Results tagged “harrypotter”

Glenn Beck needs to get his house in order. Only a day after the Fox News Channel host identified President Barack Obama as a white people-hating racist who doesn't not like white people (got that?), he confesses in a YouTube video promoting his latest book that his daughter hopes to attend that august institution of radical Islam and communism, Columbia University. Admits Beck in the video: "My middle daughter, she wants to go to Columbia. Do you have any idea the price of Columbia? Please, buy the book! Buy two! Buy three!" And it gets worse—not only does Beck's daughter want to matriculate at the same school that launched arch-superliberals like Eric Foner, Eric Holder, and Barack Obama, she is also a devoted follower of pagan lit! Says Beck: "My daughter is a huge reader—Harry Potter changed her life." So let this be a lesson to all you parents out there: letting your children read books about godless, spell-casting teen wizards will convert them into snobbish intellectuals with effete Ivy League aspirations. It's almost enough to make you cry. FWIW, one notable Republican's daughter attended Columbia—gay marriage-supporting Meghan McCain.

             

Click on the film stills above for more details and reviews on this week's new releases and repertory screenings, which also include 500 Days of Summer, Homecoming, Death in Love, Off Jackson Avenue, Somers Town, A Woman in Berlin, The Way We Get By, Died Young, Stayed Pretty, In a Lonely Place, Flesh Gordon, The Blair Witch Project , and A Clockwork Orange.

Suggestions that Harry Potter actress Emma Watson might attend Columbia University in the fall sent a collective shiver through the campus' online community today. Columbia alumnus-founded gossip blog JustJared.com posted a piece shortly before noon speculating that an entry in the school's online phone directory might belong to the 19-year-old starlet, who had toured the college last October. An hour later, Columbia's student-run Bwog picked up the story and set off a frenzy among the students. Comments on the site and Facebook statuses quickly popped up to rejoice in the news—"Emma Watson at Columbia??? Columbia - 19078096 Other Ivies - 0"—which only got worse as other gossip sites began re-posting JustJared's scoop. Their bubbles may be bursting, though, as it seems the directory entry may actually match a different Ms. Watson, and the actress herself has yet to confirm. But fortunately for Columbians, even if their hopes for NYU-style undergraduate celebrity fail to apparate, they can always return to their old pastime: stalking James Franco in the university library.

"Now your eyes are feeling heavy. You want to sleep, don't you?" That's the question posed by child psychiatrist Martin Dysart (Richard Griffiths) as he hypnotizes his 17-year-old patient Alan Strang (Daniel Radcliffe) in the current revival of Peter Shaffer's 1973 play Equus. But in that moment I could have sworn Griffiths was speaking directly to me. It was also the only point where I felt that any of the performers in this tedious, overwrought production were actually in the same room as the audience.

J.K. Rowling and Warner Bros. have won their copyright infringement lawsuit against a web site operator who intended to publish an encyclopedia based on the author's multi-billion dollar fantasy franchise. Today a judge agreed with Rowling's argument that Steven Vander Ark's Harry Potter Lexicon would amount to "the wholesale theft of 17 years of my hard work." Vander Ark and his publisher had contended that the lexicon was a fair use allowable by law for reference books. But today's ruling found that it "appropriates too much of Rowling's creative work for its purposes as a reference guide." The judge also awarded Rowling and Warner Bros. $6,750 in statutory damages, which should finally permit the struggling author to enjoy a modest retirement.

While a judge deliberates on whether Harry Potter superfan Steve Vander Ark and his publisher violated copyright law by producing a lexicon based on J.K. Rowling’s hit novels, the 50-year-old librarian has simply been trying to keep it together. This week he told the New Yorker all about the trauma caused by the recent trial, during which he broke down in tears.

As the Harry Potter copyright infringement trial drew to a close yesterday, the judge urged the two parties to use their “imaginations” and agree to a settlement. Judge Robert Patterson professed a love of literature and invoked Charles Dickens’s Bleak House as cautionary tale, “A very sad story. Litigation isn’t always the best way to solve things."

The 50-year-old librarian on the receiving end of a copyright infringement lawsuit brought by the Harry Potter author was driven to tears yesterday while testifying in a Manhattan courtroom. Steven Jan Vander Ark (pictured), a former Star Trek fan from Michigan whose exhaustive website The Harry Potter Lexicon would be published in a print version by RDR Books, told lawyers that he was devastated by the lashing he’s received from J.K. Rowling and "the Harry Potter community... This has been an important part of my life for the last nine years or so.”

As detailed yesterday, the proposed book is essentially a print version of a Harry Potter fan site that Rowling previously awarded for excellence in web fandom (something she now “regrets bitterly”). But the website is free, and the billionaire author (along with Warner Brothers Entertainment) claims that a print version, if sold, would amount to “the wholesale theft of 17 years of my hard work.” Rowling went on to dismiss the book as “sloppy, lazy, dire and atrocious,” which is ironic because Rowling once confessed that she consulted the Lexicon website to check facts while writing the Potter series.

Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling is testifying in a Manhattan federal courtroom this morning against a small publisher trying to release an encyclopedia based on her work. In the past, Rowling has been supportive of the fan-based websites that explore her novels, but when RDR Books announced last fall that it would be publishing a book version of the The Harry Potter Lexicon website, Rowling filed a lawsuit claiming copyright infringement.

At 8:30PM (following a half-hour red carpet special), the 80th Annual Academy Awards ceremony will begin, finally putting an end to the "There Will Be Oscar" or "Oscar Country for Old Men" type headlines.

