Brooms Online continues to improve.  Check them out.

Quidditch League 2007 is looking for players.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.:  The Movie   You know, I'm really tired of writing about how the movies do justice to neither the books, nor to the art of filmmaking.  Most of the performances don't do much for the glorious history of British acting either.  There is something they do justice to.  Bear with me a minute.  You know Dolores Umbridge?  The ultimate Yes-woman who acts as mouthpiece for the head-in-the-sand Ministry of Magic?  Anybody who's been in an organization with more than a hundred people in it will recognize the type (Anybody who's worked for a Post Office or a School District will immediately see their district manager).  Dolores will do anything to enforce her boss's will, with the same "why bother thinking for myself?" intensity of Condi Rice.  The thing is that she is such an excellent portrait of the urge to dumb down the populace to keep it docile that I'm sure the screenwriter had her own spitting image sitting across from him at all the production meetings with Time-Warner.  The huge cash cow that must be constantly fed and milked for the glory of the media empire is a harsh dominatrix:  it demands the sacrifice of much of the same independent will that Umbridge seeks to stamp out.  Where you come in is that rather than a fixed character out of someone else's mind, you can walk away from it -- forget about the DVD, the videogame, the action figures, and whatever tie-ins the fatburger franchises are cooking up.  Try it for a change --  that would be the ultimate homage to the spirit of Harry.  But based on the results of the box office polls, most of you are hurrying to join the Office of the Inquisitor.

The Online Quidditch League is one of those rare things: an on-line community that's actually burgeoning.  Check them out.

Terminus 2008:  If you're looking for a Harry Potter conference this summer check out these guys at Terminus.  Chicago is a really good town to visit.

Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid is out.  It's not worth writing about.

Check out the Whomping Willow and Knight Bus games from WB.

Phoenix Rising a "five day exploration of all things Harry Potter" will be held in New Orleans on May 17-21, 2007 (good time to be in the Big Easy).  The Bayou Quidditch League will be hosting the Riverside Quidditch Classic.  Read their website and you will want to join in.

Brooms Online:  Check out this Flash game based on Broomsticks.  It does require registration and is multiplayer (so you'll need at least one friend to send a link to) -- but it's simple and comprehensible (if only all games could claim as much). 

Random rambling: It's a minor plot point but nagging:  Why do the Dursleys let Harry stay there at all?  My take on it is that in the final book we're going to find that Aunt Petunia know so much about the magical world because she actually WAS magical, but didn't want it and traded Dumbeledore the protection of Harry for the ability to be "normal."  Arguably this makes her one of the book's hidden heroes, which would be an appropriate twist for the final installment.

In the American Midwest?  The Great Midwestern Educational Theatre Company runs a Harry Potter / Wicked camp (aka Frogwarts).

Not strictly Quidditch or Lemony Snicket, but Fun Games Plaza has loads of games all with free trial downloads.

Potter Puppet Pals: This is one really funny site.  Check it out.

Queer Ditch Marsh http://www.queerditchmarsh.com/ is Fantasy Quidditch Game looking for players.

HP Quidditch is trying to gather and consolidate as many ways of doing Quidditch Role Playing as possible on one site.

Lumos 2006 is an RPG starting up and looking for a new Minister of Magic and some Death Eaters.

There are times we must simply ask: WWJD?  What Would Jethro Do?

Tales of the Truly Grotesque.  Any book with an attitude and a character named Joan of Arkansas deserves attention on this site.  Add the fact that the purported author is Prof Odysseus Malodorous (Odysseus being Greek for to cause pain and Malodorous being Latin for smells bad) and it's a no-brainer. Given the arduous duties webmaster-critic-cultural-interpreter entails (like ignoring irate email and defending the First Amendment) I've started training a new generation of webmaster-critic-defenders-of-the-First-Amendment who will start giving their own reviews (or whatever the heck else grabs them) right here.  Check back soon.

I have been informed that  Hogwarts Star-School of Witchcraft and Wizardry has just started Term One and now is accepting Sortings with a major change in the way they run classes. Everyone meets in an AOL Chatroom once a week and all role-play classes.

Hogwart's Recreation of the Entire Wizard World http://www.freewebs.com/maverick24/ has been relocated and updated.

