Harry Potter

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince: July 16th, 2005

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It’s official, folks: Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince will be released July 16th, 2005.

Retail price is \$29.99, but pre-ordering through Amazon currently gets you 40% off, just \$17.99! C’mon, click the links and send a penny or two my way, you know you want to! ;)

Mary Grand Pre will be illustrating the cover again, as she has for all prior books. It’s also apparently “a bit shorter” than Order of the Phoenix.

Year Six is on its way…

(via The Leaky Cauldron)

I think I saw a porno like that once

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Not quite as good as Troy in 15 Minutes, but very nearly so, and still damn funny: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban in 15 Minutes.

The Shrieking Shack

RON: Help! Help!

HARRY: We’re coming, Ron!

RON: Don’t help! Don’t help! It’s a trap!

HARRY: eye roll

BIG BLACK DOG: turns into Sirius Black

HERMIONE: If you want to kill Harry, you’ll have to kill us first!

HP FANS: OMGWTF THAT WAS RON’S LINE! YOU CHANGED THINGS FROM THE BOOK!

LOTR FANS: What are you, new?

And as it turns out, Cleo’s had such success with her ‘…in Fifteen Minutes’ series that there’s now a m15m LiveJournal community dedicated to them. Worth keeping an eye on!

(via Ryan)

iTunes: “Tide is Turning, The” by Company from the album The Wall Live in Berlin (1990, 7:21).

Part Three

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Through no real reason other than happenstance, this became a weekend of “Part Three”s — Scary Movie 3, American Wedding (the third American Pie movie), and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban were all part of the weekend entertainment.

Scary Movie 3

Actually, I have to admit, while I’m no huge fan of the series, this was easily my favorite of the three. The humor was a little less scatological in nature and tended more towards the purely absurd, the reason for which became all too clear when the end credits came up and I realized that the director was David Zucker, one third of the Zucker/Zucker/Abrams team responsible for the Airplane! series and Top Secret!, among many other spoof films.

American Wedding

Not as amusing as either of the prior two American Pie films, unfortunately. Too much of the film revolved around Stiffler, who works well as a secondary character, but doesn’t have enough to carry as much of the film as he was expected to here. The look of the film bugged me, too — I’m not sure how best to describe it other than to say that it looked like a beer commercial (high contrast, lots of hand-held camera work, many shots with a very shallow depth of focus). It had its moments, but wasn’t that great, either.

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Prairie and I caught this one Saturday afternoon at the 12:30 show, early enough in the day that we didn’t have to stand in line to get into the theater. Interestingly enough, while we generally have fairly similar tastes in films, I ended up liking this latest installment more than she did. It is very obvious throughout the film that there’s a different director this time around, and while I very much enjoyed the end result, Prairie wasn’t as impressed. After talking it over for a while after we got out, we think that it’s simply differences in the way we pictured the books as we read them — her mental images were more in line with how Chris Columbus directed the first two films, while I found Curanzo’s vision much more in line with how I’d “seen” things as I read the books.

This isn’t to say that she didn’t like it, of course, just that she didn’t like it quite as much as she did the first two. As for myself, I’ll quite happily join the many other people declaring HPatPoA to be the best of the three films so far.

On motivating your actors

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While filming the new Harry Potter film:

…during filming, when [director Alfonzo] Cuaron needed [Daniel] Radcliffe to convey the proper look of astonishment, he took his young charge aside and coached: “Pretend you’re seeing Cameron Diaz in a G-string.” (Cuaron: “It worked. I’ll let audiences guess what shot it is. I don’t want everyone thinking about Cameron Diaz in a G-string.”)

iTunes: “Dance or Die” by Dance or Die from the album German Mystic Sound Sampler Vol. II (1989, 4:05).

Trailers: Harry Potter, Peter Pan

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Quick notice of a couple trailers worth checking out (at least, in my world they’re worth checking out):

Sirius Black

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Askaban: On the insanely unlikely chance you don’t know, this is the third film in the Harry Potter series, adapted from the book of the same name. First impressions: Michael Gambon as Dumbledore seems to both look and sound right (a good thing, I was a little worried about the switch in actors). What’s up with Draco’s new hairstyle? I’m not sure if I like it or not. Gary Oldman looks great as Sirius Black. Our first glimpse of the Dementors, and they look nicely creepy. Overall, I’m looking forward to it — each sucessive book has been getting darker, and it appears that they’re not afraid to let the movies do the same.

