When You Get Down To It, 'Candy Land' Basically Just Confectionary Tolkien, and More

May 24, 2011 5 Comments

- After eight films, everyone in the Harry Potter is fucking filthy as shit.
- RT Features has signed Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Auburn to adapt Peter Ackroyd's The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein for screens, marking at least the fifth Frankenstein project in development. I guess I was wrong that Frankenhood would be the final word on that tale.
- The writers currently adapting Candy Land into a feature film told Entertainment Weekly they "envision it as Lord of The Rings, but set in a world of candy," which is a statement that is only acceptable if they were super high, and playing Candy Land.
- Production on The Hobbit continued down its maligned path with two injured in an industrial explosion at Peter Jackson's Stone Street Studios. Thankfully, the injured parties were taken to the hospital mostly as a "precaution," and production on the film can continue on its rampage.

Blame Harry Potter for All Your Missing Owls, India

November 3, 2010 8 Comments

Curious where all your wild owls have been lately, India? Check out the arms of your urban, middle-class Harry Potter fans, apparently.
Indian Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh is calling for tougher measures to protect India's wild owl population, telling the BBC, "Following Harry Potter, there seems to be a strange fascination even among the urban middle classes for presenting their children with owls."
Abrar Ahmed, an ornithologist and member of the conservation group Traffic, claims a friend had even asked him to capture a white, Harry Potter-ish owl, and asserts in a recent paper that a more and more owls are being "trapped, traded or killed in black magic rituals," which might end up being a spoiler for those of you who haven't finished the series.
Of course, the report goes on to note, "black magic practitioners ... prescribe the use of owls and their body parts such as skull, feathers, ear tuffs, claws, heart, liver, kidney, blood, eyes, fat, beak, tears, eggshells, meat and bones for ceremonial pujas and rituals," adding that, "owls are trapped and traded for use in street performances; killed for taxidermy and for their meat; their parts are used in folk medicines; even their claws and feathers are sometimes used in headgear." So maybe it's not so much Harry Potter after all. Yeah, that sounds more like the influence of Hari Puttar to me.
(Thanks, Dan.)

Harry Potter Joins 'All Quiet on the Western Front'

June 23, 2010 13 Comments

Continuing to forcefully shrug off the heavy burden of the Harry Potter series (which, as you can see, makes that manifested burden so sad), Harry Potter will follow up his 2011 run of Broadway's How to Succeed Without Really Trying with the lead role in a new adaptation of All Quiet on the Western Front. The 1930 adaptation of the Erich Maria Remarque novel famously won Best Director and Best Picture Oscars, and Wikipedia tells me there was also apparently a 1979 made-for-CBS version starring John-Boy Walton of Stephen King's It and Ernest Borgnine that somehow also managed to take home an Emmy and a Golden Globe, so this sounds like the perfect forum for Harry Potter to remind everyone he's a dead serious, penis-exposing actor, not just Harry Potter.
You'll next see Harry Potter in two more Harry Potter films.
Radcliffe to star in 'All Quiet on the Western Front' [Variety]

Phew: 'Hari Puttar' Beats Lawsuit, Opening This Friday!

September 23, 2008 9 Comments

A court in India has dismissed a Warner Bros. lawsuit against the slightly similarly-named film Hari Puttar: A Comedy of Terrors:

"The case has been dismissed. The court said that Warner Bros had known the title of the film since 2005 and had delayed bringing the case to court until the last moment," lawyer Pratibha Singh was quoted by news agency AFP as saying. The Delhi High Court also said that consumers who read the Harry Potter books, written by JK Rowling, were sufficiently educated to know that Hari Puttar was different, the agency quoted the lawyer as saying.

