Hareeeeee! Jim Dale to Present at Portus!!
Mugglenet is reporting:
We are very happy to break the news that Jim Dale, narrator of the US Potter books, will be presenting at HPEF’s Portus 2008 this July! Portus representative Aziza Aba Butain talks about how excited they are to be hosting him:
“We’ve just confirmed that Jim Dale, the amazing “reader” of all the HP audio books for the US , Broadway icon and the narrator of ABC’s new hit series “Pushing Daisies”, will be presenting at Portus in July. This will be Jim Dale’s first HP conference. We’re all very excited and honored to have a guest so involved with the series be apart of Portus’s Programming. Mr. Dale is quite the dynamic, accomplished speaker and we can’t wait for Portus to arrive.
Portus’s monthly newsletter, The Portal, will be updating soon with the latest on Jim’s programming. This will, undoubtedly, be a must-see conference for Harry Potter fans. We cannot wait to find out what Portus and Jim Dale have to offer!
I. Am. So. Excited!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Needless to say, if Jim Dale is presenting during any of my round table discussion times, I’ll be abandoning the round table. Immediately.
March 5th, 2008 at 10:56 pm
Hmm…I struggle with Jim Dale. I very much prefer Stephen Fry’s readings. The “Haarrryyyyyyyy” thing drives me freaking crazy. Almost everything about the way Dale reads the books drives me crazy.
But I have to say, I hope he’s not schedule at the same time as I am, ’cause he’s sure to steal the majority of fans during his time slot.
March 5th, 2008 at 11:02 pm
Harreeee drives me crazy but I am a HUGE Jim Dale fan. I love the audiobooks! Have listened to all of them. Know DH by heart almost because of the audiobook. I am so excited. I hope he isn’t speaking the same time as you!
March 5th, 2008 at 11:14 pm
And I hope he’s not speaking at the same time as you. But that’d really be a no brainer for me, as I’m not a big Jim Dale fan.
Have you heard the Stephen Fry versions? He gets Hagrid perfectly. He gets almost everything perfectly, including the feel of the books. I actually really loved Jim Dale, until I picked up the Fry versions. I didn’t like Fry at first, but by 3 books in, I was a convert, and when I had to go back to Dale for DH, I really had hard time with it.
March 5th, 2008 at 11:15 pm
No, I haven’t heard the Frye versions. I’ll have to get ahold of a copy.
Well 2 things- if I am at the same time as Jim Dale, no brainer for anyone, I’ll be at Jim Dale.Also, don’t feel like you have to come to the round tables, they won’t be all that intellectual, I can promise that .
March 6th, 2008 at 12:20 am
Yay! I’m uber excited too! He is such an entertaining speaker and such a generous man. I can’t stop squeeing!
I just can’t believe we were able to keep the secret!
March 6th, 2008 at 11:58 am
Hasn’t Fry done a version of DH? That’d be disappointing if he hadn’t. I’ll eventually, legally, pick up all the audiobooks but only Fry versions. If you love Stephen Fry, watch Blackadder.
Oh, I know this is off topic but since we’re talking about audiobooks, if you’ve ever wanted to read The Screwtape Letters by CS Lewis get the audiobook done by John Cleese. I think Audible.com has it.
March 6th, 2008 at 2:26 pm
Fry has definitely completed his narration of the series. I enjoy it regularly
March 6th, 2008 at 5:10 pm
So, if I wanted to buy the audio books, which should I buy and where should I buy them?
March 6th, 2008 at 5:21 pm
We all have different opinions about it. I would take the Jim Dale versions out of the library and give them a listen before you buy them.
March 6th, 2008 at 6:23 pm
Okay! I think I will.
March 6th, 2008 at 7:29 pm
Hey Penny and Greg, I just recorded my first episode for my podcast, and I’m trying to get it onto Podcast Alley, but it says I need some sort of RSS feed thing. Can you help me out? I have no idea what to do. I have a Wordpress blog set up for my podcast, and I tried to link the RSS thing to my blog, but that didn’t work. Any ideas?