Goblet of Fire -- The Movie

I never thought I'd be saying this -- but Goblet of Fire might be be the Harry Potter film that in some ways is better than the book.  Forget that in the dollar-oriented world of Hollywood-produced entertainment it's already succeeded by eclipsing the box office of the previous three films -- let's look at it as its own story (horrors -- when does a reviewer do that?).  While Chris Columbus was busy deracinating Rent, Mike Newell was getting to the core of the Potter world and the Goblet of Fire story.  I love the fact that this film is ready to drop entire characters and subplots in the interest of crafting a tighter story than the book itself (the film really does not lose anything by dropping Dobby, SPEW, or Ludo Bagman among other plots and characters).  What remains is the core of the story -- a coming of adolescence story wrapped in the terror of both mortal peril and "how can we ever get a date for the dance?"  It is as though Lord of the Rings were channeling Clueless.  What is great is how well it all works.  Daniel Radcliffe is finally projecting some of the courage that characterizes Harry -- though his own acting talents are not shining through as much as Rupert Grint's as Ron and Emma Watson's as Hermione (watch for Emma Watson -- she will be a talent long into the future).  As a troika their chemistry is perfect for the Potter universe.  Individually it's an open question how well each of them will do solo when the series or their abilities to play their characters end.  But no one can deny they have been part of a lasting work here.  While the earlier films seem to have had a fear of losing anything, this episode dares to acknowledge that it's forging a different path -- Quidditch is almost an after thought, though there's a dragon-chasing-Harry sequence that's the best flying sequence of the series so far.    The special effects while crucial are not the over-powering sledgehammer blows of the earlier films:  the Quidditch World Cup arena is well-though-out,  fascinating, and appropriately short, the dragons are believable and not not lingered over, Voldemort is horrifying and yet lifelike, Mad-Eye Moody is both the mentor you'd want to have and the psychotic you might walk across the street to avoid.  In short, it gets so much to the core of the paradox, perplexity, and paranoia of adolescence that it also gets under your skin like one of the wizard tattoos of the Death Eaters.  See this film and hope they figure out how to get Newell on board for the rest of the series.

Check out this article:  Harry Potter and the Half-Crazed Bureaucracy, by Benjamin Barton.

Xauror has just added Quidditch.  You must be a registered user of the Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince Forum to use it (and I never register for anything anymore so I cannot give you a first hand review).  From the webmaster:  It currently has 3 levels with a 4th level coming soon.  People click on which player they want to throw the Quaffle to while looking for the Snitch.  Sometimes the throw is complete, sometimes the player loses ground, and sometimes the computer team intercepts.  When the computer team has the Quaffle the user chooses between stealing, or hitting a Bludger to get the Quaffle back.  By gaining experience and buying Quidditch supplies the user will increase their skill level.  Each level gets a bit harder and there are new features with each level.

Magic International, A role-playing wizard community, is an already-functional RPG that needs people to join their Quidditch league and school.  There are positions on the school Quidditch teams as well. Check it out

Merlin Kabir emails to remind me of his Farsi-language Quidditch site.  I just love the look of the typography.  Hopefully the Farsi-speaking US community (largely based in Teherangelas, California) will check it out.

The New Order is an RPG adding more members daily.

Quidditch Cup 2005 is looking for players -- NB: You must have an AIM account.

Subtle Magic has relocated and is looking for members.

Based on JK Rowling's latest Potter hints, I have the following speculation:  Voldemort's and Harry's lives are entangled by the failed curse that created the boy who lived.  What's this mean?  They can kill each other and end the entanglement, but if someone else kills one of them the other will die. Think of this as quantum entanglement for wizards.  Hence the care that Voldemort's henchmen have taken to preserve Harry's life when it was in their capacity to just off him and make it look like an accident, and Dumbledore's reticence to attack Voldemort in the Ministry of Magic.  Both Voldemort and Dumbledore being the wizards they are know this and act accordingly. As we've seen, Harry is purposely kept in the dark on a number of issues.  One of the consequences of this:  We already know that by the end of the series either one or both of Harry and Voldemort need to die (otherwise it doesn't end).  The most courageous and noble end for Harry is to sacrifice himself to rid the world of Voldemort (though it is more likely he would sacrifice himself to save his friends and thereby rid the world of Voldemort).   Also, consider that Ron is on track to have his vision in the Mirror of Erised fulfilled (remember, way back when?).  There is however only one way for Harry to have his vision fulfilled.

