Dracorex hogwartsia

So there's a dinosaur called Dracorex hogwartsia. They found the skull and a handful of vertebrae in South Dakota and thought it looked like a Hogwarts dragon.

However, it's probably just a misunderstood youthful pachycephalosaurus. But the name is cool while it lasts.

I hear it's just a stage

I'm actually not sure whether staying home and doing housework all day makes the house any cleaner, net, than going out and about. If we're out, at least the home mess stays stable. If we're in, all that Meggie energy gets channeled into her toys so that whichever room I clean, there's another one getting methodically turned into a disaster. We seem to generate more trash and laundry at home, too (especially during potty training), and I know I generate more dishes to wash if I cook.

Staying home and cleaning does change the distribution of the mess, though. Instead of dirty dishes I get tastefully assorted roomsful of dinosaurs, stuffed animals, and easter eggs, and the laundry baskets fill up with clean clothes rather than dirty. I guess that's worth it?

Another article on Harry Potter

I liked this article on Harry Potter. It's rare, at this point, to find an article discussing themes I'd never thought of before (articles I don't think are wrong, that is), and I like his points. Harry Potter does find his identity in loyalty and choices, not in a commencement-speech-style following his dreams at others' expense. The author doesn't mention it, but that's what Voldemort did; and Dumbledore did that, before Ariana's death, back when he and Grindelwald wanted to rule the wizarding world. Dumbledore grieved over that his whole life.

"Be careful what you wish for, because your passion might be to become the Dark Lord of humanity. And your vocation might be to avoid becoming that!" Jonathan

Also, I like this quote from the article: "...as with Tolkien's stubbornly not allegorical Middle Earth."

Deathly Hallows part 2

On a subject of possibly more general interest than Eureka (can it be so???), we went to see the last Harry Potter movie yesterday. It was good.

Seven part one was just a hard half a book, a hard movie. Harry and Ron and Hermione were flailing around, trying to finish the task from Dumbledore, but not really getting anywhere. Harry's wand breaks. They're always cold and hungry, and Voldemort controls England. The plot advances painfully.

Seven part two is when things start happening. It's what the entire series has been working up to. It's still dark, but there are redemptive things, sacrificial things, good solid rousing battles after Pansy Parkinson wants to just hand Harry over to the dark lord and and three Houses' worth of students close in around Harry to protect him. I almost don't even know what to say. It's not as detailed as the books, of course, and entire subplots are elided, but the changes were good and the movie was good. I did cry in parts. I also clapped when Molly Weasley took out Bella, and the theater clapped with me. Ha!

It amused me!

I come across all kinds of fun stuff. Today, it was this interview with Helena Bonham Carter, who plays Bellatrix Lestrange in the Harry Potter movies. She's talking about her upcoming death scene, in which she's dueling Molly Weasley (one of the awesomest scenes of the entire book series), and fell right off a table backwards. Hee!

Also fabulous - the career of Wallace Shawn, or as one blogger put it, Wallace "Princess Bride" Shawn. He IS Vizzini! In addition to a great many other parts, he's a regular voice for the Pixar movies, doing such classics as Rex the Dinosaur and the evil insurance boss from The Incredibles. He also did some Star Trek, Stargate SG-1, The Revenge of Kitty Galore, a Kung Fu Panda spin-off, an American Girls movie, Ally McBeal, and, oddly enough, Freud in something called "Hotel New Hampshire." He has fun. IMDB is great.

This morning I had on my old long white linen skirt and an equally aged blue t-shirt with pink flip-flops - nothing fancy, believe me, though it coordinated with Meg's outfit. So we were out for our walk and I was pushing the stroller along, when we noticed a semi parked in the neighborhood. It looked like a moving truck, but the side had some faded lettering that appeared to read, "Complete cage fighting," which was different. About then the driver stuck his head out and said, "Hi, how ya doin'?" "Hi!" I called back. "Do you need directions, or are you good?" "No, I'm good. I just thought I'd say hi because I liked your dress!"

I'm not sure what to say to that!

Haggis is a real critter

...according to 18% of Britons in this poll. Either that, or a Harry Potter character.

Ack!

