12.28.05
Posted in Meta, Reviews, Stories at 5:58 pm by Michael
As Ravenclawwit posted, JK redid her site. The entrance is much better and the whole site has a holiday theme to it (which begs the question of are there any Jewish witches and wizards who feel alienated due to Hogwart’s only celebrating Christmas). Best of all she has updated the rumors page and her diary.
1) The Diary talks about 2006 being the year she writes Book 7. SO that gives us the pretty much assumed badnews that 7 will not be out this year… However, if things stay on track, we could see a summer 2007 release (my guess not her statement) which would be great.
2) The rumors address a few things… A fictional HP7 title, Wormtail’s Silver Hand, the new DADA teacher, and under the dark mark, a horcrux rumor. Unfortunately, it isn’t the Harry/Horcrux rumor… but the one it addresses has been bandied around a lot. Very good stuff… as always, read and discuss.
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Posted in Humor at 10:33 am by RavenclawWit
Anybody who listens to Mugglecast knows that one of the teenaged hosts, Ben Schoen, has recently instituted a Top Ten list into the show. In last week’s podcast he asked listeners to tell him whether they enjoyed the Top Ten list and whether they should keep doing it. Well, I think the Top Ten list could be great, that is if he would stop picking lists that were the reverse of entertaining. Honestly, it’s just tedious to listen to. I don’t know if it’s just that Ben has no sense of humor (no offense Ben) or if I’ve gotten so old that I’ve forgotten what passes as funny to a 15 year old (or however old he is), but the lists read so far have just been flat.
To that end, I’ve written my own list (and submitted it to Mugglecast, we’ll see if it makes it on there). Here goes:
Top Ten Non-Fiction Books at Flourish and Blotts
1) A History of Magic, CliffNotes Edition: For People Who Refuse To Read (Sigh), by H. Granger-Weasley
2) Break On Through To The Other Side: A Guide To Paranormal Dating (Previously Titled “Getting That Cute Boy With The Scar To Notice You”), by M. Myrtle, deceased
3) Tuesdays With McGonagall, by P. and P. Patil
4) Freakoministry: A Rogue Witch Explores The Hidden Side Of The Ministry of Magic, by L. Lovegood (with an introduction by Cornelius Fudge)
5) Splat! 1001 Uses For Bubotuber Pus, by Professor N. Longbottom
6) Professor Trelawney or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Omen Of Impending Doom, by Ronald Bilius Weasley
7) Rubber Ducks, Fellytones, and Eckeltricity: The Magic That Muggles Make, by Arthur Weasley
8) A Youth Well-Spent: The Secret To Our Success, by “Gred and Forge” and edited [a lot] by Ginevra Potter
9) Pumpkin Juice For The Soul, by Severus Snape
10) Nitwit, Blubber, Oddment, Tweak! The True Story Of The Greatest Wizard Who Ever Lived, by Harry James Potter and Professor R.J. Lupin
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12.26.05
Posted in Scoops at 8:36 pm by RavenclawWit
U.K newspaper, The Mirror, is reporting that Dan Radcliffe has managed to get members of the boy band McFly pretty upset. According to the guitarist for the band, Dan said, “I know bands who can actually play their instruments and who write their songs.” Apparently this was a slam at the British pop quartet.
The band members responded with comments like:
“I’ve never met him but if I did I’d throw a bag of s*** over his head.
“He’s slagged us off in interviews - we’ve never met him, so I don’t know where it’s coming from,” he added.
“He’s going to be embarrassed when he does meet us.”
All of which gives me a good chuckle. Quite obviously, one doesn’t have to personally meet someone to know that their music sucks. I’ve never met Britney Spears, but I feel pretty safe in saying that she has as much talent as a salted slug.
And in what universe or dimension would Dan Radcliffe have to meet the members of McFly?
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12.24.05
Posted in Art at 3:59 pm by RavenclawWit
Want to see something truly amazing? There’s a guy by the name of Jonathan McEnroe who has been posting the most amazing digital paintings of the Potter actors in the MuggleNet forum. They are really incredible. You can view the thread here. You can also click on that thumbnail to see the full-size painting he did of Harry and Hermione (as played by Dan Radcliffe and Emma Watson).
Mr. McEnroe was even kind enough to provide both a graphic and short paragraph outlining his technique for creating the paintings in Photoshop:
“It’s a very simple technique I use in photoshop, and it’s simple painting with the reference photograph on another layer beside it. I simply block in the face, making sure everything is where it needs to be, then it is around seven hours of continual painting of the face, refining the details over and over. I usually begin the eyes first when I do the face, but now they are last. Finally, I block in the hair, very rough, and begin to layer the details, and finally, I begin to add in the hair strand details to give life to the hair. To finish off, I add in the shoulders with a costume choice, luckily, Harry had his cool sports costume on from film four, however the picture of Emma was from a posed promotional photograph where she had a white t-shirt on. I simple added her dark jacket and grey/pink turtle neck jumper on to finish the picture off. I finally brought the two characters together and made a single image with them together. It’s a technique I’ll be using for all the characters. Painting over photograph looses all fun in painting, and the overall practice. It’s always best to have the painting beside your painting, on a different layer, the face, hair and shoulders are all three separate layers too and not connected to the background layer.” -Jonathan McEnroe
Mr. McEnroe is a professional artist. He has worked for EA Games (creators of the Harry Potter video games), Dabhand Films and Hardwhere films. You can see his deviantART page, where he has all kinds of digital art on display, including some Star Wars paintings.