April 29, 2004: I just saw the trailer to the Lemony Snicket Movie.  My quick take: while Jim Carrey LOOKS like Count Olaf his clown-like actions undercut all of the menace you associate with the man.  I mean, how scared of the guy can you be if he's doing the same facial contortions as Ace Ventura Pet Detective?  And the score shows subtlety and depth are not to be found.  But I'll withhold final judgment until I catch the whole film. 

The Director Speaks at this link in SciFi.com.  I like his analogy of the film being between Mary Poppins and Night of the Hunter (an incredible movie screenwritten by one of my fave authors, James Agee)

THANKS!!!!!!!! to SALON.COM for the link and encouraging words about this site!  You'll be able to see their review of Tim Curry's audiotape after watching a brief commercial.

Order of the Phoenix.  OK -- the Quidditch sequences are the weakest ever, but as any sportswriter will tell you, play-by-plays all get tedious after a while.  Now for the brief word on the whole book: IT IS BEYOND AWESOME!  The only way I can try to convey this is: what if Boris Pasternak had been heavily influenced by X-Men comics when he wrote Doctor Zhivago?  This is not as flippant as it might sound.  Rowling has produced a novel of both epic sweep and teen angst.  This is not as easy as it seems since most successful teen angst books require very few pages to either get their point across or wear thin -- Catcher in the Rye couldn't take you through much more of Holden's life or you'd simply hit him with a brick.  But here it works - owing largely to the sweep of the entire Potter universe.  And I do mean ENTIRE -- it is hard to imagine something from all the previous books that does not make at least a cameo appearance here (trivia buffs: yes, Moaning Myrtle does not, and there are others, but to quibble on this is to be wildly ungrateful for all that DOES appear here).

Here's where Pasternak comes in.  The word you might associate with Zhivago is STORM: the rage of nature, of social forces beyond individual control, and of individual emotions beyond social control.  The same theme plays out in Phoenix with an adolescent twist.  X-Men, the comic book of super-gifted teens wrestling with how to fit into a world that does not want them, is the closest analog here.  While the comic book universe is by nature repetitive and (make of this what you will)  two-dimensional, the Potter universe performs its own magic act of creation out of imagination. 

From the politics of the Ministry of Magic (Americans will find it hard to recognize some of the British political undercurrents, but don't let that deter you) to the internal squabbling of the Order of the Phoenix (which might also be thought of as the Popular Front for the Liberation of the Wizard World), the wider world becomes more and more intrusive on the Happy Valley of Hogwarts, and therefore on Harry.

Where Hogwarts always meant liberation and escape, it's almost now a point where liberation comes with the price of entanglement and insecurity in the larger wizard world.  To underscore this, we are treated to scenes of Wizard Career Counseling.  In a scene which makes you yearn for the bored, disinterested guy who's probably running your high school guidance department, we see Harry start to consider what he's going to do when he leaves Hogwarts.

The climactic battle sequence in this year is almost reminiscent of X-Men battles.  Here for the first time we don't see Harry mano a mano but in a team of people he himself has helped train.  If the war is coming, we have seen the skirmishes and first battles.  If the  

Opera, it has been said is a song of love and death.  This is true of Order of the Phoenix, the most operatic of the books so far.  (Like opera, one wonders if the Fat Lady will sing in Book 7?)  Yes, death is now omnipresent in the world of Harry -- from his past to his present, to his future.  But so, tellingly, is love -- from his parents to his surrogate parents in the world of Hogwarts.  Like opera, the series will continue this struggle, and it is an ending which we now all know must include a death.  But just as characteristic of human life is our incompleteness without love.

Harry is directly placed in the way of all kinds of both love and death, standing in our stead for experiences both too horrible to contemplate and too necessary to ignore.  The arc of this story, against all expectations any reasonable person would ever have, gets deeper and more profound.  If this is what we are to be treated to in the next two volumes I will wait a decade, knowing it will have been worth it.

