Goofs for Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets 2002

• During the Quidditch match, the wire that attaches the broom to Harry is visible for several seconds.


• When Harry and Ron's car is caught by the tree, a limb smashes a hole in the rear window but the hole is missing in one shot when the car tips forward while falling out of the tree.


• When Harry and Ron are in the Dark Forest and the spiders begin to attack, Hagrid's dog gets in the car twice.


• When the Weasleys' enchanted car has ejected them and Ron and Harry are chasing the car, you can see the hand and silhouette of the driver.


• When Professor Lockhart is knocked backwards by Professor Snape's charm during their duel, his wand can be seen flying through the air. When he lands, however, the wand is back in his hand.


• When Harry and Ron go in to Lockhart's office, Lockhart is not wearing a cloak. But when they arrive in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom Lockhart has a cloak on.


• When Harry tries to run through the wall to Platform 9 3/4 but bumps into the wall instead, you can see an obvious dummy of the owl inside the cage when it falls over.

Trivia for Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

• Daniel Radcliffe has said that "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" is his favorite book.


• Zoë Wanamaker does not appear in this film as Hogwarts' flying instructor, Madam Hooch. Her character was written out.


• Fourteen Ford Anglias were destroyed to create the scene where Harry and Ron crash into the Womping Willow.


• The Weasleys' car registration number is 7990 TD.


• The train station interior used in the film is Kings Cross in North London, whereas the exterior shot is actually St Pancras. The two stations are adjacent to one another, but not the same building. This was done because the architecture of St Pancras is much more visually appealing.


• In the UK, this became the first movie to achieve a million DVD sales in its first weekend.


• Nurses were drafted into the production when an outbreak of head lice occurred among the young cast.


• The script originally said that Hermione would hug Harry and Ron in the final scene. As the then 11-year-old Emma Watson was embarrassed about having to hug the boys in front of the entire cast, Chris Columbus allowed her to change the scene so that Hermione just hugs Harry then starts to hug Ron but the two get embarrassed and resolve to only shake hands. Watson also stated in a recent interview that she kept letting Daniel Radcliffe go too quickly, so the film was "frozen" for a few seconds to make the hug look like it lasted longer than it actually did.


• Daniel Radcliffe was initially only offered £125,000 (approximately US $181,500) for this film. The actors' union, Equity, stepped in and negotiated new terms which increased his salary to roughly £2,000,000 (US $3,000,000).


• Many Harry Potter fans went to see Scooby-Doo (2002) just to see a trailer for this film.


• When Hagrid is escorting out of Knockturn Alley, they pass by a bookstore which has Harry Potter hardcover books in its window display.

Goofs for Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

• Crew or equipment visible: When Harry, Ron, and Hermione are struggling in the Devil's Snare, a puppeteer can be seen on the left of the screen, working at least some of the masses of tendrils.
• During the train journey, Ron's hair is parted in several different places.
• Harry's glasses sometimes have lenses, and sometimes don't, as do Dumbledore's.
• When Harry, Ron and Hermione are talking to Hagrid about Fluffy, Ron's scarf goes from being on his shoulder to being draped over his shoulder.
• Harry's scar clearly changes positions throughout the movie.
• The note that Hagrid gives to the teller in the bank is wrinkled in one shot, neat and clean in the next, and then back to wrinkled.
• Just after passing Madam Malkin's shop and before the owl emporium in Diagon Alley, a woman dressed all in black and a man with a burgandy top hat and mutton chops pass on Harry's right walking in the opposite direction. In the next shot, as Harry looks to his left, the same pair can be seen standing and chatting in the doorway of the owl emporium.
• When the first years climb the stairs and meet Professor McGonagall for the first time, Ron's robe is hanging partly open in one shot, but is closed in the next.
• In the scene in the hut on the rock, where Hagrid comes to fetch Harry, Harry's T-shirt is hanging off his left shoulder at the beginning of the scene, and then it is in the center of his chest, then hanging off the left again, and then back to center.
• In the scene with the flying keys, we can see the string holding up the broomstick just before Harry grabs it.
• According to the book, Hogwarts students reach the train by going through platform no. 9¾, which is secretly located in the barrier between platforms 9 and 10. In reality, platforms 9 and 10 are in separate buildings, and there is no barrier between them, but railway tracks. People wrote to Rowling about this, and she admitted getting confused between King's Cross and Euston stations. The Platforms actually used in filming are platforms 4 and 5.
• At Kings Cross the camera crew is reflected on the side of the train on the right.

