This report starts:
LONDON, England (AP) — Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling will give a midnight reading of the sixth book in her hugely successful Harry Potter series at Edinburgh Castle in Scotland to coincide with its publication, the writer announced Saturday.
What’s especially lovely is that J. K. Rowling is inviting 70 children (from 6 countries and also from the fan websites) to conduct a press conference about the book. She is giving them all pre-release copies of the book so that they have a chance to read it and plan questions to ask her. She really has a good knowledge of her fan base - and one of the best authors sites I’ve seen, with all sorts of secrets hidden away for kids to discover. I like it that she sneaks in to web forums using a pseudonym to talk over her books with the fans, and I also like it that she has really encouraged kids to write their own fan fiction.
Clair Hill reveals the truth behind Star Wars: it’s a chick flick! The tongue-in-cheek piece begins thus:
FOR 28 years boys, men, and men who act like boys, across the world have been waiting to find out the answer to one question. Just what was it that made Anakin Skywalker turn to the dark side and end up a wheezing piece of plastic? Was it greed, the thought of wearing snazzy, and slimming, black for the rest of his life or was he wowed by the chance for a penthouse on the Death Star? Nope, it was none of those things.
In fact he did it all for a chick. Skywalker lost everything, both his legs and arms, and got burnt from head to toe all because he wanted to keep his wife alive. Slightly soppy reasoning and it also sounds like something out of a Bronte novel.
Very amusing. On the SBS Movie Show earlier this week, Megan Spencer’s review commented that Revenge of the Sith actually managed well with the narrative pulling together all the threads from the other movies, but lacked somewhat in dialogue. Megan did say though that the characters were actually developed a little more than usual:
The actors also are allowed to be more emotional in their roles - Natalie Portman shines as the frail Padme and Christensen is convincing as he nears his Vader destiny, progressively becoming more menacing over the course of the film. And the pivotal scene – the one fans have been hanging out to see for 28 years where Lord Vader finally “arises” - is frankly superb, suitably referencing Frankenstein.
I guess the lack of female presence is one reason why there are so many female Star Wars fans writing such fantastic fan fiction. The story world is exciting and has such potential, and the gaps, which usually serve to silence marginal groups, are being used by fans to insert themselves into the fiction. I moved some of my links to fan fiction articles here. One of the very moving points that the girls in my study told me was how in some Star Wars forums they were persecuted for being female fans when it was supposed to be “a boy’s film”. Consequence: they created their own unique spaces to celebrate their fandom, write their fan fiction and create narrative storylines that allowed them to become a combination of both action chick and romantic heroine. (More about this in my Fan Fiction paper about narrative identities)
Continuing DrJoolz’s meme, here’s my list of things I am excited about related to technology, as of right at this moment:
1. My passion: books!!!!
Thanks to reading about this book, girl wide web, over at both DrJoolz and also at Lalitha’s site, I ordered my own copy from amazon.com and am delighted that it arrived this afternoon!!
2. Flickr - multimodal, hyperlinked, social networking, glorious! My favourite photograph at the moment is:
I sure hope that when I am in Miami in December that I get to see this gorgeous beach!
3. Online Journals
I am so happy to find all the current journal articles I could want online now - it saves me sooooo much time and I am convinced it has improved my writing. I am really hoping to have my own article published in this journal - and I only found it through searching through the online listings!
4. Social Relationships!
People studying my blog, people writing academic papers about my blog, people writing to me about my blog, people writing comments on my blog, my research girls writing me random poems and role-play excerpts to publish on my research blog, people I don’t know linking me to them, and people I know very well linking me to them.
(to be continued…)
Anochece, tulipanes
Originally uploaded by besia.
OK! Thanks to all the people on the help forums, I have now found answers to most of the questions I had and fixed a lot of the problems I had in the template… the search function and the popular post function actually works now too! Of course, I am checking in Firefox, so I am just hoping its working in IE.
