by Stone Marshall | Jan 1, 2015 | Awesome Book News |
Veteran British character actor David Ryall, who’s best known to mainstream American audiences as “Harry Potter’s” Elphias Doge, died on Christmas Day. He was 79.
“Sherlock” writer and actor Mark Gatiss tweeted the sad news on Saturday.
His daughter, actress Charlie Ryall, also confirmed on Twitter.
The actor’s career spans more than five decades and covers film, TV and theater. His movie credits include 2008’s “City of Ember,” 2004’s “Around the World in 80 Days” and 1980’s “The Elephant Man.”
Ryall replaced Peter Cartwright as Elphias Doge in 2010’s “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1.” His character was a close friend of Albus Dumbledore in addition to being a Ministry of Magic jurist and an Order of the Phoenix member.
Most recently, he was perhaps best known on the small screen as Frank — the grandfather who suffers from dementia — in the BBC comedy “Outnumbered.”
His television roles also include that of Britain’s oldest man in BBC’s “The Village” and Mr. Hall in writer Dennis Potter’s “The Singing Detective.” He appeared in Andrew Davies’ adaptation of “House of Cards” (not the Netflix original series), the British sitcom “Goodnight Sweetheart” and ITV’s “Midsomer Murders.”
Ryall began his career on the stage before becoming a familiar face on British TV.
The actor joined Laurence Olivier’s company with the National Theatre at a young age, during which time he was involved with several influential plays, including Tom Stoppard’s “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.” His work at the National Theatre also included “Guys and Dolls,” “The Beggar’s Opera” and “Animal Farm.”
Ryall is survived by his son, music manager Jonathan Ryall, and two daughters, singer Imogen Ryall and actress Charlie Ryall.
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by Stone Marshall | Dec 31, 2014 | Awesome Book News |
A seal found stranded 20 miles from the ocean in a farmer’s field has been transferred to a rehabilitation center, where staff have decided to name the animal Dumbledore, after the famed Harry Potter character.
The seal was discovered in Newton-le-Willows, near St. Helens in Merseyside on Monday morning, according to the
Telegraph, after becoming desperately lost and clambering into the field from a nearby brook. A dog-walker stumbled upon the seal, which authorities described as “distressed,” around 9:45 a.m., sparking a rescue operation that included emergency services and the RSPCA.
The animal was transferred to the RSPCA’s specialist seal treatment facility in East Winch, Norfolk, on Tuesday. Alison Charles, manager of RSPCA East Winch, noted that staff had given the seal a new name, based on their current theme.
“The big lad is now called Dumbledore. He is much more settled but needs a lot of vet attention in the coming days,” she observed. “He has horrible thick nasal discharge and still looks very sorry for himself but other than that he is quite lively and quite large so we need to handle him very carefully with our expert team of adult seal handlers.”
Dumbledore suffered a head injury sometime during the adventure that brought him inland, and though staff at the facility are optimistic that the seal will make a full recovery, they caution that it is still far too early to tell how he will respond to long-term care.“He certainly seems lively now, and was pretty listless when he first came into our care, so that’s a good sign,” Charles noted. “Until we get the blood tests back (which will be after Christmas as the labs are shut) we won’t know more about his overall condition.”
The facility names the animals that come into their care according to a popular theme, according to the Independent. The current theme centers around Harry Potter characters, which is why the staff decided to call the seal Dumbledore.
Over the last few years, a colony of seals off the English coast have formed an unlikely bond with a local diver. As the Inquisitr previously reported, several videos of the interactions between Ben Burville and the seals have gone viral.Dumbledore will remain at the seal treatment facility into the new year, as staff caution it will take some time before he is released back into the wild.
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by Stone Marshall | Dec 31, 2014 | Awesome Book News |
Even though the beloved series technically ended back in 2007 when the seventh and final book was published, author J.K. Rowling has had a hard time pulling herself away from the world of Harry Potter and has recently been adding short stories set in the Potter universe to the official fansite Pottermore. This started back in the summer, then another piece was added for Halloween, then Rowling announced that she was going to add a short story a day for each of the twelve days of Christmas. Now that Christmas has come and gone, here’s some of what we learned about Harry Potter and company from the new writing.
