A Successful Presentation!

So, my lecture on "The Christian Elements of Harry Potter" was a success. I'm surprised that no one had to leave after it passed an hour (it went about an hour and twenty minutes), but that's the magic of the Potter series and the audience was extremely polite. There were about 20-25 people who attended. I do hope that they get some of the books I referenced which are critical to a literary analysis of the Potter series. But more importantly, I hope everyone had a good time. I think they did - I've heard some positive reviews.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince opens in theaters, and my family and I will be at the midnight release at our local theater on July 15th (if you recall that midnight belongs to the AM - that's so annoying). Even the theater says Tuesday night/Wednesday morning, to clear up any confusion (lol). Yesterday I was looking at www.fandango.com to look at tickets and saw that my local theater had two screens showing it at midnight, and one was sold out already. But then I thought "hey, that's okay, the other theater with 22 screens has seven showings and they haven't sold out yet." Not the case this morning. When my father and I logged on to purchase advance tickets for the other showing (we got them, thank goodness), can you believe that all seven showings were already sold out. That's the juggernaut that is the Potter films.

I can't believe I haven't blogged yet about "A Very Potter Musical." I've been singing along to the songs and enjoying this for the last few weeks (when it was initially posted and when it was re-posted), and it's just so good... I hope that everybody checks this awesome thing out on www.youtube.com. It's becoming its own phenomenon, a soundtrack should be released and another reviewer suggested the cast and crew go on tour with the show - I agree, I think they should as well.

If I don't post again until after the new movie comes out, I hope everyone who goes has a fun (and safe) time at the midnight releases or whenever you go to see the film. Thanks again to all who attended my presentation this morning.

Harry Potter Lecture: July 12th at 11:00 AM

I am quite delighted to have the honor of delivering a presentation on Harry Potter on July 12, 2009 at my church, three days before Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is released in theaters. The topic of the lecture (as it will be in a church) is "The Christian Elements of Harry Potter." I expect a decent-sized crowd will be there, as my town was the 9th Harry-est town in America (according to amazon.com), and I'm sure many of the churchgoers have read all of the books. (I have forewarned through the bulletins, etc. that there will be spoilers for those who haven't read the whole series).

I have prepared my notes that draw from my own thoughts and also what I've studied from various HP analysis books on the subject. Hopefully this will get some of the people who attend to read these wonderful works, and maybe even get the local library to stop stocking the companion guidebooks/encyclopedias of the series and turn to books that focus on academic analysis. One can only hope!

I've prepared this presentation for about a month, as it is not the easiest thing to explain the Christianity of a 4000+ page book series in an hour, but it is possible. I have the utmost respect for people like John Granger who manage to speak about alchemy, Christianity, the five keys to Potter and eyeballs in about an hour and a half (as I heard his last talk up in Forks at the Twilight conference? was).

I'm working some more on his some new essays and the continuation of my essay on the music of the Potter films (which I'm holding off on until I hear the score to Half-Blood Prince), so I hope to post on that soon. At any rate, I hope all is well!

Sorry! An update post :)

Hey guys, I know I haven't updated in quite a while - I've just been busy job searching, etc., while doing my part-time work. (Isn't half the world doing that with the economy as such?) Anyway, with hard times come good friends (at least you know the friends you can count on), and the Harry Potter community is sticking together.

We're about two weeks away from the release of the sixth film, and I'll be giving a lecture titled "The Christian Elements of Harry Potter" at my church three days before the release of the film. Hopefully it'll persuade some more people to get on board with some of the work that some of our favorite scholars (Granger, etc.) have been doing for years.

I should be posting a new essay soon; or at least the first part, on the music of the Harry Potter films in time for the new movie. I hope you all enjoy it! :)