Just a reminder that the Potter Pundits will be appearing live tonight, March 6, 2010, at Pace University in the NYC area.  For those who can’t make it in person (and I suspect that’s many of us), the good news is that Pottercast will be offering a livestream of the event.  You can find the livestream here.  The event starts at 7PM Eastern Standard Time.  Tune in to hear the Potter Pundits–Travis Prinzi, John Granger, and James Thomas–discuss Harry Potter as great literature!

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Melissa Anelli has posted a new “Vault” entry. These are excerpts from her interviews with J.K. Rowling. Two fascinating items come out of this discussion.

Grindelwald as Lucifer

MA: It reminds me of WICKED, did you ever read WICKED?

JKR: No.

MA: Maguire does retellings of old fairytales and he made a very cerebral book about the Wicked Witch of the West, and Glinda, and how they used to be best friends.

JKR: Oh really…

MA: It’s very similar; she went one way to fight injustice and fight the wizard, and Glinda went the other, to be the political figure and play into the system. Really interesting.

JKR: Well, it’s the old fallen angel idea in some ways, isn’t it? It’s God and Lucifer.

MA: I wanted to ask you about that, because Grindelwald resembles – the golden curls, the first person I thought of was Lucifer.

Fascinating. Rowling goes on to call their friendship a “fraternal bond,” and she notes that Dumbledore’s emotional infatuation with Grindelwald makes him “less culpable.” Thoughts?

Then, there’s this bit. Often, when I think Ms. Rowling didn’t think through something well enough, she comes out with something like this to prove me wrong:

MA: Because he’s set up this massive chess game -

JKR: Mm, this massive chess game. But I said to Arthur, my American editor – we had an interesting conversation during the editing of seven – the moment when Harry takes Draco’s wand, Arthur said, God, that’s the moment when the ownership of the Elder wand is actually transferred? And I said, that’s right. He said, shouldn’t that be a bit more dramatic? And I said, no, not at all, the reverse. I said to Arthur, I think it really puts the elaborate, grandiose plans of Dumbledore and Voldemort in their place. That actually the history of the wizarding world hinged on two teenage boys wrestling with each other. They weren’t even using magic. It became an ugly little corner tussle for the possession of wands. And I really liked that – that very human moment, as opposed to these two wizards who were twitching strings and manipulating and implanting information and husbanding information and guarding information, you know?

Ultimately it just came down to that, a little scuffle and fistfight in the corner and pulling a wand away.

I welcome the Pub’s thoughts on that! Fire away.

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According to some calculations, when the clock ticks over midnight tonight, a new decade will begin and the old one close.  Not for me, though, I don’t think the new decade starts until 2011. 

But since most of the world figures 2010 will start the new decade, I’ve noticed a fair number of stories posted over at The Leaky Cauldron on Harry Potter and its place in the last decade.  That is to say, Harry Potter is making a lot of end of decade lists.  I was going to post the links to some of those stories but Leaky is apparently down for maintainence right now.  Oh well.  Anyway, if you go over there once they’re back up, you’ll see over the last week or so many of these stories.

My question to you all this New Year’s Eve is, what do you think Harry Potter’s role and place was in the last decade?  What do you think it will be in the decade to come?  How do you measure the impact of both Harry Potter and of Joanne Rowling at this time in history?

So, have yourself some hors d’ouevres, raise a toast of champagne, and sing a round of Auld Lang Syne, and have a Happy New Year!!

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Found this article on The Torch Online.  I post it for two reasons:  One, it’s a nice, thoughtful article on a topic we’ve discussed much here regarding adapting books or comics for the big screen, and Two, it mentions specific books/comics we’ve talked about much here, namely The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and the Watchmen.  Plus, our very own Matthew/Korg is mentioned.  See if you can find where!

Feel free to share your thoughts on the article here.  Enjoy!

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On her blog Quoth the Maven, Janet Batchler has some great comments regarding who is the hero of Harry Potter: Harry Potter or Dumbledore.  She’s responding to a story here arguing that Dumbledore is the real hero of the HP series not Harry.  Check out both and see what you think.

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For me, two very important events happened yesterday and today.  Yesterday, November 22, 1963, C.S. Lewis died, his death being overshadowed by the assasination of John F. Kennedy.  Aldous Huxley also died that day too.  Lewis is well known for his Chronicles of Narnia books and also for his Christian apologetical works, even giving a series of radio lectures during World War II which would later form the book Mere Christianity.  Among many works, Lewis also wrote science fiction, The Space Trilogy, and also, what I consider to be his best work, Till We Have Faces, a retelling of the myth of Cupid and Psyche.

The second event happened on November 23, 1963.  Doctor Who debuted on BBC Television.  A science fiction show following the time travels of the eccentric and enigmatic Doctor, it has been recognized as the longest running science fiction television show in the world and also the most successful.  It ran originally from 1963 to 1989.  The series was regenerated in 2005 and has continued until present, although no full series was run in 2009.  David Tennant, who played Barty Crouch Jr. in Goblet of Fire, was a fan of Doctor Who in his youth.  Tennant eventually played The Doctor from 2005 through 2010.  The show had an almost cult status in Great Britain and led to a shared experience called “behind the sofa,” in reference to hiding behind the sofa during the scary parts of the show and peeking out to see if they were over.