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12.22.05
Posted in Scoops at 5:56 pm by RavenclawWit
This popped up on the Wizard Wire Service over at HPANA today. UnderGroundOnline is reporting that Elizabeth Hurley has been offered the role of Bellatrix Lestrange in Order of the Phoenix. I wonder how reliable this is, though. I had heard this before, but I think it was Veritaserum had it from Warner Bros. that this was utter bunk.
Actually, when I read OotP, I thought of Hurley at first when imagining who could play who in the movies (something only a true Potter nerd does), but I discarded her, as I favored seeing Catherine Zeta Jones in the role. Time and Warner Bros. will only tell whether this is just a rumor or not. One can only imagine how the young men of the cast will feel about having Elizabeth Hurley on set. 
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12.21.05
Posted in Scoops at 3:00 am by RavenclawWit
via Cinematical
Rumor has it that Disney may have plans in the works with Warner Bros. for a Harry Potter theme park. Jim Hill, an apparent media insider, received a comment on his blog from a reader who claims a contact with the legal dept. over at WB, which states,
I would appreciate it if you kept this anonymous. But I have a friend who works for the Warner Brother legal department, who actually sees the contracts. And they just sent me the following e-mail:
“You didn’t hear it from me. But there may be a certain wizard visiting the mouse kingdom in the future.”
Of course this is all pretty dubious. But if it happens that would be awesome. I would so be there.
I was actually discussing an idea like this with my sister the other day. My idea was for Warner Bros. to find some drafty old castle in Scotland with extensive grounds, buy it, and make a Potter theme park out of it. The castle would be Hogwart’s of course, and they could build a Hogsmeade and a Diagon Alley on the outer grounds, with the Hogwart’s grounds attractions (Hagrid’s Hut, Whomping Willow, Lake, Dark Forest, etc.) closer to the castle. That’d be pretty awesome.
In reality they would probably not build such a thing in Scotland since it might not have worldwide travel appeal. If Disney is in on the game, it would probably be in the states somewhere.
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Posted in Scoops at 12:07 am by RavenclawWit
Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling has updated her site with holiday decorations. It looks nice, but since there isn’t actually any new information on the site, a bit of a let down. It’s been quite a while since the site was updated, so hopefully once she really starts writing book 7 after the new year, she’ll start posting tidbits of information again.
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12.17.05
Posted in Wallpaper at 7:51 pm by RavenclawWit
Here are a couple Christmas themed Harry Potter wallpapers.
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12.15.05
Posted in Theories, Stories at 10:18 pm by RavenclawWit
I actually found a fanfic that I like today. It’s a non-slash, mostly canon based fic about Draco Malfoy. I actually felt sorry for the poor kid.
Anyways, I realized we’ve never talked about Draco on this site. So what does everybody think of him?
In some ways I feel bad for him. He was basically raised to be the arrogant, evil prat that he is. Raised by people who are Death-Eaters, taught that non-pure bloods are scum to be hated and killed if possible, taught to revere evil. Did he have a chance?
Sadly, my answer to that question is yes. We all have to make the choice between doing good and doing evil (or as Dumbledore put it, between what is right and what is easy), and I think that’s a message that Rowling tries to make clear in her books. Draco may have been raised in an evil environment, but their comes a time in every person’s life when they have to make their own choices, regardless of their upbringing. Take Sirius for example. He was raised in an environment very similar to Draco’s. And yet he chose to abandon that kind of life and fight for good. I’ll speculate that when the sorting hat placed Sirius in Gryffindor, it wasn’t for “shits and giggles”, pardon my language. It was probably very akin to why Harry was placed in Gryffindor, because Sirius was probably already choosing to reject the ideas of hatred and violence that he grew up with.
There is hope, of course. Draco, like most other humans, is not beyond redemption. Possibly he could see the error of his ways (perhaps he’s already starting to) and redeem himself in book 7. Only time will tell.
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12.13.05
Posted in Scoops at 11:17 pm by RavenclawWit
via Veritaserum
News from Enchantment Casting, an agency that represents Harry Potter actor hopefuls, that all open casting and auditions for Order of the Phoenix are now complete. The agency indicated that the roles of Tonks and Kingsley Shacklebolt have been cast and that they are in the final stages of casting actors to play young Lily, James, Lupin, Sirius, Peter and Snape as per the pensieve scene.
It’s good to know that the pensieve scene will make it in. Finally, we’ll have some marauders! I admit I was surprised to hear that they’re not just going to use Dan Radcliffe to play young James. In that scene in the book, Harry actually mistakes his father for himself when he first enters Snape’s memory, although on closer look, there are differences. Apparently James’ eyes were hazel and his nose was slightly longer than Harry’s. I think it might have been a nice touch for Dan to play James.
The agency also indicated that Marietta Edgecombe and Lavender Brown are not known to be in the film. This goes a long way towards confirming my theory that the script will have Cho Chang betray the DA rather than Marietta. She’s just too small of a character to hire an actress to play her. As far as Lavender goes, she’s not important until book 6, so they’ll probably cast her in that film, but not in Order.
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