The most restful Harry Potter yet

It's never easy, I daresay, to adapt 652 tightly-written pages (part six of seven) into a movie that humans can sit through without an intermission. I think, charitably speaking, the scriptwriters probably even read the 652 pages. Once, at least.

So yes, Jonathan and I went to see the new Harry Potter movie. I actually kind of liked it. It's much less tense than the book, almost restful, actually (except for the zombie scene). The adaptors naturally had to cut and condense and invent elements left, right, and center, and then relied on "scary" almost-colorless cinematography like in the third Pirates movie to try and add the creepiness back in.

I think the adaptors' worst problem was that they didn't have anyone to read the script over their shoulders and say, "Huh?" It has details like, the entire sequence of events hinges on getting the Death Eaters into Hogwarts, but once they're there, they stand around and watch Draco and Snape kill Dumbledore; Bellatrix smashes up the Great Hall*; they go outside and burn Hagrid's cottage; and that's it. I was sort of puzzled. Why did they waste screen time on totally apocryphal (and pointless) fight scenes at the Weasleys' house and then cut out the climactic awesome final battle at Hogwarts?

Entire subplots were either cut or handled poorly. We saw a fair amount of Lavender kissing Ron, but they never actually referred to her by name. (!) Jonathan points out she was wearing a lavender shirt, though. I suppose that would be a clue. Ginny doesn't break up with Dean before she switches to Harry, but that somehow never really got going either. We never see Bill or Fleur at all, or how Mrs. Weasley comes to like Fleur at the end, and naturally not why Bill now likes really rare steaks. We also don't see how Tonks and Lupin get together. It's assumed. They also left out the bit where Harry inherits Kreacher and the house.

I find it interesting that nearly all the angst from the prior films got cut. There are several love triangles, but overall it's so clean. The adults are mostly helpful and kind; Harry doesn't have it in for anyone particularly except Draco, who's very obviously up to something; nobody gets after him for using Sectumsempra; Harry even does what Dumbledore tells him in the last scene without having to be petrified. Bizarre. As I recall, the book is stressful to read because Harry insists on doing things that are an Incredibly Bad Idea, but in the movie he just... doesn't.

Subplots can be expended, I suppose. But it's a problem when a script bungles the main plot. I would argue, I think, that would be Dumbledore helping Harry learn what he needs in order to find the Horcruxes and destroy Voldemort in the final installment. We only see two of the memories from the book, three if you count the two versions of Slughorn's conversation with Tom. Absolutely huge plot elements are ignored. Why does Voldemort pick certain objects to hold his soul? He does have a rationale, of sorts. How did Dumbledore know to look for the locket in that seaside cavern? It was in a part of the orphanage memory that got cut from the movie. What is the significance of Tom's ring, that he made it one of the horcruxes? And most of all, why is it Dark magic to make a horcrux, anyway? What does murder have to do with splitting your soul, and is that really a problem? Horcruxes were reduced to a McGuffin, not a nature-of-the-universe thing. And it's hard to win genuine emotion for a plot full of McGuffins. Hence, I daresay, the reliance on color and camera technique.

Ah, well. For all its incoherence, I'm really not sorry we went.



*Laughing maniacally. I have a particular fondness for Helena Bonham Carter as Bellatrix. She's so crazy. She flaps around in her black dress, destroying things and laughing maniacally. Batty, quite batty.

Lurgy

I'd always wondered about "the lurgy," ever since Luna mentioned it. It sounds made-up. It is made up. There you go.

Oh, and apparently it rhymes with "Fergie" rather than "clergy." Another fond thought dashed.

Heavenfield is just a font of knowledge... or links thereunto. :-)

More on St. Mungo

This window, from the Stobo Kirk in Stobo, Scotland, shows St. Mungo (Kentigern) apparently baptizing Merlin, or at least the woods-dweller who later got integrated into our current legendary Merlin. (Thanks to ramshornstudio for the image.)

There's quite a lot of dispute as to whether Mungo really baptized him, or perhaps he merely healed him.

