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From the category archives:

Beyond the Potterverse

It’s slated to release sometime next year, but some production art and headshots of characters have creeped out online over time, especially in the last day or two.

And if you’re wondering…  Yes, it is most certainly steeped in Tim Burton’s classic vision of the fantastic.

And yes, the image to the left is Johnny Depp as The Mad Hatter.

And, again, yes — it is downright creepy!

If you want to check out some other info, a USA Today article offers some concept art and details some of the story here.  And some other production stills are available at Yahoo! here.

The one thing you can always count on with a story that has been Burtonized:  his ideas will stretch far into a direction you never considered.  At minimum, even if the story isn’t especially compelling, he will always create a visually arresting world that you can’t help but look at.

What do THH patrons think?

(HT to Quint @ Ain’t it Cool News)

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THH’s readers are a smart set — well informed and willing to stretch their imaginations.  I’ve always imagined that we come from a tremendously wide variety of ages, backgrounds, philosophies and worldviews.  I’ve also figured, in the last few days, that many of us have at least been distantly aware of the turmoil in Iran.  It is not my intention to get political here, and please do not take this post as such.

But, I sometimes find myself reminded of the power of a word, description, or scene.  It’s easy to read a scene like Harry’s walk in the woods with his family to what he knows will be his death, and understand that he has accepted it.  But, an honest mea culpa: as much as I love literature, it’s sometimes easy for moments like these to remain somehow abstract in my mind.  Again, I understand so well what that scene is after.  But, I always tell my students that the true power of literature is its ability to make the reader feel what it’s after.  [click to continue…]

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A Yahoo! article indicates that a legal action filed in England is claiming that J.K. Rowling copied significant portions of Goblet of Fire from a 1987 children’s book written by Adrian Jacobs, called Willy the Wizard.

It named the estate’s trustee as Paul Allen, and said that Rowling had copied “substantial parts” of “The Adventures of Willy the Wizard — No 1 Livid Land” written by Jacobs in 1987.

It added that the plot of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire copied elements of the plot of Willy the Wizard, including a wizard contest, and that the Potter series borrowed the idea of wizards traveling on trains.

“Both Willy and Harry are required to work out the exact nature of the main task of the contest which they both achieve in a bathroom assisted by clues from helpers, in order to discover how to rescue human hostages imprisoned by a community of half-human, half-animal fantasy creatures,” the estate statement said. [click to continue…]

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Summer Reading?

May 30, 2009

Stephen King gives 7 “summer reading” recommendations.
Do you make a “summer reading” list?  That’s something that makes sense if you’re in high school or college, when you’re generally stuck with piles of assigned reading.  But to me, there’s no such thing as “summer reading.”  It’s all just “reading.”
Nevertheless, let’s do a reading update, since we [...]

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What Movie Did I Watch?!

May 19, 2009

Maybe this is why I like the new Star Trek!  Enjoy.

On a related note, have you ever noticed these kinds of uncannyparallels in books or movies you enjoy?

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Dave’s Star Trek Review (No Spoilers)

May 10, 2009

First, let me start my review with a bit of full-disclosure:  I’m not a Star Trek fan.  Never have been — Star Wars was always a vastly more interesting world and story for me.  The characters were more interesting to me, and so was the action.  Thus, I do not come to this film with [...]

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B.J. Harrison’s Classic Books

April 29, 2009

My favorite podcast is The Classic Tales, with B.J. Harrison.  For those of you who love audiobooks, great news: B.J. has started The Classic Novels podcast!  This is not a free one, like The Classic Tales, but it does mean you’ll get professional audiobooks for a great price.
The books will be released episodically, and the [...]

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BBC Narnia Code with Michael Ward Online

April 17, 2009

BBC’s special, The Narnia Code, which is about Michael Ward’s excellent work, Planet Narnia, is available online for another 6 days!  I plan to watch it sometime this weekend.  Don’t miss the opportunity!
Johnny did an interview with Michael Ward for The Hog’s Head just prior to the release of the Prince Caspian movie.
Find Michael Ward [...]

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Van Helsing and the Return of Mythos

March 17, 2009

I’ve written recently about mythos and logos in response to Randy Hoyt’s article at Journey to the Sea.  I think it can be argued that hints of mythical thinking are working their way slowly back into our previously overly-rationalistic culture.  Postmodernism is more friendly to it than modernity was.
Dracula, which I’ve finally read, was such [...]

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Dr. Manhattan: “The Superman exists…”

March 9, 2009

“…and he’s American” (IV.13).  His backstory comes straight out of a Marvel comic, a company famous for its heroes who are made so by exposure to some form of atomic energy.  He begins life as Jon Osterman, a kid predisposed toward ingenuity.  He becomes a physicist, working in high-tech tests for the federal government concerning [...]