In Samuel Beckett’s 1961 play Happy Days, a decidedly upbeat woman named Winnie spends Act One striving valiantly to make the best of her sticky situation: she’s irrevocably buried up to her waist in a “low mound.” True, Winnie has her reticent companion Willie for company, but she cheerily defies the barren void by holding forth for a seemingly nonexistent gathering of spectators. And Act Two finds Winnie still determined to make a go of it, despite a marked deterioration of her condition: she is now buried up to the neck. 47 years after Beckett finished it, the brutally funny and moving Happy Days is now the hot ticket at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling spent the past week meeting with school children across the country as part of her Open Book Tour. Greeted like a rock star in Los Angeles, she told the crowd she isn't immediately writing the Harry Potter encyclopedia. And last night was her final stop, an event at Carnegie Hall, where it appears she saved for the best for last, as she spilled the beans about various characters during a Q&A.

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a shooting on 155th Ave. and 79th St. in Queens, a bank robbery at the Chase branch on De Kalb and Bedford Ave. in Brooklyn, and a pedestrian struck at Hunts Point and Lafayette Aves. in the Bronx. The Guggenheim sent out a postcard inviting people to a seminar about Andy Warhol. The message on the reverse side is expletive-laced and describes Warhol and his fans in derogatory terms...

We all knew the real estate bubble was causing insanity, but we should have known it's encouraged people to divorce. There's a NY Times Styles section article about some who wait until the market's at its peak to divorce - that way, they can benefit from an even bigger profit when selling their homes.

HEADS UP: Last year we had Daniel Kitson join our Laughable Hype comedy show, and we've been eagerly awaiting his return to the states since then. Good news...he's back! We strongly urge you to buy tickets right now so you can catch the special performance on Monday at Mo Pitkins. These will go fast Sold out! But this just in...Kitson will also be performing at Union Hall this Sunday at 9pm (first come first served).

The teens first dreamed up the trip six years ago. After all, they grew up with Harry, his pals Ron and Hermione, and the rest of the Hogwarts crew.

Continue reading "Cross-Country Trip for Teen Potter Fans"

This week ended with the launch of the seventh and final Harry Potter installation. But while the world was consumed with Pottermania, it's important to remember that there were more serious things going on in the world, too - two of them in -Ist cities.

Earlier this afternoon, we watched Scholastic transform Mercer Street between Prince and Spring Streets in "Harry Potter Place" in anticipation of the 12:01AM release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - early reviews be damned! Not only was the Whomping Willow ready, there were owls (stuffed), messages on the Muggle Message Board, and a copy of the book signed by JK Rowling.

The clock is ticking and the new Harry Potter book will be released at 12:01am, less than twelve hours from now! The scene will surely be crazy and something that this city hasn't seen since...well, Wednesday when people lined up for a canvas grocery sack.

MUSIC: If you haven't checked out the Summer of Love exhibit at the Whitney, head over there after work and get a double dose of rock while you're at it. Tonight Dirty Projectors and Lucky Dragons take the stage at Whitney Live. Get there early to get in. Check out this "Take Away Show" in New York featuring the Dirty Projectors.

What do we make of the fact that the NY Times book critic Michiko Kakutani purchased a copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows at a NYC bookstore yesterday and was able to sift through its 1.8 pounds to write a review in today's paper? There are no true spoilers, just confirmation that there is a fitting ending (but if you are worried about spoilers of any kind, don't read the blockquote):

J. K. Rowling’s monumental, spellbinding epic, 10 years in the making, is deeply rooted in traditional literature and Hollywood sagas — from the Greek myths to Dickens and Tolkien to “Star Wars.” And true to its roots, it ends not with modernist, “Soprano”-esque equivocation, but with good old-fashioned closure: a big-screen, heart-racing, bone-chilling confrontation and an epilogue that clearly lays out people’s fates.

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a shooting on Utica Ave. in Brooklyn, a triple shooting on West 166th St. in the Bronx, and an accidental officer shooting on Jamaica Ave. in Queens.
• Noted New York opera tenor Jerry Hadley has been removed from life support. Hadley shot himself in the head with an air rifle last week.
• Members of the band Radiohead are in town, mastering their latest album after a four-year hiatus.
• More proof that Ronaldo Martinez is helping New Yorkers stop smoking: the New York Times profiles the anti-smoking advocate, whose primary appeal to the cause is that he scares the bejeezus out of smokers with an electronic tracheal voicebox.
• A transit cop encountered a distraught woman on a Times Square subway platform, who said that she had been kidnapped, strapped to a couch, and repeatedly raped by various men over a five-day period.
• Mediabistro is reporting that someone got an advance copy of the latest Harry Potter novel and published photographed pages on the Internet.
• An animal protection group on Long Island is offering a reward to find the person who tied a dog to a tree, apparently doused it with gasoline, and then lit the animal on fire Monday. The dog succumbed to its injuries today.

MOVIE: In To Sir, With Love, an engineer who is unable to find a job as such lands a position teaching at an East End London high school. It's faculty vs students until the new teach (Sidney Poitier) breaks through all the teen angst. Lessons are learned, etc etc.

(directed by David Yates)

Okay, who went to see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix at 12:01AM? Was it good? Is it better when you draw a lightning bolt on your forehead or wear a Hogwarts scarf? The movie has a 77% Freshness rating, as per Rotten Tomatoes (though it may go up or down as more reviews come in), and offers Harry Potters devotees another way to bide time until the final book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, is released on Saturday, July 21 at 12:01AM.

(directed by Walter Hill)

At a bar filled with arcade games, all of which pre-date the 1990's, hundreds of spectators and competitors gathered yesterday for Wiimbledon. While interest in the first-ever Nintendo Wii tennis tournament was high, only 128 competitors were able to play in the single-elimination tournament at Barcade. Players dressed up as tennis players, Harry Potter, and came in their best bear costumes (the bear was eliminated and dejected). While the competition was intense at times, it was obvious to us that several players were in over their heads.