New Harry Potter film delayed by 6 months

The 6th installment of Harry Potter was supposed to release in cinemas on the 21st of November, but as you must have gathered by the title of this post - it's not going to :]
The film is ready and the producers are happy with it, but they think they'll earn more money if they release it on the 17th of July. This perhaps would not be so weird if they hadn't already released a trailer that says "November". Clearly this was a last minute decision.

So everyone is speculating what is the *real* reason for Warner Bros moving the dates.
There seems to be a hint of it in what Warner Bros have said:
Like every other studio, we are still feeling the repercussions of the writers strike, which impacted the readiness of scripts for other films — changing the competitive landscape for 2009 and offering new windows of opportunity that we wanted to take advantage of
In other words, because of the writer's strike they have no big hit to put up during the summer (the time of biggest box office earnings), so they decided to make Harry Potter a summer release.

Some are reading even more into this... The next Terminator with Christian Bale was supposed to release May/June. Does this mean Warner Bros think it will be a flop?

Another thought I had is that now that Daniel Radcliffe is doing Equus again (this time on Broadway), he might have had less time to do promotion for the film in autumn. With the first films the promotion for Harry Potter was focused on the whole trio and on quite a bit of the supporting cast too, but more recently Daniel Radcliffe has been doing the majority of it (I think very well - as you know I'm a fan of Daniel Radcliffe doing promotion on talk shows etc. ;-P), so I wonder if Warner Bros freaked out a bit with that too. There's less talk about Harry Potter now that the books have come to an end, so they may feel they need the promotion to be very strong.

Finally, I thought I'd share a silly clip of Harry Potter fan reactions to the date move ;)

J. K. Rowling interviewed by PotterCast

PotterCast is the leading Harry Potter podcast. They got to interview J. K. Rowling in December and it's a really terrific interview :) It's very much an interview done by fans and for fans, so it has a completely different feel then what you normally see (a lot funnier and the questions are a lot more detailed).
If you're a Harry Potter fan yourself and you've read book 7 then I urge you to check it out! :)

2007 MEETS 2008 | PART 2: 2008 in Polish cinemas

This is a list of films that I'm excited about, ordered by the Polish release date (the dates may of course still change). You can treat it as an open invitation to see any of these films in the cinema with me ;)

18th January, 2008 Lust, Caution



Why I'm excited?
It's Ang Lee's first film after Brokeback Mountain, so I guess I would have always been curious about it (like a lot of the cinema going world I think). But the controversy surrounding it has made it even more of a must see for me. It received an NC-17 certificate in the US which is very rare - especially for such a mainstream director. And Ang Lee isn't known for sexually explicit films.
The Chinese angle is also very interesting for me - it's a China-USA co-production and I guess somehow just the idea that a Chinese production company would be doing a film that is that explicit has an interest factor in it for me (even if the film was cut significantly for Chinese audiences).
Surprisingly enough there is also a Bollywood angle to the film since Anupam Kher has a small part in it (his face will probably be familiar to you if you've watched a few Indian films).
Finally, this is the film that won the main prize at the Venice film festival in September and of all the big film festivals and award ceremonies Venice is probably the one I trust the most.

Previous mentions on my blog

• The MPAA and the BBFC - how the US and UK deal with sex and violence in films

15th February, 2008 The Kite Runner



Why I'm excited?
Well, I'm not expecting it to be the best of films (even though AFAIK the reviews in the US have been good), but somehow I'm just getting a kick out of Hollywood making a film that is so heavily based in Afghanistan, but at the same time doesn't seem to be particularly political (I may be wrong about this, but that's my impression thus far).
The story itself sounds rather interesting (I'm just hoping it won't be told as sentimentally as it's treated on the trailer). It's about two boys who are good friends. The turning point is when one of the boys gets abused and raped and the other just lets it happen. And then the rest of the film is largely about the guilt of allowing that. Apparently, a lot of people wanted the director to take out the rape scene (leaving in just the violence). But he said it was necessary because you had to feel how terrible the deed was for the attempts at redemption to follow naturally. I guess that comment got me even more curious.