Kentigern was one of the great sixth-century saints and missionaries. He's now the patron saint of Glasgow, with a cathedral I should like to visit and a museum which has apparently been hijacked by multireligiosity. :-(

There are a couple of early lives about Mungo/Kentigern, but I haven't tracked down online versions yet. If anyone comes across one, do let me know.

St. Mungo

Heavenfield, my favorite living medievalist, had a post up about St. Mungo--whom the hospital in Harry Potter is named after, you know. I'd always wondered if that could possibly be a real name or if Rowling just made it up, but apparently she didn't. She generally doesn't.

And, appropriately enough, St. Mungo is associated in legend with Merlin!

Yesterday's Farsi of the Day

Yesterday's Farsi of the Day is "Harry Potter." It's pronounced "Ha-ree Pa-ter."

I learned this happy fact while skimming the BBC-Farsi news yesterday. I do this, despite the fact I don't actually have much clue what any of it says (I can find the sections that say "Iran" and "Jehan" (world) and "Mahmoud Ahmadinejad." But I digress). Anyway, I was rather excited to come across this article, because it's about Harry Potter. And I know Harry Potter. :-)

If I ever manage to translate enough of it to find out what it says, I'll let you know...

Vaguely horrifying

Harry Potter Personality Quiz by Pirate Monkeys Inc.

Let's see. INTP is introverted, intuitive, thinking, and perceiving. And I do believe this is the second time I've come up as Lord Voldemort--and on two different quizzes, too.

There's only one quote appropriate for the occasion: "She had not yet decided whether to use her power for good or for evil."

Books read and unread

Humiliating though it may be for a lit major, I don't think I've heard of a single of these "contemporary authors" the article surveyed.* But I liked the question they asked: what's your favorite book you haven't read? (Translation: what book have you most egregiously not read yet?) As a follow-up, what's a favorite or unusual book you have read?

Mmm....there are gazillions of books I really need to read. Top of my list presently, I'd probably put Brothers Karamazov and Treasure Island. The latter I need to read, because I've seen the Muppet version, the Disney Treasure Planet version, and even Treasure Planet in Farsi, and it's perfectly disgraceful to have missed the book itself. I actually own a copy of the book now; I got a lovely old hardback at the library used bookstore. I want to read Brothers K because Dr. Mitchell recommends it so highly. He was my academic advisor, after all.

My favorite random book must be M. M. Kaye's The Ordinary Princess. If I name my seventh daughter Amy, that's why.


*I think my favorite answer was the man who borrowed the first Harry Potter from one of his students about ten years ago and not only never finished it, he never gave it back, either! That's pretty bad.

Creativity, in various forms

I rather think I posted about artist Makoto Fujimura some time ago, but today I came across a longish speech on art and the church and monsters and imagination, also by him. It's quite good. The title sounds rather like "Dawning of the Age of Aquarius," but try not to worry about that. :-)

And you may not yet have seen an article from the National Review Online on "Harry Potter and the Art of Dying Well;" I hadn't, but I rather liked it. It isn't the full story. It didn't mention Dumbledore and Snape's rather questionable approach to killing, but I appreciated its perspective.

Movie review!

The movie is Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. I thoroughly enjoyed it. :-) Warning: there are probably spoilers, so if you don't like that sort of thing, watch out.

They did a really good job condensing the book. They kept all the really essential plot points--well, the essential ones as far as we know, seeing as the last book isn't out yet. The dementor attack on Harry and Dudley was properly grim. They had the house on Grimmauld Square, and it sure looked dark and nasty. Kreacher and the portrait of Sirius' mother made it in, though not at length. Harry's Occlumency lessons were mercifully abbreviated, but one did clearly get the idea they were a fiasco.

Umbridge minced around in her nasty hairy pink suits, going "hem, hem," and calling centaurs "filthy half-breeds." (Brilliant.) They had fun with the filmography for the bits where you had to find out what the Ministry of Magic was up to: you'd fly through layers of Wizarding newspapers, catching bits of headlines and moving pictures, and finally fall into scenes where Fudge was blustering to the press.

Several reviewers mentioned the Weasley's spectacular exit from Hogwarts: they're right. It rocked. It involved a dragon-firework kind of like the one from Bilbo's birthday party. It even knocked all Umbridge's Educational Decrees off the wall so they went smash on the stone floor. You've got to love it.

