Accio blog!
via HPANA
Goblet of Fire has received one Oscar nomination, in the category of art direction. The movie is up against some really powerhouse films in that category, including Good Night, and Good Luck, Memoirs of a Geisha, King Kong and Pride & Prejudice. The Oscars are on Sunday, March 5th.
While I doubt that GoF will win this Oscar, they should be congratulated for the nomination anyway.
via HPANA
Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling has created a short list of books that she thinks all young people should read. The list was published in the Royal Society of Literature magazine.
Rowling’s choices were:
Wuthering Heights — Emily Bronte
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory — Roald Dahl
Robinson Crusoe — Daniel Defoe
David Copperfield — Charles Dickens
Catch-22 — Joseph Heller
To Kill a Mockingbird — Harper Lee
Animal Farm — George Orwell
The Tale of Two Bad Mice — Beatrix Potter
The Catcher in the Rye — JD Salinger
Hamlet — William Shakespeare
I have bolded the ones that I have read, so let’s have a little on-site meme, shall we? In the comments, post the list and bold the ones you have read.
I have to say that it is wonderful that Rowling is such an advocate for education and reading. When I saw this story on HPANA, I was pleased to see a lot of kids commenting that they planned to read these books since Rowling recommended them. She probably doesn’t realize what she has done for kids and reading since she started writing Harry Potter.
The Mankato, Minnesota Free Press has an interesting article about a local professor who teaches a class about Harry Potter at Minnesota’s South Central College.
“This is the first literature class where people have actually read the books before hand,” the professor, Kirstin Cronn-Mills, said.
In the class they not only discuss Rowling’s books, analysing the plots, inconsistencies, clues, and predicting how the series will end, but they also study the films and merchandising.
Does this sound fun or what? I would kill to take this class. Actually wishing I lived in Minnesota right now. Weird.
As I predicted a couple of weeks ago, Goblet of Fire has overtaken Chamber of Secrets on the list of the highest grossing movies of all-time. Goblet of Fire is now the eighth highest grossing movie worldwide, bumping CoS to number nine. To date, GoF has made 879.4 million dollars. The next movie up on the list is Jurrassic Park which made 914.7 million dollars back in 1993. Anyone willing to bet it’ll make that much? I personally doubt it myself. The movie went out of U.S. theaters last weekend, and it’s only playing in some smaller countries now. But you never know.
This is a really exciting piece of news (for Potter nerds anyways). Rowling recently promised to donate an item to Book Aid International for fundraising purposes. The item turned out to be the handwritten (by Rowling herself) Black family tree!
Apparently several names of interest appear on this tree, including Longbottom (Callidora Black married Harfang Longbottom), Crouch (Charis Black married Caspar Crouch), and Potter (Dorea Black married Charles Potter, they had one child, a son. The time frame is consistent with these being Harry’s grandparents, and the only son, Harry’s father, James). A close up picture of a part of the tree can be seen here.
Yet another name of interest lies on the tree, that of Arcturus Black (1884-1959). Many speculate that the R.A.B. who left the note in the fake locket in HBP was Sirius’ brother, Regulus Arcturus Black. Arcturus was first suggested as Regulus’ middle name by the HP Lexicon; it was mysteriously removed soon after. Could it be that the Lexicon had knowledge of this family tree?
So, Harry was actually related to Sirius. Which also means that Harry is distantly related to Neville, Tonks, and notably, Draco Malfoy. Very interesting indeed.
A very convincing case for Snape being good has recently been posted on MuggleNet. The editorial theorises that one can discern what side Snape is on by looking at the number of things Snape has done for the Order that he did not have to do. It’s a convincing argument, especially when presented with the evidence. Indeed, in many cases, Snape has done things for the Order that were unnecessary to keep his cover of being a loyal member of the Order. Conversely, it seems that the only times that he has betrayed the Order were when it was vital to keeping his cover as an agent for Voldemort. Read and discuss.
The Candy Addict blog has another review of Harry Potter-inspired candy, this time Fizzing Whizbees. They sound right up my alley.
They are exactly like Pop Rocks. I was looking forward to a cool new fizzing, popping candy and got Pop Rocks. Not that I don’t like Pop Rocks, I do - I was just hoping for something new and different. I was also thinking….they could have called these Whizzing Fizzbees instead - that’s a cool name too….or even just Pop Rocks.
No news on whether consuming Fizzing Whizbees and Coke will cause death. I hope to have a full report some time in the very near future.
I found this quiz via del.icio.us the other day. It’s the The Harry Potter Obsession Quiz. It aims to tell you just how obsessed you are with the bespectacled one. According to the quiz, I’m 44% obsessed with Harry Potter. That’s full-blown fandom but I don’t need to see a psychologist (yet).
Give it a try and then report your answers here in the comments. I’m actually quite interested in just how obsessed the average Potter fan is (surely another sign of my obsession). Take note that the quiz is 125 questions long (they’re quick though) and that the quiz appears to be a bit outdated, as it refers to book 5, Order of the Phoenix, but not book six or even the Prisoner of Azkaban movie.
ContactMusic reports that filming of Order of The Phoenix will have to halt for a month this summer when stars Dan Radcliffe and Emma Watson sit exams. Dan will be taking the Advanced Supplementary (AS) Levels and Emma will be sitting her General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) exams. These exams are the basis for the NEWTS and OWLs featured in the Potter books.
Dan will be taking tests in English literature, history, religion and philosophy. Emma will sit exams for standard subjects including English, math and science.
It appears that the GCSE is akin to the American SAT or in some states, the Regents exams. We don’t have anything akin to the AS.
Some quick news updates about the Goblet of Fire movie. You can now pre-order the Goblet of Fire DVD on Amazon. Prices are currently at about $20. The DVD is set to be officially released on March 7, 2006.
In other news, MuggleNet is reporting that GoF is #10 on the list of the top ten highest grossing films of all time. Chamber of Secrets is number 7 on the list, having grossed $876.7 million. At this writing, Goblet of Fire has earned $867.2 million, meaning it only needs to earn 9.5 million dollars to overtake it. I predict that it will easily do that in the coming weeks.
