Screenhead

A rare photo of the day Daniel Radcliffe met Rupert Grint is something too special not to share.  LA Times: Head Complex has a wonderful interview with David Heyman the producer of all the Harry Potter films.

Any Harry Potter fan needs to take a look at the article — it’s quite good. Heyman talks about casting Radcliffe and how he found the bright-blue-eyed boy wonder at the theater and coaxed his parents into letting their son audition.  He even gives some insight to casting Rupert Grint and Emma Watson.

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Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince took its wand as a guiding force to movie goers with a magical $21.9 million in its second day of play at the domestic box office for a handsome total of $80.1 million. Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs came in second while Bruno and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen took third and fourth. Another new movie, I Love You, Beth Cooper came in eighth.  

1.Harry Potter And The Half Blood Prince 
$80,186,627 — $80,186,627

2.Ice Age: Dawn Of The Dinosaurs
$42,231,885 — $134,304,581

3.Bruno
$41,215,090 — $41,215,090

4.Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
$35,108,711 — $350,116,636 

5. Public Enemies
$19,464,100 — $71,890,970 

6. The Proposal
$16,536,374 — $119,793,566 

7. The Hangover
$15,055,483 — $227,567,151 

8. I Love You, Beth Cooper
$7,596,376 — $7,596,376 

9. Up
$7,292,253 — $276,411,268 

10. My Sister’s Keeper
$7,057,928 — $38,679,328

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It may not surprise many of you to realize, as I sit here at the depths of three in the morning writing this up, having braved the terrors of a quite thoroughly packed 12:01 showing of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, that I had something of a crisis of conscience writing this one up.

After all, I said to my screen, balefully, and sucking back a cup of hot green and white fusion tea against whatever diseases the numerous little hellions that were in that theatre were carrying, was there anyone out there who was going to actually NEED this movie reviewed for them?  Surely pretty much everybody has already made their decision–most of the people planning to see Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince had likely bought their tickets weeks prior, and those without plan to see it refuse to do so on religious grounds, convinced quite thoroughly that Harry Potter is enslaving the youth of America and pushing them down a dark path of satanic witchcraft, wicca, and voting Democrat.

Anyway, the plot: Harry’s back for yet another year at Hogwart’s, learning all about potions and wands and assorted mystical hoodoo whatnot.  Meanwhile, the vague creeping evil that is Lord Voldemort still pretty much refuses to show itself except through his minions.  This time, not only does Harry and company have to defend the school and its inhabitants from the advances of the dark lord, but they’ll also deal with all those typical teenage things like crushes, fending off aggressive suitors, and countering the occasional misdirected love potion.  Describing the plot in much more than these vague terms would require massive spoilers, because this plot is very much dependent on its specifics.

I’m rather convinced Harry’s going for his master’s or something because he’s been there several years.  Even the characters are getting a little bored of it–there’s one really great sequence where one of the teachers (I think it’s McGonagall but no one mentioned names much) gave an exasperated sigh and asked, why, whenever something horrible happens, you three (meaning Harry, Ron and Hermione) are always involved.  Imagine my shock when I muttered virtually the same line that Ron gave back, saying that they’ve wondered the exact same thing.

Well, Ron, buddy–so does the audience.

I personally have several problems with this movie, especially as it relates backward through the canon (for instance, why does Harry never use that expecto petronum or whatever any more?  Does it only work on Dementors? You’d figure if you’ve got this really uber spell you’d actually bust it out on occasion, especially when you’re in a fight as Harry seems to be every twenty minutes or so.).  But chances are my problems simply stem from the fact that I’m going in cold on this, having never read the books.

However, the critical fact remains–this is not really a bad movie, but rather, this is a movie that preaches only to the choir.  If you’re not already enamored with Harry Potter and his world, chances are you never will be.  There are few fence-sitters here, and so, you’re either desperate to see it or desperate to avoid coming in contact with it.

So what does it get on the ten-scale?  Easy.  A seven out of ten.  It’s beautiful, the environments are great, the actors are at least tolerable even if the plot, much like the lost continent of Atlantis, no longer appears on any map.  For that handful of you undecided, it’s worth a shot.

You know, after looking back over the last five years and seeing nearly half a dozen Harry Potter movies come out (this one will make half a dozen), I’m amazed that there haven’t been more knockoffs.  Seriously, it seems like no one in Hollywood is even taking a crack at the boy wizard subgenre…until now.

It’s called The Mystical Adventures of Billy Owens, and you’ll be able to find this lump on your video store shelves in just under two weeks, July 21st.

See, Billy Owens lives in one of the oldest towns in the East Coast, Spirit River.  And seeing that he’s about to turn eleven–on November eleventh, no less, in easily the biggest example of overforeshadowing I’ve seen in some time.  More on that later, but first, the rest of the plot. Harry–I mean,  Billy, on his eleventh birthday, is about to discover an unusual item up for sale in a local second-hand shop, one that’s likely going to save both himself and the entire town of Spirit River.  Harry–I mean, Billy, in case you hadn’t already figured it out from the opening paragraph, is going to discover that he’s a boy wizard.

No, seriously.

And this isn’t where the similarities end either–merely where they begin!  Billy has two friends, an underachiever named Devon and a clearly pedantic know-it-all named Mandy.  There’s even a school bully who relentlessly pursues Billy, with his two toadies.  Imagine how loud and long I laughed when I realized that the school bully had his own Krabbe and Goyle.