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Watchmen at The Hog’s Head

March 7, 2009

Watchmen opened this weekend.  Dave has been blogging away on the graphic novel, and he and I are trying to arrange a time to record a podcast about it.  Here are Dave’s posts so far:

Who will watch Watchmen?
Watchmen: Getting Started
Rorschach: Watchmen’s Abyss

Also, Pete Peterson at Rabbit Room links a Motion Comic of Watchmen.

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Rorschach: Watchmen’s Abyss

March 4, 2009

Rorschach (aka Walter Kovacs) is easily one of the more (in)famous characters from Alan Moore’s world.  And Dave Gibbons’s visual take on him has become iconic to many comic fans.  Figure 1 demonstrates the film’s desire to be as faithful to his character design as the medium allows.  The look clearly seems to draw from [...]

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Watchmen: Getting Started

February 24, 2009

Preliminaries (Updated)
Update:  Here’s another link that appeared online:  IGN’s “Top Ten Most Memorable Moments from Watchmen“.
First, here are a couple of links to online “annotated” versions of Watchmen (the book):

Watching the Detectives:  The site bills itself as “an internet companion” to the book; it’s akin to a Wiki, although the layout is different from anything [...]

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New Dickens Adaptations on PBS, Starting Tonight!

February 22, 2009

Charles Dickens fans will be excited to know that tonight, a new three-hour adaptation of Oliver Twist will air on PBS, starting at 9PM EST, followed by three other Dickens adaptions in the coming months.  Many familiar actors are involved:
“The Tales of Charles Dickens” opens with a three-hour Oliver Twist (Sunday and Feb. 22, 9 [...]

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Who will watch Watchmen?

February 21, 2009

I had intentions of posting material on Watchmen in the coming weeks, with the movie’s coming release.  But, Red Rocker brought the subject up in the comments section of a post, so I thought I’d give everyone some material to mull over, now.
Watchmen is a radical departure from much of the material we’ve examined here [...]

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Why Twilight Readers Fail (for everyone)

February 18, 2009

Or maybe better, Literary Criticism in the Hands of an Angry Blogger. Or perhaps, Defending Coleridge and Granger.
I wrote a couple of days ago about the out-of-hand dismissal of the idea that authors are actually careful artists who choose their imaginative keys, symbols, and overall approach to literature very deliberately – i.e., they are attempting [...]

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More Twilight Talk at HogPro

February 10, 2009

Since we’ve had some interesting Twilight discussion here, I figured some of our readers would be interested to know that John Granger is blogging away on the series, drawing specific parallels between the initial critical response to Harry Potter and the current critical response to Twilight.

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Reading Update

January 29, 2009

Till We Have Faces, by C.S. Lewis
Andersen’s Fairy Tales, by Hans Christian Andersen

On Deck:

Dracula, by Bram Stoker
The Silmarillion, by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Little White Horse, by Elizabeth Goudge

2009 Books Read

Paradise Lost, by John Milton
The Enchanted Castle, by Edith Nesbit
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll

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Narnia Movies Update

January 29, 2009

It was reported a few weeks ago that Disney had bailed on the remaining Narnia movies.  Those who suggested Fox would be picking them up were correct!  (Thanks to Amy Sturgis for the tip).
John Granger recently wrote on Disney’s dropping Narnia.

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Happy Birthday, Edgar Allen Poe!

January 19, 2009

Today is Edgar Allen Poe’s 200th birthday.  The master of Gothic horror still speaks to readers from his grave with his brilliant tales and poems.  We plan to give Poe some attention this coming October, in the 2009 Scary Story Read-Along.  Last October, Dave wrote a post on Poe.  So did Amy Sturgis.
Speaking of our [...]

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Stories about Stories: Your Personal Recommendation

January 13, 2009

This past weekend, a post over at the My Friend Amy blog got me thinking about how the value of books are determined.  It’s an interesting issue, especially given the many conversations we’ve had about the literary merits and lasting value of Harry Potter, as well as our recent conversations about whether or not those [...]

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Free Chesterton Audio

January 12, 2009

The G.K. Chesterton collection at Librivox is pretty extensive.

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Two Twilight Reviews

January 9, 2009

Gina R. Delfanzo doesn’t like the books – thinks they’re contrived and dehumanizing.
Regina Doman liked Twilight for its portrayl of male sexuality under control – called it a “likely classic” and Rowling’s “equal” as a “stylist.”

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Happy Birthday, J.R.R. Tolkien

January 3, 2009

Today is J.R.R. Tolkien’s 117th birthday.  Since the theme here has been fairy tales lately, here are a couple of Tolkien quotes that get to the heart of it.
On Myth:
“History often resembles myth, because they are both ultimately of the same stuff.”   ~ “On Fairy-Stories”
On Eucatastrophe:
Endings of this sort suit fairy-stories, because such tales have [...]

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E. Nesbit and G.K. Chesterton on Fairy Tales

January 3, 2009

“When you are young so many things are difficult to believe, yet the dullest people will tell you that they are true – such things, for instance, as that the earth goes around the sun, and that it is not flat but round. But the things that seem really likely, like fairy-tales and magic, are, [...]

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