Previous mentions on my blog
None

22nd February, 2008 Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street



Why I'm excited?
Do I even have to explain this one? lol

Previous mentions on my blog

• Initial promotion for Tim Burton's "Sweeney Todd"
• Sweeney Todd trailer - yay!
• Can Johnny Depp sing?
• Second Sweeney Todd trailer
• Sweeney Todd promotion in full throb

? March, 2008 Dhoom 2



Why I'm excited?
Bollywood + Hrithik Roshan + Abhishek Bachchan + a trailer like that = fun ;)

Previous mentions on my blog

• Dhoom 2

13th June, 2008 The Happening

No trailer available yet.

Why I'm excited?
For a reaaaaally dumb reason - it's the first time that an Indian producer (UTV) is co-producing what is essentially a Hollywood film.
That said, it's directed by M. Night Shyamalan, so there's hope that in ecological thriller terms it won't be so bad ;)

Previous mentions on my blog

• Bollywood and Hollywood together - it's happening!

? September or October, 2008 Jhoom Barabar Jhoom



Why I'm excited?
Because more Bollywood in Polish cinemas is always a good thing and when it involves Abhishek Bachchan then it's even better ;)

Previous mentions on my blog
None


28th November, 2008 Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

No trailer available yet.

Why I'm excited?
Because I'm amongst the Harry Potter fans who think the films are getting better and better ;) Plus there's a few scenes in this one that I soooo want to see on screen *dreamy eyes*

Previous mentions on my blog
None

Some time during 2008? I'm not there
So far there's no release date for Poland, but the film sounds big enough to have gotten a distributor, so I expect we will be seeing it at some point during 2008 (the world premiere was in September 2007).



Why I'm excited?
Because Cate Blanchett, Ben Whishaw, Christian Bale, Richard Gere, Heath Ledger and a little boy I don't know called Marcus Carl Franklin are all playing the same person and according to the buzz the film actually works lol All of these are terrific actors, so it should be quite something.

Previous mentions on my blog
None

late in 2008? Om Shanti Om
2008 is probably wishful thinking on my part as no Polish distributor has bought the rights as of yet, but hey - a year after its initial release is not exactly soon ;-P I'm pretty sure *somebody* will pick up the rights as Om Shanti Om is on its way to become the highest grosser in Indian cinema history.



Why I'm excited?
Shahrukh Khan is quite enough for me to be excited about any film ;)

Previous mentions on my blog

• "Om Shanti Om" - Shahrukh's next release
• Tom Cruise film loses out to two Bollywood films i...
• Another Shahrukh interview (OSO promotion)

Late in 2008? Brüno: Delicious Journeys Through America for the Purpose of Making Heterosexual Males Visibly Uncomfortable in the Presence of a Gay Foreigner in a Mesh T-Shirt

No trailer available yet.

Why I'm excited?
This is Sacha Baron Cohen's next and I like him, so I guess a project with a title like that has to get some curiosity from me ;)

Previous mentions on my blog
None

It's official - Dumbledore is gay!

Yep, it's true! J.K. Rowling was asked about Dumbledore's love life in New York and now the news is out! :)

Order of the Phoenix publicity in full throb

The new Harry Potter film has now released and the publicity for it is going on in full throb, which means there's loads of great interviews with the Trio (and Daniel Radcliffe in particular) floating around.

Here's a long interview with Daniel Radcliffe from Entertainment Weekly. He talks a lot about Equus in it. My favourite bit from it is:

The publicity photos for the play were extremely provocative, and spread all over the Internet as soon as they were released. What was it like shooting them?
I remember being a little bit hyper that day. At that point, we'd just done the nude scene in rehearsals [for the first time]. And I was basically wanting to get my kit off as much as I possibly could, to try and get used to the idea, and in front of as many strangers as I could. I'd be like, ''Ready now? Is this where I take them off?'' And they'd be like, ''Dan! Hold back! Wait! Just give us 10 minutes, please!''


