Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince to be released on 7 December

Warner Home Video has revealed that it will be conjuring up one of the year's biggest box office hits on DVD and Blu-ray in the UK on 7 December.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, the sixth of the boy wizard's big-screen adventures, will be arriving as a two-disc Special Edition DVD and a three-disc Blu-ray pack, the latter including a bonus DVD containing a Digital Copy of the film. Perhaps most exciting of all, though, is the confirmation that the hi-def release will also employ Warner's new-fangled Maximum Movie Mode, an interactive viewing experience already used to spectacular effect on the US Blu-ray release of Watchmen: Director's Cut.

Other extras shared across both the DVD and Blu-ray releases include Close-Up With The Cast of Harry Potter (29 minutes); J.K. Rowling: A Year In The Life documentary (50 minutes); One-Minute Drills (character info – seven minutes); What's On Your Mind (interviews – seven minutes); The Wizarding World of Harry Potter (a sneak peek at the Universal Orlando Resort theme park ride – 12 minutes); and eight additional scenes. Early indications lead us to believe that most (if not all) of the video extras are to be presented in hi-def on the Blu-ray release.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack

THERE are millions of people who think J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books are brilliant. Judging by the huge box-office returns of the sixth movie, there are obviously millions who think the Harry Potter movies are well worth watching. But do you know anyone who spends their days listening to the soundtracks of the Harry Potter movie franchise? I thought not.

Now that’s not to say that the soundtracks don’t contain some memorable themes. The first three movies were scored by meister soundtrack composer John Williams (the one who’d already given us Star Wars, Jaws, E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, Raiders of the Lost Ark and many other classic scores) and his successors Patrick Doyle and Nicholas Hooper have tried hard to live up to the man’s high standards.

However, as with most purely orchestral movie soundtracks the music will only really mean much to diehard fans who want to relive this particular aspect of the movie. I’m sad to say that two of the most memorable themes here are actually reworkings of Williams’ earlier pieces, Hedwig’s Theme and Quidditch Match.

Somewhat perversely, one of Hooper’s boldest compositions, the careering swing number Wizard Wheezes, was not actually featured in the movie, either!

Another highlight is the gentle, melancholic Harry & Hermione which features some lovely melodies played by the strings and harp, a mood that recurs on When Ginny Kissed Harry, while the vaguely Latin jazz rhythms of The Slug Party and the stately, sorrowful Dumbledore’s Farewell also register.

Still, this is 62 minutes of often incidental, almost totally instrumental orchestral music and it really is all too much for me to absorb at one go.

Action guinea pigs topple Potter at box-office

A trio of animated secret agent guinea pigs broke the spell of the new Harry Potter movie to take the top spot at the North American box office, according to studio estimates issued on Sunday.

G-Force, a Disney live action and computer-generated animation family feature, earned $32.1 million in the United States and Canada, pushing Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince down to second place with $30 million in its second weekend.

The sixth movie in the boy wizard franchise dropped 61 per cent from its huge opening last weekend — a fall-off that was in line with studio expectations — but is still on course for becoming the second biggest Potter movie so far, distributors Warner Bros said.

Internationally, Half-Blood Prince raked in $84.4 million in 64 countries over the weekend to take its worldwide total so far to $627.1 million.

Dan Fellman, president of domestic distribution at Warner Bros, said the earnings in North America and Canada had been hampered by the movie’s small presence so far in IMAX movie houses. IMAX roll-outs will expand in the coming week.

“Our IMAX support will pop in this week and it looks like the movie is headed north of $300 million (in North America) which will be the second biggest Harry Potter of all time on the domestic side,” Fellman said. The biggest movie was the first one, 2001’s Harry Potter And The Sorcerer’s Stone.

Delighted Disney executives said G-Force, which features cute talking guinea pigs as action heroes, played well to family audiences and that more than half the box office had come from 3D showings.

“We are very, very pleased with the results when you are competing with movies like Harry Potter and The Ugly Truth,”” said Marc Zoradi, president of Walt Disney Motion Pictures Group.

Paul Dergarabedian of Hollywood.com said that G-Force had benefited from a “great marketing campaign and a premise that had people scratching their heads while simultaneously grabbing the family.”

