake much longer than we expected to or come back early the next morning and stand on another line. We headed home to ponder our decision, as at least our wristbands meant we didn’t have to stay in the store until 2:45. At my urging, we decided to stay up and go back. Foremost on my mind was the desire to pick the book up and barricade myself in the house to reduce the risk of hearing any spoilers.

We pulled into a practically empty parking lot at about 2:15, which we took as an ominous sign. I was ready to go ballistic had Borders decided to close early, leaving us tired and bookless. But we walked through the unlocked doors and were told that the last of the crowds left about 20 minutes previous. Apparently most of the “silver” wristband holders never showed. So we went right up to the counter, paid for our books, and left.

And so dear readers, thus ends my tale of bravery most proud and geekery most loud.