How EA’s Handling ‘Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince’’s Shocking Ending

Something big happens at the end of “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.” Fans of the book are well aware of the revelation.
We’re not here to spoil it for you. But I already know how it ends, so I wanted to ask Electronic Arts how they’re handling “Half-Blood Prince”’s conclusion.
The problem: EA can’t actually talk about the ending. “I can’t, under our Warner Bros. embargo, talk about the ending,” laughed “Harry Potter” executive producer Jonathan Bunney while he was showing me the game at a publisher event a couple of weeks ago. “But I can tell you that you will not be…interacting…”
Will you take your Wiimote and…? “Whatever you’re alluding to, you won’t be doing that. [laughs],” said Bunney. “Obviously, it’s a massive — I was so shocked when I read it. I put the book down and said, ‘That’s crazy! You can’t have done this.’ We’re dealing with it very sensitively because it’s a big deal, right? Obviously, we’re making a game that kids are going to be playing, as well.”
Of course, none of this story makes any sense if you don’t know the conclusion to “Half-Blood Prince.” But if you do, it’s interesting to see EA’s approach.

Warners' Puttar-Potter Suit Peters Out

A court in New Delhi, India, has dismissed the studio's legal action aiming to halt the release of Bollywood's Hari Puttar—A Comedy of Terrors over fears the name too closely resembles Warners' blockbuster franchise.

Muggles are apparently bright enough to tell the difference between Harry Potter and Hari Puttar—no matter what Warner Bros. believes.

In fact, Puttar's plot is more John Hughes than J.K. Rowling. Set in England, the film tells the tale of a 10-year-old Indian boy who, à la Macaulay Culkin, is left home alone by his parents and must guard his scientist dad's top-secret computer chip against a pair of inept thieves.

The decision now clears the way for the film to premiere in Mumbai on Wednesday and open wide across the subcontinent this Friday.

Potter rival Brisingr fastest selling children's book

Brisingr, by American author Christopher Paolini, sold more than 45,000 copies on its first day, according to its publisher Random House. It is the third book in Paolini's Inheritance Cycle series, about a dragon rider, Eragon, and his steed, Saphira.

Before it went on sale Waterstone's, the bookseller, predicted it would be met with "near Harry Potter-style demand." The first of the series, Eragon, published when Paolini was just 19, was made into a successful Hollywood film.

Although the 45,000 first day sales figure is likely to send it to the top of the children's bestseller charts, it is still dwarfed by those for JK Rowling's books.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the seventh instalment in the series, sold more than 2.6 million copies on its first day in Britain when it went on sale in July 2007.

Tight security on Half-Blood Prince sts

Security is so tight on the set of "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" that the cast is practically frisked as soon as cameras stop rolling.

Actor David Thewlis, who plays Remus Lupin, says, "You finish a scene, and the crew treat your wand like it was a diamond and take it straight off you. Filming hasn't even finished, and there is already a big fight for the props."

Originally scheduled for a Christmas-season release, it has been pushed back to next summer.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - Photos

Rupert Grint, Bonnie Wright, Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson in Warner Bros Pictures' Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009)

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - Photos

Steve Vander Ark - in trouble again?

Steve Vander Ark, the would-be lexicographer is back in the headlines again.

This time, the discussion is about his new book, “In Search of Harry Potter,” a guide to Harry Potter-related sites throughout the United Kingdom. (Perhaps most interesting to Potter fans will be Vander Ark’s claim to have discovered the location of Hogwarts school on Rannoch Moor in the Highlands.)

The new book is scheduled to be published next month and is making headlines because Potter author J.K. Rowling’s agents are asking to see the manuscript in advance. Their concern is to determine whether or not Vander Ark breaches copyright by using too much of Rowling’s language.

Vander Ark has told the press that this time around the words are all his and there should be no copyright issues.

(In the court decision banning his earlier manuscript, a New York judge stated that Vander Ark had appropriated too much of Rowling’s language.)

Potter delay triggers scramble for movie release dates

In the Harry Potter stories, wizards play chess with life-size, animated pieces.

When Warner Bros. pushed the release of the next film in the Potter franchise, "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," from Nov. 21 to summer 2009, the studio set off a chess game of another sort that’s being played out in Hollywood.

In the last few weeks, distributors have shifted several major fall releases -- including the animated 3-D comedy "Bolt," the vampire thriller "Twilight," the James Bond adventure "Quantum of Solace," and the epic romance "Australia" -- to new dates in November, hoping to take advantage of the box-office void created by Harry’s departure.

November is one of the biggest months for movie ticket sales outside the summer popcorn season, and its three biggest openings ever were all Harry Potter movies, with weekend hauls ranging from $88 million to $103 million.

