From the category archives:

Death

Just a quick shout out on one of my favorite poems.  The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe was first published with his name attributed to it on this day in 1845.  Very haunting and very Gothic.  Anyway, if you’d like to read it, go here.  If reading isn’t your thing, you can find a recording on Librivox here.  If you want to see a video of Vincent Price reading The Raven, go down to the bottom of the wikipedia page on the poem and you’ll find it under external links/video.  He does a dramatic reading of the poem, not literal, but hey it’s Vincent Price!  And if you want to see the best adaptation of The Raven ever, go here for The Simpson’s Halloween special version.  So, if you like really depressing, gothic poems, enjoy!!

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This chapter opens with an ominous moment: Harry searching for a place to bury Moody’s eye. He does so under “the oldest, most gnarled, and resilient-looking tree he could find.” Harry’s symbolism is clear, and the scene will be repeated later.

All-in-all, this chapter has an Empire Strikes Back feel to it. Our heroes are stuck in the wilderness, hunting for clues to puzzles they know are important, but coming up empty. As Rowling writes it, the scene reduces the three of them to “three teenagers in a tent whose only achievement was not, yet, to be dead.” The dark magic of the locket, now being passed among them to diffuse its effect on any one of them, is taking a severe toll. And it is most assuredly the prime cause of discord within the tent.

Hermione’s realization that this is so does little to assuage the Horcrux’s effect on all of them. Endless boredom and hunger in the midst of the stress of being hunted like animals isn’t helping the situation. It all creates a vicious psychological cycle within the trio, most notably Harry: “[He] was starting to fear that Hermione too was disappointed by his poor leadership. In desperation he tried to think of further Horcrux locations, but the only one that continued to occur to him was Hogwarts, and as neither of the others thought this at all  likely, he stopped suggesting it.” In other words, out of fears over his lack of leadership, Harry quits being a leader. Any reader who has paid close attention to the series knows Harry has to be right, or at least on the right track. The importance Hogwarts holds for Voldemort and others is unmistakable. All of them are ignoring the evidence, from Ginny’s possession and Voldy’s other repeated attempts to penetrate the school, to what Harry learned in his Pensieve lessons in Half-Blood Prince. [click to continue…]

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NosferatuShadowNosferatu, The Symphony of Horror (How’s that for a catchy name?) was an unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula.  It is, as far as I can tell from a brief research, one of the earliest adaptations of Dracula.  Directed by F.W. Murnau and released in 1922, the film attempted to get around the problem of not having the rights to the Stoker story by changing the setting from London to the fictional German city of Wisborg and also changing all the names of the characters.  Count Dracula becomes Count Orlok, Harker becomes Thomas Hutter, Renfield becomes Knock, and so on.  Minus the ending, though, the story is essentially the same as Dracula. [click to continue…]

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Like a lot of the general movie-going public, Jamie and I plunked down some change to check out Paranormal Activity Friday night. First, my quick review: very, very good. The story is simple, and the audience is really supposed to focus on the characters as they sink ever deeper into their fear over what is in their home. The film’s style is much like that of The Blair Witch Project from ten years ago. But, I didn’t find that movie at all engaging, much less frightening. Part of the issue for me was the migraine I left the theater with after enduring nearly an hour and a half of people who couldn’t hold a camera steady. Paranormal Activity solves both of those problems. In short, if you enjoy thrills and confronting your own fears, you need to go see this film.

Movies don’t frighten me very often. In fact, I’ve tried to remember the last film that really unnerved me when I saw it in the theater, but I came up empty.** Paranormal Activity actually left me rather shaken. It is frightening in a way I have never experienced with a film. [click to continue…]

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Immortality: On the Way?

by revgeorge 10.01.2009

Saw an interesting article from The Telegraph in the UK the other day wherein a scientist postulates that in about twenty years human beings could become immortal.  This would come about through accelerating technology such as nanotechnology and a better understanding of how the human body works.
What do you think?  In Harry Potter we discuss [...]

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The White Tomb

by Dave the Longwinded 07.14.2009

Half-Blood Prince’s final chapter opens with a favorite device of Ernest Hemingway, the simple declarative sentence:
“All lessons were suspended, all examinations postponed.”
It really is one of Rowling’s finer moments as a writer, poignant and rich with subtlety.  In this one statement, she wipes away all the carefree wonderment of childhood with pointed irony.  Hogwarts shifts [...]

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Escape into the Perilous Realm

by Travis Prinzi 02.16.2009

“I don’t want to analyze a story. I don’t want to find hidden meaning. I just want to escape from the real world for a bit.”
I’m guessing you’ve either heard some variation of those words or said them yourself. Books are for “escaping.” Stories are for entertainment value. A page-turner is all we want – [...]

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Harry, War Hero

by Travis Prinzi 10.09.2008

“It would have been a cop out to kill him,” J.K. Rowling says:
In many ways it would have been a neater ending to kill him. For sure, I knew that all along. felt that the books’ overriding message was that love is the most powerful force in this world. My model with Harry really was [...]

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