The Mystical Adventures of Billy Owens is, let’s be honest, a bad movie.  The effects are weak even for low-budget, relying on computer graphics, and fairly low-quality CG at that.  This by itself would mean little, really, if it weren’t for the sheer aggressive awfulness of the script.  Mandy’s know-it-all persona is strenuously overexaggerated–she will bust out lines starting with “did you know…” with alarming frequency.  Worse, they’ve put the voice-over narration in Mandy’s hands, and she reads like, well, like a ten year old in class, blasting through lines with little regard for dramatic tension.  I understand she’s just a kid, but folks, she’s no Morgan Freeman.

You may think I’m being too harsh on a bunch of kids, but rest assure, the hackneyed acting isn’t just limited to them.  The adults can’t swing a whole lot of weight either, and that really doesn’t help matters.  The script too, as I said, is a morass of poor writing and terrifyingly bad plot elements.  Immortal dragons, mysterious vines, the “death of the river”…frankly, this is just downright horrible stuff on a narrative level.  The first time I saw a person sufficiently horrified that the town was being “invaded by vines”, all I could think was: “Does no one in Spirit River own a pair of hedge clippers?”

It’s bad enough that The Mystical Adventures of Billy Owens is a Harry Potter knockoff, it’s even worse that it’s an aggressively BAD Harry Potter knockoff.  It’d be one thing if this were just a lousy movie, or a boy-wizard movie, but to be a lousy boy-wizard movie is a kick in the junk on literally several levels.  A movie that’s both wildly unoriginal AND poorly done can only be called a bad movie, and sadly, no amount of magic is going to change that.

Sure you are itching to see Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince and the opening day, July 15th, is just too far away.  You can’t stand it anymore! Well, AOL Radio Station might have the next best thing for you to keep you appeased while you go through the dreaded waiting pattern — the movie soundtrack online!

AOL Radio Station has an exclusive premiere for the new Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince soundtrack. The only snare is that you need to go on the hour every hour to listen to each song on the soundtrack album, one song per hour. I’ve enjoyed listening because Harry Potter soundtracks are unique and clever, each part of the story can easily be “seen” through the music. The music plays an important role in this movie as it does in every movie. To take a listen — just click on Harry at the top of the hour and go to Move Scores.

Young love is abound at Hogwarts as Voldemort plans his attack on the muggle and wizarding worlds. Dumbledore prepares Harry for the final confrontation as all indications of the final battle quickly approaches.

You may have never heard of Channing Tatum, but you’ll be fairly surprised by his big excursion into the big screen with the release of Fighting.

Channing will be playing Shawn MacArthur, as a young street hustler from the wilds of…Birmingham, Alabama.  Um, okay…anyway, he’s moved to New York, where he’s hawking ersatz Harry Potter books and occasionally discount umbrellas.  Anyway, while selling his ersatz Harry Potter books, he gets in rolling three-way fistfight that draws the notice of former brawler turned agent / hustler Harvey Boarden.  Harvey sees an opportunity in Shawn, and sets him up with a series of illegal underground bare-knuckle brawls, and Shawn steadily advances up through the ranks.  Eventually, he gets set up with the fight of his life as a face from his past surfaces—can he stand up and face his own past or will he get knocked out by the strife?

For those of you making comparisons to Fight Club, you’re not alone.  I got about fifteen minutes into this thing when I wound up saying that this was all just a huge Fight Club knockoff that had been heavily dumbed-down and stripped of all its pedagogery.  Yeah, there aren’t any rants here about sleepless nights and IKEA and materialism—just guys beating the crap out of each other and the occasional appearance of hot chicks.

Yes, this is very much a guy movie.  Chances are you could probably talk your girlfriend into seeing it by virtue of mentioning Channing Tatum, but aside from that, total guy movie.

Now, if you go in expecting very, very little, then chances are good that you won’t be disappointed with this movie.  If you expect, say, a rousing brawl or maybe a little romance or an empty-headed good time, then you’re definitely going to get what you’re after.  But if you want strong, well-developed characters or important, valuable life lessons, then forget it—this little fluff muffin of a movie is never going to supply any of that.  This sucker’s about as worthwhile and consequential as a ball of pocket lint.

This isn’t to say it’s a bad movie—it does what it sets out to do, in that it entertains you with tons of fistfights and such, and there’s a little bit of growth and character development.  It’s never going to be mistaken for high art, but it’s not really unpleasant to watch, either.  The storyline’s thin as skin on gravy, but everything that should be there is.  I’m not going to suggest you run out to the theatre and catch this—you can definitely wait for video even if you really LOVE a movie with plenty of fistfights—but if you go against my suggestion and see it anyway, you’ll have a pretty fair time as long as you go in with eyes wide open about just what it is you’re walking into.

In fact, words like “pedestrian”, “average” and “mediocre” were invented just for this kind of potboiler action / romance / drama.  There’s not much to this one, but what’s there isn’t necessarily bad.  It’ll be worth a look if you get a cheap matinee or wait for video.

I wonder what more can Warner Bros. supply us with before the opening of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Here is the latest, a wonderful featurette offering actors, directors and producers insight into the next installment of Harry Potter. I noticed some new footage mixed with the old. Enjoy!

“Once again, Harry I must ask too much of you.”