Harry Potter

As the 20-somethings nursed their post-Harry Potter feelings of emptiness with Butterbeer rum concoctions at McNally's tavern on Germantown Avenue, a more brutal form of Harry Potter-opothy was playing out further up the hill. "It's all about the physical contact," said Olga Iodko, 22, of the SUNY Geneseo Quidditch team, one of 15 quidditch teams competing - broomsticks between legs - in Saturday's second annual Brotherly Love Quidditch Tournament at Chestnut Hill College. "One of the concussions happened because someone took a broom between the eyes," Catilin Hepps Keeney, 19, of the John Hopkins team, recalled from an earlier competition.

With the fifth installment of the Harry Potter films in theaters tonight and the seventh, and final, tome due in bookstores on the 21st, Potter fever is epidemic. Here's hoping, though, that Book No. 7 is better than Movie No. 5, a slog that might induce Potter fatigue even among stalwarts. Until Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix , the Potter pictures were that rare franchise in which each new film topped the prior one. This time around, there's a notable backslide, the filmmakers frustrated in their attempt to telescope 800-plus pages into two-plus hours during which Harry fights demons inner and outer while experiencing hormonal surges and grieving the loss of a loved one. In Phoenix , director David Yates, who has exhibited sensitive rapport with actors in his work for British TV ( The Girl in the Cafe , The Way We Live Now )

GIMME FIVE "Harry Potter" has to be the most weirdly consistent box-office monster ever. The top five Harrys: 1. "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone," $317 million. 2. "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," $301 million. 3. "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1," $295 million. 4. "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix," $292 million. 5. "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire," $290 million.

As the twentysomethings nursed their post-Harry Potter feelings of emptiness with Butterbeer rum concoctions at McNally's tavern on Germantown Avenue, a more brutal form of Harry Potter-opothy was playing out farther up the hill. "It's all about the physical contact," said Olga Iodko, 22, of the SUNY Geneseo quidditch team, one of 15 teams competing - broomsticks between legs - in Saturday's second annual Brotherly Love Quidditch Tournament at Chestnut Hill College. "One of the concussions happened because someone took a broom between the eyes," Caitlin Hepps Keeney, 19, of the Johns Hopkins team, recalled from an earlier competition.

The book ban-ners finally may have met their match in Harry Potter. We can only hope. Over the years, in many school districts, fundamentalist parents have challenged the "Wizard of Oz" because it includes a "good witch," and so runs counter to their religion. Just reading about Glenda apparently would send the youth of America straight out to bubbling cauldrons. And since they can't trust their own kids to know that it's only a story, nobody else's kids should have the book in school, either.

Kids love Harry Potter and marketers love kids. So if you have a product to market - like Coca-Cola, for instance - what you want is to figure a way to imply that the children's book hero endorses that product, however indirectly. This fall, Warner Bros. plans to release the movie version of "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone," and now the studio has forged what is said to be a $150 million marketing alliance with Coca-Cola. Often such marketing deals are mutually reinforcing.

Friday marks the end of an era. Some, like Warner Bros. executive Dan Fellman, compare its finality to the breakup of the Beatles. When Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 , the eighth and presumably final film based on the phenom that has sold 450 million books and close to a billion movie tickets, opens this week in theaters from Lahore to Los Angeles, it will be twilight in the Potterverse. No more pajama-clad kids lining up at midnight to buy the new Harry volume.

Sid Zilber is no fan of Harry Potter. He's never read the enormously popular series of children's books about the junior wizard. He doesn't know a Muggle from a Martian or a Nimbus 2000 from a Nissan 300ZX. But he does know a good idea. "A great idea," the 53-year-old businessman and former lawyer says, happily, in his plush Bala Cynwyd offices. Hoping to cash in on Potter mania, Zilber is selling sweatshirts, T-shirts and baseball caps with Potteresque logos, on the Internet.

Nearly a dozen years have gone by since the first Harry Potter book ascended best-seller lists, and nearly a decade have passed since it become a movie. Finally on Friday, after an intermission of more than seven months, the last film in the series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2 finishes the story of the series' seventh and concluding novel. So fans can be forgiven if they're fuzzy or confused about a lot of details. Herewith, then, is a Harry Potter quiz that should serve like a refresher course at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

SINCE THIS is Harry Potter movie day, here's the wit and wisdom of star Daniel Rad-cliffe, who recently spoke to Details: On attending school after the first Harry Potter film was released: "Some people did get very aggressive. People say it was just jealousy, but I don't think it is jealousy. I think it's just 'We can have a crack at the kid that plays Harry Potter.' " On not attending college: "The paparazzi, they'd love it. And also if there were any parties going on, they'd be tipped off as to where they were, and it would be all of that stuff.

