… and mine (well, maybe not so much mine anymore, I’m really diggin’ Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell at the moment), is back in the news. Well, I guess he’s related to the news story … oh, whatever.

Ain’t-It-Cool-News has posted a link to a site with photos of the Quidditch World Cup set.

Well, a single photo actually. See the one at the top of the page? Yeah, that one.

A few years ago I’d heard that Warner Brothers planned to split “Goblet of Fire” into two movies, thus bringing the book to life as much as possible. Well, apparently Cuaron persuaded WB to do it in a one-movie sitting.

I have mixed feelings about this. See, at work, I actually got into a rather heated arguement with JMac over Prisoner of Azkhaban. I thought the film did a good job translating the book - certainly better than Chamber of Secrets - and while certainly there were large chunks of the book missing, the movie had better pacing and flow then the predecessor. JMac disagreed - but I think he wants to see all of the films as faithful, scene-by-scene replicas of their written versions. I’m all for the theory that the book will always be better than a movie, but at the same time, movie adaptations must redefine the story to fit the cinema format. Look at LA Confidential for a movie that rewrites the book and is almost - almost! - as good as the source.

So, I’m nervous that Goblet of Fire will be - what? A two and a half hour movie? That’s a lot of material to condense into one film, and I fear JMac’s reaction when he goes to the theater, Thanksgiving ‘05.

“The military lawyers would from time to time remind the civilians that there was a Constitution that we had to pay attention to.”
REAR ADM. DONALD J. GUTER, retired.

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The Boston Red Sox win the first of the Series! 11-9! Go BOSTON!

There is part of me that WANTS George W. Bush to win re-election. Why? So that he’ll be forced to accept responsibility for what he’s done. He’ll be forced to accept responsibility for Iraq, he’ll be forced to accept responsibility for torpedoing our economy, he’ll be forced to take responsibility for siding with big-business repeatedly over the “little guy.”

There is part of me that WANTS George W. Bush reelected so that this disaster of an administration will once and for all force a split within the Republican Party and conservatives across this great nation - a split seperating the “small government” guys from the ideologues and theocons and bigots and racists.

There is part of me that WANTS George W. Bush reelected so that once again we can see a Republican Party so betrayed that they will be willing to help bring down one of their own, the President, as they were willing to do to Nixon.

Then the rest of me says, “Are you fucking INSANE?”

There is part of me that replies, “Yes.”