Emma Watson is apparently NOT done with acting.

[ranger_scout]

Emma Watson, who rose to global superstardom in the world of movies by landing the role of Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter film series, is "dormant" within the movie industry according to agent. He continued, noting she is “not taking on new commitments.” Post-Potter went on to star as Belle in Disney's live-action Beauty and the Beast and starred in other successful films like Lilttle Women, The Perks of Being a Walflower, The Bling Ring, and Noah.

She is apparently stepping out of the spotlight to spend time with her boyfriend of 18 months and also wants to start a family. I know that plenty of actors have said that over the years and she could un-retire at some point, but I still feel like a huge part of my teenage years and young adulthood is over with this news. I wish her the best.

https://insidethemagic.net/2021/02/emma-watson-stepping-away-from-acting-cb1/

ETA: The rumor was debunked.

https://ew.com/celebrity/emma-watson-not-retiring-from-acting/

[Leo656]

Aww, she's hot, that's a shame.

[IMJ]

Aww, she's hot, that's a shame.

She's one of those people that has such a plain, symmetrical face that she can't help but be gorgeous.

[Andrew NDB]

I don't see it. She's not unattractive, but she's one of these ladies that look like they're permanently about 14 years old.

Not good!

[Leo656]

Call me crazy, but I'm more into that than I am someone like Cameron Diaz, whose face looked like she was 45 by the time she was 22. :lol:

Maggie Gyllenhaal was also a smokin' little pistol until she aged 20 years in a five-year span. She too ended up looking 40-something before she was out of her 20s.

Drugs, man. They ain't good!

[Andrew NDB]

Call me crazy, but I'm more into that than I am someone like Cameron Diaz, whose face looked like she was 45 by the time she was 22. :lol:p.

Well, didn't Diaz come down with some kind of leprosy or something? I swear I read that, sometime after/during her Charlie's Angels days.

Maggie Gyllenhaal was also a smokin' little pistol until she aged 20 years in a five-year span.

I don't know... I'd have to see proof of the "smokin' little pistol." She looks about 120 years old now, and didn't look much younger than that in Dark Knight.

I've heard "Secretary" is good, but I've never seen.

[Prowler]

Haven't seen anything she's in other than The first 3-4 Harry Potter movies. And that was over a decade ago already. So can't say I'll miss her.

[Leo656]

Well, didn't Diaz come down with some kind of leprosy or something? I swear I read that, sometime after/during her Charlie's Angels days.



I don't know... I'd have to see proof of the "smokin' little pistol." She looks about 120 years old now, and didn't look much younger than that in Dark Knight.

I've heard "Secretary" is good, but I've never seen.

I thought she was pretty hot in "Donnie Darko". But she was already pretty much a half-used wax candle by "The Dark Knight", yeah. She must have a huge drinking problem, at the absolute least.

I'd never heard that about Diaz, but she already was lookin' pretty rough by "There's Something About Mary", in my opinion. Like, not "ugly" by any means, just way older than she should've looked by then.

People always gushed over how hot she was, but I've always been kinda "meh" about her. She's kinda got what Bobby Heenan used to describe as "a million-dollar body and a ten-cent face", although not quite as bad as all that, plus her body wasn't really that great either.

[ZariusTwo]

Good for her. Made her money and wants to save it.

[Andrew NDB]

Good for her. Made her money and wants to save it.

She'll get fat royalties for life. And there's always that inevitable "Adult Harry Potter" trilogy probably only a few years off.

[Leo656]

I don't think Radcliffe's alcoholism has gotten bad enough to allow for that, yet. Since becoming an adult he very much wants to distance himself from all that Harry Potter stuff, and without him it's almost certainly a no-go. He'd have to be pretty desperate to sign up for something like that and I don't think he's quite there, yet.

Plus nobody wants to give Rowling anymore money, now, on account of... you know, some nonsense.

[Andrew NDB]

I thought she was pretty hot in "Donnie Darko". But she was already pretty much a half-used wax candle by "The Dark Knight", yeah. She must have a huge drinking problem, at the absolute least.

lol... it's possible. I'd say it might be genetic... but her brother basically looks freakishly the same as 20 years ago.

I'd never heard that about Diaz, but she already was lookin' pretty rough by "There's Something About Mary", in my opinion. Like, not "ugly" by any means, just way older than she should've looked by then.

