The Sly Oyster | culture & entertainment on the sly

Remember when we all finished Harry Potter and the Super Duper Long Seventh Book of Wizarding Awesomeness? That was a good book - full of magic and excitement and sadness because Harry’s tale officially ended.

And we thought that that might be the end of this particular universe, so we slooowly dragged out each and every page as the boy wizard saga reached it’s ultimate conclusion.

Well, J.K. Rowling, billionaire maestro behind this whole shebang, has gone and pulled a George Lucas on us by offering up The Tales of Beedle the Bard this December.

That’s right, the book of five fairy tales Albus Dumbledore gave to Hermione Granger will be yours for the low low price of $12.99. It’s available for pre-order now and will hit bookshelves on Dec. 4 just in time for that Christmas holiday. Now that’s something straight outta George Lucas’s playbook.

“Oh hey, it’s Christmas time you’re kid would really love another Harry Potter book.” So um, hint hint Mom? MORE »

As we turned the last pages of the final Harry Potter novel, The Deathly Hallows it was a bittersweet affair.  Everyone who got sucked into the boy wizard saga probably felt a void and that generally feeling of that can’t be it? Can it?

Luckily for fans it wasn’t it.  Author J.K. Rowling took part in an online auction this past month wherein she scribble an 800-word prequel to Harry Potter on a postcard that sold for an astounding $48,585.  You can read that story here, though it isn’t always easy to read Rowling’s handwriting.

Now she’s participating in writing a story that will be turned into a mini-movie that will be shot with actors Emma Watson, Rupert Grint and Daniel Radcliffe.  According to the Sunday Mirror the movie will be shown as part of the Universal Studios theme park The Wizarding World Of Harry Potter in Orlando, Florida.

The movie and some additional clips and sequences for the theme park will be shot in Leavesden, Herts, UK before the trio begin filming movie number seven.

The Wizarding World of Harry Potter is expected to open late next year or early 2010.  The 20-acre island will feature attractions, shops and restaurants set inside  locations such as the Forbidden Forest, Hogsmeade Village and the iconic Hogwarts castle.  Concept art for Hogsmeade can be seen above.  It looks pretty cool in that sort of kitschy Disney/theme park kind of way.

I see no downside to an amusement park like this, even if it does cheapen the Harry Potter experience a bit.

There is no word on what this story or movie will entail, but you can expect there will be interest for it when it does arrive.  [via]

The author of Harry Potter was picked for Harvard’s 2008 Commencement speech, but some students aren’t sold on the muggle. Some of them feel that the bajillionaire is, get this, beneath them. Oh, and there’s the usual hangups about witchcraft, the devil and homosexuals.

“Our commencement speaker tricked parents into letting their kids read books filled with sex, murder, and homosexual role models,” said Adam Goldenberg, a Canadian student who writes for the Harvard Crimson, the daily newspaper at the university.

“Harvard seniors have every right to demand a Harvard-calibre speaker. Harry Potter – and JK Rowling – is just a flash in the pan. Writing bedtime stories is lame – just ask Tolkien and CS Lewis. The class of 2008 has been royally screwed by Harvard. A petty pop culture personality of questionable permanence will send us on our merry way, while figures of real substance wait in the wings.”

I would hardly call Tolkein or CS Lewis mere bedtime story tellers and like those two heavyweights, Rowling elevates mere fantasy/mythology to a grandeur unseen in most literature.

To balance off the slight of author J.K. Rowling, Harvard students enlisted Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke to speak on Class Day. Obviously, it goes without saying that Robin Williams is available for commencement. Seems like he might be “highbrow” enough for all those smaht kids.

I guess the title says it all.  Pretty much everyone everywhere was reading Harry Potter 7, in terms of cultural events this was probably the biggest event of the year.

And it was also the only book on the NY Times list of 100 notable books that I managed to read.  Yes, I know, I’m pathetic.

Well we know he’s gay, the entire known universe knows it to.  Does anyone else begin to think that this is just another publicity stunt?  I’m not sure why but now that book number seven has come and gone, it feels like we keep getting more Harry Potter “news” than ever before.  J.K. Rowling is really trying to keep this in the spotlight, yeah?  Or the media just has nothing else to write about.  Either way, the kid actors react to the news.

But I found these two unrelated articles immensely interesting.  The first is an interview with author J.K. Rowling.

Beware SPOILERS if you haven’t finished the final Harry Potter book.  I finished it this morning, and as much as I loved the final scene, thought it was quite perfect really, it was comforting to get some more information about our favorite characters.

And this one has to do with technology.  It’s about a compressed air car and how it may just help the environment.  What really makes the argument is the author’s assessment that for most things in life we no longer rely on 150 year-old technology.  We don’t use candles to light homes and we don’t use blocks of ice to keep our food cold.  But we still use the same automotive energy technology we used for the first cars.  Pretty pathetic if you ask me.