We do follow some trends here at Quidditch.com.  I got three emails on the same day asking about Quidditch for Muggles.  The best links I know are currently active are here:

Toy Symphony -- I saw the US premier at MIT on April 26, 2003 and was blown away.  Nerve was especially awesome and rockin'!  Check this out -- and download HyperScore -- which is an amazingly empowering music program!

Oliva Guerini has an interesting proposal online in "leggere e scrivere" or reading and writing.  For those fans of my essays this is a good place to check out.

Chamber of Secrets.  Well to say that the second movie is better than the first sounds like praising with faint damnation.  And it is.  However, it is improved.  First, because it's not a slavish duplication of the book.  It's accurate, but the filmmakers actually came up with some variations that add to the movie experience (the flying car sequence is really welcome, as is the Quidditch match ).  It's all here: Dobby, the Malfoys, Hermione is just as smart (and boy I wish they did more with Emma Watson, she is a treasure who has nailed the part of Hermione).  

My main problem with it is that (aside from the amateurish editing), I get the feeling that I've seen it all before.  Maybe the subtitle should be Home Alone with Harry Potter.  There's the obvious Home Alone gags, involving easy laughs and bodily harm.  Seeing Dobby smack himself on screen is oddly disconcerting, like you're in the undesirable position of watching somebody be the victim in a reality TV series.  (Odd thought: You can show a computer-generated character beating himself up but you can't show two human actors having a physical fight?). 

The Quidditch match is a remake of the climactic attack on the Death Star in Star Wars (play the two side-by-side when the DVD comes out).  For cineastes, the scene where Harry fights the basilisk seems to be based on Siegfried's battle with Fafner (Siegfried, dir. Fritz Lang, 1924).  I suspect that the NYU Film School grads working on this had to see that film a few times in one of their required courses.  The scene with Aragog looks like the bug invasion from Starship Troopers.  These were good scenes in their original movies, and should have stayed there unless Chris Columbus was good enough to give them a twist (which he isn't).

The scenes that stick as delightful are far between and undercut. 

Every time I start to think that maybe these guys have internalized the spirit of the Potter books they undercut it.   The best example of this is the Howler Ron gets.  It's wonderfully imagined and realized though true to Home Alone's misguided spirit, the scene finally falls apart by having a paper tongue razz Ron -- honestly, can you see Mrs. Weasley sending a message that does that?  These guys forgot that the reason we care about their screen legerdemain is because there's a CHARACTER behind them, and that regrettably is the part of these stories they spend the least time on.

The closer you get to the real core of this story, the less you find.

Seeing this flick I can only hope that Alfonso Cuarón doesn't lose his edge in the production process.  Harry has always deserved better treatment than he's gotten so far.

Let me get this straight:  A Russian publishes Tanya Grotter and the Magical Double Bass and those fine fine people at Warner Brothers who claimed that "Larry Potter" and "Muggles" from Nancy Stouffer's books bore NO relationship to the Potter series are bawling like a figure skater in second place?

Slate has this essay on Harry -- you might not like what it has to say, but it does make some good points.  My one problem with it is that in portraying Harry as a privileged slacker it ignores the most obvious fact that Harry chooses to face danger rather than send proxies or lawyers to take care of it for him.

Thanks! to Barbara Feldman at http://www.surfnetkids.com/ for giving my Lemony Snicket page a four star mention in her weekly column!  Many thanks!

BUT

Why I LIKE the ... Chamber of Secrets trailer.  The whole incident with the flying car coming down on the track in front of the Hogwart's Express is not in the book -- and I think this is great!!!  It shows that the doctrinaire apparatchiki working on the script have finally realized it's a MOVIE and needs to stand on its own in its own medium rather than a film of the book.  Let's face it, the flight in the car would be really boring cinema if you just took it verbatim.  But you start working with it and suddenly you can be true to the spirit of the original without slavishly copying it.  Of course, we wait and see what happens to the full second installment.   