Consumers who read Harry Potter are sufficiently educated to know the difference? Have they met all these people? No offense to fans of the series, but that's a pretty broad statement to make. I've seen the groups gathering at Barnes & Noble, and there are definitely at least a few Harry Potter readers who are not sufficiently educated to know that Hari Puttar is different than Harry Potter, even with mousetraps serving as the dominant plot device in only one of the two.
Anyway, Hari Puttar Friday then?
Warner Bros. Lose Case Against Hari Puttar [Coming Soon]

Jim Broadbent is Horace Slughorn

September 19, 2007 3 Comments

Speaking to Dark Horizons, Jim Broadbent revealed that he has been assigned the goofy name of Horace Slughorn, apparently for some kind of movie about a boy wizard and his friends, who are also wizards. Broadbent described the character as:

a retired teacher of magic who's drawn back out of retirement because he's got some secrets they need in the battle against the Deatheaters and he's quite star struck as a teacher and he's drawn back into the fold because he likes to notch up celebrity students, and he's drawn back by Harry.

I'm going to be so glad when they finish the fourteenth movie or whatever we're going to and I don't have to keep hearing grown men and women throw around names like Slughorn and Deatheaters and Hogwarts and all this crap. It's really getting embarrassing as a society, and it distracts me from my discussions of Anakin Skywalker's midichlorian count as compared to Mace Windu and the rest of the Jedi council.
Broadbent on "Potter" & "Indy 4" [Dark Horizons]

Crap Rules Box Office, Travolta Rules My Nightmares

July 23, 2007 4 Comments

Despite a heavy-handed marketing effort, Hairspray couldn't compete with worse-reviewed Chuck & Larry or Harry Potter.
If people are looking for a reason why, they need look no further than the picture of John Travolta in drag above. I don't care how good you tell me this movie is, that is the scariest thing I've ever seen. I had a nightmare that I was buried alive inside a coffin with the re-animated corpse of Tammie Faye and it was less scary than that (too soon?).
I would rather see Knüt the polar bear get electrocuted to death by Michael Vick than see two hours of John Travolta in drag. I would rather fall asleep with Shia LaBeouf gently nibbling my earlobe than see this movie. Okay, maybe that last one's not such a good example, but still man, like, creepy.
Source

Christmas Comes Early for Dorks

June 22, 2007 8 Comments

It hurts so good!
Alright nerds, I've got a present for you: 75 new Harry Potter pictures. As for myself, I haven't seen a Harry Potter movie since I saw the first one on mushrooms and crapped myself during the 'talking hat' scene. However, I do have a newfound respect for Daniel Radcliffe. He turned in one of the funniest guest appearances I've ever scene in Ricky Gervais' HBO show, Extras. Check it out, after the jump.
Continue reading...

Hermione's Breasts Grow in 3-D Transfer

May 3, 2007 19 Comments

Perverts at PosterWire have determined, after careful, repeated examination, that Hermione's figure has been made more curvaceous for the IMAX version of the Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix poster. To make it seem less creepy to have noticed, the site also mentions the change in actress Emma Watson's flowing hair, but them big ol' titties are really the highlight of the new poster, with controversy now surrounding the decision to add more sex appeal to a 17-year-old girl.
Personally, I see nothing wrong with the change. No harm in seeing a couple coming attractions before the feature (the feature being legal sex age). And honestly, would people be complaining if Emma Watson was kidnapped, and they were using this to show possible breast age progression to help find her and her new, giant boobs? I think not.
If the issue is making an underage girl over-sexualized, I've got news for you: they've made her less appealing to pedophiles. Believe me, there's nothing a pedophile wants more in a young lady than a boyish, breast-free physique. Except maybe access to the Internet and parents who are comfortable dropping you off in a motel parking lot. Hairlessness, too.
Source

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix Poster

April 26, 2007 13 Comments

The one-sheet for the new Harry Potter film (above) documents an event rarely seen at all, yet alone in the poster of a children's movie: the Pedophile Temptation Gauntlet. Step 10 of the 11-step road to recovery, the Pedophile Temptation Gauntlet (PTG) must be successfully traversed without signs of visible arousal (yes, "half-wood" counts) before the pedophile can move on to the final step: not kidnapping and raping children.