Recently in Harry Potter Category

Don't drink the water...With Michael Gambon looking and sounding more Gandalfian than ever, the international trailer for David Yates' Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is now online. Well, ok then.

In anticipation of the HP & The Half-Blood Prince trailer, which should be on later tonight, USA Today scores two stills from the forthcoming sixth Potter film, including this one of young Tom Riddle looking Omen-ish. (Conveniently, he's played by Hero Fiennes-Tiffin, Ralph Fiennes' nephew.)

Update: "I can make things move without touching them. I can make bad things happen to people who are mean to me. I can speak to snakes too. They find me, whisper things..." And here it is. (Link sent via Raza.)

Here we go again...Along with several media previews (note beat-up Harry on the Empire cover), a bunch of new stills from Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince hit the tubes. (That's Jim Broadbent as Slughorn on the left.)

Hulk smash? Or does Hulk whine for two hours about his condition like last time? The rather underwhelming teaser for Louis Leterrier's The Incredible Hulk is now online. (I had hopes for Norton, but it looks like, if anyone saves this film from summer mediocrity, it'll be Tim Roth.) Meanwhile, Harry's seventh year at Hogwarts, Deathly Hallows, has been split into two films, both directed by Order's David Yates and coming out in 2010 and 2011 respectively. If it's at all like the book, I guess there was just too much camping in the English countryside to fit in one film.

"'Oh, my god,' Rowling, 42, concluded with a laugh, 'the fan fiction.'" So, as you probably heard, in a moment of retroactive characterization (a la Elisabeth Röhm on Law and Order), J.K. Rowling revealed that Albus Dumbledore is gay. Well, ok then. "A spokesman for gay rights group Stonewall added: 'It's great that JK has said this. It shows that there's no limit to what gay and lesbian people can do, even being a wizard headmaster.'" And if nothing else, the news should make the witchcraft yahoos that much more livid.

Speaking of Indy IV, Dr. Jones' new colleague, Jim Broadbent, is cast as professor and celeb hound Horace Slughorn for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. That works.

For those others who were looking for more information from the epilogue of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, J.K. Rowling offered her take on what happened to the surviving characters in a recent online chat. For example [spoilers], "Harry Potter...was named head of the Auror Department under the new wizarding government headed by his friend and ally, Kingsley Shacklebolt." (She also reveals the fate of Ginny, Ron, Hermione, George, and Luna.) Well, ok then...but why, exactly, wasn't this squeezed somewhere in those last few pages? I'd have taken this info over some of the interminable shenanigans in the English countryside.

Naturally, like most of the wizarding world, I spent Saturday deeply ensconced in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, J.K. Rowling's long-awaited final installment of the tale of the Boy Who Lived. And the verdict? Well, I enjoyed it, and I appreciate the degree of difficulty Rowling faced in closing this much-beloved tale. But, I'll go ahead and put a word in for the muggle-hearted: It was easily my least favorite in the series (Put another way, it was the first book in seven where I started flipping forward every so often to see how much I had left, and the first where I found myself thinking the movie would assuredly be better than the book.) For obvious reasons, the rest of the discussion will involve spoiler-vision, so click the space below to highlight (and don't click anything if you don't want to know the end) [Update: Spoiler-vision turned off, now that the book has been out for awhile]:

* First off, I very much agree with this Laura Miller Salon review: I thought the book sorely missed the presence and the rhythms of Hogwarts. I get that Harry, Ron, and Hermione might have to break out of their safety zone to prosecute the war on You-Know-Who, but in all honesty, I didn't find the wandering around the English countryside nearly as engaging as all the boarding school shenanigans that have marked the series in the past.

* The action scenes. I've complained as recently as my Order of the Phoenix film review that Rowling's action sequences tend to be kinda clunky. Well, as befitting the last book in a seven-tome saga, there's a lot of action in here, from escapes from the Ministry, Godric's Hollow, Luna Lovegood's house, and Gringotts to the final, climactic Battle of Hogwarts. And, most of it, in my humble opinion, didn't really jump off the page. In a way, Hallows felt more like a screenplay treatment than a book, and, as I said, I expect the inevitable movie will make more of these myriad escape and battle scenes.

