The Myth & The Majesty

2013 marks the 200th anniversary of the release of Pride & Prejudice , and rather coincidentally, I've been on a bit of an Austen-athon. Compared to a lot of people, I'm a fairly recent convert. Mia Sorella first introduced me right before I took a selected authors course at Mines where we covered P&P and Persuasion (which happens to be my personal favorite of hers). In the last seven years (holy cow, it's been longer than I thought) I've read, watched, listened (I love audio books) and even visited. In 2009, I got to roam Bath during my venture to England and have tea at the Jane Austen Centre. I wandered the gravel walk, saw the Roman baths, and pondered the dreary weather.  This and other stills were Facelifted from the Jane Austen Facebook fan page.  They're all from the 1995 BBC production of Pride & Prejudice . And tonight, when I needed to get some work done around the house, I popped the 1995 BBC version of P&P into the DVD pla...

It's been a long time coming ... but the final Harry Potter movie has been released. Yes, I know I'm a couple weeks late on that one, but as I've finally made it to the theater to see it, now's my chance to talk about my Hogwarts view. Let me summarize: I love this series, both the books and the movies. If you don't want to read any further, you now know the general idea of it. Also, there will be spoilers. While just about everybody knows and understands most of them, I might let details slip that could be ... well, spoilers. * It took awhile before I was willing to join the Harry Potter Club. It was a kid thing, and I -- at the ripe old age of 13 (just two years older than the characters, actually) -- didn't feel like joining in with the kid thing. In fact, I resisted until after the first movie came out on video something like five years later. It was the summer of 2002 when we watched it at the day care ... and I was almost instantly hooked. It was sho...