The Invisible Counterpoint

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them Eddie Redmayne's Newt presents himself as respectful and sometimes even demure, but though there are honest aspects to both of these qualities what he mostly is matches best with the "troublemaker" moniker that was attached to him during his time at Hogwarts. He sees the world as requiring vast improvement  -- foremost, a need to encourage tolerance of strange animals amongst his fellow wizards, but since we also see him advocate against anti-miscegenation laws, really for the whole wallop of progressive causes -- and sees himself as a potential chief agent for change. In New York, he finds himself intertwined with someone who is not exactly his equal. This is Jacob, who unlike Newt never went to any kind of special school, is not pursuing advanced studies in the scientific art of magic creature naturalism, and is, rather, mislaid into a terribly depressing, isolated life working in a canning factory -- a job, a...

I gather at some point in "Harry Potter" I'll get some explanation as to why the hierarchy at Hogwarts is so intentionally obtuse as to how horrible the family situation is that they keep on insisting Harry go back to.

Hairless Butt Potter and the Pederast's Dong Book 1: Boy with the Lightning Tattoo By Patrick McEvoy-Halston and Steig Larsson Hairless Butt : Uncle, you have me caged in my room and won't sign release forms so I can go on fieldtrips. I'm lonely, isolated -- and without practice in the summer, even my Quidditch is beginning to suck. Uncle Asshole : You're a sorcerer, the dirtiest human being! You deserve no better! However, you do possess the most admirable hairless butt. How about we put our relationship on more agreeable terms ... If you do something for me, I'll do something for you. ----- Ron : Hairless Butt! It's great that you can visit during the summer now, and that you can join Hermione and me as we go on fieldtrips. How did you manage this? [Hairless Butt details the sexual services he provides his pederast uncle so that his uncle will give him these minimal allowances. Ron, hoping to become the next Quidditch team captain and jo...

Conclusions to fantasy epics and quest narratives pose a diabolical problem for their creators, one that calls to mind a remark I once read in a journal by Edmund Wilson, one of the 20th century's greatest cultural critics. Late in his life Wilson had decided to give up reading history, he wrote, because "I know the kinds of things that happen." Epic fantasy is, if possible, even more familiar than history, in that we know exactly what will happen: Good will triumph over evil at great price, but only after the hero endures a crisis of self-doubt and agrees to sacrifice himself for the greater good. So the execution of such a conclusion becomes largely a technical matter, a matter of How more than What, and still less Why. In the case of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2," a movie with no beginning and no middle but two-plus hours of thundering, momentous ending, all of this is carried to a comical extreme. I'm not trying to wage some kind ...