All About Inferi
Inferi are the reanimated corpses of dead people, wizards or Muggles, that Voldemort uses as part of his Army to guard the Horcruxes that contain pieces of his soul. In the new information about the mythical creatures of her creation, Rowling explains why she chose not to call the creatures “zombies” even though that’s what they most closely resemble. Partly she didn’t want to invoke the African and Caribbean voodoo tradition from which the concept of the zombie comes and which would be out of place in Harry Potter’s London.
“Lastly, zombies have been represented and reinterpreted on film so often in the last fifty years that they have a whole raft of associations that were of no use to me. I’m part of the ‘Thriller’ generation; to me, a zombie will always mean Michael Jackson in a bright red bomber jacket,” the author wrote.
Snape Is Not a Vampire
Similarly to how she felt about including zombies in her fantasy world, Rowling mostly kept away from vampires when creating the lore of Harry Potter. The writer pointed out that vampires are mostly a folklore tradition from Eastern Europe and that she tried to stick to mythology based in Britain when creating the major aspects of the Potter universe. The only vampire that Potter meets in the books is a character named Sanguini in Half-Blood Prince, who just makes a funny appearance at a party.
Vampires do exist in Harry Potter’s world and he learns about them in his classes at Hogwarts, but he never really interacts with any. Rowling reveals that she considered including a vampire character named Trocar early on, but the character quickly disappeared from early drafts of her notes. The author also used the opportunity while she was on the subject to dismiss a rumor amongst fans that Snape is a vampire. “While it is true that he has an unhealthy pallor, and is sometimes described as looking like a large bat in his long black coat, he never actually turns into a bat, we meet him outside the castle by daylight, and no corpses with puncture marks in their necks ever turn up at Hogwarts,” she wrote to do away with the rumor.
Ghost-Plot About Florean Fortescue
The character Florean Fortescue was the subject of a ghost-plot, or a side plot, written by Rowling that never made it into the final Harry Potter books. Through explaining why, Rowling gave a look into her writing process and some of the difficulties inherent in writing such a massive series with so many characters and so much going on. Rowling says that the character is the owner of an ice cream shop in Diagon Alley who Harry was to meet in the third book, Prisoner of Azkaban.
Rowling planned to use Florean and his deep knowledge about medieval wizards as a way to give Harry clues about the location of the Hallows, as Florean’s historical knowledge would be useful to Potter’s quests for various objects. As she wrote, Rowling made Fortescue get kidnapped by Voldemort’s army with the intention of having Harry rescue him, but the characters Phineas Nigellus Black and Lady Grey ended up being used to convey those clues. “He is not the first wizard whom Voldemort murdered because he knew too much (or too little), but he is the only one I feel guilty about, because it was all my fault,” Rowling wrote.
There Are LGBT and Jewish Students at Hogwarts
The information didn’t come in any of the new writing on Pottermore, but from fan questions posed to Rowling on Twitter. During all the hubbub about Christmas, one fan asked Rowling on the social media site if there are any Jewish students at Hogwarts. Rowling responded by naming one specific Jewish wizard she remembers placing at the school, but also saying there are more Jewish students at the school she doesn’t know by name. Rowling said “But of course” when another fan asked if there are LGBT students at Hogwarts as well. The author finally said that the only belief system she didn’t imagine at the school is the witchcraft-religion Wiccans, which makes sense given Wiccans practice a different sort of magic than Rowling has imagined in her fictional world.
Snape and Potter’s Parents’ Hometown
In order to give more background on some of the older characters in the books, Rowling wrote a little about where Snape and Harry’s parents, James and Lily, came from. Rowling invented the fictional working class town of Cokeworth, England to show that magic can come from the most unlikely places. “Cokeworth’s name is supposed to suggest an industrial town, and to evoke associations of hard work and grime,” Rowling said. Harry visits the town with the Dursleys in The Sorcerer’s Stone when Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon are trying to dodge the letters from Hogwarts, though it’s never made clear in the books this is the place where Harry’s parents are from. The town has at least one large factory, a river going through it, and the small homes of the working class.
