Some things of interest that have cropped up:

Amy Sturgis' presentation "When Harry Met Faërie: The Tolkien Solution to the Rowling Problem" has been recorded as part of The Audio Science Fiction Magazine; she links to both the podcast and the original article ("Harry Potter is a Hobbit: Rowling, Tolkien, and the Question of Readership") here at her journal.

She is, to paraphrase her own summary, applying Tolkien's literary theory to the Harry Potter series, addressing the divide in opinion about the "proper" audience. There seems to be a lot of cross-interest in Tolkien and HP, and I thought it an interesting application of Tolkien's theories. I'd never really given that much in-depth thought to the intended readership of HP, and she presents it in a different manner.

In more directly Tolkien-related news, Daniel McNicoll is releasing a new documentary on the sword and its standing as a symbol. There's a lot of focus on Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings--ToRN has the article here. He's working with (among others) Bob Anderson, Viggo Mortensen, and Karl Urban, with John Rhys-Davies narrating.

As a bonus, the interview is just amusing. :)