Daniel Radcliffe on Regis and Kelly:


Daniel Radcliffe on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno:


Daniel Radcliffe on the Late Night with Conan O'Brien (part one):


And here's part two:


Here's the whole Trio on Unscripted. It's a little stiff at the beginning, but gets hilarious by the end :D


And this is a bit of Emma Watson doing publicity on Extra:


And here's a longer interview on the David Letterman show. I was actually shocked at how patronizing Letterman was at the beginning especially. But maybe I'm oversensitive or something. She handled it well at any rate :)


And finally, this is Rupert Grint on the Craig Ferguson show:


Post edited to add another article from Entertainment Weekly. It talks a bit about some on set stuff, for example:
A few hours later, Oldman has nailed his scene, decompressed, and begun bantering naughtily with his castmates. ''Have you noticed,'' he asks Isaacs, ''how long my wand is?'' ''Yes,'' Isaacs volleys back, ''it expands in the warm, doesn't it?'' Radcliffe listens and grins broadly. He asks Oldman for advice on a tough role he's signed on for in Equus, a London revival of Peter Shaffer's 1973 play about a troubled stable boy, for which Radcliffe will appear naked eight times a week. ''You'll have to shave,'' Oldman tells him. Radcliffe's wide eyes open even wider: ''What — down there?'' Oldman nods, eyes closing. ''Especially down there.''

J. K. Rowling on the Jonathan Ross show

You can download the interview here. It's fun :D

More Order of the Phoenix promotion

I'm putting it up because whenever Daniel Radcliffe talks about nudity or kissing I giggle (sad, I know).

Here's a news clip from the first press junket which I think was in the UK:


And here's the Japanese press conference (the world premiere was in Japan this year):

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix clips

11 scenes from the new Harry Potter film as well as some cast interviews and backstage clips have been released here.

Some of the best in my opinion are:

• "I see them too"
  It's the first proper glimpse we've had of Luna. It's just 2-3 lines, but she's perfect! (and very funny ;) )
  
• "How long have you worked here?"
  Umbridge is probably also going to be a lot of fun ;) I so love that Snape is like twice taller than her on that clip ;)
  
• "I will attempt to penetrate your mind"
  Occlumency lessons were something I've been really looking forward to seeing and while I'm not sure I entirely like it (and am fully anticipating to hate the worst memory scene), at least the intensity of the scene hasn't fallen below my expectations.
  
• "Hand me the prophecy"
  Now this is something for which my expectations were rather low (probably because I'm not a big fan of the climax of book 5), so I'm positively surprised!

P.S. (edited June 30th) You can also access those clips here

Order of the Phoenix set report

The Harry Potter Lexicon is one of the most amazing Harry Potter sites on-line. It's a total encyclopedia of everything to do with the world in the books, compiled from a huge range of sources. It is so good that J.K.Rowling admits to using it when she needs to check on some small fact somewhere.
Anyway, they've put up the first part of a report from the set of the new film and since it's in their own detailish style I found it a great read :)
Here's a small, random quote which apart from being amusing also relates to a conversation I once had with one of you about the appropriateness of fan fiction about real people:
interviewing Jason Isaacs wearing leather head to toe (Jason, not me) and discovering that he reads fan fiction about himself and gets a huge kick out of the more far-out stuff
I really hope we're going to get the whole interview once the film is out lol

Yet another new Harry Potter trailer

Warner Bros have just released another trailer. This one's for the US market I think (the other one was the international one):

The beginning bit is the same as in the international trailer, but there are changes later through the trailer, but IMO the changes are bad rather than good... I mean it's even more action packed and even more pompous :-/ Of course one wants some action, but in the end what I'm excited about are the characters...

Second Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix Trailer

I've left it a bit long between posts again and as usual when I leave it long, my posts are short ;-P (incidently, I'm still much better than Ziggy who has just started updating his blog for the first time in about 18 months ;)).