The Order of Merlin’s Less-Than-Honorable History
The Order of Merlin is the highest award a member of the wizarding world can receive, with three different levels within it to signify the achievement. The award is given by the Wizengamot, which is sort of like the parliament and court of the magical world. Rowling wrote that while the Wizengamot and the award far pre-date the Ministry of Magic, unfortunately Ministry favorites are far more likely to receive the prize than is fair. Albus Dumbledore rightly received the highest honor for defeating the dark wizard Grindelwald, but Cornelius Fudge also gave himself the same award for a career that many would call into question. Sirius Black’s grandfather Arcturus Black actually bought himself an Order of Merlin by loaning the Ministry of Magic gold.
More on Malfoy
Similarly as she did for Dolores Umbridge at Halloween, Rowling wrote a longer piece fleshing out the backstory of one of Harry Potter’s biggest enemies, Draco Malfoy. Malfoy is Potter’s arch rival at school from the boys’ first days at Hogwarts. Among fans the character has become a bit of an antihero, which was aided in no small part due to the film portrayal by Tom Felton. Throughout their years at school together, Malfoy was envious of the attention Harry received both for his talent and for his famous story.
This most Potter fans would’ve already known, but Rowling fleshes out Malfoy’s confusion in the wake of the events of the final book further. He eventually marries a girl who was raised in a similarly intolerant family, but together they decide not to raise their children to believe that Muggles are scum. This is a big disappointment to Draco’s parents, but they are by that point disgraced to the lowest rung of Death Eaters. Finally, Draco maintains some fascination with the Dark Arts by collecting and holding on to Dark artifacts from his family, though he doesn’t use them. Rowling said she believes he will raise his own son in a much more tolerant manner than he was raised.
“Draco has all the dark glamour of the anti-hero; girls are very apt to romanticise such people. All of this left me in the unenviable position of pouring cold common sense on ardent readers’ daydreams as I told them, rather severely, that Draco was not concealing a heart of gold under all that sneering and prejudice and that no, he and Harry were not destined to end up best friends,” Rowling wrote.
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by Stone Marshall | Dec 28, 2014 | Awesome Book News |
Whatever happened to Harry Potter’s Hogwarts nemesis after Harry defeated Voldemort? Where is he now? J. K. Rowling finally revealed Draco Malfoy’s life post-Harry Potter in her 12 Days of Harry Potter Christmas at Pottermore.
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In her second to the last installment of her Harry Potter Christmas stories, best-selling author, J. K. Rowling unfolded the life of Slytherin antagonist Draco Malfoy after Harry Potter soundly routed arch-villain Voldemort and drove the Death Eaters away for good.
J. K. Rowling revealed that after the events in the last book, Draco, who was born into a traditional pureblood family from a very old line, finally realized his parents’ ways (and that of all purebloods for that matter) were slowly becoming anachronistic in the present time.
From a pureblood perspective, only witches and wizards born of parents from wholly magical decent were the only ones worth considering as equals. After Harry saved him from the fiendfyre inferno he and his cohorts had set to kill Harry, Draco is said to have seen things in a different light.
Rowling says Draco abandoned this pureblood way of thinking, and when we last saw him in the final book sending his own son off aboard the Hogwarts Express, Draco and his wife, pureblood Astoria Greengrass, had already been raising their son, Scorpius, to believe that Muggles, squibs and other people not of pureblood decent were of equal footing.
“Family gatherings were often fraught with tension,” ABC News reported on Rowling revelations in Pottermore, referring to the times Draco got together with his pureblood parents, Lucius and Narcissa.
“Being raised by either the Malfoys or the Dursleys would be a very damaging experience, and Draco undergoes dreadful trials as a direct result of his family’s misguided principles. However, the Malfoys do have a saving grace: they love each other,” Rowling continues.