On a GOOD NOTE:

Since Quidditch news has been slow I think I'll share a couple of thoughts on Jimmy Neutron:  it's half the length of Harry and twice as much fun.  First it doesn't have the  burden of expectation.  Second, free of this it just has loads of fun with an amusing premise (though having known a boy genius or two I do not recognize Jimmy -- most real world boy genii are completely screwed up).  

The two best moments in this flick come close together -- the first as the children re-engineer amusement park rides as spaceships and then blast into orbit.  After hitting the Jimmy Neutron equivalent of hyperspace there's this sickening moment when the rockets flame out and everybody starts to drop towards earth.... with just the right timing the propulsion starts up again and the film literally takes off.   This one "yeah moment" is refreshingly powerful since you don't often find a single one in most modern movies.  Every opportunity for one in the Harry Potter movie was squashed by the ham-handed director and the production team from hell.

The second one follows soon thereafter -- while resting around a campfire (on a deep-space atmosphere-less asteroid!  Do not try to learn science from this flick), one of the characters is telling a ghost story that recounts the tale of the Blair Witch Project.  Now the irony of this is delicious: adventure characters around a CG-campfire telling a ghost story that's a derived from a faux-documentary real-world film.  The recursions in this just keep layering and layering.  Add to this that this is the way most early stories WERE told (Homer came to us orally long before the Greeks were writing it down) and it's the best dialectic on the nature of story telling since Michelangelo Antonioni was confusing the art house crowd. 

It's weird to think of a cartoon (excuse me: animated film) having anything like a message you can think about -- but the trends are really towards that: Shrek is one of the best romance movies you'll see and Toy Story 2 has the same message of death and  obsolescence as anything you'll see in Ingmar Bergman -- but it's just lots more fun to watch.

Undoubtedly the suits at AOL-Time-Warner (how many more hyphens are they planning on adding to that?) are going to rake in dough.  But years from now we're not going to be huddled around the DVD player watching this with the delight we still feel for the Wizard of Oz.  This may not be Kansas, but it surely isn't the magic of Hogwarts either.

Your feedback on the movie is always welcome.

Quidditch3D 

I sense a great disturbance in the Force... as if.... wait a minute -- wrong PopCult²: popular culture cult (please note that I have originated that term in November, 2001).  Sorry, sometimes it just overwhelms me.  Keep an eye on Quidditch3D.  The unofficial game is created by DiagonSoft.com International Studios, Questcom Entertainment and XSquare Software. Quidditch3D.com launched on Saturday, December 1, 2001, and we  have EXCLUSIVE screenshots, concept art and images of the game.

I was once at the National Archives and Records Administration doing some research when I saw an older man with a cap that read "Pearl Harbor Survivor."  I excused myself and asked if he'd been at Pearl.  He said he had, and I asked if I could shake his hand.  I was without words at meeting someone who was there.  He said simply, "It was a long time ago."  History is a strange thing -- that we can suddenly be put in a world where madmen can do more destruction with some flight training and knives than entire navies could hope to in the past.   Please pray to whatever you hold sacred for the families and the loved ones and the lost of this horror, and for the justice this great nation shall deliver.  My town of Belmont, Massachusetts lost three people on the hijacked airliners, one of whom was another dad at my daughter's school. Please visit the Red Cross to see how you can contribute to the on-going efforts.

To everybody who has written me for email accounts:  I have checked with my hosting company and they can provide me with an infinite number of email accounts on the quidditch.com domain name, but they will be charging me $12.00 per year for each of them.  You're a great bunch of people, but I can't finance vanity email at that rate.  Unless I hear a grassroots swell of interest in email and a desire to pick up the cost of your email accounts (and for the record I would not be making any profit on these) I'm going to lay the matter to rest.

Has anyone else noticed an acute shortage of Quidditch T-shirts?  I've gotten four or five emails from people asking me if I have any (sorry to say folks, if you haven't picked up on my zeitgeist against  merchandising you haven't been paying attention).  I've seen people offering the darned things for $30 on some of the auction sites.  Folks: Give it a few weeks or months.  No licensee is going to sit by and let normal people pick up profits when all they need to do is hire a few more workers for their Asian sweatshops.  The supply is fated to rebound in time for the movie.  Don't waste your money paying a premium that can't sustain itself.