Connecting all this to Harry Potter, it’s well known that JK Rowling has expressed admiration of The Chronicles of Narnia and of Lewis’ work in general until she started to distance herself from comparisons to him and her work in recent years, for whatever reasons.  However, both share strong literary roots.  Lewis, like Rowling, loved Edith Nesbit and Jane Austen.  Lewis supposedly said of Austen’s works that they had two faults, both of which were damnable, they were too few and too short.  For more on the connections between Lewis and Rowling, there is an excellent book I’ve heard of, by some obscure but brilliant writer, called Harry Potter and Imagination.   As an aside, I think if Lewis had the chance to read the Potter books, he would’ve been delighted!  J.R.R. Tolkien, perhaps not so much…

As for connections between Doctor Who and Harry Potter, I’ve not heard of many, besides the mild connection between Tennant’s role as Crouch Jr. and The Doctor.  Doing a bit of brief research, I came across some stories suggesting that Rowling might have been contacted about writing a story for the revived series but could not since she was still working on Potter.  I also saw one story that claimed there was to be a Doctor episode about Rowling but that Tennant shot it down as being too silly even for Doctor Who.  If you’d like to check some of these stories out, just google “Rowling Doctor Who.” Rowling is of an age that she could have watched Doctor Who in her youth.  I’ve never seen any references, though, of her mentioning the show.  Does anyone here know?

Feel free to share your thoughts on C.S. Lewis and on The Doctor.

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We reported previously on a forthcoming J.K. Rowling “Female Force” comic. You can now view a preview of that comic at MTV!

MTV reports:

Bluewater has provided Splash Page readers with an exclusive preview of “Female Force: J.K. rowling,” which hits shelves in December in a standard, 23-page comic and a “double-sized collector’s edition.” The comic is written by Adam Gragg with interior art by Matthew Filer (“Masque of the Dragons”) and cover art by Joshua Labello.

Should be an interesting way of telling the story of Harry Potter’s author.

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DQ Entertainment is awarding J.K. Rowling a Lifetime Achievement Award:

The 2009 DQE Lifetime Achievement Award has been awarded to J.K. Rowling for her outstanding contribution towards children entertainment. J.K Rowling is the author and creator of the Harry Potter fantasy series. The esteemed jury were almost unanimous in their choice of J.K. Rowling – who has inspired the minds of millions of people around the world, and has given rise to a whole new generation of young readers. The Potter books have gained worldwide attention; won multiple awards, sold more than 400 million copies and a string of films have been produced based on the series.

Rowling is also being awarded the first H.C. Andersen Literature Prize, a Danish honor which she will accept next year. It appears the city of Odense knows how to celebrate Harry:

The city already has a strong link to Rowling’s books and hosts an annual Harry Potter Festival, which transforms the City Hall into Hogwarts School for witches and wizards. The festival is run in conjunction with the public library to encourage children to read.

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In case you missed it, J.K. Rowling joined Twitter recently, and her third tweet was exciting: she said she wouldn’t be on Twitter much because “pen and paper is my priority at the moment.”

If you’re a Twitterer, don’t get too excited about Rowling’s joining Twitter; it’s unlikely she’ll be spending as much time on there as I do. But today, another report suggests Rowling’s got something in the works. Sue Upton reports:

There is a new article today regarding author J.K. Rowling and her next piece of literature.The Telegraph is reporting that at a recent fashion week showing, Jo “bid for three tickets to see Stella McCartney’s Paris show at a Gala Auction in London, in June, to raise funds for the Raisa Gorbachev Foundation, and bought along two friends.” JKR is next quoted as saying “I’m working on something, but it’s not Harry Potter,” she said. “I need a Harry break.”

The day’s going to come when Rowling writes something new, and it’s going to be interesting to see what dedicated Harry Potter sites do with non-Potter novels from Rowling. I know here at The Hog’s Head, we’ll spend just as much time on them as we do Harry when the time comes.

Could this new work be the “political fairy tale” she was talking about?

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At the beginning of last year, the James Runcie documentary on J.K. Rowling, “A Year in the Life,” was available in the UK and for a very limited time online. Hog’s Head writers saw it at the time, and Johnny wrote up a review.

This Thursday, July 16 at 8pm Eastern time, ABC will air the documentary! (HT to Arabella Figg!)

J.K. ROWLING: A YEAR IN THE LIFE – THURSDAY, JULY 16 (8:00-9:00 p.m.) — The woman who created an imaginary world for millions, J.K. Rowling, allowed cameras extraordinary access during the year before the 7th Harry Potter book was published. From the one bedroom apartment in Scotland where it all began to a hotel room where viewers watch her type the last words of the Potter saga, Rowling lets millions of fans into her world. The documentary exposes her childhood sorrows, visits the church where she and her sister worked after-school as janitors, and allows people to see her now as both the queen of a magical, alternate universe and an everyday mom. Cameras also travel back to her hometown and discover where many of the characters of Harry Potter originated. Upon the release of the latest Harry Potter movie, Elizabeth Vargas takes viewers on a journey into the life of the woman who came from “nothing” and created all of her own success.

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