Most of the actors are so very good, I wished they got more screen time. Dumbledore is an exception; none of the movie Dumbledores have remotely gotten across why anyone should respect him, and this Dumbledore (partly by necessity) is even more distant than usual, even in the final explain-it-all scene. But Emma Thompson has the most charming and incompetent Trelawney--of course she's a right old fraud, but that doesn't mean Umbridge should kick her out. Kingsley Shacklebolt is cool as all-get-out; he, I think, wound up with a bigger part than in the book, because he had to fill in for various members of the Order of the Phoenix that got elided. Neville also wound up with a lot of house-elf lines, but it worked. Tonks is adorable. It took me aback to see her punk outfits, because when visualizing her I'd forgotten that detail, but it was perfect. "Don't call me Nymphadora." I really would have liked more Tonks in the movie. Luna Lovegood, actually, was almost as freaky as any of the Death Eaters, because she was so very calm and spacey. I've always rather liked Luna. She has the strength of character to be completely weird in a school environment, which is admirable.

Ralph Fiennes remains a disturbing Voldemort. But Helena Bonham Carter as Bellatrix Lestrange took the cake. She was freakishly insane. One reviewer said she was "in full Banshee mode," and that's about right. She definitely didn't get enough screen time, and when she did, it was so dark you could barely see her. She wore black and blended in with the ill-lit Department of Mysteries, you see. I'm definitely looking forward to having her in the next movie.

One interesting thing: in abridging this movie, they actually removed some of Harry's angst. I found this fascinating compared to Lord of the Rings and Narnia, where they felt the need to give characters completely unwarranted I-can't-be-king-angst. I suspect it's because Harry, unlike Peter and Aragorn, already had enough angst to satisfy any scriptwriter's soul and to spare. So the movie Harry is considerably less irritating than the book Harry, who spends hundreds of pages whining and snapping at his friends.

The final scene is also less violent than in the book. I think it's because they wanted to shorten it so much, but none of the kids got knocked out or had bones broken or anything. They all got headlocked by Death Eaters and menaced with wands, and I think Luna got smashed in the teeth, and that's about it. Though Harry did get possessed by Voldemort in the end, which I don't remember from the book. But as an addition it worked. In the book, Harry escaped possession not so much by choice as by who he was as the accumulation of years of choices: even when he slipped and tried an Unforgivable Curse, it didn't work because he didn't have the hate stored up for it. This Harry was actually writhing on the ground full of Voldemort's nastiness, but he chose love instead--Dumbledore, hanging out with the Weasleys, Lupin, Hagrid, sitting around with Ron and Hermione, his parents' sacrifice--and that got rid of the Dark Lord. It was a less subtle event, and therefore worked better onscreen, but got across roughly the same idea.

So I liked it. It's dark, definitely dark, but it's not a particularly scary "jump" movie. I didn't scream once. :-)

Bookses

I have finished three books in the last few days: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Dante's Paradise, and Augustine's Confessions. I am a happy camper.

Confessions: read them. Augustine is excellent much of the time. The most peculiar thing (to me) was his frequent flights of allegorical interpretation, which is a thing we just don't do much. At least, I thought that until I was reading some Spurgeon and discovered that's his method, too...

Half-Blood Prince: the minimum reading age for the series--at least, as far as I would let my hypothetical kids read them--just jumped a couple years. It's good. It's not so dark as Order of the Phoenix, and has some really good stuff, but it also has certain content issues. Alas. For the record, I don't approve of sixteen-year-olds "snogging"...

Paradise: Alas, just when it was getting really good, we spend three cantos mostly praising Mary! Jesus may be the Main Point, but He's barely there!

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

It’s a strange movie. It’s not bad, exactly; it has a lot of good content; but it’s strange. It’s a lot like The Wizard of Oz, even to the color scheme. Just so you know, my review does contain spoilers: I couldn’t talk about it sensibly otherwise. Sorry.

