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| Wednesday, July 18th, 2007 | | 6:33 pm |
| | Monday, July 16th, 2007 | | 7:28 am |
OotP movie notes
The last few months have been probably my busiest since my last semester of grad school (when I was working two jobs, one with a long commute, and trying to finish a thesis, all at the same time). This year hasn't been that bad, but it has still been a challenge. ( What I've Been Doing Recently )However, I did manage to take a couple of hours off to see the OotP movie when it came out last week. I liked it, although mainly because I wasn't expecting anything truly great-- it was just a nice illustrated (and abridged) version of the books. I'm not sure how well it would have worked for someone who didn't already know the book; it kind of seemed like several things in it depended on a knowledge of the books in order to make sense. Obviously, in condensing an 870-page book into a 2+ hour film, they had to leave a lot of stuff out; and the effect, I thought, was to reduce the impact a lot, so that both the high and the low moments were less intense than they were in the book. ( Movie spoilers )Anyway, I may or may not find time to post any final thoughts on expectations for Book 7. I won't really have anything new and exciting to say, I don't think; most things I could discuss about the book are in one of three categories: (1) things everybody sort of knows (like Regulus and the Locket); (2) things where I don't even have any intelligent speculation (like what the Ravenclaw horcrux will be, assuming that there is one); (3) things where I know what my guess is, but most of you seem to be guessing differently, and there's not really anything more to say (like Harry probably returning to school, at least for most of the year). There may still be a few interesting things I can manage; but time may not permit (I've spent too much time on this post already!). If not... happy Book 7 release, everybody! | | Saturday, March 31st, 2007 | | 11:38 pm |
| | Sunday, February 18th, 2007 | | 9:32 pm |
| | Wednesday, January 24th, 2007 | | 10:54 pm |
| | Wednesday, January 3rd, 2007 | | 3:00 pm |
Further thoughts on "HPDH"
(I started to write this as part of my reply to ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92) perceval on the previous thread, but decided to split this part out as its own post.) My position-- now that I've had a couple of weeks to consider the title-- is still more or less what it was: (1) I think "sacred place" is the most likely sense of "hallows," followed by "sacred objects." I would have a hard time seeing JKR using it to refer to "holy [and presumably deceased] people," although I'm not sure I can rule that out absolutely. ...(a) I could see her using the "hallows" with sort of a dual reference, both to a sacred place and to the sacred objects that are kept there. ...(b) I could see it referring to a cemetery, or perhaps to the Death Room (Veil Room) at the Ministry. ...(c) If "hallows" refers to place, it could be either singular or plural (one place or many places). If it's "many places," then it seems like it could conceivably be Voldemort's own phrase for the places where the Horcruxes are kept (though that may be too much of a stretch; I'm admittedly grasping at straws for ideas here). (2) As for "deathly," the definitions at dictionary.com allow it to be a synonym of "deadly" (i.e. "causing death"), but also allow the more general sense of "pertaining to death." I'm guessing that JKR means "pertaining to death" (or "deathlike," "resembling death," etc.), partly because if she had meant "deadly" she would probably have used that more specific term, and also because something like "pertaining to death" seems to fit the story better. However, all of the above suggestions are only "guesses" (free-association conjectures about what JKR might have meant). I have no "theories" in the sense of "serious expectations about what JKR is probably up to with that title," nor do I expect to until she gives us further hints. Note: Until a consensus develops otherwise, am supporting reference to Book 7 as "HPDH," to reduce risks of ambiguity.) | | Thursday, December 21st, 2006 | | 11:27 am |
| | Wednesday, December 20th, 2006 | | 9:11 pm |
Time from completion to publication; Fantasy or school story?
