Muggle Quidditch??

Who knew?

Apparently, everyone except me.

I opened up my UC Davis magazine today and read through it during lunch.  There was a little blurb near the back about Muggle Quidditch.

Quidditch, for anyone who hasn’t read Harry Potter, seen Harry Potter, or heard about Harry Potter, is the sport played on broomsticks by Harry and his classmates at Hogwarts.  It’s well described in the books and there is always action on the Quidditch field in every book.

I remember going to see the first movie for the first time.  Some of my co-workers had been listening to the books on CD while working at their microscopes outside my office.  It had been a long season for the biologists out in the field collecting samples and they were now cooped up indoors identifying and cataloging.  Most of them had read all the released books already but it was fun to “reread” them at work.  We planned a trip to the movies (during work hours, yes) when Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone came out.  We walked together from our office to the nearby theater, chattering about our favorite parts of the book. 

There were two things in particular that I had vividly created in my brain and I was looking forward to/dreading seeing on the big screen: the Gryffindor Common Room and the first Quidditch match.

Neither one of them disappointed me.  The common room, with its big fat stuffed chairs and roaring fire.  The Quidditch match with the swooping brooms and the beating Bludgers.  It was all good for me.

I suppose at some point after that, Quidditch became big on college campuses.  I had no idea.  Participants play with real brooms and follow the same rules, including trying to catch a human Golden Snitch who runs around campus and the field.

My UCD mag states:

The Intercollegiate Quidditch Association, established in 2007, is now an official sports league with more than 200 participating institutions worldwide, according to the association Web site (collegequidditch.com).  So far, tryouts for the UC Davis team are not necessary and everyone is encouraged to bring a broom and come out to the Saturday afternoon practices.

Brilliant. 

Almost makes me want to go back to school.

This CBS Sports video (from 2008 – where the heck have I been??) is AWESOME. Awesome in a total-geek sort of way.  I love the Dad quote: “That’s why we send him to college, to play Quidditch.”

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Favorite Harry Potter Director?

No real spoilers here. Especially since I have NOT read the last book yet.

A friend of mine asked me last night how I liked the newest Harry Potter movie, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. I hemmed and hawed a little. I said I thought that, similar to the book, the movie was more of a transition story than a great stand-alone story. There really was not a lot of *story* in this story. Period. I mentioned how my favorite movie is still The Prisoner of Azkaban. I really think the director took his time during that movie – some of the shots are slow and great. The more I think about The Order of the Phoenix, the less impressed I feel with this director. Who……I notice on IMDB……is the director of the next movie. Uck. Any chance that will change? But then…The Order of the Phoenix appears to be the only one not written (screenplay) by Steve Kloves. Maybe I can blame the screenwriter. Who, thankfully, is not listed on the next movie.

So, given that all the books are written by the same person, my question for the day is:

Who is your favorite Harry Potter movie director? There was one director for the first two movies, and one director for each of the last three. Do you have a favorite?

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