Something was going on there. When she was still dating Timberlake. Like she erupted into being a walking pile of sores or such... I'm not kidding. She was, like, hiding from cameras for a while and that's why she stopped taking roles.

People always gushed over how hot she was, but I've always been kinda "meh" about her.

The same. She was alright around "The Mask" for me, but she was hardly on any sort of short list, even as a kid.

I don't think Radcliffe's alcoholism has gotten bad enough to allow for that, yet. Since becoming an adult he very much wants to distance himself from all that Harry Potter stuff, and without him it's almost certainly a no-go. He'd have to be pretty desperate to sign up for something like that and I don't think he's quite there, yet.

He'll do it. It would be too much money to ignore, even if he's set for life just from those original Potter movies and all he's really done since is dick around and have fun. "Horns," that movie where he's a dead body, "Guns Akimbo," and even that appearance on Ricky Gervais' "Extras" (which was HILARIOUS... Youtube that or watch the episode on Netflix, the whole thing).

Plus he's not gonna be like the ONE GUY to ruin it for everyone else looking for that last payday.

Plus nobody wants to give Rowling anymore money, now, on account of... you know, some nonsense.

She could probably independently fund them if she wanted to. But most likely when they're done with the Fantastic Beasts movies (which... by the way, are they even still happening? after all that Depp business I actually haven't heard that they've even started filming anything on part 3) they'll just downplay her name and involvement.

[Leo656]

I haven't been keeping track - I know f*ck-all about Harry Potter so I don't pay much attention - but last I heard they were still planning on doing a third one, but without Depp. But since the 'Rona I don't think anything really moved forward with it.

And I'unno, after both Watson and Radcliffe talked sh*t on Rowling recently I'm not so sure they'd jump on a project that saw her getting any money from it. For one thing, they'd get so much sh*t from the Twitteristas about it. "You called her 'reprehensible' but now you're doing a movie that's gonna put money in her pocket!" and all that kinda thing. Stranger things have certainly happened but the whole climate would have to change. There's money there, sure, but a lot of the fans have sworn they'd never put another penny in Rowling's pocket because "she's terrible", so who knows how much demand there'd even be for it. Allegedly, one of the reasons things stalled on the third Fantastic Beasts movie is because she'd get paid big for any more movies and she's got "nuclear heat" right now.

I definitely wouldn't say it's impossible to do a big Potter revival with the original cast but it's gonna be a while before it's even something anyone could seriously consider. Because it's absolutely gonna start a Whole Big Thing if and when.

[frank_one]

Cameron Diaz is also retired to stay with her daughter and... produce wine. She's still looking pretty good to me, I cannot believe she's 48.
Maggie Gyllenhall? A train wreck. She's probably been hot for like 3 years at the beginning of her career, I don't know what happened to her. She's 5 years younger than Diaz but she looks like 10 years older. I was honestly quite disappointed watching The Dark Knight.

[IMJ]

Cameron Diaz is also retired to stay with her daughter and... produce wine. She's still looking pretty good to me, I cannot believe she's 48.
Maggie Gyllenhall? A train wreck. She's probably been hot for like 3 years at the beginning of her career, I don't know what happened to her. She's 5 years younger than Diaz but she looks like 10 years older. I was honestly quite disappointed watching The Dark Knight.

That's a helluva life - act and be paid to be hot when you are young and retire way before your prime with a small enough fortune that you can go into the wine business and live like retried Picard.

As for Gyllenhall? I never understood it - she's not ugly by any means... but.... yeah well... she is. It's so weird. Attractive ugly.

[Prowler]

Leo, I'm not surprised you haven't watched or read Harry Potter.

Vast majority of HP's fanbase consist of people born after 1988 or so. My generation grew up with the early HP movies.

Think of HP as a similar phenomenon to Pokémon. People born in the early 80s also generally tend to not care or know much about it either for similar reasons.

[ssjup81]

Aside from the Harry Potter films, I've only seen her in two other films. One was that Beauty and the Beast live-action remake where she was...meh to me and probably only got the role because of her name. The other was a movie based on Noah's ark (she was married to one of Noah's sons, iirc), but I don't recall much about it as far as she goes. The former, a coworker of mine who was a big Disney fan had us over at our place to watch that movie and the other movie we saw on TV a couple of years ago.

[Andrew NDB]

Cameron Diaz is also retired to stay with her daughter and... produce wine. She's still looking pretty good to me, I cannot believe she's 48.