Mermaid

Peter Pan: I’d not even heard of this one, until I found it linked from the Harry Potter fan site The Leaky Cauldron (Cpt. Hook is played by Jason Isaccs, who played Lucius Malfoy in HPatCoS). This one looks quite interesting — it appears that the people making it are aiming to do their best to capture J.M. Barrie’s book on film as closely as possible. Wendy isn’t “classically” cute, but I think she looks perfect — like a real girl. Isaacs looks like he’s having a blast as Cpt. Hook, and the mermaids look downright creepy! There are two trailers available on the website, I’d suggest grabbing the one listed as “Trailer #1” first — while the “New Trailer!” shows more of the story, the quality is much worse, and the first trailer gives a much better idea of the look of the film.

Hit the showers, Harry!

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From iChat tonight:

D: Oh, to find Harry in some real hot water

I’m up to page 500 in book five. Maybe there’s a cleansing wash at the end but by now we’ve had five volumes, almost 2500 pages, and more than two dozen references to Harry’s morning and bedtime routines with no shower, bath or even wash included.

Michael Hanscom: must’ve been a slow news day

D: LOL
D: funny, though

Michael Hanscom: yeah
Michael Hanscom: though i’m not sure what the reaction would be if she started including shower scenes in the Potter books

D: LOL

Michael Hanscom: “Harry woke up, stumbled naked into the Gryffendor community lavatory, and sleepily started soaping himself up.”
Michael Hanscom: “‘Do you really need that much lather down there, Harry?’ Hermione asked as she stepped into the shower and dropped her towel.”
Michael Hanscom: Somehow, I don’t think the parents would approve.

D: hahahaha

Of course, now I’m going to start showing up in searches for all sorts of disturbing Harry Potter slash fanfic. Joy.

Butt Kicking ;)

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Note: This entry was originally a comment in response to a comment left on this post, but I liked it enough to make it a full post.

Ok I’m asking to get my butt kicked…but its just a book. I took the time to see the first Harry Potter movie on DVD just last week and quite frankly I didn’t think it was anything special. I don’t know…I didn’t get the Beatles and I didn’t get Elvis and I don’t get Harry Potter ? All were good, but greatness? I think not.

Commencing butt kicking. ;)

I get the impression from what you said that your sole experience with Harry Potter so far is watching the first movie. If that’s truly the case, than I’m not too surprised that you “don’t get it.” However, to use that one movie (which, as you said, really isn’t anything special) to write off the entire Harry Potter phenomenon as “just a book” seems silly, at the least.

If nothing else, whether or not I had any interest in the series, I’d hardly dismiss a phenomenon which, in the age of Nintendo, the Internet, cell phones, MTV, .mp3s, and all the other electronic instant gratification toys that surround us daily, actually has kids reading. Not just reading, but reading willingly. Enjoying reading. Kids barely into their double digits are lining up to buy an 870-page book, not because it’s on a reading list, or because a teacher or a parent assigned it, but because they want to! Then, once they get their hands on it, they devour the book within days and, once done, turn back to the beginning and start reading all over again to catch any fine details they may have missed the first time.

Other authors have been catching some of the overflow of all of this, too. During the time between Harry Potter novels, kids who have suddenly discovered the joys of reading, of being able to pick up a book and disappear into another world that in many ways is far beyond anything that the ‘net or television or video games can offer them — because so much of it is created within their own imaginations — are returning to the bookstores, and picking up other books. It’s not just Harry Potter that has these kids excited now (though he’s the one that gets all the press). The printed page is suddenly both fashionble and, even above that, fun.

To look at that, to see the effects that these books have had upon todays children, and then — without even picking up the book itself — shrug your shoulders, turn away, and say that it’s “just a book” is to do a great disservice to J.K. Rowling, to the world she’s created, and, most importantly, to the literally millions of people that she and her imagination have inspired to put down the game controller or the mouse, to unplug their headphones, to turn off their cell phone — and to pick up a book.

You may not ever choose to read any of the Harry Potter novels, and that’s fine. I didn’t actually read any until this past year. I’d heard about them, of course, and seen the movie (and walked away from it with about the same impression you have, from the sound of it), but the books were perpetually in my “I should read those someday” list. Then, after talking about the books some with Prairie, she lent me her copies of the first four. I sat down, started reading — and practically didn’t come up for air until I was done with all four. I found out that, for once, something lived up to the hype — I really enjoyed the books!

Whether or not you decide to give them a shot, or — if you do — whether or not you like them, is, of course, entirely up to you. Just don’t go tossing the “just a book” line around until you’ve actually read the book(s) and can judge on more than just the film!