Anyway, the next Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix trailer is out, wheee! :D Check it out if you want to:

There's a lot about it that I like, but I hate the music. It's such a typical high drama, high action soundtrack and I think it kills a lot of the details (if you concentrate on trying to get the soundtrack out of your head you can actually see a little bit of the political aspect that the director, David Yates, has talked about). I'm also a bit worried about how overloaded with special effects both these trailers have been. I hope the whole film will not be like this.
My favourite part of the trailer is Umbridge's laugh (in fact I just generally love the way Umbridge has been portrayed full stop ;) ).
What about your thoughts? :)

Personality Types

Unsurprisingly, psychologists have tried to work out ways of categorizing people into personality types. The most popular method as far as I know is the Myers-Briggs type indicator. This method is based on whether people are:

• Introvert or Extravert
  
• Sensing or iNtuition
  
• Thinking or Feeling
  
• Judging or Perceiving

You can read up more about these factors on wikipedia. By using them people can be divided into 16 different personality types. You can read more about the types here or here.

Because I think it's fun, here are a couple of personality tests *grin*
The one which is definitely the most fun is a Harry Potter test ;) It assigns you to a personality type, but also to a character in the Harry Potter series which belongs to that particular personality type. This might seem like a strange thing to do, but you'll find psychologists actually write entire works about personality types in literature. In fact I rather think it's probably much easier to assign a fictional character to a personality type than it is a real person.
You can check out all the possible personalities with Harry Potter characters assigned to them here.

You can also check out the Jung Typology Test and a a test which is supposed to be for computer programmers but I think you'll be able to do it anyway :) (the cool thing about these two is that they tell you how many of your answers pointed towards which traits).

The other Myers-Briggs personality test I found is the BBC one. It uses slightly different terms, but it's basically the same thing. It's "planner or spontaneous" instead of "judging or perceiving", "heads or hearts" instead of "thinking or feeling", "facts or ideas" instead of "sensing or intuition".

Finally if you want a totally different kind of test, then check out this Big Five Personality Traits Test. This is based on a different sort of idea - rather than assign people to a personality type, they are evaluated on 5 different traits:

• Openness to Experience
  
• Conscientiousness
  
• Extraversion
  
• Agreeableness
  
• Neuroticism

By the way, according to wikipedia the Myers-Briggs tests have a very low reliability rate, about 50% of people get different results upon retaking it lol
But despite that I'm rather curious what you got on those tests - maybe you could post in the comments? :)
I'm also curious if you think my results suit me ;)

On the Big 5 test I got three traits average, Extraversion low and Openness high. My exact results are here if you want to see them (though I actually think it's the least interesting of the tests ;-P).

On the Myers-Briggs tests I mostly got INTJ (which is Snape ;) ), though I also once got INFJ (Dumbledore) on the HP test and ISTJ (Hermione) on the BBC test. On both of these though when I changed some answers that I thought I could have answered in more than one way I came up as INTJ. I think the ISTJ description totally doesn't suit me though ;-P ISTJ's are supposed to be very orderly with the way they put things, excellent with time management and very systematical - which I think are not really traits that many people would associate with me ;) On the other hand a personality that I didn't get, but I think some could argue for me is INTP (Voldemort). I think I'm probably an INTJ though, which is a bit interesting in that it's apparently extremely uncommon (0.8% in the USA) amongst women ;-P

In terms of numbers this is what I got on the programmer's test:
E=4 Extraversion
I=7 Introversion
S=2 Sensing
N=18 iNtuition
T=11 Thinking
F=8 Feeling
J=16 Judging
P=3 Perceiving

And this on the Jung test:
Strength of the preferences %
89% Introverted
88% Intuitive
38% Thinking
33% Judging

On a random note, I think the part of this FAQ about INTJs in which they tell you how to deal with INTJs is hilarious ;)

The cover art for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is out!

The Harry Potter books must be the only books ever which have people rampantly discussing their cover art and page count every time a new one is released ;) Here is the cover art for the seventh book. The page count for the British edition is 608 pages and 784 for the American edition (the text is the same, just that the American one has illustrations and I think the size of the print is bigger or something).

Here is Arthur Levine (the American editor) talking about the American artwork.

The seventh book will set a record with 12 mln first print copies in the US (the previous record holder was the sixth Harry Potter book with 10.8mln ;-P).

New Order of the Phoenix photos

You can see the pics here. I really love almost all the pics they've released so far - there's moments when I think I'll like the pics better than the film ;-P
These new pictures first appeared in this article which I think is a fun read :)

Slightly old news, but the test screenings for the film have already taken place. You'll find some reviews here.