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/9a/b7/bf/9ab7bfaaecb7527c55673d2a05b8aec9.jpg

https://cdn2.stylecraze.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/cameron-diaz-beauty.jpg

https://i2-prod.dailyrecord.co.uk/incoming/article7522481.ece/ALTERNATES/s615b/CD2952692.jpg

Leo, I'm not surprised you haven't watched or read Harry Potter.

I'm not, really. I've never really felt any burning push to read the books, and the movies? Shesus, it took me years to work up the energy to watch any of them past the second one, the "Chamber of Secrets." Those first two were soooo boooooring. When I finally powered through to the rest, yeah, some of them were marginally better, but beyond "moments" near the very end of it all I don't feel like it ever lived up to the way a lot of people talk about it all.

[ssjup81]

Think of HP as a similar phenomenon to Pokémon. People born in the early 80s also generally tend to not care or know much about it either for similar reasons.I was born in the early 80s and I liked the Harry Potter books. I only started reading them because the librarian recommended it. I was asking for a recommendation and she mentioned HP. I thought they were kid books, but she said that she read them and even "people in nursing homes read Harry Potter". This was back in 2000. I gave them a whirl and liked them. My mother read them too. After I finished the first book, I gave it to her, while I read the second, etc. Only the first four were out by then. We both went to watch the movies too...but the last two I wasn't in the US for. Personally, I was sick of the movies by the third film (which I hate the most out of all of them), but continued with them to see how it would go and how things would turn out. The first two films I liked...it had its problems, but I could see past them, but the third movie...gosh. So terrible to me and annoyed the heck out of me.

I also liked Pokemon in the 90s and that was because my best friend and his younger brother played the games. Those games came out when we were in our first or second year of high school, but his brother is eight years younger than us so there could be those with younger siblings who were into it. We also used to watch the show too and saw the first movie together...but I kinda prefer those earlier episodes (Kanto) because it wasn't being catered to an international audience yet. I liked the real-world and real-world Japanese references. They even had direct and indirect references to stuff like the hina matsuri, kodomo no hi, obon (one of my favorite episodes), the music group SMAP, Japanese comedians and comedic styles like manzai, the popular Shinorer fashion style going on at the time based on the teen idol/singer, Shinohara Tomoe, ganguro, etc. I really liked that.

[drgon78]

She is cute and loved her in the Harry Potter movies, too bad she never found too much else that would be memorable movie roles.

[Andrew NDB]

She is cute and loved her in the Harry Potter movies, too bad she never found too much else that would be memorable movie roles.

I thought she was pretty good in "Colonia," from 2015. Which is... jeeze, already 6 years ago.

SiVAGDTmlpY

She also starred with Boyega and Tom Hanks in "The Circle" a little bit ago (the evil Facebook movie). Great story premise but... pretty forgettable movie.

Again, for me... and it's not her fault. She just has one of those faces and frames where -- and being front and center in the Potter films obviously doesn't help -- she looks like a perennial adolescent. It's hard to take her super seriously in "serious" adult roles.

[Prowler]

Leo, Andrew and ssjup:

I barely remember any of the HP movies anymore. I went to see the 5th movie at the cinema and didn't like it much. Then again, I was already 16 by then, so I guess I had outgrown HP by then.

I did like the 2nd movie, but I was a very young kid still. Who knows of I'd still like it these days.

I've never actually read the books, so I can't comment on them.

[CyberCubed]

It's kind of ironic the whole Harry Potter craze from the early 2000's is now 15 years old and the young teens of today know nothing of it. I mean I was already 18-20 by the time these books started coming out so I was already "out of the target audience" but I remember how HUGE it was. Like even people who almost never read books were reading it, there was no way to escape from it.

And now today's teens were born a decade late from it and don't seem to care about it much. It's really funny how the passage of time works, like each generation has their own "hot popular franchise of books/tv/movies" and the previous ones just become "retro" or outdated.

Like god, what do the young teens of today even like these days? I honestly have no idea.

[Andrew NDB]

Like god, what do the young teens of today even like these days? I honestly have no idea.

Activism and racism, as best as I can gauge. Which seems to be the same thing to a lot of them.

[Prowler]

Activism and racism, as best as I can gauge. Which seems to be the same thing to a lot of them.