In Search of Harry Potter

London, the West Country, Lancashire and Scotland are but a few locations readers will visit in Steve Vander Ark's latest Harry Potter rendition, In Search of Harry Potter. A United States court, the Harry Potter Lexicon - derived from the now defunct www.hp-lexicon.org - citing a breach of JK Rowling's copyright
A United States court yesterday banned the school librarian-cum-author's encyclopedia, the Harry Potter Lexicon - derived from the now defunct www.hp-lexicon.org - citing a breach of JK Rowling's copyright.
The publisher, Methuen, describes In Search of Harry Potter as an 'extraordinary travel book' which 'evokes the myths and magic of Harry Potter.
Methuen had also planned to publish a UK version of the Harry Potter Lexicon, but after yesterday's ruling that's now in doubt.

Rowling Wins Lawsuit Against Potter Lexicon

For seven years, a Harry Potter fanatic worked on a guidebook to J. K. Rowling’s best-selling series, but in the end, a federal judge ruled on Monday, his book was too close to the work he admired.

“Plaintiffs have shown that the lexicon copies a sufficient quantity of the Harry Potter series to support a finding of substantial similarity between the Lexicon and Rowling’s novels,” Judge Robert P. Patterson Jr. of Federal District Court in Manhattan wrote in his 68-page ruling blocking publication of a Harry Potter Lexicon written by Steven Jan Vander Ark.
The decision, which came nearly five months after a four-day trial, was a victory for Ms. Rowling and Warner Brothers Entertainment, the company that produces the Harry Potter movies. They had sued to block a Michigan-based publisher from producing the lexicon. Judge Patterson awarded the plaintiffs $6,750 in damages.

Mr. Vander Ark, 50, who bears a striking resemblance to Harry Potter, said he wished he could come to a resolution with Ms. Rowling that would allow him to go forward with the lexicon, which he said was written in response to the demand of fans of his Web site, also called the Harry Potter Lexicon.

For now, however, Mr. Vander Ark has his sights on his next Harry Potter project: his book “In Search of Harry Potter” is scheduled to be released next month. It is a memoir of his travels to locations similar to the ones described in the Rowling books. The book, Mr. Vander Ark said, should not land him back in Wizengamot — the wizards’ high court of law depicted in the Harry Potter series.

“It’s a travel memoir,” he said. “It’s not in any way the kind of a thing which should raise any red flags.”

Mr. Vander Ark was a librarian and teacher at Byron Center Christian School in Byron Center, Mich., but now makes a living as a writer.

Voldemort Hath No Fury Like Angry Harry Potter Fans

To a world of wand-wielding Harry Potter loyalists, the Warner Bros. studio executive had crossed to the dark side. Within hours of Warner Bros.'s decision to postpone the release of "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" to next July, hate mail began to pour into the studio. An online petition expressing fans' disgust with the decision garnered more than 45,000 signatures. The studio says it even received death threats. "I hope you choke on your own saliva," snarled one fan in an email.

While executives' private email addresses circulated via the Web, angry homemade videos were being uploaded onto YouTube. In one, Greg and Penny Gershman overlaid their own subtitles to a German film about the final days of Adolf Hitler. "How am I supposed to get my Potter fix now!" Hitler violently shouts, according to the new subtitles, when told of the delay by one of his officials. He adds: "We are going to make Warner Brothers suffer."

The withering attacks over a family-friendly franchise like Potter show how the nature of fan uprisings has grown increasingly hostile. Thanks to the Web, angry fans can arm themselves with the latest information and speedily deliver profane brain dumps straight into executive email boxes. When CBS canceled its drama "Jericho" last year, fans deluged its network with vicious emails and a cavalcade of nuts -- a sly reference to a word used in the finale. As a result, CBS changed its mind and ordered up new episodes.

It's an unpleasant new challenge for the entertainment industry, which is more used to quaint letter-writing campaigns like the one that briefly saved the television show "Star Trek" from being canceled in the late 1960s.

But Warner Bros. is in some ways a victim of the same forces that drove its success. The five prior Potter films have grossed almost $4.5 billion in world-wide box-office revenue, making the series the biggest franchise in history. In the past, Warner Bros. has invited staffers of Potter fan Web sites to movie premieres to help whip up hysteria ahead of upcoming movie releases. With its transgression, Warner Bros. inadvertently unleashed this powerful force against itself.

On Aug. 19, Mr. Horn issued a formal apology assuring fans that the studio "would certainly never do anything to hurt any of the films." He also noted a "silver lining," which is that "Half-Blood Prince" would now open closer to the studio's seventh planned Harry Potter film, due out in November 2010.