Johnny Depp plays Willy Wonka, the owner of the chocolate factory. Remember the part in Pirates where he asked Will Turner how far he’d go for Elizabeth, and Will said he’d die for her, and Depp replied, “oh, good”? That’s sort of how he was for Chocolate Factory, only more so. Kindness to others was not his prevailing virtue. He also has a high voice, effeminate hair, and pale makeup, so I probably wouldn’t have recognized Depp if I hadn’t known it was him. So that was not so great.

Wonka’s factory is run by the Oompa Loompas, a tribe of munchkins who came from the jungle to eat cocoa beans instead of (admittedly disgusting) green caterpillars. Wonka’s jungle travels in which he discovered them were his most manly parts of the movie, but the Oompa Loompa language itself tended towards middle-school humor. They are musical munchkins. Every time someone disappeared from the tour, they put on an elaborate song and dance number (rather like “Ding, Dong, the Witch is Dead,” only with more cultural references). The dances were supposed to be funny. They tended to bewilder me. Or weird me out. I think I just don’t quite get Tim Burton’s sense of humor, which is probably good.

Christopher Lee plays Wonka’s father. He was a being with no existence in the book, but he works in the movie. At least, he adds (moderately obvious and unimaginative) depth and motivation to Wonka’s wonky character. In addition to being a great Saruman and Count Dooku, he’s also a great evil dentist. Seriously! He did well with what he had to work with. There’s a reunion scene at the end. “I haven’t seen bicuspids like this since…WILLY?” “Dad!” “You haven’t flossed since you left?” “Not once.”

On the other hand, the movie did some excellent things. Charlie Bucket’s family is very poor, but they love each other and his parents both work hard, his dad to support the family and his mom to keep the household running. (The casting job on the Bucket family, all seven of them, was phenomenal. Actually, most of the casting was really good.) I was surprised how nonfeminist the movie was, in that and other regards. It was a major theme that Family is Good and Selfishness is Bad—even more so than Harry Potter, actually. Charlie at the end passed up riches beyond his wildest dreams to stay with his family.

It was also a big theme that obeying your parents is good, even if you don’t understand. Charlie had a line to Wonka about how “they love you and want the best for you.” Every one of the frightful four children had parents who spoiled them. The Oompa Loompas knew perfectly well whose fault it was, and sang so.

I loved the way the movie skewered four vices. Everyone had a fitting end for his sins, rather like Dante’s Hell. :-D

The first to go was a glutton, plain and simple. He tried to eat what wasn’t his, fell into the chocolate river and was sucked up into a factory UFO, and that was that.

The second was your feminazi go-conquer-the-world type of girl, with her mother exactly the same. ::shudder:: She was a champion gum-chewer and chewing the wrong gum was her downfall. Wonka actually went to some effort to save her from herself (he generally didn’t), but she, knowing better of course, turned herself into a blueberry.

The third was a prim and spoiled young lady, who insisted on her own way and got sent down the garbage chute for her pains. Her doting father followed her: a squirrel pushed him in.

The fourth boy was a combination math whiz and video game addict. He was not as consistent a character, actually; I think they tried to do more with him than was possible. He was incredible at puzzles, math, and technology, and also liked violent video games. He’s the sort of boy who stomps on pumpkins for no reason but destruction. His dad halfheartedly tried to dissuade him, but was too much of a wimp to give an actual order or enforce it if he did. The Oompa Loompas sang that TV rots your brain, but it was so manifestly not true in this boy’s life, that one fell rather flat. His foul character was certainly bad, but they didn’t denounce it very convincingly. It should also be pointed out that bashing TV using the medium of cinema is perhaps not the most consistent.

The movie was, in short, of ambivalent quality. There were some funny parts, and some good parts, and some gross parts (mostly the caterpillars), and some parts that fell hopelessly flat. At least there was no love story to “fall on its face and skin its nose.”

Father's Day Weekend

We just went up to Colorado!

We set off about 10:15 and drove up past Espanola through Abiquiu, past the old little zoo that the environmentalists closed down because it wasn't run by experts, past the Reservoir we went rafting on once, that day we prayed and God made a hole in the cloud so it wouldn't rain on us (we checked the Weather Channel maps when we got home), past the bright pasty and orange and red layers, and past the big hole chipped out of the orange layers that echoes so beautifully. We had a leisurely lunch and shopping at Chama, NM (the train lives there, you see, the narrow-gauge something or other that greatly excites the people who like trains), and headed up to Pagosa Springs, Colorado.