July 19, 2001:  Quidditch employment opportunity (I never thought I'd be writing that).  Hogwarts 3D Questcom Entertainment, and XSquare Software are looking for 3D Modelers experienced in Poser 4, Maya, or Dark Basic to work on the full Quidditch 3D game at Hogwarts 3D.com.  Must be advanced in the program that they use and either US or UK residents.  Degrees less important than ability.  Please e-mail them at technical@xsquare.net or iownspace@hotmail.com

Two words:  Lemony Snicket

If, like me, you have read and re-read the wonderful, awesome, life-affirming Harry Potter books again and again and eagerly await the next, yet are looking at the same time for a pleasant diversion, a little detour, a different sort of taste, then look no further than Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events.  These books are wonderful.  VERY DIFFERENT -- but since there is nothing in the immediate horizon for Potter fans -- this will do.  I will not go into the plots or the cast of characters (much). The Baudelaire children start orphaned and have to face a world populated with adults who make the Dursleys seem like St. Francis of Assisi and Mother Theresa.  The wonderful attitude of the author (note to those with chronic reality-avoidance syndrome:  Lemony Snicket is a pen name!!!!!) pervades these books -- think of a Horatio Alger story as scripted by David Lynch with storyboard by Charles Addams and Gahan Wilson and directed by the offspring Wes Craven and Woody Allen and you'll have the beginnings of an INKLING of what these books are about.  Ignore the comparisons of Klaus Baudelaire to Harry Potter -- just give one of them a try and see how you like it.

Coolest Idea I've seen in a while:  Quidditch without Broomsticks.  The creators also call it "Muggle Quidditch." I love the idea!   It's about turning off our computers and doing something in the physical world (what a concept!).  I hope these guys have an idea that catches on like wildfire.  And I think they should put their names on their site so anybody doing this gives them credit.  They've got something that can be bigger than Pog -- and nobody needs to buy cheap plastic models or action figures to have fun with it.

One of the co-creators also has a site.

Beater Practise - thoughts.  Butrpopcorn7 asked me to post my opinions of the Beater Practise game at WB's harrypotter.com so here goes.  

The strong point of the game is the beautifully drawn background and the soundtrack (most of the fan stuff really ignores a good sound track).  Playability is not something it offers up. For the generation groomed on joysticks and power-ups, things don't get interesting until two bludgers make their appearance in level 6.  Your best strategy then is to hug the bottom of the frame and alternate beating them away before they make a dash for the players you're charged with protecting.  In general, to get your points higher, stay away from the players (heck, blot them out of your mind) and watch where the bludgers enter the game space.  Not a bad game, it'll do until something more robust comes out, but if you've spent any time at all on an N64, it'll get tiring.  It's a good introduction for your younger siblings, though!

Has anyone created a team called the Haileybury Hammers?  James Franks the town's Recreation & Tourism Coordinator would like you to contact him.  This has been a Public Service Announcement.

The MOVIE TRAILER is here! (No Quidditch scenes directly, but there are some broom shots, a brief image of the Bludgers leaving their box, and a point of view shot of Harry ascending over flying lessons!).  Did anybody else have trouble saving the movie file?  I loaded the full QuickTime version and then copied it from "Temporary Internet Files" under the Windows directory.  Now I don't need to keep going to the Warner Brothers site to watch it.

Today's prediction:  Ever notice how Hogwart's: A History is constantly referred to by Hermione and no one else has ever read it?  I think one of the ultimate mysteries in the seventh book is going to hinge on Harry finally reading it.

The other thing that eats at me is what's the deal between Dumbledore and the Dursleys?  It makes no sense they keep taking him back and Dumbledore WANTS them to take Harry for at least part of the summer.  Something is weird here.  Yes, as some of you have pointed out Dumbledore has put a charm on Harry protecting him while he's with his blood relatives.  The bigger question is:  What's the blood link specifically?  Voldemort used Harry's blood to regenerate himself in "Goblet" removing the most effective first weapon Harry had.  BUT, Wise D. seems to be RELIEVED in "Goblet" when Harry tells him that Voldemort took some of his blood and can now touch him painlessly.  Blood will tell, but what it's telling we don't yet know.