Did you hear that noise? That was the sound of box office records being shattered for the midnight opening of the sixth installment of the juggernaut franchise that is Harry Potter. Harry Potter and Half-Blood Prince, the movie adaptation J.K. Rowling's book about a boy wizard, raked in a gasp-worthy $22.2 million on its first night. But the Potter series isn't just a pop-culture phenomenon. The academic world is under its spell, too, and now that the seventh book, 2007's Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows has been released in paperback, scholars have had some time to study it in its ... Read More
Talk About a Mash-Up
April 9, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment
The past and present get a good poke in the ribs in the hilarious sendup from LandlineTV.com ("Culturally relevant ... for about a week" reads the site's tagline). The scene starts in the office of an über-hip blog, bohemania.com. The editor says that because of the demise of newspapers, he's been getting a ton of resumes from print journalists and he's decided to hire a few — and that's when the wackiness ensues. Cut to a news meeting where the very calm (and clearly not deadline-pressed) editor says he's going to do a story on the latest wireless ear buds, then the camera pans to ... Read More