* The "homages." Yes, all fantasy is derivative, often intentionally so. (As every fanboy and fangirl knows, Tolkien, Lewis, Lucas, and others all deliberately hearken back to collective myths in their writings and films.) Still, there was a lot in Deathly Hallows that felt lifted, from the very One-Ringish locket (As my sister wryly noted, it was "Share the load" all over again.") to Harry's Aslan-like sacrifice in the final battle, from the Sword in the Lake to Ma Weasley paraphrasing Ripley's most memorable catchphrase from Aliens. Each time, it was pretty distracting.

* The fifth element is love? Ok, it's been obvious it's going this way for awhile now, but I still found it rather irritating. But that assuredly speaks worse of me than it does the books. Let's move on.

* The deaths. As it turns out, my guesses about where this was all going turned out to be pretty on the money. (I've long been of the school that Snape was deep undercover, and -- while I always thought Harry would end up losing his magic when he lost his horcrux/scar -- my basic contention that he'd end up all grown up and outside the magical world of Hogwarts was somewhat substantiated by the epilogue.) But the deaths here...well, to be honest, they felt pretty arbitrary to me, as if Rowling wanted it both ways. None of the major characters (except Snape and Voldemort, both givens) ended up on the other side of the veil (even if Ron seemed a goner after leaving in a huff, and Hagrid's been a one-trick-pony for at least five books now.) But Rowling pretty remorselessly cuts a swath through her supporting characters, including offing Hedwig, Mad-Eye, Lupin, Tonks, Colin Creevy, some random Muggle Studies prof, and, most shockingly for most, I'd guess, Fred Weasley. In short, all of these deaths seemed to me the equivalent of Haldir kicking the bucket in Lord of the Rings...a way of bringing the high stakes of death into the equation without it actually affecting any of the major characters. (Ok, Fred may be a Theoden level loss, but it's a toss-up.) In short, the lack of major deaths, especially when compared to the catastrophic losses among the second tier, makes Hallows seem at once painless and bloodthirsty.

Not to miss the forest for the trees, I didn't hate Deathly Hallows, and would still, without a doubt, number the series as a whole as a masterful work of children's fantasy. (I'm not about to recant The Leaky Cauldron at this late date.) I do find myself wishing Harry's final year at Hogwarts had taken a somewhat different direction. but it'd have been hard in any case for the seventh book to live up to the mighty expectations before it (although I actually found David Chase's infamous Sopranos non-ending to be a more satisfying piece of pop culture closure.) Still, the surviving characters of Deathly Hallows -- and especially J.K. Rowling -- have more than earned a happy retirement. So, so long, y'all, and here's hoping future Gryffindors are up to snuff.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, director David Yates' take on the fifth installment of J.K. Rowling's (soon-to-be-completed!) series, is, I'm happy to report, a somber, suspenseful return to the increasingly dire matters at Hogwarts, and well in keeping with the higher standard set by Alfonso Cuaron and Mike Newell in the past two movies. While I think Newell's Goblet of Fire remains my favorite film outing thus far, this one is right up there in my estimation, and given how much less Yates had to work with, that's rather impressive. (For all its girth, Book V felt basically like a holding action to me -- the wider narrative arc didn't progress all that much from the end of Goblet to the end of Order, and the story suffered from a wham-bang action climax that didn't really work on paper (it comes off better on-screen.)) Indeed, Yates' Order not only captures my most prominent impressions of the book -- Harry's burgeoning teenage moodiness, the growing sense among the students of grim times ahead and important events already set in motion -- but also significantly streamlines and distills Rowling's most-sprawling tome into two-and-a-half hours of sleek, well-paced cinema. No mean feat of magic, that.