Romantic comedy The Ugly Truth, starring Katherine Heigl of TV medical show Grey’s Anatomy and British heart-throb Gerard Butler, brought in a solid $27 million to take third place — above expectations, distributor Sony Pictures said.

Rory Bruer, president of worldwide distribution for Sony Pictures, said the movie had cost just $38 million to make and had played particularly well to women over the age of 25.

“It all paid off. The chemistry between Heigl and Butler is tremendous,” Bruer said.

The weekend’s other strongest new showing was horror film Orphan which took fourth spot at the box office with $12.7 million.

The glut of new offerings pushed 20th Century Fox’s Ice Age: Dawn Of The Dinosaurs from second place to fifth. The animated movie has brought in $171.3 million domestically in four weeks.

Universal Pictures’ Bruno tumbled another 67 per cent in its third week of release with $2.7 million over the weekend, taking the total for British actor Sacha Baron Cohen’s outrageous gay spoof to a modest $56.5 million.

Universal is a unit of General Electric Co’s NBC Universal, and Fox is a unit of News Corp.
Reuters

J.K. Rowling lets go for the sake of a good movie

As Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince heads into another lucrative stretch expected to add mightily to its $421 million US take worldwide, the young cast reflect on their good fortune to have a creator who is film flexible and novel prolific.

That would be J.K. Rowling who wrote the series of Potter books which have sold more than 400 million copies and created a multi-billion dollar movie world of fantasy and adventure.

"She's always been very, very good at letting go of the films and realizing that they're totally separate entities from the books," says Daniel Radcliffe during a New York interview before The Half-Blood Prince opened July 15.

He's grown up playing Harry Potter, and had to mature with it as the Rowling novels, and subsequently the movies, became darker and more threatening. And more popular.

By the time The Deathly Hallows film versions of the book arrive, The Half- Blood Prince will be the billion dollar record setter.

Chances are the two separate Deathly Hallows pictures - set for theatres in November, 2010 and the other tentatively ready for July of 2011 - will out do The Half-Blood Prince.

Both novels set publishing records. The movies are expected to break box office records, too. The stories live in two different narrative worlds.

And that brings us back to Rowling's sensible approach.

"She's not been too precious about anything," suggests Radcliffe who points out screenwriter Steve Kloves and director David Yates had to undertake a massive story edit of The Half-Blood Prince to make a workable movie.

"She realizes that things have to be cut in order to make them viewable," he adds.

Radcliffe, (Emma) Watson and (Rupert) Grint look forward to the author's set visits as though they were a blessing, not a duty.

"It's a pleasure and a rare treat because I don't think she wants us to feel that she's come kind of prying," reports Radcliffe. "She's always been wonderful and is an incredibly gracious and lovely woman."

As they head toward the end of filming the Potter series by early next year, Watson says she'll miss reading the books as much as playing the character with her mates Radcliffe and Grint.

And Watson agrees that she was always impressed with progression of the novels and looked forward to the next one.

"I'm such a geeky Harry Potter fan, genuinely," Watson insists. "I know the books inside and out and have read each of them at least three times and could probably answer any question you come up with and any plot detail you might care to ask."

And for the record, Radcliffe adds this about Rowling: "It might be interesting to note that the only thing thus far, in six films, that has been onscreen which is not in the books that she said, 'I wish I thought of that' was a thing that Alfonso Cuaron had on the third Potter film." he says of The Prisoner of Azkaban.

And that was?

"To make the temperature drop when the Dementors came by so that you would see the water freeze over," he says. "That's the only thing that she's gone, 'Oh, God. I wish I thought of that.' "

Daniel Radcliffe amazed by stunning effects in new Harry Potter movie

Daniel Radcliffe is used to people saying that each film in the Harry Potter franchise is darker than the last, but with Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince he feels a lot more has been added to the mix.

“It’s very very funny along with all the romance,” he laughed: “Rupert Grint does a great Buster Keaton/Harold Lloyd impression half way through. The relationship between Harry and Ginny is very sweet and kind of tender whereas the relationship between Ron and Lavender is…more sort of energetic”.

Radcliffe had yet to see a finished cut of the movie but was impressed with what he had seen and was astonished at the work of the technicians who added the spectacular special effects. He said “You just think ‘That’s incredible, that’s what you were planning when you were standing around (the set) drinking coffee’.”

