Good morning and welcome to Summit Up, the world’s only daily column that’s knee-deep in Harry Potter stuff this weekend, as the new movie bursts into theaters and the notion of waving a wand goes from seeming pretty insane to really quite practical.

A wand, we’ve read in the past, is a way of focusing your magical power – much as other magical folks like wizards might use a staff (really, a wand is just a more convenient form of the rather cumbersome staff). Which leads to a frightfully important question that’s been weighing on our mind for quite some time: Who would win, we wonder, in a battle between, say, Dumbledore of Harry Potter fame with his teeny little wand or Gandalf from Lord of the Rings, with his kick-ass staff? (OK, maybe you can tell we’re already a little biased here! But hey, sometimes size matters.)

We’re pretty sure Gandalf would totally waste Dumbledore. But what about a matchup between LOTR’s Sauron or Saruman and HP’s Lord Voldemort? Hmmm … hard to say. Although we will note that, in LOTR, Sauron doesn’t really do a whole helluva lot – just sorta has the big, glowing eye up there on the tower while his (mostly dumb-ass) minions try to get things done below and ultimately fail. Saruman was a little more effective, but overall we’d have to give this one to Lord Voldemort. Which leads us to a matchup of Gandalf vs. Voldemort: Whaddaya think? Voldemort has evil on his side, which can be handy if you’re going for the scorched-earth kinda battle and don’t mind killing innocent people all around. Gandalf, though, has it pretty much going on after he becomes a white wizard, and it’s hard to imagine him succumbing to a guy who A) doesn’t have a nose and B) once spent an entire film stuck on the back of some guy’s head wrapped in a turban. That ain’t cool! Plus, Gandalf can handle a sword – a skill we’ve never seen deployed by Voldemort who pretty much sticks to holding a wand in a rather girly fashion.

So edge to Gandalf as king of wizarding, in our view. And, as you may know, we’ll get to see more of Gandalf in the two “Hobbit” films, which begin principal photography in February. No firm word yet on whether Gandalf will be played by Ian McKellen, as he was in the LOTR trilogy – but we certainly hope so.

Anyway, please feel free to weigh in with your own opinion about Gandalf and Voldemort. Let us know who you think would prevail and why at

summitup@summitdaily.com.

Wizards aside, the skiing is real and out there and good, so get on it,

doggonit! We out.