WHEN HARRY LEFT HOGWARTS: a documentary special attached to DEATHLY HALLOWS: PART 2 Blu-Ray

Yes, it's true.  I cannot let this series go.  It's sad sometimes  to think that there isn't another movie or book coming out from this world anytime soon.  Plus! I have still not been to Harry Potter World in Orlando (hoping to remedy that in the Spring). 

However, to tide us Potter-nerds over, Target is offering an exclusive 4-disc set of PART 2 that will include a 48 minute documentary about the making of the final films. 


Check it out after the break:

Bias: Comparing Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows and Transformers: Dark of The Moon

The Boy Who Lived Isn't Perfect!

About a month ago, the final entry in the Michael Bay's Transformers saga was released to the world, and as expected, people completely hated it.  Obviously, after the atrocity of TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN, critics especially had a reason to be skeptical whether the third chapter would be any good.  When it came out, the results were not so stellar.  Like Jonesy and I said, DARK OF THE MOON was a big disappointment of a movie, even though it got some brownie points for trying to reach a lot of higher than its predecessor.  From the get go, people were ready to pounce on this movie no matter how good it could have been.  And since I'm the one with a Decepticon tattoo, I can admit when things I like aren't that great.

Now with HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS PART 2, there was the culmination of over a decade and a generation's worth of people lining up to finish up the franchise. There was a lot of emotion going into these final parts. What I found interesting was the decision of having the last book be split into two for the purpose of putting as much of the book as director David Yates could and having the final battle be the most epic thing ever.  And yet, after I left the movie, I couldn't help but feel underwhelmed by the overall experience.

Then  I started really thinking about DEATHLY HALLOWS, and a few of the things began to bother me, especially during the Battle of Hogwarts sequences, and I realized they were the same issues I had with TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON. Yet the more I read around on the Internet, the more I saw people dismissing if not out right praising those same faults in DH while completely shitting on DOTM.  The point here is not to say necessarily that DOTM is a misunderstood movie, or that Harry Potter was worse, but more that it's interesting that the "fanboy/fangirl" aspect really clouds people's judgement.  A lot of people, who are better writers than myself, fall into this category, but I can admit when something I'm very fond of has major problems.


(Please know there are totes spoilers after the break.)

HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS: PART 2 review: She said

Directed by David Yates

Written by Steve Kloves

Starring: Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, and Rupert Grint

Synopsis: Harry, Ron and Hermione final journey to search and destroy Voldemort's remaining Horcruxes in hopes of defeating the Dark Lord once and for all.

Update: The Almost Annual Summer Bet

A couple months ago, we posted about our Almost Annual Summer Bet details.  Well, with one movie in the bag, TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON, we have the week one results.

( Originally when we set our terms, both movies were being released on a Friday.  However, as we all know, Transformers was moved up two days earlier.  So, we decided that the winner would be the biggest gross after 7 days. )

After 7 days in the theatre, Transformers has made a whopping $188,588,858....damn.  And that's only the 6th best gross for a movie after the first 7 days.  Oh man, do my Harry Potter fans need to come out in droves to help me win this.  Movies 6 and 7 each take spots 10 and 11 respectively on this same list, so there is hope for me.   Only time will tell.  

But seriously...I HAVE TO WIN THIS!

TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON is now in 3D IMAX and theaters.

HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS PART 2 will be released July 15th, 2011.  

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Harry Potter Clip for today...Snape vs. Harry

Be prepared for a a plethora of clips to hit over the next week.  With only nine days away, we're treated to another clip from HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS: PART 2.  Prepared for your excitement to exponentially grow even more:



HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS: PART 2 will be released July 15, 2011.

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Harry Potter movie clip!

With HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS: PART 2 being two very long weeks away, we're treated to an awesome clip from the movie.  Here the trio are inside Bellatrix's Gringotts vault...looks exciting!!!!





HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS: PART 2 will be released July 15, 2011.

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Harry Potter Fangirl Conundrum

Nooooooo!