Daniel Radcliffe on the Jonathan Ross show once again

Daniel Radcliffe has given a new interview on the Jonathan Ross show (the one from last year which was just as hilarious has been taken off youtube, but you can still access it - unfortunately in poor quality - here). The new interview is about Equus and the fifth Harry Potter film and IMO it's the dirtiest interview Dan has given yet ;) (although with a presenter like that it would be difficult not to ;) ).
Just on a side note (cause I keep rambling on about things like this), I think it's interesting that people are commenting that in the US a 17 year old (or any sort of big star really) would not be getting those sorts of questions (they're not saying it's bad, just pointing out that it wouldn't happen in the US). But I guess the same would be true for Poland. I'm wondering - is this specific to the UK or is it the US and Poland that are unusual?
Anyway, the interview is here (again it was on youtube and I originally intended to embed it, but it's been taken off).

Pornography, sexual content and obscenity

According to this and this (both articles in Polish unfortunately!) Poland might be facing a full ban on pornography in the near future. The new legislation that some politicians want to bring in (perhaps they'll be in the minority, we shall see!) will make it possible for someone to get a prison sentence not just for distribution but even for possession of any kind of pornography.
No definition of what constitutes pornography is given in this proposal, which sort of brings me to what I want to discuss (other than how stupid our current government is I mean ;-P). I've always felt that the limit of what's ok and what's not ok as far as sexual content goes is a fascinating discussion topic. Of course it's largely about taste and I don't think I'm going to come up with any reasonable conclusions, but if you have any thoughts I'd love to hear them :)

Not so long ago in India, there was a legal complaint against the kissing scene between Hrithik Roshan and Aishwarya Rai in Dhoom 2 (imdb page, trailer on youtube). A quote from IndiaGlitz reads:
According to the complainant, the women felt offended after watching the scene and it promoted vulgarity in society, especially among the youth.
Now for anyone who read the Polish articles on the pornography ban you might have noticed that those are almost the exact reasons for which some of PiS want a full pornography ban in Poland. In case you're wondering, here's the scene which we're talking about (the actual kissing happens late in the clip and sorry for the lack of subtitles but didn't find a clip with them):

It's not even as if there's no kissing in commercial Indian cinema, so it's hard to say why this particular kiss was so controversial. In the end, the kiss was cut.

But even a Western perspective of what's ok and what's not may sound just as ridiculous at times. Having been rambling about Equus on this blog I'm going to link to a Guardian article which uses Equus as a starting point to write about the history of nudity in British theatre. Apparently 40 years ago only female nudes were ok in the theatre and only if they didn't move. If they moved they were automatically considered obscene.
Not that people in the West don't have (what I would call) weird ideas about nudity even now. If you check out some discussions about Equus on-line, a lot of people (many of whom seem to be American) think that Daniel Radcliffe appearing nude on stage is enough to constitute child pornography because he's not yet 18 (he will be in about 6 months by the way). In accordance with US laws this might actually be true, I'm not sure, but I still feel it's a bit weird...

Of course so far I've been writing about stuff which nowadays only a small minority of people in the West would call obscene or pornographic (if at all that is - I'd be shocked if someone considerd the Hrithik-Ash kiss as such!). When we think pornography we generally think about stuff which is more explicit - usually photos or films which show people really having sex rather than just pretending. But there are films which would confuse us even there because they show *real* intercourse and yet they probably wouldn't be of interest to someone who is looking for pornography. One such film is definitely Lars von Trier's The Idiots (imdb page, trailer on youtube), another (although I haven't actually seen it) is Michael Winterbottom's 9 songs (imdb page, trailer on youtube). Both of these were shown at art cinema festivals and entered normal distribution in many countries.
And it's not just with films. If you ever check out some sites which specialize in fetish photography you'll find that most of the photographs are very artistic (sometimes - especially when we're talking about the violent stuff - very unsettling, but still artistic). I'm not sure what it is specifically about the fetish community but they really take photos which are way more than something that's just supposed to turn people on (in fact I've not seen many fetish pics which show people "in the act"). And yet when people hear "fetish" we usually think "obscene". Check out Incubus Choice if you want to see some stuff (though I am warning you - if you click on the link you are straying into territory that maaaany would consider porn, not that I think that should scare you but I'm saying it all the same).