The manipulative baddie Wes Bentley plays in The Hunger Games - the Capitol puppetmaster Seneca Crane - has heaps more face time than he does in the Suzanne Collins book whence he sprang. That's a fortunate turn of events for the actor - who gets to sport an ultra-trim steampunk beard (it looks sprayed on, not grown), and wears strange Edwardian-meets-disco era clothes. Bentley, already a fan of Collins' dystopian young-adult trilogy before he sought the role, explains that part of the reason Seneca figures so prominently in the screen adaptation is that Collins' book was penned in the first person, from the vantage of its teenage heroine, Katniss Everdeen ( Jennifer Lawrence in the film, of course)

Harry Potter. . . . Bella Swan. . . . Katniss Everdeen? If the bespectacled boy wizard of the Harry Potter books and films and the sulky high schooler-turned-vampire-wife of the Twilight Saga have long been imprinted in the collective consciousness, is it now time for the teenage heroine of The Hunger Games to join them? With the Suzanne Collins book perched atop the children's and young-adult best-seller lists pretty much since its publication in late 2008, and with advance ticket sales for the $100 million Lionsgate film adaptation - opening at Friday - outpacing the inaugural Harry Potter, there are strong indications that Ms. Everdeen is indeed heading for that rarefied realm of pop iconography.

As long as there have been bridges, trolls have hidden beneath them. Same for the Internet. As long as there have been message boards, discussion groups, and comment strings, there have been "trolls" - people who, under cover of Web anonymity, post bullying, lewd, or off-point comments, disrupting and demeaning the whole enterprise. Some comment strings are moderated, so trolls can be blocked and deleted - but most of cyberspace is, in the words of one (anonymous!) wit, "free range for idiots.

IT WAS A dark and possibly stormy night. OK, it probably wasn't stormy; Daniel Radcliffe can't remember. But the "Harry Potter" star was in bed expecting to drift off to sleep when he started hearing strange sounds coming from inside his flat. What's a former boy wizard to do? He popped up out of bed and grabbed "the nearest, bluntest thing" and charged what could have possibly been vengeful spirits from the netherworld. "I literally came out of my room brandishing a cricket bat [bellowing]

If you're from the Jersey Shore or Jurassic Park, attend Hogwarts Academy or prefer to hang out in classic locales like the West Side, movies offer a chance to escape this holiday season. DVD and Blu-ray boxed sets, large and small, abound this year for folks who also want to give the gift of film. Here are just a few recommended titles: Harry Potter. Harry Potter fans this summer bade farewell to their magical-mystical hero whose on-screen adventures ended with the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2 . But when it comes to movies, the end is never the end, and Harry (Daniel Radcliffe)

The people have spoken, and their favor has fallen on Katy Perry , Glee , and Harry Potter, recipients of the most People's Choice Awards nominations. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 , the last installment in the saga of the boy wizard, led the way in Tuesday's nomination announcement with nine nods, including favorite movie and ensemble movie cast. Singer Perry and Fox musical Glee snagged seven apiece. Voting for the 38th annual fan-favorite ceremony, set for Jan. 11 at the Nokia Theatre, ends Dec. 6. Glee was nominated for favorite network TV comedy and in several of the TV-acting categories: Chris Colfer and Cory Monteith for favorite TV comedy actor, Jane Lynch and Lea Michele for favorite TV comedy actress, and Gwyneth Paltrow and Kristin Chenoweth for favorite TV guest star.

As the twentysomethings nursed their post-Harry Potter feelings of emptiness with Butterbeer rum concoctions at McNally's tavern on Germantown Avenue, a more brutal form of Harry Potter-opothy was playing out farther up the hill. "It's all about the physical contact," said Olga Iodko, 22, of the SUNY Geneseo quidditch team, one of 15 teams competing - broomsticks between legs - in Saturday's second annual Brotherly Love Quidditch Tournament at Chestnut Hill College. "One of the concussions happened because someone took a broom between the eyes," Caitlin Hepps Keeney, 19, of the Johns Hopkins team, recalled from an earlier competition.

As the 20-somethings nursed their post-Harry Potter feelings of emptiness with Butterbeer rum concoctions at McNally's tavern on Germantown Avenue, a more brutal form of Harry Potter-opothy was playing out further up the hill. "It's all about the physical contact," said Olga Iodko, 22, of the SUNY Geneseo Quidditch team, one of 15 quidditch teams competing - broomsticks between legs - in Saturday's second annual Brotherly Love Quidditch Tournament at Chestnut Hill College. "One of the concussions happened because someone took a broom between the eyes," Catilin Hepps Keeney, 19, of the John Hopkins team, recalled from an earlier competition.

Children are invited to explore an owl's-eye hay maze, to celebrate jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald through art, and to experience Harry Potter Weekend at Woodmere Art Museum. At the maze, offered at the museum through Oct. 30, families can have find their way through an artful large-scale landscape. On Friday night, festivities will be from 6 to 8. From 6 to 7 p.m., children can participate in A-Tisket, A-Tasket art activity to celebrate the museum's fall jazz series, beginning with a tribute to Fitzgerald.

Sarah Mabel Hough is a senior at Temple University studying English This hasn't happened in a while, but when I used to finish a book whose characters I had grown to love, I would cry a little. I've always done this, even when I was a kid who thought weepy movies were dumb and rolled my eyes while my mom and sister held tightly to the tissue box. If I was on the bus or some other not-so-private place, and I noticed there were only a few pages left, I closed the book and waited until I was somewhere more intimate.