In a few short weeks, one of the most successful franchises in movie history will come to a close. As it's predecessors before, HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS PART 2 will make a crap ton of money worldwide. But I'm not here to talk about the obvious success the movie will have. This movie will be a bitter-sweet moment for millions of fans worldwide...including this fan. It's ending, for real, which is an almost impossible concept to wrap my mind around.

The only good thing from the MTV movie awards: a brand-spankin new HARRY POTTER clip!

While the MTV movie awards have become a bit of a joke the past couple years, the one glimmering bit of hope that always surfaces is their exclusive clips from upcoming summer movies.  This year with the traditional preview of the next TWILIGHT movie, we were treated to a wonderful clip from the upcoming HARRY POTTER. 

If you're not familiar with the series at all (which have you been sleeping under a rock the past ten years??), be warned that the first part is somewhat spoiler territory: 

2011 MTV Movie Awards - Movie News

For anyone who has read, or obsessed, over the books like I have, that clip leaves you breathless.  It's hard to imagine that this is all ending in a about six weeks, but it looks as if the final installment will do the books justice.

HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS directed by David Yates and starring Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson and almost every awesome British actor living will be released July 15, 2011.

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The Almost Annual Summer Bet...who will win out??

So, two years ago, my cohort and I had a bet of which movie would make more money in its opening weekend...STAR TREK or TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN.  Now, if you've been following us over the past few months, you will know that Javi is the die-hard Transformers fan.  So, naturally that's what he predicted would make more money.  I, however, put my faith in the Star Trek fandom that would be thrilled for a J.J. Abrams reboot of the series, which was the first movie in about seven years, and wouldn't let me down.  But as we all know, ROTF beat the weekend gross of STAR TREK within 24 hours.  (STAR TREK made $70 million opening weekend, which is pretty awesome for a May beginning of summer release, and ROFT made $90 million the FIRST DAY....)  Needless to say, I went down in a Baysplosion of fire.  So, I owed Javi two movie tickets.

 

This summer however, we are rehashing our bet.  Within two weeks of each other, both TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON and HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS: PART 2 will be released.  So, he, once again, is betting on Transformers, while I am putting all my faith and love into Harry Potter.  Surprisingly, I haven't written much about Harry Potter here, but let me assure you of my devotion to it.  I could spew Dickens-type jargon about my nerdy obsession with the series; however, since I don't have time to write a book, I wrote my condensed thoughts when the full trailer premiered not too long ago here. 

 

So, from awesome and somewhat completely biased my perspective, PART 2 will be the movie of the summer. 

 



I mean...he's so fierce!



 

Why?  Well, first off, it's a billion dollar, international success.  When the first movie was released ten years ago, there was much speculation about whether the series would be successful, or if they might have to go straight to DVD with the later movies.  The fans showed their loyalty, and the movies bred new fans, and the franchise is now almost untouchable.  Also, not only do you have fans of the books who also care about the movies, there's another whole set of people who just go and see the movies.  The movies began ten years ago, so there's a whole generation that grew up with them, and there's a whole new generation that are falling in love with the franchise with its repetition on ABC Family. 

This is also the final chance for all the fans to say good-bye to the characters that some of grown up with and come to love.  When the final book came out, it was definitely a chapter closing in the fandom world, but we still had the movies to look forward to.  However, this is it for this world, and for many of us, it's going to be a very sad farewell. 

 

Plus, let us not forget that the Harry Potter movies are, quality wise, exponetially better than the Transformers movies.  My cohort will agree to this.  (In fact, we both whole-heartedly agreed that STAR TREK was a better movie, but unfortunately for my sake, that wasn't the terms of the bet).  What I underestimated was the Speliberg-magic from the first Transformers movie that obviously flickered in the hearts of the movie-going public who ended up spending $400 million domestically to see the sequel two years ago.  I saw the first movie months after it was released on video, and I actually enjoyed it.  It was funny, fun, and had (somewhat) of a heart.  So, the ROTF had that momentum going for it.  However, I think many will abhorredly remember ROFT moments such as Transformer balls that dangled in front of our faces and a robot dog humping Megan Fox's leg.  Many, many, many people, including die-hard fans, felt ROFT was an atrocity to the Transformers legacy.  This is what I'm banking on! I'm hoping that people will remember their I-wish-I-didn't-pay-$12-for-the-IMAX-experience feelings they felt after ROFT and not go see the third movie (which from the trailer looks pretty baysplosion-esque fun).