Ok, so I've gotten from kissing scenes to real intercourse and photography portraying naked people tied up. Surely there should be a limit somewhere, right?
Lets look at the law then - I found this article very interesting and useful for this. Law is obviously different in different countries. But what I think is true pretty much everywhere is that it is illegal to supply pornography to people below a certain age (usually 18 or 16 though in Poland surprisingly enough it's 15 at the moment - however most Polish shops dealing with any sort of porn would not sell it to anyone below 18). It is also illegal to force the viewing of pornography on anyone (hey, I warned you about that Incubus site so I've done nothing illegal! ;-P ). The other legislations differ. Usually depicting bestiality is illegal (though I don't think that is true in the Netherlands - I think it is ok there as long as the animal is not harmed in any way). And of course there's child pornography which also has different restrictions and definitions in different countries. Mostly nobody below the age of 18 should be depicted although sometimes it is 16. Shockingly enough until 1999 Japan was extremely liberal about child pornography:
Prior to 1999, the only Japanese statute prohibiting actual child pornography was very limited in its reach, applying only to children under 13 who filed complaints within six months of an incident. A general criminal obscenity law protected minors over 13, but it also specified that the material must depict sexual organs to be considered illegal. Consequently, pornographic materials in Japan often resorted to showing other sexually oriented depictions of children, including abuse or torture, to avoid running afoul of the law.
Most countries also have laws against possession of child pornography (reading through the imdb boards, I'm not sure if this is true but apparently in the US anybody with nude pics of Daniel Radcliffe from Equus on their computer could theoretically be arrested for child pornography - not that there are many non-photoshoped pics of him floating around but I think even those are not legal under US law).
Many countries have laws which seperate child pornography into "virtual" and "actual" penalizing the virtual kind just as much. Virtual pornography is defined as depictions in which adult models are made up to look like children, and artistic or computer simulations of children involved in sexual activity. Now while I can see the logic of this I at the same time can't help but wonder if some of the stuff I've read or seen wouldn't be considered child pornography of the virtual kind. I mean particularly when I think about Harry Potter fan fiction and fan art... there's a lot of teacher-student relationships portrayed in those. To give you some examples, here's fan art showing Snape with Draco, Snape with Harry and another of Snape and Harry. I can see how for some people this might be considered totally sick, but is it harmful?
There have been (more about this in the long article I linked to) attempts at trying to find a link between watching porn and comitting sexual offences, but generally it seems the results depended on who tried to find this out (conservatives found a correlation and liberals did not).

I think I've finally come to the end of this post, but I don't really have a conclusion... I do believe people should be left with a choice as long as it doesn't harm anyone, but when it comes to "mental harm" it's very difficult to establish what is harmful and what is not (other than making somebody watch porn when they don't want to). Obviously if pornography causes sexual offences then something should be done about it (though I'm not sure a total ban would work), but we don't even know if it does (I've even heard claims that it actually makes the amount of sexual offences drop! but unfortunately don't have a link for this). Also I think even describing what pornography is is problematic. I'm not saying that any sort of porn is ok. There is definitely a lot of things happening in the porn industry which are not right - there are many reports of children and women being forced into starring in porn films (and in the case of children even if they did this willingly there would be reasons to say this is wrong).
On a final note, I think it's interesting that porn is apparently a huge economy booster and a pioneer in technology. The BBC article even says that the switch from Beta to VHS happened because of the porn industry.

More on Equus

Since I've had lots of fun posting about the Harry Potter nude story, I thought I'd follow it up ;-P

The play opened in London at the end of February and so far all the reviews I've seen have been good. Pretty much everyone who's seen the play says that by the time he takes off his clothes nobody cares because that's really not the point ;) Even those who dislike Peter Shaffer's plays or Daniel Radcliffe's acting in Harry Potter seem to be giving rather good reviews.