By the start of Order, Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes) is loose, Cedric Diggory is dead, and Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe), once more at the mercy of the Dursleys for the summer, is poised on the verge of adolescent rebellion. He hasn't heard a pip from friends Ron (Rupert Grint) and Hermione (Emma Watson) for months, nor has he heard any news of goings-on in the magical world. So it is with no small amount of surprise and consternation that Harry finds himself first attacked by Dementors one gloomy evening, then expelled from Hogwarts -- by authority of the Ministry of Magic -- for using his wand to defend himself. Brought back into the magical loop by these events, Harry discovers that many of his former allies, including godfather Sirius Black (Gary Oldman), have banded together to re-form the Order of the Phoenix in preparation for Lord Voldemort's next move. More troubling, it seems Minister of Magic Cornelius Fudge (Robert Hardy) is not only not inclined to believe Harry that You-Know-Who has returned, but also views Harry and his mentor Albus Dumbledore (Michael Gambon), as a political threat, and has turned the general public and popular press against them both. Finally, to further complicate Potter's prospects, Fudge dispatches one Dolores Umbridge (Imelda Staunton) to Hogwarts with a ministry mandate to stamp out both dark sarcasm and Defense against the Dark Arts in the classroom. Thus hemmed in, Harry, Ron, and Hermione find once more they need to take matters in their own hands, and begin to defiantly assemble what they call Dumbledore's Army, a student organization dedicated to preparing for the worst. But, all the while, Lord Voldemort is up to his own tricks...and what good is Dumbledore's Army if its young, bespectacled leader is already hopelessly compromised by his still-unexplained connection to the Dark Lord?

As the paragraph above attests, there're a lot of balls in the air this time around, but Yates, screenwriter Michael Goldenberg, & co. do a solid job of keeping everything moving without doing grievous harm to any of the many included subplots. (Several have been excised regardless, such as this year's Quidditch match. No real loss, imho.) And throughout, what Order of the Phoenix gets most right -- in fact, one could argue it's actually done better here than in the book -- is the feeling that things are simmering to a boil. Hermione, Ron, and especially Harry have grown from wide-eyed, trusting children to gawky, hormonal teenagers (and better actors, for that matter), seething with imminent rebellion against the powers-that-be, and their world has similarly gone from a colorful, fantastic, and ever-so-occasionally dangerous realm of magical delights to a gray, ominous land of hidden agendas, political propaganda, fallible adults, and fatal consequences. In the last movie, Harry's Hogwarts cohort were on the threshold of early adolescence, and had just begun to discover the tantalizing mysteries of the opposite sex. Here, slightly older, they come to another classic teenage rite-of-passage: finding that the world -- and, more often that not, the people in charge -- aren't all they're cracked up to be, and that they may even actually be out to get you.

Of course, Yates is helped out tremendously in bringing Order to life by his ever-expanding Dream Team of British thespians. Imelda Staunton, as the main new cast member, is note-perfect as Umbridge. A pink-festooned, unholy cross between the Church Lady and arguably the real You-Know-Who of Rowling's books, Margaret Thatcher, she's like something out of a Roger Waters fever dream (and continues the "The Tories are Coming!" subtext I noted in my review of the last movie.) Even with Staunton aside, tho', Order is packed to the brim with quality actors reprising their roles from the first four films -- Oldman, Hardy, Brendan Gleeson, Maggie Smith, Michael Gambon, Emma Thompson, Jason Isaacs, Robbie Coltrane, etc., and particularly Fiennes and Alan Rickman. They're all excellent, and frankly it's good fun just to see so many of them around again to help further flesh out the Potterverse. (Although, having seen Naked and The History Boys since Goblet, I'm slightly more concerned about Harry hanging around the likes of Remus Lupin (David Thewlis) and Vernon Dursley (Richard Griffiths)...what would the Umbridges of the world have to say about that?)

Alert the Ministry: The new trailer for David Yates' Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is now online, albeit not in the best format. Looks...ok, although I'd be surprised if it lives up to Newell's Goblet of Fire (or even Cuaron's Prisoner, since Order may have been my least favorite book in the series thus far.) Update: It's now available in Quicktime -- go here instead.

