http://www.cafepress.com/mf/67256092/ty … =638606068

Having Harry clean an old Triwizard Tournament trophy in detention in Chamber of Secrets wouldn't ruin Goblet of Fire.

And imagine writing a movie adaptation of Prisoner of Azkaban now without using the term "Death Eater". Both impossible and pointless. It would be like never mentioning "Jedi knight" until Return of the Jedi.

We've seen plenty of cases where screenwriters say they had no idea there might be a sequel or they would have provided for it better. I think that was the case here. I think Rowling came up with Chamber of Secrets by thinking "Now that V is dead and gone, who will be the villain? I know! He left behind a piece of himself when he was younger!" And the idea of horcruxes came later as a way to tie books 1 and 2 to the others and make V hard to kill in the end. My evidence is the fact that destroying V in Stone didn't make him a powerless wraith again in Chamber. The real, actual, present-day V is totally absent and there is only young Tom Riddle.

Let me be clear, tho, and say that I think Rowling planned each individual book incredibly well. It has to be really hard to write story after story that takes place over an entire school year and yet maintains both mystery and good pacing. And she was clearly very good at keeping careful notes about who did what when so the timelines matched and she could reuse characters. It's an astonishing feat.

Again, you cannot use the author's after-the-fact justifications to defend her. The ingenious planner people claim she is would have worked in a mention of those things before they became the main plot points of later books.

Disagree. The case for the former is how many things central to a story are not even mentioned until the beginning of that story.

• James' circle of friends and their magical map aren't discussed until Azkaban; prior to that, Sirius is just a guy who loaned Hagrid a motorcycle and Scabbers is a rat.

• Death Eaters aren't mentioned until Goblet of Fire, despite the fact that Snape was one (surely a subject of rumor at the school) and Sirius was accused of being in league with V.

• The Triwizard Tournament is first mentioned in Goblet, despite the fact that winning it bestows "eternal glory".

• The Order of the Phoenix and the prophecy about Harry aren't even hinted at until Order, despite the fact that all the central characters in Azkaban were in the order and V's whole motivation for attacking Harry is the prophecy.

• The Deathly Hallows, the Elder Wand, and wands having or changing allegiances due to disarming and "defeating by superior skill" aren't discussed until Hallows, even tho there is a ton of disarming and defeating done thruout, including Draco and Snape killing Dumbledore at the end of Prince.

And there is a shit-ton of after-the-fact explanation by Dumbledore, Snape, Sirius, and Lupin at times, most of which is obvious retcon flim-flammery. Clearly, Rowling just kept good notes and often said "who (or what) can I use here that I've only mentioned before?"

She who writes the story makes the rules.

You're one of the people I disagree with, then, because--if you include SPEW--she's no better in the books, in my opinion. Almost every single line she has is "We can't do what you want, Harry" or "We MUST do this now, Harry" or "OMG! Studying!" What small consolation she was to Harry in 1-4 was given to Luna in 5 (not that I'd get rid of Luna).

I don't have any annual movie-watching rituals or anything. I don't really watch movies over again except for commentaries or when introducing them to my young niece and nephew.

I rarely watch bits and pieces of movies, but I'll sometimes record something on DVR and fast forward thru boring bits but still catch all the plot points. Likewise, I'll often pause a movie and think about the plot developments or surf the Net for a little while before restarting it.

I prefer to watch at my house over someone else's just because I have the best home theater of my circle of friends and family. And for the same reasons of quality I prefer Blu-ray and HD DVR recordings over DVD and streaming.

And, for the record (because I know a lot of people don't), I watch nearly all the extras on all my disks.

I prefer to sit around the 10th row at the theater, near the center, simply because those are the best seats to fill your vision without craning your neck. I don't arrive late. Tardiness is either incompetence or passive aggressiveness, and I'm competent and actively aggressive.

*jabs finger in your chest*

As I recall, Lucas' answered the question of "you scanned the masters to make the special edition, so why not just release that scan as a restored original?" by saying "those scans were irrevocably turned into the special edition as they were restored, so there's no restored original." Some people interpreted that to mean the master film elements were destroyed.

However, that is immaterial. When Disney is ready to make more money off the effort, they'll have someone rescan the masters at super-high-res (16k maybe) whereas Lucas had scanned them at, I think, 4k. (Remember the timeframe we're talking about here.) Then they (Disney) will control the nature and extent of the restoration, something they are VERY EXPERIENCED AT.

Well, either you're closing your eyes
To a situation you do not wish to acknowledge
Or you are not aware of the caliber of disaster indicated
By the presence of a pool table in your community.
...
Trouble, oh we got trouble,
Right here in River City!
With a capital "T"
That rhymes with "P"
And that stands for Pool,
That stands for pool.
We've surely got trouble!
Right here in River City,
Right here!
Gotta figure out a way
To keep the young ones moral after school!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8OWNspU_yE

TOMBSTONE
Johnny Ringo is waiting for Wyatt Earp to meet him for a gunfight and is pleasantly surprised to see the figure of a man approaching from the shade of the trees. "Well, I didn't think you had it in you," he smiles.

"I'm your huckleberry," says Doc Holliday, passing into the sunlight.

At the sight of the most dangerous gunman in the territory, Johnny Ringo loses his color. "Why, Johnny Ringo, you look like somebody just walked over your grave."

I'm not sure 10 of 10 is really appropriate, but who said it was bad? Heathers is a classic of the era; it's anti-John-Hughes.

/still loves his dead gay son