There were already some rather political teens when I was in HS, but they were in the minority. In fact, I remember being rather tough having a serious conversion in HS that wasn't about homework or a test. Vast majority of my classmates only cared about discussing football, relationships, alcohol, weed and the popular TV shows, movies and musicians. Most didn't have any strong political positions and didn't even bother voting in the first elections they were eligible to vote for.

And the ones who cared about politics only seemed to be parroting what their parents said at home. That and there was always that edgy kid or two who read Hitler's life story or something and decided to go through a nazi phase.

Social media at the time was this website called hi5 where teens shared their photos and that's it. It wasn't anything like Facebook or twitter.

[Andrew NDB]

There were already some rather political teens when I was in HS, but they were in the minority. In fact, I remember being rather tough having a serious conversion in HS that wasn't about homework or a test. Vast majority of my classmates only cared about discussing football, relationships, alcohol, weed and the popular TV shows, movies and musicians. Most didn't have any strong political positions and didn't even bother voting in the first elections they were eligible to vote for.

And the ones who cared about politics only seemed to be parroting what their parents said at home. That and there was always that edgy kid or two who read Hitler's life story or something and decided to go through a nazi phase.

Social media at the time was this website called hi5 where teens shared their photos and that's it. It wasn't anything like Facebook or twitter.

Yeah. That's about the high school I remember.

[Prowler]

Yeah. That's about the high school I remember.

And you're about a decade older than me afaik. I was born in 1990, so it's not like my HS days were THAT long ago. I mean, Youtube debuted when I was in 10th grade!

Things sure changed fast in just a few years.

I think the fact Facebook and other social networks have been used by politicians and media outlets who share their clickbaity stuff and exploit the algorithms has contributed to all the sociopolitical concerns of modern day teens. Plus, people spend more time online than ever these days. When I was a teenager, you were still considered a geek with no life if you admitted to spend the weekend in front of your computer at home. The "cool kids" didn't do that.

[Leo656]

I knew a few kids (including a few cousins) who were pretty outspokenly Liberal, mostly because their parents were Conservative. It was more about rebellion that a sincere caring/understanding towards the issues that matter.

Go figure, almost all of them flipped to being Republicans once they had kids. Especially the girls. My one cousin voted against Bush in 2004, because "war bad, m'kay", but then after she had a daughter she ended up voting for Trump twice. :lol: Once you actually have a family of your own, you magically end up caring more about "traditional values" than letting someone with a penis share a bathroom with your daughter, or making sure that people who don't work get a living stipend while you work your ass off to barely scrape by and provide for your kids. Shocking.

It's an extreme oversimplification, but there IS some truth to the idea that "If you're young and not a liberal, you don't have a heart, but if you're older and not conservative, you don't have a brain." The older you get, and the more time you spend in the Really-Real World, you start to understand that "empathy" simply makes for bad policy, and the reason "Status Quo" exists is that it's because what keeps the majority of people safe, healthy, and prosperous. Which does not translate to "oppression", it simply is "What's best for the majority", which is what's supposed to be important.
------------------

As for Harry Potter, I honestly never gave a sh*t but it was more like "Whatever it takes to get kids to read." Of course, then they made a bunch of movies and shot that idea all to hell. :lol: I'unno, no interest, it's fine if people like it. If I never bothered with it by now I doubt I'll ever read the books or watch the movies. I'm not "against" them in any way, there's just nothing in it that compels me to actually experience it.

My wife watched the newer one just because it had Johnny Depp in it, and she has this compulsive obsession with seeing everything he's in, so I was worried that now she'd wanna get into Harry Potter, but she doesn't; she just cares about Johnny Depp. :lol: I didn't see it, though; sounded dumb.

I'm weird, I'm either like 110% into something or 0%, with no middle ground.

[Prowler]

My aunt gave me one of the Harry Potter books for one of my birthdays. I think it was my 11th? Forgot which book... cuz I never read it. :lol:

Tbh I didn't like reading when I was a kid unless it was comics. And then school turned me off even more from reading novels. It wasn't until i finished HS that I began enjoying it, since now I was picking my own books and reading them at my own pace instead of being pressured by teachers to overanalyse them. No, "the curtains were blue" doesn't mean the author was saying something deep and vague for readers to guess, sensei. It simply meant the curtains were ****ing blue :roll:

Funny thing is, as an adult I've noticed most people don't seem to read much or at all. "oh I haven't read a book since HS/University" is something I hear/see often. While, when I was a teenager, I felt like one of the rare cases of someone who didn't read books except when school forced me to.