Her name is Yoshimi, she's got a black belt in karaoke...Two choice links via Webgoddess. I thought for sure this was a Slings and Arrows-type April Fool's joke at first, but no: The Flaming Lips' Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots is coming to Broadway. "There's the real world and then there's this fantastical world. This girl, the Yoshimi character, is dying of something. And these two guys are battling to come visit her in the hospital. And as one of the boyfriends envisions trying to save the girl, he enters this other dimension where Yoshimi is this Japanese warrior and the pink robots are an incarnation of her disease. It's almost like the disease has to win in order for her soul to survive. Or something like that." And, weirder still, it's apparently being written by Aaron Sorkin of The West Wing and Sports Night.

And, also via Kris, my old site The Leaky Cauldron has posted the cover art for the final Potter installment, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, which you can see at right. Clean, simple, I like it.

Year seven at Hogwarts gets its registration date: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows comes out July 21. Look for Berk and I in the midnight line.

Old news now, but it happened while on the track: Harry Potter's final chapter gets a title: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

Ready for another year at Hogwarts? The new teaser for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix which I mentioned on Friday is now online.

The new Fiennes-centric Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix teaser poster is now online. Look for new photos from the film here, for a very brief clip here, and for the teaser -- if, like me, you're not going to see Happy Feet -- on Monday. Update: Here it is.

WB releases several high-quality stills from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, including one of the eponymous Order and several of new headmaster Dolores Umbridge (Imelda Staunton). (And, since it's wartime at Hogwarts now, it looks like the late '70's haircuts of Goblet have gone by the wayside as well.) Update: More here.

As part of the sixth anniversary festivities for The Leaky Cauldron, the Harry Potter blog-turned-comprehensive-fansite I set up way back when, Melissa Anelli, Sue Upton, and John Noe -- current heads of the site team (now numbering 150 strong) -- interviewed me this week on their weekly Pottercast. Great job over there, y'all, and thanks for the chance to reminisce. :)

AICN posts some pics from the big licensing show in NYC, which includes some impressive looking bears from The Golden Compass, as well as posters for Spiderman 3, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (apparently, the '70's hair is out), Dreamworks' Kung Fu Panda, and (gulp) Fantastic Four and the Silver Surfer.

The cast for Order of the Phoenix is announced, with Helen McCrory as Bellatrix Lestrange, Natalia Tena as Nymphadora Tonks, Kathryn Hunter as Mrs. Figg, and newcomer Evanna Lynch as Luna Lovegood. (Previously announced were George Harris and Imelda Staunton.) I have no sense of any of these actors, but they all seem to look the part.

Joining Imelda Staunton for Year 5 at Hogwarts, veteran actor George Harris will play Kingsley Shacklebolt in the forthcoming Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (set to begin filming next month.) You may recognize him as Capt. Katanga in Raiders of the Lost Ark, or, more recently, as Morty in Layer Cake.

Happy New Year's Eve to everyone..I'm celebrating in San Diego with old college friends and likely won't update again until 2006. So, without further ado, here's the 2005 movie round-up. Overall, it's been a pretty solid year for cinema, and this is the first year in the past five where the #1 movie wasn't immediately obvious to me. But, still, choices had to be made, and so...

[Note: The #1 movie of 2005 changed in early 2006: See the Best of 2006 list for the update...]

1. Syriana: I know Stephen Gaghan's grim meditation on the global reach and ruthlessness of the Oil Trade rubbed some people the wrong way, but I found it a gripping piece of 21st century muckraking, in the venerable tradition of Ida Tarbell and Upton Sinclair. True, Christopher Plummer was a mite too sinister, but otherwise Syriana offered some of the most intriguing character arcs of the year, from morose CIA Field Agent George Clooney's ambivalent awakening to corporate lawyer Jeffrey Wright's courtship with compromise. In a year of well-made political films, among them Good Night, and Good Luck, Munich, Lord of War, and The Constant Gardener, Syriana was the pick of the litter.