Potter fans felt particularly betrayed by the studio for giving them such late notice about the delay. In late July, just two weeks before the announcement, the studio released a trailer for the film, which explores the teen wizards' early struggles with romance and promises the shattering death of a major character. And Time Warner's Entertainment Weekly had just put Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe on its cover.

Many fans felt Warner Bros.'s stated reason for the delay -- that the film would make a bigger splash in the middle of summer -- was a crass admission that the studio cares only about bigger box-office returns. "YOU just slapped the face of EVERY Harry Potter Fan and told us you don't care what we want -- you only want our money!" stormed Natalie DeGennaro, a 50-year-old electronic-design engineer who lives in Hillsborough, N.C., in an email she sent to Time Warner Chief Executive Jeffrey Bewkes, Warner Bros. Chairman Barry Meyer and other executives.

Some think the outsized reaction could actually be a boon for the studio. Steve Sansweet, who runs fan relations for George Lucas's Lucasfilm Ltd., says "Warner Bros. should be delighted. Sure, they have a problem on their hands, but they are also seeing the passion of their fans. The real problem comes when you have fans that don't give a damn."

The fans, however, are still angry. Many are still signing petitions planning protests and uploading angry videos to YouTube. Ms. Fink, the artist and administrative assistant, recently stood outside Warner Bros.'s Burbank lot with a large sign. "Dear Mr. Horn," she scrawled in red marker. "You will forever be known as 'The man who changed Harry Potter's release date.' Are you happy now?"

Source: http://online.wsj.com

Emma's difficult childhood

Emma Watson found it "hard" growing up on 'Harry Potter'.

The 18-year-old actress - who appears on the cover of Vogue Italy magazine's September issue - started playing teen wizard Harry's friend Hermione Granger at the age of 11.

She has since starred in four more films in the hit franchise, but admits becoming famous at such a young age took something away from her childhood.

She said: "In a way, it's hard to grow up inside a film. I lived a period of my life that is full of lessons and changes under the spotlight. People have the strange feeling of knowing me intimately because they have seen my transformation from child to woman, albeit only on screen."

Emma also revealed despite the fact she has learned a lot about the industry since she started as an actress, she often wishes she could have had an ordinary upbringing. She added: "I learned a lot of things, met tons of people from as many different places and had incredible experiences. It was just a bit different, but that's OK. "Some days I wish my life were simpler, but the rest of the time I feel like the luckiest girl in the world. After all, whose life is normal?"

Daniel Radcliffe gets rave reviews for Equus

"Harry Potter's" boy wizard, Daniel Radcliffe, is all grown up and the first fan reviews are in for his Broadway debut in Equus.

According to People, fans who saw the first preview performance Friday night are giving Radcliffe rave reviews. In Equus, Daniel plays a troubled and distressed teen. One scene even requires him to take it all off.

Opening night for Equus is scheduled for Sept. 25, and the production will play through Feb. 8, 2009.

New Harry Potter Image

There's a new image for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince from Snitch Seeker, is from a scene that seems to have been added for the movie - Tonks, Lupin, Harry, Mr. Weasley and Ginny are out in a field near the Weasley's home The Burrow, holding wands.

This sure is going to be a long Harry-less winter.

Daniel Radcliffe: Lost Virginity to Older Woman

In October's Details, Daniel Radcliffe confesses that he lost his virginity at age 16 (Britain's age of consent) -- and that the woman was older.
The age difference "wasn't ridiculous," the actor, now, 19, says. "But it would freak some people out."
(Though Radcliffe doesn't name-drop, a source says in the new issue of Us Weekly the ex is Amy Byrne, an assistant hairdresser who was 23 when they met on the set of 2005's Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. His rep had no comment.)
Despite the hanky-panky, Radcliffe — who also says he'd like to play a "drag queen" one day — insists his life isn't too racy.
"I don't pretend to do anything particularly wild," he says. "People talk about rebellion and they say, 'Where is the teenage angst?'
"But I say I try to do it simply by the choices I make in the work I do," he goes on. "I just like wrong-footing people. I write poetry and I love it. I like being different from most other people in my generation."

Harry wants to play drag queen

"I think part of me would love to play a drag queen," Daniel tells the new issue of Details magazine, "just because it would be an excuse to wear loads of eye makeup."
Fans might have to wait a while to see the 19-year-old star don high heels - he is about to embark on a stint playing tortured Alan Strang in Equus on the Broadway stage later this month.

"For the most part I've been happy every single day," he says. "And all the times I've been unhappy, it's never been anything to do with Potter. It's just been the normal, boring teenage c**p. Insecurities, acne -- all the normal stuff. I've got a great family. We're a very tight-knit group - we work very well as a team and as a tribe. I owe it to that."