Dad and I checked us into the hotel; or tried to. It was only three, and the room wasn't ready till four. So we went across the street and hung out at the Visitor's Center for an hour. It was on the banks of the San Juan River, which was overflowing itself and being generally busy. We took pictures. We also took pictures of "The Springs," which is a quasi-spa built on the very Springs Pagosa is named after. Beautiful place.

So then we checked in properly, checked out the pool, and had dinner. It had a back balcony that overlooked the River and the Springs. The food was tolerable, but the view was priceless...we watched a girl and her brother at the Springs. It was hilarious. They took turns, one holding the another's ankles while they leaned over and stuck their head in the river. I don't know WHAT they were doing, but it was awfully funny. And the girl had a stick almost twice as long as she was, and she'd toss it in the river and catch it just a bit downstream. Eventually her dad tossed it in with great vigor. No more stick.

Dad, Emily, and I went to the Springs ourselves after dinner; it was great. We spent most of our time in one particular pool. I read "The Two Towers" and they talked to an old gentleman who teaches school on a Navajo reservations during the winter and camps out with his horse all summer. He had a lot of great stories. There was a gazebo there with snow-cone and popcorn machines, so we got some of both and listened to a couple tell stories, about their daughter and son-in-law, who work in Hollywood and know all these celebrities I've never heard of. I am dreadfully out of the loop. Well...we started it, because we were talking amongst ourselves about how Torrey and Katie Jackson's little sister were getting married, and they thought we said "Kate Jackson." After dark, the Springs had an inflatable movie screen, a projector, and a highly effective sound system, and played Lilo and Stitch and A New Hope. But we left before that.

And then today we went swimming, had lunch and shopping at a Victorian tea house, went to Best Buy and Old Navy in Santa Fe, and came home. I amused myself this evening by editing "The Quartz" (I think it's done now) and starting an epic in limericks about the Normouse. His name is Striking, so presumably in the past he had an ancestor named Strike. Oh, and I've been doing reading for the reading group, which meets Wednesday. If anyone comes up with good DQs for "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets," Book II of "The Two Towers," or "The Horse and His Boy," I'm open for suggestions. :-)

Happy Father's Day, y'all!

The Harry Potter can of worms

I think I'll open a can of worms.

I just finished reading Connie Neal's What's a Christian to do with Harry Potter? I don't think I can entirely buy her argument, but I appreciate a lot of what she had to say.

To start with, she completely affirmed that witchcraft and sorcery were real and that Christians must absolutely stay away from them.

She also applied--rightly, I think--Paul's instructions from Corinthians on how Christians should behave when dealing with moral questions. In their day, the issue was eating meat sacrificed to idols. Every man should be convinced in his own mind, and don't cause a brother to stumble, and whatever you do, do to the glory of God. We may disagree, but need to do so as brothers, not enemies.

Neal pointed out the illustrious career of what she calls "literary magic" and says that if you're going to object to the portrayal of magic on principle, you need to apply that principle consistently.

She dared pick up the WWJD question and answered it in a number of plausible ways, generally relying on Harry Potter as reflection or parable for the truth.

She points out that refusing to have anything to do with Harry Potter, hermit-like, or alternately going hysterical, is neither a good witness nor being in but not of. She advocates having a Christian worldview on the matter. (Can't argue with that one.)

She points out that the good characters sin, but they also grow. They are not flat or static.

She finally emphasizes that you cannot just let your children loose with Harry Potter, but need to help them distinguish good from evil. I would entirely agree that reading him requires discernment and maturity. (And he's just too scary for small children, I would say.)

I have read all five books and seen all three movies. I like Harry Potter. Rowling is brilliant and applies the Western literary tradition with the best of them. At the end of Neal's book, I am left with the same opinion I started with: there is good in the series, but you cannot go to the series to discover the good. Not as the series stands now, incomplete. And with that, I hereby put the lid back on the can.