 

 

The fact someone thought this was funny makes me weep for mankind, says Javi

 

Will I win?? I hope so.  I mean I better.  Am I completely confident I will?  Absolutely not.  However, it's all in good fun, and it'll be a great summer to see who will win the epic battle between wizards and alien robots.  Plus, the quality movie needs to win!

 

 

 

Javi: Ok, so obviously, I know that I'm rooting for the"wrong" movie. TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN was an atrociously bad piece of shit that bastardized the property worse than the third Pirates of the Caribbean.  Regardless, the audience of teenage boys, nerds, and bros, made this movie the biggest hit that wasn't called AVATAR during 2009.  So why is that, discounting the big love for the franchise since 1986, I would root for this movie to make a load more money than that nerdy wizard? Simple, every bad thing that could have gone wrong with this movie has been fixed and has been improved.

 

Complaint #1-The Story- The second movie sucked so bad mostly because of the confusing and badly edited story, and the fact that Shia LaBeouf was born.  In the past few years,  the writers and Bay have been blaming the writer's strike of 2008 as the big reason as to why it failed completely.  This time around, we don't have that, sure the worst of the writers Ehrin Kruger is the head of the script nowadays, so I'm sure he'll be messing up completely somehow, but it won't be nearly as bad ass it was that summer two years ago.

 

Even that nose-less freak would cower in front of this guy.

 

Complaint #2- Michael Bay is raping childhoods- Yes, nerds can be hyperbolic and have sheer hatred of a thousand burning suns when they don't like something, and I can even admit that I'm not really happy that it was Bay that was the director for this series.  Everyone's big complaint is that Bay has a Ritalin-infused ADD style of directing with his cuts lasting fractions of a second.  But! for once 3-D has saved the day! Thanks to the technical difficulties of setting up the 3-D rigs, Bay is forced to show long shots to properly show which robot is kicking who's ass.  This will at least help with making the visuals of this movie superior than the last movie's

 

Complaint #3 Racist and childish humor- Skids and Mudflap (The Twins) are two characters I wish I could somehow turn into a hybrid human/robot centipede along with the character of Leo Spitz.  They encapsulate many of the faults of the last movie with their moronic and truly racist humor injected into the last movie.  Well, this time around, Bay has allegedly promised that there will be no Leo, no twins (even though you can spot them in the trailer), and no "dumb humor".  What does this mean? No robots portraying bad racial stereotypes voiced by SpongeBob, although the NASCAR Autobots have been shown to have hats and mullets, no robot testicles, and no overly horny nerds just trying their hardest to get laid.   Given the trailers, it seems this might be true.  I mean, they have LaBeouf crying like the little girl he probably is. Alll we have seen in the teaser and the full trailer is utter destruction, chaos and desperation.

 

Finally, last time I heard, HARRY POTTER didn't break any records for having the most trailer views in 24 hours on the QuikTime/iTunes.

 

In my mind, the demographic that went to see ROTF doesn't care too much about quality either for the lack of empathy or the fanboy aspect of it, so they'll see the third movie regardless of how much it could suck.  The improvements might help sway those that are more savvy towards good movies such as ourselves.  Honestly, I just wanna beat Jonesy! 

So seriously guys, who do you think will win during the summer? Either one of our choices? A completely unexpected one?

 

 

Side note: the winner of the bet will receive bragging rights (until the next bet) plus a Criterion Blu-Ray.



-TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON will be released July 1, 2011 in theatres and IMAX.

-HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS: PART 2 will be released July 15, 2011 in theatres and IMAX. 

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HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS PART 2 Trailer Hits!

So, thanks to JoBlo, we have the trailer for HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS PART 2! I know Jonesy has been waiting for this, and now this trailer has me even more hyped up for this movie. Check out the trailer after the break.