2. Layer Cake: If X3 turns into the fiasco the fanboy nation is expecting with Brett Ratner at the helm, this expertly-crafted crime noir by Matthew Vaughn will cut that much deeper. Layer Cake not only outdid Guy Ritchie's brit-gangster oeuvre in wit and elegance and offered great supporting turns by Michael Gambon, Kenneth Cranham, and Colm Meaney, it proved that Daniel Craig had the requisite charisma for Bond and then some (and that Sienna Miller is no slouch in the charisma department either.)

3. Ballets Russes: Penguins and comedians, to the wings -- The lively survivors of the Ballets Russes are now on center stage. Like the best in dance itself, this captivating, transporting documentary was at once of the moment and timeless.

4. Good Night, and Good Luck: Conversely, anchored by David Strathairn's wry channeling of Edward R. Murrow, George Clooney's second film (and second appearance on the 2005 list) couldn't have been more timely. A historical film that in other hands might have come off as dry, preachy edutainment, Good Night, and Good Luck instead seemed as fresh and relevant as the evening news...well, that is, if the news still functioned properly.

5. Batman Begins: The Dark Knight has returned. Yes, the samurai-filled first act ran a bit long and the third-act train derailing needed more oomph. Still, WB and DC's reboot of the latter's second biggest franchise was the Caped Crusader movie we've all been waiting for. With help from an A-list supporting cast and a Gotham City thankfully devoid of Schumacherian statuary, Chris Nolan and Christian Bale brought both Batman and Bruce Wayne to life as never before, and a Killing Joke-ish Batman 2 is now on the top of my want-to-see list.

6. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire: As I said in my original review, I initally thought Cuaron's Azkhaban couldn't be topped. But give Mike Newell credit: Harry's foray into Voldemortish gloom and teenage angst was easily the most compelling Potter film so far. Extra points to Gryffindor for Brendan Gleeson's more-than-slightly-bent Mad-Eye Moody, and to Slytherin for Ralph Fiennes' serpentine cameo as He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.

7. King Kong: I had this film as high as #2 for awhile, and there are visual marvels therein that no other movie this year came close to offering, most notably Kong loose in Depression-Era New York City. But, there's no way around it -- even given all the B-movie thrills and great-ape-empathizing that PJ offers in the last 120 minutes, the first hour is close to terrible, which has to knock the gorilla down a few notches.

8. Capote: When it comes to amorality for artistry's sake, Jack Black's Carl Denham ain't got nothing on Philip Seymour Hoffman's Truman Capote. I think it'd be awhile before I want to watch this movie again, but, still, it was a dark, memorable trip into bleeding Kansas and the writerly id.

9. Sin City: One of the most faithful comic-to-film adaptations on celluloid also made for one of the more engaging and visually arresting cinematic trips this year. I don't know if the look and feel of Sin City can sustain a bona fide franchise, but this first outing was a surprisingly worthwhile film experience (with particular kudos for Mickey Rourke's Marv.)

10. Munich: I wrote about this one at length very recently, so I'll defer to the original review.

11. Brokeback Mountain: A beautifully shot and beautifully told love story, although admittedly Ang Lee's staid Brokeback at times feels like transparent Oscar bait.

12. Lord of War: Anchored by Nicholas Cage's wry voiceover, Andrew Niccol's sardonic expose of the arms trade was the funniest of this year's global message films (That is, if you like 'em served up cold.)

13. The Squid and the Whale: Speaking of which, The Squid and the Whale made ugly, embittered divorce about as funny as ever it's likely to get, thanks to Jeff Daniels' turn as the pretentious, haunted Bernard Berkman.

14. Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith: Thank the Force for small kindnesses: George Lucas put the Star Wars universe to bed with far and away his best outing of the prequels. The film flirts dangerously with the Dark Side, particularly in the "let's take a meeting" second act, but for the most part Sith felt -- finally -- like a return to that galaxy long ago and far, far away.