I don't blame a lot of kids and young people for not feeling any motivation to read books. Visual mediums are a lot more appealing to their eyes and school also makes a lot of people hate reading because a lot of the classics people have to go through in school are boring.

I'm no teacher or educator, so I can't give any concrete advice to encourage more kids to read, but it seems like parents and teachers could use a different kind of approach?

[frank_one]

I always thought Harry Potter was something for young girls. Even before the first movie came out I remember spotting girls reading it on the train more than once.

[Prowler]

I always thought Harry Potter was something for young girls. Even before the first movie came out I remember spotting girls reading it on the train more than once.

It definitely seems to have a very large female fandom.

Once I entered my teens, Harry Potter became less cool among boys, now that you mention it.

Dudes eventually became bigger fans of Lord of the Rings.

[Leo656]

Tough call. I always liked reading and I even liked most of what we read in school. Hated Shakespeare, though; I once had a teacher take points off of a paper because I had the audacity to write that he was "arguably one of the greatest writers of all time" as part of the introduction. I was just trying to be diplomatic. She was like "No, 'arguably' nothing, he WAS one of the greatest writers of all time, period." And I was like, "Well, to be honest I said 'arguably' because *I* personally don't feel that way, even though I'm aware that you and others disagree with that opinion. But the very fact that people like me disagree that he was so great means that it IS an opinion, and NOT a fact. And so I really don't think you can take points off for that." But she did anyway. :roll: She also later failed me for the year by a single point - against school policy - and sent me to Summer School to make up the credit for that class. I mentioned that whole deal with the paper to my Summer School teacher as well as my next-year Language Arts teacher, and they agreed that she was an idiot and a pretty bad teacher all-around. Not JUST for that, there were a lot of reasons. But that was a pretty bold example of her nonsense.

She also gave me poor marks on a book report because she didn't care for the subject matter. She said that biographies were acceptable, so I did my paper on a really incredible Guns N Roses biography by a guy named Danny Sugerman; it was more than just a simple history of the band, I mean the guy cited stuff like Nietzsche and various myths and folklore in his analysis of the individuals in the band and their personal and professional history, what compelled them to certain behaviors... really fascinating stuff. Still one of the best biographies I've ever read, and almost certainly the deepest. The guy Sugerman is a seriously acclaimed biographer. I'd already read the book three or four times by then so I used it for my book report since I knew I would nail it, and I wrote this giant five or six-page paper on it. BUT, she gave it a mediocre grade (I know for an almost certain fact that I put more work into that paper than anyone else in the class did) because she didn't like the band itself. Her reasoning for the grade made it pretty clear to me that she probably didn't even read the paper. She was a really lousy teacher.

The rest of high school those kinds of classes went a lot better, though. We had better teachers who had more of a conversational teaching style that encouraged discussion and interpretation. Even stuff like Hamlet and Oedipus which I don't remember extremely well, I remember having fun with the material at the time. We'd basically be assigned a chapter or two each night and then the next day the class would be like a roundtable discussion on it. Most of the class grade was in participation, so if you didn't read the daily chapters you could still pass so long as you answered the test questions but you'd only get a really good grade if you kept up with the daily stuff and stayed engaged. If you just sat there and never talked, read the whole book the night before the test and answered most of the questions right, you might get a C- overall, but you were definitely better rewarded for actually keeping up and participating. And that approach seemed to help people stay engaged; if you didn't read the chapter the night before, you'd literally end up just sitting there doing nothing for 40 minutes while everyone else was having a conversation, and that's boring. So it was like "If you don't want to be bored, you have to participate, and to be able to participate you have to read the whopping ten or fifteen pages that were assigned the night before." You basically got back what you put in.

Our school district had a really strong Language Arts and reading and Creative Writing program, though; most of the kids who excelled at anything tended to excel in those areas more than others, and those teachers tended to have more rapport with the students than the math or science or history teachers did. I can safely say that it isn't like that everywhere.

A lot of writing is symbolism and metaphor, though, on either a micro or macro scale. More often than not those curtains actually are blue for a reason. :lol: Might not be a great big reason, but often it's for some reason. For people who write a lot, especially those who do it as their profession, anything that hits the page tends to have a layered or textured meaning. What I find is that people who are very literal-minded tend to struggle with that.

