59 days, 17 hours, 50 minutes, and 48 seconds

That's how much time I've spent listening to Jim Dale read me the Harry Potter books. I really like listening to books on tape (or, really, books on CD . . . or, really, for me, books on iPod) while doing the dishes, doing the laundry, mowing the lawn, and trying to fall back asleep. The Harry Potter books have been on my iPod for generations, and they're a frequent fall-back . . . especially if I'm up in the middle of the night.

So those two months of time mentioned in the topic are spread out over a number of years, and I've frequently been unconscious or near-unconscious while listening to them.

Still, that's an impressive amount of time!

The most-listened-to CD (I join all the tracks on each CD into one convenient track for iPod listening) is the last CD of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. I've listened to that, my iPod says, twenty-five times. I'm not sure exactly why, but I remember falling asleep a lot while Harry waits for Dumbledore to return to his study and have a talk with him.

The next-most-listened-to CD is a tie. The last CD of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince has a play count of twenty. I think I was trying to find ways for Dumbledore not to be dead. As desperately as Harry was trying to find ways for Sirius not to be dead. The other twenty-play track is the last one of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. I suppose the endings are the places where I pay the most attention. Or they are where I pay the least attention, but I feel that I ought to be paying more attention to them, so I repeat them to savor all the lovely dénouments.

Thanks, Jim Dale, for reading them so astonishingly well. Thanks, J.K. Rowling, for writing them so astonishingly well in the first place!

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Mesmerizing, Intriguing, and Important

It's taken some time to post about Ye Yan, a.k.a. The Banquet. I suppose it's because the film was really quite extraordinary. I like to watch films while doing something else--preparing handouts for class, requesting books from the library, messing around with my iPod. With The Banquet, that proved to be impossible. And it wasn't that it was subtitled.

The cinematography was extraordinary. Every scene--every setting--was carefully and beautifully planned out in stunning detail.

The plot was magnificent. There are all sorts of spoilers out there (I'll try not to provide any here), but the film is fairly close to Hamlet itself--but with some intriguing departures.

All that, and the film isn't even in a genre I particularly enjoy. It's Wuxia--Hong Kong Action / Kung Fu / Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon type stuff. You'll find lots of slow-motion, ballet-like swordplay (with its attendant stabbing and chopping off heads. Brutal stuff, but presented in a beautiful way (which may make it all the more disturbing). That's the main reason I haven't asked Amanda to watch this with me.

The Shakespeare Retold's modernization of Much Ado About Nothing, on the other hand, I foisted on her immediately. It, too, takes really interesting liberties with Shakespeare's plot. But that one pleased us both immensely.

All in all, if you can handle multiple gruesome deaths (well, it is based on Hamlet after all!), watch The Banquet--if you can get your hands on it.

And I hope you can.

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Quite Remarkable (and I'm not even five minutes in!)

A Chinese adaptation of Hamlet has me mesmerized.

Feng Xiaogang's The Banquet is, so far, visually stunning. The film doesn't seem to be in print in the united states, but I picked up a used copy and started it today. Even though I'm not very far along, I'm hooked. The image is one of the first you see. He turns out to be the Hamlet analogue. He's studying art and dance in, I suppose, a Wittenberg of sorts.

More later (when I have more under my belt).

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School of Rock

Over the Christmas break, we met with one of my mom's friends. She's an older woman (by that, I mean older than my mom)--about seventy-five--and she taught us a game she played when she was a little girl. The kids loved it, so I thought I'd pass it along to those of you who have kids and don't know it.

"School of Rock" (or "Rock School")

One person is the leader. The rest sit on the bottommost step of a flight of stairs. that step is designated "kindergarten."

The leader hides a rock in one hand and presents it to the first child. That child chooses a hand. If the guess is correct, the child moves up one step--to "first grade." If the guess is incorrect, play passes to the next child.

The first child to the top step "graduates." Hurrah!

How's that for sounding like Parker Brothers for a very simple game?

In any case, our kids loved it. They wanted to play it for hours.

Try it out! Let's have a nationwide revival of "School of Rock."

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p.s. There's a 2003 movie 2003 movie entitled School of Rock that has nothing to do with this game--though it was a fairly funny movie that starred Jack Black.

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