15. A History of Violence: I think David Cronenberg's most recent take on vigilantism and misplaced identity was slightly overrated by most critics -- When you get down to it, the film was pretty straightforward in its doling out of violent fates to those who most deserved them. Still, solid performances and Cronenberg's mordant humor still made for a far-better-than-average night at the movies.

16. Walk the Line: Despite the great performances by Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon, Walk the Line ultimately seemed too much of a by-the-numbers biopic to do the Man in Black full credit. But, definitely worth seeing.

17. In Good Company (2004): Paul Weitz's sweet folktale of synergy, downsizing, and corporate obsolescence was too charitable and good-natured to think ill of any of its characters, and I usually prefer more mordant fare. Nevertheless, the intelligently-written IGC turned out to be a quality piece of breezy pop filmmaking.

18. The Constant Gardener: Another very good film that I still thought was slightly overrated by the critics, Fernando Meirelles' sophomore outing skillfully masked its somewhat iffy script with lush cinematography and choice Soderberghian editing.

19. Primer (2004): A completely inscrutable sci-fi tone poem on the perils of time travel. Kevin and I saw it twice and still have very little clue as to what's going most of the time -- but I (we?) mean that in the best way possible.

20. The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe: The Chronic-what? Andrew Adamson's retelling of C.S. Lewis's most popular tome lagged in places, and the two older kids were outfitted with unwieldy character arcs that often stopped the film dead, but it still felt surprisingly faithful to the spirit of Narnia, Christianized lion and all.

Most Disappointing: The Fantastic Four, which I finally saw on the plane yesterday -- One of Marvel's A-List properties is given the straight-to-video treatment. From the Mr. Fantastic bathroom humor to the complete evisceration of Dr. Doom, this movie turned out just as uninspired and embarrassing as the trailers suggested. Runner-Up: The Brothers Grimm. Terry Gilliam's long-awaited return wasn't exactly a return-to-form. But, hey, at least he got a movie made, and Tideland is just around the corner.

Most Variable: Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: I still haven't figured out how I feel about this one. I liked it quite a bit upon first viewing, but it didn't hold up at all the second time around. Still, the casting feels right, and I'd be up for The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, provided they turn up the Ford-and-Zaphod shenanigans and turn down the forced Arthur-and-Trillian romance.

Worth a Rental: Constantine, Aliens of the Deep, Me and You and Everyone We Know, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Island, March of the Penguins, The Aristocrats,Tim Burton's Corpse Bride, Jarhead, Sarah Silverman: Jesus is Magic, The Ice Harvest, War of the Worlds

Ho-Hum: Inside Deep Throat, The Jacket, Million Dollar Baby (2004), The Ring 2, Kingdom of Heaven, Unleashed, Mr. & Mrs. Smith,
Aeon Flux

Best Actor: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Capote; Eric Bana, Munich; Heath Ledger, Brokeback Mountain; David Straitharn, Good Night, and Good Luck

Best Actress: Reese Witherspoon, Walk the Line; Naomi Watts, King Kong

Best Supporting Actor: Jeff Daniels, The Squid and the Whale; George Clooney, Syriana; Brendan Gleeson, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

Best Supporting Actress: Maria Bello, A History of Violence; Tilda Swinton, The Chronicles of Narnia

Unseen: The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Bee Season, Broken Flowers, Cache, Casanova, Cinderella Man, Crash, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, Grizzly Man, Gunner Palace, Head On, Hustle & Flow, Junebug, Match Point, The New World, Nine Lives, Pride and Prejudice, Serenity (although I watched all of Firefly last week), Shopgirl, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, Wedding Crashers

2006: Frankly, the line-up doesn't look too exciting at the moment. Nevertheless, 2006 will bring A Scanner Darkly, Casino Royale, The Da Vinci Code, Flags of our Fathers, The Good German, The Inside Man, Marie Antoinette, M:I III, Pirates of the Caribbean 2, Snakes on a Plane (!!), Southland Tales, Superman Returns, Tristam Shandy, V for Vendetta, and X3.