It’s been pretty heady and heavy around here this week. How about a break from ideas cerebral to images-sensational? Here is the latest trailer from Warner Brothers for the first installment of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, due in your neighborhood theaters this November.

Please share your thoughts on what you experienced here, especially if that experience was markedly different than the one you had via either your imagination on first reading (and re-readings) or on reflection after studying the book with The Deathly Hallows Lectures.

The report today is that the film version of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007) has lost $165 million despite being one of the top 10 grossing films in history on earnings close to a billion dollars.

Is this an illustration of life-imitating-art? Does this story come from the pen of Rita Skeeter, a journalist writing what the public wants to hear or, more often, what the power-holders want us to believe? Or is it Quibbler tabloid fare, the nonsense and sensational man-bites-dog hooey we expect from Fleet Street? I asked Janet Batchler, resident Film Industry expert, author of What Will Harry Do?, and Screen Writing professor at USC, what she thought. [Read more…]

There is a Hog’s Head Forum page devoted to the subject of the esteemed actor‘s portrayal of Albus Dumbledore (‘Just Say No to Michael Gambon’) and a diverse Fandom seems to share a common disdain for the movie Headmaster post Richard Harris. But Mr. Gambon, CBE and Knight Bachelor, has only fond memories of his life on the set, saying recently, after wrapping up filming of Deathly Gallows:

“I enjoyed it!” he says proudly of his Dumbledore days, though he admits the role may not have stretched him particularly as an actor. “There’s no character really, it’s just me! Me dressed up in a costume! I’m essentially playing myself, that’s all I’m doing.”

Still, he misses the Harry Potter films. “It’s fun laughing all the time, and I know all the other actors, I’ve known them for years. It’s like being with friends.”

Love him or hate him as Dumbledore, do read the whole Irish Times article from which this snippet is the smallest and perhaps the least interesting part. A fascinating man, however unfortunate the decision to cast him as Albus Dumbledore…

So Daniel Radcliffe thinks. Check out this Leaky Cauldron video taken at the Half-Blood Prince movie release (the comment comes at 6:50).

No, I don’t think a young movie actor’s idea of what Deathly Hallows means is in any sense authoritative but I’d need to be the bigger goof than I am not to know that Mr. Radcliffe’s interpretation will very much influence the way that many readers will understand the series finale. Movies have that ability to re-shape what we have experienced ourselves in text, like it or not.

So what do you think Mr. Radcliffe means by describing Harry as a “Pilgrim Soldier” and Harry’s situation as “the last days of a dying Roman Emperor”? (H/T to Jeremy for the TLC clip and quotation!)