March 7th, 2008 at 9:29 am
Crews: Wordpress should give you an RSS feed for your blog (it will look like a URL but with rss.xml or atom.xml at the end I believe) and you can give that to podcastalley. I am not the expert here (and I don’t know if Greg will have time to answer today), so if I am getting this wrong and someone can help, let us know.
March 7th, 2008 at 11:06 am
revgeorge, yes, Fry did a DH. But I had ordered all the other books through ebay in bulk so it was cheaper. At the time DH came out, to order Fry’s version from England would have been something like $65 more than the Jim Dale version, and I didn’t have that cash at the time! Someday I’ll get Fry’s version of DH.
March 7th, 2008 at 11:25 am
I love Dale’s Dumbledore. I think he got the loving and kind Dumbledore of Richard Harris and mixed it a bit with the stern (when necessary) Dumbledore of Michael Gambon (yes, another discussion in itself) and melded it perfectly into Dumbledore.
I have said this before on the podcast but one of my favorite chapters to listen to Jim Dale read is the chapter in HBP entitled, “Horcruxes.” I think his Dumbledore of that chapter is beautiful.
March 7th, 2008 at 4:17 pm
Ah, just another of the many reasons I’d love to go to Portus. I don’t really have much to add to the discussion on Dale vs. Fry because I’ll admit that I’ve never listened to a HP audiobook. (When I was typing that I accidentally typed ‘podcast’ instead of ‘audiobook’ at first. Yeah right, like I’ve never listened to a HP podcast!)
I was just looking at the website for all of the libraries in the system, and all of the audiobooks are by Jim Dale. I’m thinking about getting one to test them out, so does anyone have suggestions? What is you favorite of the Harry Potter audiobooks by Jim Dale?
March 7th, 2008 at 4:38 pm
Well, I have to say that I have never listened to the Jim Dale versions, but as I am European and have lived in the UK, I prefer to read and listen to the British versions over the American (although I do appreciate the chapter art in the American books, a feature that the British lack).
I must say I love Fry’s Dumbledore, Hagrid, Snape and Draco.
March 7th, 2008 at 8:48 pm
I believe the best audio book by Jim Dale is the Order of the Phoenix. The seventh one is a very good second however. Put it this way, he is great with all of them so take your pick! By the way Penny, I can do a spot-on impression of Dumbledore, I will send you a voice mail and you can judge for yourself!
March 7th, 2008 at 9:06 pm
Potters number one fan:
That’s funny because OoTP was my first choice because I decided to skip it while rereading. I don’t want to listen to DH until I read it again, but I’ll consider it for the future. Does he do a good McGonagall and Umbrige? I’d love to hear your Dumbledore impression! Thanks for your imput.
Note to Penny: Maybe you should do a podcast sometime (after Patterns in Potter or during if you want a break) of just impressions of the characters. It’d be fun and engaging for the listeners. That and I was reading in the comments a long way back about your suggestion to do an episode of discussing the actors that play the characters in the movie, but that would probably best be saved until after the HBP movie comes out. That would be so awesome!!
March 8th, 2008 at 9:51 am
He does every voice perfectly! As for my impression of Dumbledore, I sent a voice mail so maybe they will play it for everyone to hear on episode 72. The best voices he does are Harry, Dumbledore, Hermione, Ron, Snape, Mcgonigall and so many more.
March 8th, 2008 at 12:05 pm
Okay, you’ve sold me! I just placed an order on it, and I’m fourth in line (luckily there are a lot of of copies, so it shouldn’t take too long). I’ll tell you what I think of it after listening to it.
March 8th, 2008 at 7:50 pm
Hey Greg and Penny, I just made a song called Wizard Rock, and I mentioned HP Progs in it. Feel free to check it out on my MySpace page by just clicking on my name. Even though it may not get you much publicity, since I’m not extremely popular, yet, it might do something. You never know. I hope you enjoy it.
March 8th, 2008 at 11:02 pm
effin’ cool! now i wish i could go…
March 12th, 2008 at 7:26 pm
[...] Jim Dale is coming to Portus!!!!!!!!!!!! [...]