How we used to approach a lot of material was, oftentimes if there was some symbolic or metaphorical meaning in the author's work it was part of the lesson - and would usually not be some big secret but an oft-discussed statement of historical fact - and so after a reading, we'd first discuss each person's personal interpretation of what we'd just read; "What do YOU think is being represented, here?" And then after we'd all had a say - with the caveat being that there weren't any "wrong" answers since art is subjective and all that - we would THEN get to the part where the teacher would reveal, "Well, this is what the author, in their own words, said they were trying to express in that scene..." And that would lead into another conversation, and so on and so forth. The whole point was in looking at things at multiple layers, and how a thing can be interpreted in multiple ways and they could all be valid in theory even if there actually was one "correct" or preferred meaning.

This was all very different from how books were taught in middle school, where it was more "Read the chapter, answer questions like 'What did Jim say to Steve to make him mad? What did Steve do after that?'." Very dry, very strict, very literal and linear. I don't think you can teach reading books the same way you teach math. Literature is art, and all art needs to be a conversation. From what I've seen that's the approach that gets better results.

As far as getting kids to read, some people just plain hate to read but I think it helps to get to kids extremely early. My father always, always read to me as a kid from an extremely young age, and I had as many of those book-and-record/cassette tape sets as I did toys. I credit that kind of thing entirely with how I was able to read by the time I was four. I kinda think by the time they even start Kindergarten, if it's not something they've already been doing on their own it's going to be harder to get them to care. Schoolwork represents structure, something all kids hate even though they may understand it as being necessary. If schoolwork is their introduction to reading and writing - or drawing and painting, for that matter - then it's just "work" and they're going to resent it. If it's something they've already been doing for fun on their own before that, then the schoolwork aspect is more about getting better at it, rather than being forced to do something they wouldn't be doing otherwise.

[CyberCubed]

I never got into Harry Potter because I simply don't read "real books." I haven't opened up a book since english class in High School and college.

If you don't count comics, and I really only read TMNT comics, I haven't read a "real book" in about 15 years now. Probably around 2007ish I guess.

[Prowler]

Sure, symbolism and metaphors are common, and the main point of analysing such content is to see what answers each person can come up with, but the difference between a good and a bad teacher is really thin when it comes to that. A not so good teacher will just shut you down and believe their interpretation is the correct one. I've seen that happen.

As for the Shakespeare thing, yes, some teachers take it REALLY PERSONALLY if you're not a huge fan of their favourite author.

Another thing that rubbed me the wrong way was the elitism of some teachers when it came to comic books when I was a kid. I remember around 5th grade our history teacher asking us if we read anything on Easter break and I said I read Tintin, one of the most famous European comic book series of all time and loved by millions of people. And she just scoffed and dismissed it as if I was some ignorant hack. Telling a 10 year old kid that he's stupid or ignorant for liking comic books isn't gonna make him feel any better and make him warm up to the idea of reading novels. She could have been more tactful and use a different approach to convince me novels can be great too. I'd have gotten her point and would actually have picked up one faster.

Also, a funny story, I was discussing Kafkas Metamorphosis with someone a few years ago and we were wondering why he decided to write such book. He said "maybe he thought writing about a guy turning into a cockroach would be funny" :lol:

[ssjup81]

Leo, Andrew and ssjup:

I barely remember any of the HP movies anymore. I went to see the 5th movie at the cinema and didn't like it much. Then again, I was already 16 by then, so I guess I had outgrown HP by then.

I did like the 2nd movie, but I was a very young kid still. Who knows of I'd still like it these days.

I've never actually read the books, so I can't comment on them.By the time the first movie came out, the first four books were out and I'd read them by that time. I don't recall much about the fifth movie. I remember the book more, though. Don't remember how I felt about it. I was born in 1981 and I liked the HP stuff. lol My mother as well. One day we would like to go to Universal to the HP land stuff. I went to the one in Osaka, but couldn't fully enjoy it. I did get a Butterbeer and a wand, though.

I liked the second movie, and like I mentioned, it had its issues, but it was tolerable. IMO, the first two movies seemed to get the characters close to right. They screwed up Ron's character the most, though compared to the other two, which was shown in those first two, but movie 3 just really screwed it up...Hermione too.