Two issues here: (1) I note that it was two years ago today (December 20; see the HPL timeline) that JKR announced the completion of HBP. Her publishers followed this shortly with the announcement of a publication schedule for the following July 16. I commented a bit on this a few months ago, and still mostly stand by those remarks. Of course, with every day that passes without substantive information, the reasonable-to-expect probability of a summer release goes down ever so slightly; in September I said 50-50, now I might say 40-60. The key question remains: How late can JKR finish and still allow a summer 2007 release? OotP took 157 days, HBP 208 (I suspect that HBP may have taken that long more for marketing reasons than for the actual mechanics of publication). My memory of GoF was that it was pretty quick, and this HPFGU archive post (sorry, membership required) seems to confirm it as having been only 104 days (exactly half of HBP's 208, amusingly). My guess is that they won't crunch it that tightly again; wouldn't want any wand-order type mixups on Book 7! I'm inclined to say that four months (about 120 days) would be the minimum schedule, and 150 days would be a pretty safe one. So, to have a release by the end of August, JKR would need to finish by the end of April at the latest, and more likely by the end of March. Which I don't think is impossible. The title of HBP was one that JKR had liked for a long time, and so I can well imagine that she settled on that earlier in the writing process than is becoming the case with Book 7. Furthermore, the OotP title ended up meaning something different than what she originally intended (see the discussion here on how the Order and the DA seem to have swapped identities during the writing process). So I can imagine that, if she's in doubt about the title, she might want to hold off on publicizing what it would be. Nevertheless, it does seem true that the completion of the manuscript is not imminent. She's not giving the sense of "any-day-now" that we had at this time two years ago. I'm still hoping for a March release, even if such hopes are becoming steadily less realistic; but I'd be surprised if it were much earlier than March. I might also mention: It seems possible that Book 7 might be longer than HBP, and that this might partly explain the time it's taking JKR to write it. (Of course that's not the only possible explanation; but it seems reasonable.) At this point I'm sticking with my earlier prediction of 220K words, 800 US pages, and 39 chapters (though I'm tempted to bump the chapter guess up to 40!); but I am becoming more confident that I didn't shoot too high with those guesses. ************ (2) On a rather different subject: I've been thinking a bit about JKR's remarks on the fantasy genre, from the July 2005 Time interview: The most popular living fantasy writer in the world doesn't even especially like fantasy novels. It wasn't until after Sorcerer's Stone was published that it even occurred to her that she had written one. "That's the honest truth," she says. "You know, the unicorns were in there. There was the castle, God knows. But I really had not thought that that's what I was doing. And I think maybe the reason that it didn't occur to me is that I'm not a huge fan of fantasy." Of course it's well-known how Terry Pratchett gave some rather snarky comments in reply to the above. But the thought has since occurred to me: Is it really correct to label the HP stories as "Fantasy"? That is: It has often been remarked that the HP stories use a lot of elements from the school-story genre ( Encarta, for example, says "The Harry Potter books combine two powerful genres—the school story and magical fantasy—but Rowling’s treatment of these is almost entirely original"). So my question is: Is it more accurate to view HP as a fantasy story with boarding-school elements, or as a boarding-school story with fantasy elements? I can certainly agree that it's fairly close to 50-50. Certainly both were part of JKR's original vision ("boy finds out he's a wizard and goes to wizard school"). Yet I am inclined to view the school-story aspects as more fundamental to the series, and the fantasy elements as more of an added characteristic. In which case JKR's slowness in associating her story with the fantasy genre makes a fair amount of sense. (But I reserve the right to alter or refine the above opinion. I would not say that I've yet gotten to the bottom of the question.) | | Sunday, December 10th, 2006 | | 10:22 pm |
My Latest Musical Adventure
