Serious drama is afoot in the Wizarding World of Harry Potter! We wrote about what the end of the series meant for some local HP disciples last summer, but there's a new, extremely serious rift in superfan land happening right now. It's between author J.K. Rowling and Steven Jan Vander Ark, a sweet 50-year-old librarian and who runs the obsessive Harry Potter Lexicon, a go-to HP online encylopedia. Even Rowling has used it, she has said, when writing on the road and without her own books to refer to. She even gave the Lexicon her fan site award a few years back. Recently, after Rowling learned that Vander Ark had been tapped by the tiny RDR Books to publish the Lexicon as an HP encyclopedia, she decided to sue for copyright infringement. You see, she's planning on penning her own Harry Potter glossery, and assumes nobody will care to purchase hers if they've already got Vander Ark's! Plus, the billionaire author contends the print verrsion of the site merely repackages her own work, and unlike a free site, is intended to churn out a profit.

The Leaky Cauldron, one of the top HP fan sites, has severed ties with the Lexicon -- they'd previously maintained a friendly webby allegiance grounded in HP love. But it hasn't stopped there. The Times reports on the heartbreak:

On the witness stand in Federal District Court, he [Vander Ark] portrayed the famous writer as his idol, his true literary love, who had been unaccountably bewitched by the evil, money-grubbing forces of publishing, like one of Voldemort’s vassals. One day, he testified, Ms. Rowling was singling out his Harry Potter Lexicon Web site, out of “hundreds of thousands” of Potter fan sites on the Web, for praise; the next, she was accusing him of plagiarism for wanting to turn it into a book.

“I did,” Mr. Vander Ark said, his face reddening, as he turned away from Ms. Rowling, who was sitting 10 feet away at the plaintiff’s table, listening intently.

Then he burst out crying. “Sorry,” he said, regaining his composure. “It’s been difficult because there’s been a lot of criticism, obviously, and that was never the intention.”

Rowling has a real knack toying with her fans' emotions. This is upsetting, considering some of us still aren't over Dumbledore.

4/16/2008 10:33:43 AM by Sharon Steel | Comments [0] |  

MTV's Movies blog reports that the English comedy Spaced, created by Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright (a/k/a the people behind Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz) is finally coming to DVD on July 23 of this year. People have been begging for this for years.

Unfortunately, though, Fox is still going ahead with a McG-produced Americanized version of Spaced this summer, and Pegg isn't too thrilled about it. From the sounds of things, Pegg and Wright weren't consulted on the US version, which certainly doesn't bode well for the show (the name "McG" doesn't exactly bode well, either). Although, we'll admit it - we might have said something similar about the US version of The Office when it first aired, and that show has had an excellent run (until they started messing with those hourlongs.) So who knows.

3/6/2008 11:02:22 AM by Ryan Stewart | Comments [0] |  

Here's what we like about Dr. House the character (and, by extension, the show) - it isn't just that he doesn't do what he's told, it's that he actively seeks out activities that are frowned upon in any profession, let alone medical. And he's brilliant. The fact that he can do drugs, steal, lie, manipulate, and generally act like an asshole to everyone and still succeed at his profession is oddly comforting. But he can't do it alone. The events of last season left him without his subordinates Cameron, Chase, and Foreman, and so this season opens with a genuinely funny bit between him and a janitor thrust into diagnostic duty (the janitor suggests Lupus, in a nice little nod to literally every episode of the show.) We know that House will eventually audition a new team - Kal Penn is among the actors who've already been announced as joining the cast, at least on a temporary basis. And it's a safe guess that Cameron, Foreman, and Chase will all wander back into the fold. But in the meantime, this episode that just saw the adults (House, Cuddy, and Wilson) knocking heads with one another, was pretty enjoyable. It's too bad they don't do this sort of thing more often.

9/25/2007 8:27:37 PM by Ryan Stewart | Comments [0] |  

Shame! Crimson, trembling, post-imperial shame. The group of British Navy personnel captured in the Shatt al-Arab waterway by an Iranian gunboat on March 23, and released almost two weeks later, returned today to their ship off the coast of Iraq. Readers may remember the appearance of these sailors on Iranian TV, apologising lavishly for having entered Iranian waters and assuring the world of the benevolence and sophistication of their captors.

Surely only the most frightful off-camera treatment could have produced this capitulation, this parrot-talk, this mousse-like collapse of British fighting spirit? Surely there were gleaming tools involved, and Oriental cruelty unparalleled? Er, no. As Seaman Arthur Batchelor told the Daily Mirror, his Iranian hosts broke him down by stealing his iPod, flicking the back of his neck and then -- lowest of blows -- comparing him to Mr Bean.

Quite unmanned by this devastating psychological assault, Batchelor cried himself to sleep.

In the UK, Batchelor and his fellow ex-hostages now enjoy the media profile of disgraced Reality TV stars. From the intensely controlled and artificial situation of their captivity they have emerged to discover that their behavior on-set was not everything the general public would have liked it to be. Some call them a disgrace to the Armed Forces; others opine that they behaved "both honorably and rationally" (the London Guardian). What lessons can we learn? Only this: if the thought of the Iranian Republican Guard messing with your playlists brings tears to your eyes, you're too attached to your iPod.

--James Parker

4/30/2007 6:16:40 PM by Nina MacLaughlin | Comments [0] |  

1. You flip your hair with knowing looks at the paps.
2. You quit your part-time job as an accessories buyer.
3. You take a job with designer Tom Ford.
4. You move to the States, where there's no shortage of wanna-be princesses.
5. You start dating a Prince of Malibu instead? Brody Jenner, I found you a new lady!


Kate Middleton: "Sod off, you bluebloods! God bless America!"

4/30/2007 5:06:56 PM by Sharon Steel | Comments [0] |