In the end, though, can one not feel pity for poor Draco, who is, when all is said and done, a product of his own family’s upbringing? He was merely doing what he thought was the proper thing, and if he was portrayed as a sneering, prejudiced racist, was not that the very same personality traits leached from his father?
For Draco to have changed his line of thinking in the end amounts to a huge paradigm shift in the pureblood way of thinking. There is hope for the Slytherins after all.
Watch the real Draco Malfoy, Tom Felton, as he shares his life after “Harry Potter:”
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by Stone Marshall | Dec 28, 2014 | Awesome Book News |
A turning-point moment came Monday night.
It involved my daughter, Katie, who has been filling our life with joy for more than 13 years.
When Katie became an avid reader as a wisp of a child, I announced one of my goals in life was to read a Harry Potter novel before she did.
Naturally, I got sidetracked. As a homeowner and occasional maintenance man/groundskeeper, I started spending more of my available reading hours focusing on repair manuals and how-to books. Instead of seeking out the wisdom of Mark Twain, I found myself contemplating the insights of Norm Abram from “This Old House.”
Katie eventually caught wind of my goal and often threatened to beat me in the Harry Potter reading race. I scoffed. She laughed. Then from time to time she would start reading a Harry Potter book — simultaneously with a host of other things. At least seven of those lengthy novels would invariably fall by the wayside, unfinished.
Then came Monday night. Everyone else had gone to bed when I retired to my recliner downstairs for some quiet time. Waiting on the seat was a note from Katie with a copy of the 734-page paperback version of “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.”
The note said: “Done. Eat your heart out, Dad.”
Dang! She got me.
I sat down on the chair with the note and reflected on how my little girl was growing up so fast. It seems like yesterday she was a pre-schooler joyfully catching bugs while exploring the backyard. Now she’s a worldly eighth grader with a keen sense of humor and strong opinions about injustices happening in society.
I was struck by how fast time is rushing by and how change keeps occurring at a furious pace.
For instance, in just the last couple of months, several of my contemporaries have headed off into retirement, including my good buddy Mark, who started in the newspaper business around the same time I did in the mid-1970s. On Oct. 29 he sent a final email as he departed his newspaper for the last time, declaring: “The end is here. I am going to grab my golf clubs, a beer mug and my fishing gear and head off to a new part of my life.”
News of more changes comes in the Christmas cards that arrive daily. The faces in snapshots keep getting older. Several aging relatives have grown ill or died. The flower girl from our wedding is getting married next year. A nephew who played football for Michigan now watches his own son play for Air Force.
On and on life goes. But with it comes the pleasant satisfaction of watching the developments as they take shape — turning like the pages of a good book.
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by Stone Marshall | Dec 27, 2014 | Awesome Book News |
HELENA BONHAM CARTER and Tim Burton have confirmed they split up earlier this year, but insist the break is “amicable”.
The couple, who have two children, Billy, 11, and Nell, seven, have announced they “separated amicably earlier this year” after 13 years together.
A spokesperson for 48-year-old actress said: “Tim Burton and Helena Bonham Carter separated amicably earlier this year and have continued to be friends and co-parent their children.
“We would ask that you respect their privacy and that of their children during this time.”
It comes just weeks after they were spotted with their children at Winter Wonderland – proving they’re remaining good friends.
The duo started dating after Tim, 56, directed Helena in Planet of the Apes in 2001 and had a famously unconventional relationship, living in two neighbouring houses joined by a communal room.
News of their split comes more than a year after the British director was photographed embracing another woman after a cinema date in Hampstead, London in September 2013.
But Helena rubbished allegations he had been unfaithful at the time, saying: “This is absolute nonsense. The pictures were taken whilst they were out and the large group includes family, friends and work colleagues.”
Although they frequently worked together, Tim previously admitted they often had a turbulent relationship on set, especially during the making of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street in 2007.
He said: “We’ve survived [as a couple], but it hasn’t always been easy. ‘Sweeney Todd’ was the worst; definitely the worst. But then I found out she was pregnant with Nell and it kind of all made sense.”
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