...had its origin last spring, when the youth orchestra for which I volunteer was preparing for its annual concerto auditions, in which members of the orchestra can try out for the chance to be featured as a soloist with the orchestra during the following school year. At one point, I heard that two of the students from the viola section were interested in playing J.S. Bach's Brandenburg Concerto #6, but that they had been told that it wouldn't work because it's not for orchestra. (Bach's original scoring features two violas, backed up by two violas da gamba [sort of like small cellos played between the knees], a cello, and a bass with harpsichord.) "What?!" I thought. "This is too good a piece to tell people they can't do it for lack of orchestration-- I'll make an orchestration for it myself." So I did, ( Read more... ) | | Friday, October 6th, 2006 | | 10:37 pm |
An amusing mental picture
So, when TLC posted the headline this week saying "Owls are delivering W.O.M.B.A.T. results"... Was I the only one to have thought, "Well, I suppose that's better than if it were the other way around"? (P.S. No, I don't have any results coming. Had intended to try to find my student ID from the first exam, but couldn't find it where I thought it was filed, and then JKR.com closed up shop before I could do a more thorough search. Oh well.) | | Thursday, September 21st, 2006 | | 1:16 pm |
| | Tuesday, September 12th, 2006 | | 11:50 pm |
"Not close to finishing"
Until recently, I had sort of been tentatively assuming that JKR would finish the manuscript of Book 7 sometime around the end of this year, and that it would be released sometime in the summer of 2007 (indeed, I was quite fond of the 7/7/07 theory, even while recognizing the uncertainty as to whether the publishers would release the book within a week of the OotP movie). My doubts about this timetable had been increasing in recent weeks, however; and now JKR's Rubbish Bin update seems to give further evidence for a pessimistic view, saying that she's "not close to finishing it yet." Recall the following: ( Read more... ) | | Sunday, August 6th, 2006 | | 4:54 pm |
Misnomer of the Month: "Wisdom Teeth"
(Okay, yeah, I know they're called that for a reason. Still, at the moment it feels like "painful useless nuisance teeth" would be more apt.) This past Friday I had the experience of having my wisdom teeth removed. And so this entry is for the benefit of anyone who might have to go through that in the future, and who might want to know what to expect. ( Read more... ) | | Sunday, July 30th, 2006 | | 10:49 pm |
Another Fandom Anniversary, Sort Of
In addition to being the birthday of one of my favorite characters, Neville Longbottom, today is also a bit of a fandom anniversary. Unfortunately, it’s not a terribly happy one. Five years ago today was my most extensive post in my least successful thread ever at SQ: “Through JKR’s Glasses.” (The thread is of course unavailable, as the old SQ EZBoard no longer exists as far as I know, and that thread had dropped off the boards before the website transfer anyway. The starting date of the thread was some unknown date in late July; I only know July 30 because I still have a document file, saved on that date, of a later post I wrote replying to several people.) The Original Thread ( What Sirius had to do with it )The Aftermath: I. In Pursuit of Literary Theory ( Feel Free to Skip This Section )The Aftermath: II. Theory and Fandom ( Read more... )Conclusion: An Attempted Clarification of My Views on Literature ( This Might Be Kind Of Boring Too ) | | Sunday, July 16th, 2006 | | 10:56 pm |
One Year Down
Today marks one year since the release of HBP. Let me then mark the occasion with a few comments, in three categories: (1) The Book, In Retrospect At the time I commented: "Wow, what a book. Not always what I expected; but, I would say, the best installment since PoA." ( Read more... )(2) The Fandom Since HBPI don't have as much to say here, but I did want to comment on the idea of a "Platinum Age" of the fandom ( Read more... )(3) Looking Ahead to Book 7 And now I get to (hopefully) the most interesting part. :-) ( Read more... ) | | Friday, June 30th, 2006 | | 1:30 am |
Lesson Learned
Presumably somebody has pointed this out somewhere before; but this week I noticed an amusing apparent example of "Lessons Harry Learned Between OotP and HBP": "And it might have been a good idea to mention how ugly you think I am, too," Hermione added as an afterthought.
"But I don't think you're ugly," said Harry, bemused. (OotP, ch. 26) "I suppose I'm just going to have to accept that [Bill] really is going to marry [Fleur]," sighed Ginny later that evening, as she, Harry, Ron, and Hermione sat beside the open window of the Gryffindor common room, looking over the twilit grounds.