“The fact that at the very beginning they make it look like the Millennium Bridge is under attack. All that stuff is just fantastic.”

Even while enthusing about the latest instalment, Radcliffe was keen to stress how much the film sets up the thrilling conclusion to the story in the seventh and eight movies. “I think people will take away a great enthusiasm to come back and see the seventh,” he said: “We’re doing the seventh at the moment and it is relentless, non-stop between pitched battles and paranoia. It’s a pretty brutal film in some ways.”

The young actor has come a long way since being cast as the boy wizard at the age of 11. He feels he has grown into the role and is getting better with every film.

“I think the performances are getting better and better and I would like to think that whatever I have done in this one I can improve upon in the seventh.”

Radcliffe credited his work in the theatre as a factor in improving his skills, saying: “The fact that I did Equus on stage in London was a huge help to me. It just meant my focus, my stamina and my ability to get to more emotional places within myself was much greater than before.”

Interest remains high in 'Harry Potter' as sixth movie comes out

The magic is still there for Harry Potter fans.

"Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" opens in theaters on July 15, and Inland libraries have seen a spike in demand for the novel and the six other books in J.K. Rowling's series.

Mary Chartier, children's services librarian for the San Bernardino Public Library, said she is seeing teenagers going into the children's room to look for "Half-Blood Prince." She called it a testament to British author Rowling's skill as a storyteller.

"It's amazing that she's gotten kids and adults to read," Chartier said.

Chartier and other librarians contacted said that many of these people are repeat readers who want to refresh their memories before the movie comes out.

Bronwyn Macharelli, of Redlands' A.K. Smiley Public Library, said interest began about a month ago, following a pattern of almost every Potter movie that has come out.

The 672-page "Half-Blood Prince" came out in 2005, the sixth of seven novels published between 1998 and 2007.

The books and movies have been around long enough for Harry to become a constant in young people's shifting, high-tech world, along with iPhones, Facebook and file sharing.

The first book, "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone," was published in the United States on Sept. 1, 1998.

In the novel, Harry marks his 11th birthday. A youthful reader who shared Harry's birthday and picked it up back then would turn 22 on July 31.

That reader's existence would seem very low-tech and devoid of magic by today's standards. There were no skinny TVs hanging on walls, no iTunes, no YouTube, no BlackBerry, no Blu-Ray, and certainly no Twitter.

There was an Internet bubble but no housing bubble. The first "Harry Potter" movie premiered in November 2001 in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

The movies became part of the fan ritual, and "Half-Blood Prince" looked like it might be this summer's biggest blockbuster until "Transformers" put a big iron fist through its chances.

Because "Transformers" has a lock on the nation's IMAX screens, "Harry Potter" won't be seen in large format or 3-D until July 29. There are three exceptions: New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles.

The AMC Century City 15 will have "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: The IMAX 3D Experience" at 12:01 a.m. July 15. At press time, tickets were available for $12 at www.movietickets.com

The theater, at 10250 Santa Monica Blvd., is in a Westfield mall.

One Inland theater, however, will have something special. D-Box Technologies announced in a press release that the UltraStar Apple Valley 14 will have 22 seats equipped with motion simulation for "Half-Blood Prince." The multiplex is at 22311 Bear Valley Road.

The Mann Chinese Six Theatre in Hollywood is also equipped for D-Box motion systems.

What audiences will see in "Half-Blood Prince" has been described as "darker" than the earlier movies. But the same was said about "Harry Potter" movies two through five. By the time No. 8, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part II" comes out in 2011, the screen is apt to be pitch black.

Inland readers are already preparing. At Riverside main library, Anne Wesling said of six or seven copies of "Deathly Hallows," one is on the shelves. Demand is high for the other Potter books.

"They check out constantly, but normally will have a good inventory. Now we're down to nothing," Wesling said.

Tokyo premiere launches return of "Harry Potter"

TOKYO (Reuters) - Thousands of fans, some dressed as wizards in long gowns with pointy hats, lined up in Tokyo to catch the sixth in the blockbuster "Harry Potter" film series on Monday, kicking off a string of such events around the world. "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," the latest movie about the boy wizard and his friends and enemies at Hogwarts school promises both action and budding romance, along with the expected death of a major character.