Here's an interview with Daniel Radcliffe and Richard Griffiths (who plays Uncle Vernon in the Harry Potter series and Dysart in Equus) after one of the shows:

Harry Potter nude and some even more exciting Potter news

I keep putting off writing anything because I've not written properly for such a long time and I feel I should write a long, clever post about something. The problem is I'm really not feeling clever or up to writing a long post ;-P
So I'll just be boring and write more of the usual. It's not that I don't have anything to write about - on the contrary, you wouldn't believe how many drafts I have on my blog (I just checked - the number is 80 drafts versus 43 published posts :D), but a lot of it seems just too much effort to write about just now ;-P
Therefore lets continue the topic of nudity (apparently it's the main theme of my blog since January 15th).

Harry Potter himself is appearing nude in a play in London and if you don't believe me I'm sure this article will convince you.
You can see some publicity pics for the play on the play's official site. And if like me you derive a certain amusement out of seeing people offended and acting as if it really is Harry Potter appearing nude rather than Daniel Radcliffe, then I recommend the imdb boards for Daniel Radcliffe. I particularly enjoy the comments in which certain Americans claim this is child pornography because according to American law Dan is not of legal age (no matter how many times they're told that under UK law he is, they still don't change their tone lol). But I think the people who think he's going to have real sex or masturbate on stage are even funnier (the arguments that there are no such scenes in the play don't seem to be getting to them ;) ).
On a more serious note, I do love the play. At least on paper it made a huge impression on me. It's the story of a boy who blinds six horses with a metal pick and gets sent to a mental institution. He is treated by a psychiatrist who has started doubting the point of his job. I really love the way the relationship between them is written out. I'm very excited about seeing it on stage (which I will in late April, wheee!).

But lets get to some more exciting and even more frontline Harry Potter news ;-P There is finally a release date for book7 "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows!!! :D Of course annoyingly it has to be on the 21st of July which is during the film festival in Wroclaw that I want to attend ;-P I'll probably try to force myself to wait until the festival finishes about a week later cause I want to be able to sit down and read it in one go (book 6 took me about 11,5h non-stop reading when it came out ;-P).
So far my favourite news tidbit about book7 coming out is enlikening two characters in the series dieing off to Take That splitting up in 1996 (it appeared in this article). Here's the relevant quote:
British book retailer Waterstone's is hoping to set up a helpline for distressed fans of the popular
Harry Potter series because two characters will be killed off in the final instalment, The Daily Telegraph reported.

"This could be a similar moment to when (pop band) Take That split up -- there could be a lot of upset teenagers out there," said Debbie Williams, a buyer for the book chain.

"We are looking to set up a helpline for them."

(for those of you who don't know - when Take That split up they set up a helpline because they were worried girls might get suicidal!)
But actually everything surrounding the release is absolutely amazing. It has shattered all pre-sale records and even before J.K.Rowling had finished writing the book, the bookies were already taking bets for who would kill Harry. Of course we don't even know if Harry will die! (personally I think he won't ;-P)


Very often when I say I don't feel up to writing anything long I end up doing what I say I won't ;-P (but when I say I'm not feeling up to writing anything clever I do mean it ;-P)
On a final off-topic note - Surya Bonaly chickened out, she was not nude at all.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix trailer and more

So because the new Harry Potter film is soooo close to coming out (only 7 months more to wait! ;-P), the whole promotional campaign has started for good. It's no longer random photos and interviews from the sets, the first official teaser trailer is out:

I'm actually rather disapointed with it - I much preferred the stills that were released. The trailer is all action and high tension (the music is so over the top!), only Snape in the Occlumency scene gets me excited. I guess I have unrealistic expectations - I'd like it to be an art house film or something of the sort ;) (Cuaron wasn't that far from doing that with film 3 and there's more and more rumours that he might be back for film 6, so maybe there's still hope ;-P)
Anyway, I found a nice fan made trailer on youtube. It's just a slideshow of some of the stills that were released (but since I liked the stills that suits me ;-P) and it's set to the soundtrack of Requiem for a Dream:

