It appears to be available now online

Oh. My. God!!! SOOOOOO COOOOOL!!!!

Sirius in the fireplace! The Durmstrang boat! Dragons! The Dark Mark!

And Harry and Ron need haircuts, badly.

Bisexual penguins! Salon thingie on the sex lives of penguins:

Penguin family values: Were the conservative pundits quoted in the New York Times piece on "March of the Penguins" (see Wednesday's Fix) really aware of how the moral role models they were endorsing actually live? Several readers hastened to point out that the movie's stars, emperor penguins, are hardly examples of committed monogamists: "Neither the Times nor your Fix column noted that the 'March of the Penguins' movie clearly says the penguins are only devoted to each other for a year and then do the whole thing over with [a] different partner. That's the monogamy and devotion the conservatives are celebrating?" Indeed, a 1999 article in the Auk, the journal of the American Ornithologists' Union, points out that emperor penguins (A. forsteri) "have much lower mate fidelity than do smaller species of penguins, despite their high rates of survival." It gets even trickier: Penguins can be gay, too. There have been a number of high-profile gay penguins over the past couple of years (Humboldt penguins, as opposed to the movie's emperors), from Coney Island's cute male couple, Wendell and Cass, to the poor guys at Germany's Bremerhaven Zoo -- after discovering three of the zoo's five penguin couples were gay, zookeepers imported Swedish babe penguins to try to make the boys go straight. Some penguins have even proved to be real flip-floppers: The first famous gay penguin couple, Roy and Silo of the New York Central Park Zoo, have apparently broken up after Silo went hetero. "They split up, although there are a few other same-sex groupings," confirms Rob Gramzay, the zoo's senior penguin keeper. These must have been the norms conservative talk-radio host Michael Medved meant when he said the movie "most passionately affirms traditional norms like monogamy, sacrifice and child rearing."

Lots of links: [link]

I think my new life goal is to be a senior penguin keeper.

That HP trailer rather rocks.

I want this movie soonest, please. On IMAX.

I cannot wait for the new W&G movie!!!!

Dood. Liking the new HP trailer.

Apparently I was so focussed on the phallic imagery in the book that I missed that Durmstrang is all boys and Beaux-Batons is all girls.

Mad-Eye Moody is the first character that doesn't look exactly like my mental image.

Apparently I was so focussed on the phallic imagery in the book that I missed that Durmstrang is all boys and Beaux-Batons is all girls.

Not in the book, IIRC. Didn't a male student help the Beauxbatons teacher out of the carriage when they arrived? I guess it's just easier to put the two schools into matching uniforms (those BB grey outfits remind me a bit of Madeline, for some reason).

The Corpse Bride is *only* opening in NYLA this weekend. Bastards.

t preens

Smug bastards.

Smug, pretty bastards, if you don't mind.