Geek Force FiveCast 186: Rain

In which ECC freaks out about the rain, talks about Harry Potter, and welcomes his sometimes guest host back to the show.

First Glimpse at Exterior of Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes?

A new TV spot for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince offers the first glimpse I’ve seen of the exterior of Weasleys’s Wizard Wheezes. You have to wait until the end to catch it, and the credits are obscuring the view, but it looks pretty darned awesome nevertheless.

Seriously, this movie can’t get here soon enough. And if this new snippet isn’t enough for you—it’s barely enough for me—there’s also this clip of the full scene leading up to Harry and Dumbledore’s trials in the cave, which is available exclusively through iTunes.

New Footage from HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE Keeps Turning Up

New footage from Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince seems to be popping up every day now, and the HP-geek in me is about to die of overexposure to awesomeness, or of Awesome Sauce poisoning, or something. First, there was the clip of the first five minutes that has been up and down on YouTube all weekend. And now, there are new clips from Yahoo UK and from a French preview that’s found its way onto YouTube.

My favorite bit comes from the Yahoo UK footage.

McGonagall (to Harry, Ron, and Hermione): Why is it, when something happens, it’s always you three?

Ron: Believe me, professor, I’ve been asking myself the same question for six years.

As I mentioned in today’s FiveCast, Stephanie and I are listening to The Deathly Hallows audiobook right now during any and all long trips we take, and I’m listening to the entire audiobook sequence during my walks to and from work. What are you doing to psych yourself up for the arrival of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince?

Geek Force FiveCast 183: Harry Potter, Etc.

In which ECC geeks out about Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and more on a dreary Monday morning.

The Bad Guys of HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE

This week, it’s all about the badass movie posters. Yesterday, this killer poster for Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds showed up. And now, now we get a subway poster for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince that simply re-defines bad-assery. It’s of the film’s villains, and I think it just plain rules.

I can’t wait to see this film, man. And I’m especially interested in seeing Tom Felton’s portrayal of Draco Malfoy. Thusfar in the film series, there have been only snatches of the Malfoy I imagine for myself when reading the books. But, in the trailers and commercials for Half-Blood Prince that I have seen, and in this poster, it looks like the real Malfoy might finally be ready to stand up, Slim Shady-style.

HALF-BLOOD PRINCE to be Second Longest Harry Potter Film to Date

HPANA, the Harry Potter Automatic News Aggregator, has learned that the running time for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince will be 2 hours,33 minutes. According to Mugglenet, this makes it the second longest Potter film to date, right behind Chamber of Secrets.

This gets me giddy in all kinds of ways. I’m very happy to hear that they’ll be letting it run long, as there’s quite a bit of important material to get on screen in this chapter of the story. I’m sure there will be cuts—I’m pretty sure that the Dursleys play no role in this film, for instance—but it doesn’t sound like they’ll have to cut anything for the purpose of paring down the length. Because they’ve been given the freedom to keep it long, I think any cuts or revisions will be entirely story-based.

For a glimpse at even more scenes from the film than we’ve already seen—and we’ve seen a lot, given the fact that this film was pushed back as far as it was—Mugglenet advises us to keep our eyes on ABC Family this weekend for some additional sneak peeks.

HALF-BLOOD PRINCE Clips Galore!

A slew of new clips from Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince have been showing up this week, and, as usual, the good folks at The Leaky Cauldron and Mugglenet are hooking us up with the deets. First, check out the first full scene I’ve seen. It shows us Ron and Harry, just after Ron’s eaten some spiked cauldron cakes (at least I think they were cauldron cakes), and it looks like it’ll be pretty funny in the finished film.

Then, check out this featurette, which offers clips of Slughorn as a chair, plus interviews with Dan Radcliffe and the dude who plays Dumbledore, whose name completely escapes me at the moment.

And, when you’re done with all that, be sure to check out the four TV commercials that Leaky has linked up here. There are flashes of new footage in each.

HALF-BLOOD PRINCE TV Spots

Thanks to the folks at Mugglenet, we don’t have to watch endless hours of mindless TV in order to check out the latest TV spots for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. There are three spots out, so far. I’ve embedded the third above, and the others are available here and here.

Geek Force Utterz 155: HP7 on Film

In which ECC geeks out about reports from the set of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

DEATHLY HALLOWS, PART ONE is a Road Movie

According to Harry Potter himself, Dan Radcliffe, the first part of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows will be “a road movie.” The Leaky Cauldron has all the details from a recent issue of Empire Magazine. Here’s a snippet from producer David Heyman:

[I]n the end I think they’ll be less edited from this film than films past because we have the freedom of making two films and I think it’s going to be fantastic. ...There’ll be a lot of action, a lot of adventure, and it’ll be an ending very true to the books that Jo’s (Rowling) written.

Scans of the full Empire article are available here