There are some recent stills which weren't included in that fan made trailer and there's a few which I'm again excited about (kind of depressing that I keep liking the stills, but not the video ;-P). Here's Harry with his geeky Ministry hearing appearance (there've been similar stills around but this one I think is particularly nice ;-P) and then there's two pics which people are very excited about - Harry's hand after his detentions with Umbridge (pic1 and pic2). Of course what's disapointing is that in the books the line that Umbridge has Harry ingrain into his hand is "I must not tell lies" which I think is a much better line than "I will not break rules". Of course the book is so huge that they've definitely had to cut things out of it - so perhaps Harry's outburst in Umbridge's class was cut and that's why they had to change the line. I hope it's that, otherwise I think it's a horrible change ;-P
At least the visual side of the film should be very good and the person largely responsible for it is in fact Sławomir Idziak, so there's a nice Polish accent there ;)

But back to the official trailer - book 5 is dark and intense, so in a sense it's good that they have gone that way (the trailer certainly implies that it's going to be the darkest of the lot!), but on the other hand book 5 is probably one of the funniest of the series, so I really hope that comes across in the film as well (the trailer doesn't make me optimistic about that even if the photos implied it :-/). Anyway, just to show you how much darker this new Potter trailer look, check out the trailers for the previous four films.

1: Philosopher's Stone


2: Chamber of Secrets


3: Prisoner of Azkaban


4: Goblet of Fire


2nd trailer to 4:


While Goblet of Fire was the first of the lot to get a PG-13 certificate in the US rather than a PG as the rest had done, I think the trailer for Order of the Phoenix implies that the film could be darker even than that (that at least I'm happy about). But on the other hand I'm starting to wonder - is it still going to be marketed at children?

But back to video material of the new HP film - there's also a very short TRL preview available on-line (near the end Daniel Radcliffe talks about the kiss in a rather amusing way):


The best preview we've had so far though (even better than the trailer) is a preview that was shown on HBO:

One part that I'm absolutely loving is Imelda Staunton as Umbridge. She is just spot on! And it's not easy to balance an act like that, I mean it's a woman who is on the one hand supposed to be all sweet, dressing in pink all the time and talking to almost everybody as if they were 5 year olds, but at the same time being a really, really nasty cow who for example punishes students by making them cut lines like "I must not tell lies" in their own skin. And she's just brilliant - all this is coming across even in those very short clips :)
I'm sort of disapointed with the hightened drama of it all though. The interviews we've had so far have mostly been saying stuff like that David Yates has really tried to take it down, make it a bit subtler (which on the one hand I say yes to, but on the other hand I think it's damn difficult to do with this sort of material - the Harry Potter series is hardly subtle ;) It's the Bollywood of literature ;) ). Unfortunately - I just don't see it. Not in the previews we've had so far. I'm particularly disapointed with the clips of Sirius in this preview. Not only is he weighing his words in a way that makes them very over the top, but he is also out of character. Sirius is an energetic man with a short temper who acts fast and thinks later (or not even then sometimes) - that's what the books have made us to believe anyway. But the Sirius on the clip is a different Sirius :-/
Oh well - it seems like most of the film is going to be like that for me - it'll score on some points and disapoint on others :-/

Well, that's it for the moment. Just as a P.S. (because I don't think it's big enough to put in a seperate post and yet it's such a ridiculous piece of Harry Potter trivia that I think it's worth mentioning), here's the annual Forbes list of the richest fictional characters. Lucius Malfoy is on the list ;)

More Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix photos

This is a follow-up to one of my previous posts. Rather than pictures from the set, these are screen captures from the film.

You can see the Dursleys here and I think they are absolutely brilliant. It's a bit like what Cuaron started doing in film 3, but better - it's kind of like a nightmare version of a typical British middle class family, don't you think? (and so true to the books I think as well!)

This is Harry fighting the Dementors at the beginning of the book/film (the Dursleys photo I think is after this fight - that would explain why Dudley is that pale). What I love again is the detail - that sort of graffiti on a very grey, dirty wall is how I remember a lot of London when I was little (that was the late 80s, early 90s which is more or less when Harry Potter is set).

And here is Umbridge firing Trelawney and they really do have her spot on - the clothes, the expression, just great! :D