"She's not that bad," said Harry. "Ugly, though," he added hastily, as Ginny raised her eyebrows, and she let out a reluctant giggle.(HBP, ch. 30) | | Wednesday, June 28th, 2006 | | 9:43 pm |
The Body Count
I don't have anything particularly profound to say about the characters JKR has recently moved back and forth across the "will/won't survive" line for Book VII. This is because all I really think we can say is that the characters in question are secondary, along the lines of Neville, Luna, Weasleys-older-than-Ron, Hagrid, Lupin, Tonks, and maybe McGonagall-- important enough that we'll care about what happens to them, but not so important that their destiny has to have been long since fixed in JKR's mind (which I take to be the case with Harry, Ginny, Ron, Hermione, Voldemort, and probably Snape). I can't see anything that would make any of the secondary characters drastically more likely than the others to have been newly sentenced or reprieved. I was, however, interested to see both peachespig's recent thread on "which deaths do we care about," as well as the USA Today forecasts by melissa_tlc and Emerson as to the likelihoods of various character deaths. My own oddsmaking runs as follows: ( Read more... )Alternative predictions from readers welcome.... | | Monday, May 29th, 2006 | | 2:17 pm |
Concert Report
Saturday night was the concert I mentioned in my previous entry, and it went quite well. The String Quintet especially went well-- I had been a bit nervous beforehand, since I was still giving them advice and corrections through the last run-through before the performance, but then in the performance itself, they played almost everything just the way I wanted it. (It's supposed to be a smooth-sounding piece, and in all the rehearsals they kept making it too bouncy, but then in the performance they got it right.) The "Lord of the Rings" songs were okay, although with a few mistakes (the girl playing cello in that one had been quite ill with a fever earlier in the week, and for that reason had missed the only full-length rehearsal of it that we were able to schedule). Still, I was generally happy with how it went (and besides, the Quintet was more important to me as a composer anyway; the LotR songs were just an extra bit thrown in for fun). (The one "criticism" I received was from the dad of two of the performers [his son sang the LotR poems, and his daughter played first violin in both my pieces]; he pointed out that the tone of my "Sword that was Broken" [which also includes "All that is Gold"] was way too light for the exchange between Boromir and Bilbo at the Council. I could see his point, but am invoking the Handel's Messiah "All We Like Sheep" defense on that one.) :-) Re. recordings: The performance was videotaped, and should be available in some digital format (perhaps .wmv or something). I hope to post a copy on music.pmcovert.com if possible, and if so will link from this journal when it becomes available. Also, as a supplement to the Saturday program notes, I wrote an extra essay on "Modern Composers and Me," describing the path of classical music in the last sixty years or so, and my own relation (or non-relation) to it. It was somewhat along the lines of my long-ago LJ entry On Being a Retro-Classicist, although with a different emphasis. I'm not ready to post it online yet-- due to time and space constraints, I wasn't really able to work out exactly what I wanted to say-- but hope to do so eventually. | | Friday, May 26th, 2006 | | 4:06 pm |
Music Announcement
This weekend, for the first time, I get to hear a couple of my compositions performed in public. It's only a student performance, mind you; but still, it'll be a first-in-my-lifetime experience. This started one evening back in February, at the rehearsal of the local youth orchestra for which I volunteer. After the rehearsal, the principal violist mentioned that she was organizing a chamber music concert series for her high school graduation project, and asked if she could hire me to write program notes for her concerts. I agreed, but then added, "Actually, you know.... Instead of paying me money, you could just play one of my pieces instead." She said, "Yeah, we could do that." (Actually, she did end up paying me anyway; but having my works performed is definitely more significant than getting paid for writing essays.) So I decided to finish writing the first movement of my String Quintet in E Flat, and have her group play that in one of the concerts. A few days later, she emailed me to let me know some of the pieces that they were doing, and who some of the other students participating in her project were (I knew several of them from the orchestra). It turned out that one of the guys from the cello section is also a baritone vocalist, and was singing "This Offer Is Unrepeatable" from the " Juliet Letters" project by Elvis Costello with the Brodsky Quartet. I replied, "Oh-- I didn't know he was a singer! I should give him a copy of my songs on 'Lord of the Rings' poems. (Well, not really... although I am quite fond of my version of 'The Cat and the Fiddle'....)" She replied along the lines of, "Well, he does have a really great voice... And we're looking for more stuff for him to sing with us... And he is a bit of a Lord of the Rings fanatic...." And so I ended up working out a version for voice and string quartet of my tunes for "Three Rings for the Elven-Kings," "The Cat and the Fiddle," "Seek for the Sword," and "Beside the Fire," and working out a tune for Gimli's "Song of Durin" and adding it to the set. So it looks like it's actually working out. It should be fun. (Note: If you'd like to hear what the Quintet sounds like [and don't mind General MIDI sound quality], click here.) | | Thursday, March 9th, 2006 | | 10:24 pm |
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