[Leo656]

Yeah, that dizzy broad I was talking about was a big "What do you think this was about? Well, you're wrong" type of person. :lol: She did that a LOT.

Better teachers would take an "incorrect" analysis, and turn it into a conversation about How/Why someone could interpret the material that way. "Okay, that's not specifically what the author's intent was, but that's very interesting in itself. What made you come to that conclusion?" We spent just as much time on the "personal meaning" of the literature as the "official" meaning.

I had one really good teacher, it was his first year, and as a younger guy he often tried to engage the students by drawing parallels to pop culture and things we might recognize, like movies, music, comics to an extent, and so on. He was a huge Metallica fan, so we had a lot of fun in that class. We did a whole section on Transcendentalism at one point, and as a homework assignment he asked us to cite at least one song in popular music that dealt with those themes, "getting back to nature", rejecting materialism, being one with the earth and so on. So I did my entire assignment on "Of Wolf And Man". :lol: I was the first person to raise my hand to read their paper, and he was like "Okay, I kinda know what you're gonna say already, so I wanna save yours for a bit because I'm sure it's gonna be great, so let's hear from someone else first." So the girl next to me went, and she literally said "I wrote 'None, because there aren't any'." :roll: And the guy almost literally blew a fuse. That was her entire "paper", that one sentence. He's like "You didn't even try," and she's like "People don't write songs about stuff like sitting around in the freaking woods!" :lol:

The little vein in the guy's temple was throbbing, so I raised my hand again and he's like "Okay, yeah, I kinda think I need you to redeem my faith in this class after that last answer." :lol: So I gave this long, in-depth analysis of Metallica's "Of Wolf and Man" and all the Transcendentalist themes in it, and he's like "See, THAT is what I'm talking about! I knew as soon as I gave the assignment that you were gonna come back with exactly that. To a lesser extent, I also would have accepted 'Wherever I May Roam', but yeah, 'Of Wolf and Man' is a perfect, perfect example of everything we've been studying here. Great job."

The girl next to me rolled her eyes, and was like "Well, I listen to rap music." Me and the teacher kinda looked at each other, he just shrugged and was like "Well... there ya go, I guess." :lol: That chick was SO mad. It was awesome.

[CylonsKlingonsDaleksOhMy]

Also, a funny story, I was discussing Kafkas Metamorphosis with someone a few years ago and we were wondering why he decided to write such book. He said "maybe he thought writing about a guy turning into a cockroach would be funny" :lol:

Peter Laird must have really loved him some Kafkas.

[Prowler]

Fun story, Leo. :D

Peter Laird must have really loved him some Kafkas.

Let's not go there :lol:

[ranger_scout]

So much for her retirement.

Emma Watson isn't retiring from acting — despite what you may have heard online (https://ew.com/celebrity/emma-watson-not-retiring-from-acting/)

[Shark_Blade]

She needs to be in the MCU.

[ranger_scout]

She needs to be in the MCU.

She was up for a role in Black Widow, but she lost it to her co-star from Little Women, Florence Pugh.

https://screenrant.com/black-widow-emma-watson-cast-shortlist/

[Hamato Yoshi]

Gillian Anderson used to be a punk back in her teens , she hang out with a neo nazi

[Andrew NDB]

She was up for a role in Black Widow, but she lost it to her co-star from Little Women, Florence Pugh.

https://screenrant.com/black-widow-emma-watson-cast-shortlist/

Florence Pugh is way more in line with that character.

[ranger_scout]

She released a statement on Twitter about the rumors surrounding her.

https://www.comingsoon.net/movies/news/1174293-emma-watson-statement-on-engagement

[ranger_scout]

Emma has been banned from driving for six months after a speeding incident. She already had nine points on her driver's license before this incident in July 2024.

https://people.com/emma-watson-banned-from-driving-for-6-months-after-speeding-11773185

[Andrew NDB]

Emma has been banned from driving for six months after a speeding incident. She already had nine points on her driver's license before this incident in July 2024.

https://people.com/emma-watson-banned-from-driving-for-6-months-after-speeding-11773185

She got clocked going 38 MPH in a 30 MPH zone? What a crock.

[ranger_scout]

If there are certain things about acting that she doesn't miss, then she can take as much time away from it as she wants to. It will probably be good for her since she's not allowed to drive for six months.

https://ew.com/emma-watson-reveals-soul-destroying-part-of-acting-career-she-doesnt-miss-11814975