Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

How USC Grads Freddie Wong and Ryan Coogler Became the Future of Filmmaking, Via Two Very Different Paths

Fruitvale Station was a hit at Sundance, while Video Game High School has millions of teen fans

Harry Potter Exhibit at Hollywood Museum: The L.A. Weekly Review

To paraphrase Draco Malfoy: "So it's true. Harry Potter has come to the Hollywood Museum." Known for preserving showbiz magic year-round, the Hollywood Museum, located in the Historic Max Factor Building in the heart of Hollywood, added the treasures and trinkets of a boy wizard last Wednesday. Th ... More >>

Mother Dough: 99 Essential Restaurants 2011

Harry Potter Cocktails

Hermione Granger & Draco Malfoy would like a martini. Right now, please.​The grim reality that Hollywood has, at least temporarily, exhausted its source material for the Harry Potter books is setting in. What to do, what to do? Drown your sorrows in these clever cocktails devised by The Backya ... More >>

Harry Potter Art at Nucleus Gallery

Gendy AlimurungJ. Shea: Thestral​If you couldn't handle waiting in line for two hours to get into Nucleus Gallery's recent extremely packed Harry Potter-themed art show, this is the sort of thing you missed. That's a hanging sculpture of a thestral in the photo above. Awesome, right? The rest ... More >>

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 Review: Franchise King Fights His Last Battle

​ After 10 years, seven movies, six Defense Against the Dark Arts teachers, four directors, two dead parents, one grating house elf, and incalculable amounts of CG wizardry, pubescent growing pains, budding romances, and apocalyptic fire and brimstone, we've finally arrived: Bespectacled Harry ... More >>

Op-Ed: Against Communal Tables

Warner Bros.the great hall at Hogwarts​ These days, every pretentious newly opened Los Angeles boîte seems determined to prove how casual and unpretentious it is with the de rigueur decorative accent of the day: a communal table. When Los Angeles had only a handful of communal tables, they ... More >>

'Parent Trigger' Plan B: Charter School to Open 2 Blocks From McKinley Elementary, Draining Students and Forcing Back-Door Takeover

Google MapsChurch of the Redeemer in Compton: It's no Hogwarts, but it'll do for now.​You'd be hard-pressed to find a school district as opposed to the new-age charter-school movement as Compton Unified. Not once have district officials accepted an application from a charter hopeful, despite t ... More >>

BRING ME THE HEAD OF HARRY POTTER!

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: The End Is Near

And the kids are not all right in Part 1 of the franchise's finale

Movie Review: Never Let Me Go

A Day In the Life of Hall H: Mostly Awesome, Briefly Chaotic

Nicole CamposThe Avengers, together at last! A genius ending to an insane day...​ The largest exhibition room at the San Diego Convention Center is Hall H, a huge 6,000-plus seater situated at the complex's south end that every year during Comic-Con International hosts the biggest, baddest, an ... More >>

Have Tea with Harry Potter at Whimsic Alley: Bring Your Own Owl

A young Potter fan. He takes no prisoners.​Every couple of weeks or so, the Harry Potter store Whimsic Alley in Los Angeles hosts Potter-themed afternoon tea events. Last weekend was one such occasion. Hagrid (or a Hagrid-impersonator) was there. As was a cute Harry (okay, fine, a Harry-impers ... More >>

Top 7 Human-Animal Hybrids Now Illegal Under Arizona Law

Under Arizona's new (and honest-to-god real) law banning "animal human hybrids," a whole lot of pop-cultural characters would be considered illegal. The law prohibits anyone in the state from "creating or attempting to create an in vitro human embryo by any means other than fertilization of a human ... More >>

Movie Reviews: Ninja Assassin, Old Dogs, The Sun

Also, The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, The End of Poverty? and more

Best of L.A.: Shopping

Blackeyed Social Club Bids Farewell to Medusa Lounge

Peddling to Pottermaniacs

Whimsic Alley sells brooms, spells, wands - and skiving snack boxes

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

That old black Potter magic continues to beguile.

Comedy is Dead Returns to Hollywood Forever Cemetery with Headliner Patton Oswalt

Comedy is Dead, the excellent comedy and music revue which brightens up Hollywood Forever Cemetery's hallowed Masonic hall from time to time, was back in full force on Thursday night, and Duncan Trussell - one of the comics performing as well as one of the organizers of the show - had some question ... More >>

Madness at Medusa, Nettwerk's Sync space and Tigerheat at Avalon

Harry Potter's Dark Arts

New Potter mines the depths of adolescent angst

the Professor

Doug Dutton, Dutton’s Brentwood Books

Scary Clowns

John Powers on Zarqawi and Haditha

White Chocolate

U.K.’s Hot Chip love American R&B, cars and slang. Some things never change

Four Wizards and a Funeral

Harry Potter goes through growing pains

He Who Must Not Be Named

Wild About Harry

Hogwarts redux again, with a difference

Devil’s Island

Just Mild About Harry

Potter putters through

Letters

Hogwarts’ Webmistress

Netizen's Uprising

The Wizard of Simi

Harry Potter’s magic survives another match with Muggles-parents