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Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" Movie Trailers
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Starring Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint
"Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" Movie Synopsis: In "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" Harry must contend with being mysteriously selected to compete in the prestigious Triwizard Tournament, a thrilling international competition that pits him against older and more experienced students from Hogwarts and two rival European wizarding schools.
Meanwhile, supporters of Harry's nemesis, the evil Lord Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes), send a shockwave of fear throughout the wizard community when their Dark Mark scorches the sky at the Quidditch World Cup, signaling Voldemort's return to power. But for Harry, this is not the only harrowing news causing him anxiety...he still has yet to find a date for Hogwart's Yule Ball dance.

Portrait of JK Rowling unveiled

Harry Potter author JK Rowling might not have a Hogwarts-style moving portrait of herself, but she has got the next best thing.
A picture of her is being unveiled at the National Portrait Gallery in London on Tuesday, inspired by her early life.

It shows JK sitting at a desk in a bare room, with a writing pad in front of her, along with three boiled eggs, to represent her three children.

The picture was painted by artist Stuart Pearson Wright.


Vote:Do you like the portrait of JK?
He said: "I was drawn to Jo principally because of my admiration for a woman who can successfully combine motherhood and a creative career.

"Jo told me that she had been drawn to my work because of the tiny paintings that I had done of a family of people with red hair.


Click here to see the bigger picture
"She confessed to sharing a fascination for people with red hair, which any readers familiar with the Weasley family in the Harry Potter books should not be surprised about."

Delighted

At the unveiling on Tuesday night JK said she was delighted with the picture: "This genuinely is the first time that I have seen this and I love it... This shows more of me than any photo has ever shown.

"Stuart [Pearson Wright] and I had the most incredible laughs doing this and of course I am delighted and honoured to be here in the National Portrait Gallery Collection."

September 07, 2005
J.K. Rowling: Announces Digital Harry

J.K.Rowling has updated her website with a statement about the release of the Harry Potter books on iTunes. She writes:

"Today sees a new Harry Potter launch: audio digital files are now available through Apple iTunes in the US, Europe and Japan (English language)!
Many Harry Potter fans have been keen for digital access for a while, but the deciding factor for me in authorising this new version is that it will help combat the growing incidents of piracy in this area. There have been a number of incidents where fans have stumbled upon unauthorised files believing them to be genuine and, quite apart from the fact that they are illegal, the Harry Potter content of these can bear very little resemblance to anything I've ever written!

The cost of a magical education...

September 07 2005 at 07:11PM

London - Currency experts say they have worked out the value of galleons in JK Rowling's Harry Potter books.

Travelex reckon each gold galleon is worth 5, making Hogwarts an expensive option.

Kitting out young witches and wizards for their first year at the school would cost parents about 1 700 just for the basics.

That means a magic wand would be 35 and a superior broomstick, like Harry Potter's Nimbus 2000, would set you back 1 503.

Saskia van Opijnen, director of Travelex, said they had based their calculations on JK Rowling's books and on interviews with the author.

Opijnen said: "This is the first time that we have dealt with a currency from another world.

"Magic money is a very sturdy currency that could assert itself on the international money market." - Ananova.com

Harry Potter books go digital
September 8, 2005 - 9:54AM

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Break out your iPods: Harry Potter is going digital.

JK Rowling, once publishing's greatest holdout against the computer age, has made all six Potter novels available for audio downloads.

In a message posted on her website, Rowling said she was concerned about online piracy, included bootleg editions for which the original text was altered.

"Many Harry Potter fans have been keen for digital access for a while, but the deciding factor for me in authorising this new version is that it will help combat the growing incidents of piracy in this area," Rowling wrote.

"There have been a number of incidents where fans have stumbled upon unauthorised files believing them to be genuine and, quite apart from the fact that they are illegal, the Harry Potter content of these can bear very little resemblance to anything I've ever written!"

The digital audiobooks are being released by the Random House Audio Trade Group, her current audio publisher.

They can be purchased through Apple's iTunes store, for prices ranging from $US32.95 ($A43) for a single book to $US249 ($A330) or the whole series, which, according to Random House, includes a "full colour digital booklet" and "previously unreleased readings" by Rowling.

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AdvertisementNeil Blair, a lawyer with Rowling's literary agency, said Wednesday that there are no current plans for Potter e-books.

Rowling's fantasy series, most recently "Harry Potter and Half-Blood Prince," has sold more than 200 million copies worldwide in print editions and more than five million as audiobooks, narrated by Grammy winner Jim Dale.

But up to now the author had only permitted paper and traditional audio releases, making her work a favourite for online pirates, although illegal sales are believed to be relatively tiny.

Helped by the iPod boom, digital audiobooks are already one of publishing's hottest sectors, with sales nearly quadrupling between 2001 and 2003, to more than $US18 million ($A24 million), according to the Audio Publishers Association.

"It's very exciting that an audiobook both critically acclaimed and commercially successful is finally available to the very broad audience of people who enjoy downloading," says association president Mary Beth Roche.

Also, Rowling said on her website that she was concerned by a wave of Potter merchandise with fake autographs for sale on eBay.

"As far as I could tell on the day I dropped in, only one of the signatures on offer appeared genuine," she wrote.

"There seem to be a lot of people out there trying to con Harry Potter fans. The same is true in respect to the huge number of unauthorised Harry Potter e-books and audio digital files that users of eBay have offered for sale to Harry Potter fans," wrote Rowling, who accused eBay of refusing to take responsibility for what it allows to be sold.

eBay spokesman Hani Durzi said Wednesday that Rowling is part of a copyright protection program offered by the online auction giant that allows members to report problems.

Durzi estimates that eBay has 55 million listings at any given time and says that "it's the responsibility of the copyright owner to report any listings that violate their rights."

"When they do, we take those listings down immediately," he said.

UPDATE 2-Bloomsbury profit rises as Potter rewards wait
Tue Sep 13, 2005 6:59 AM ET
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(Adds CEO and analyst comments, updates shares)
By Jeffrey Goldfarb

LONDON, Sept 13 (Reuters) - Harry Potter publisher Bloomsbury attributed a 12.4 percent rise in first-half pretax profit to overseas expansion as it will not reap full benefits of the boy wizard's latest adventure until later in the year.

The publisher (BMY.L: Quote, Profile, Research) on Tuesday repeated its expectation that annual profit before tax and goodwill impairment would not be less than 20 million pounds ($36.5 million) as it publishes more of its own titles in the United States and Germany instead of selling rights in those territories.

The company is bullish about the next 12 months, especially for the just-released paperback edition of Susanna Clarke's fantasy novel "Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell", John Irving's new book "Until I Find You" and Ben Schott's forthcoming "Schott's Almanac", due to come out around Christmas-time.

"Prospects into 2006 and beyond are strong as we expand our publishing list and develop our international operations," Bloomsbury Chairman Nigel Newton said.

The $55 billion global consumer book publishing market has been stagnant for five years, but Newton said he believes Bloomsbury can outperform rivals.

"There's no question there are problems out there -- a certain flatness -- but it is possible as a publisher to buck the macro trends," he said.

Still, analysts are sceptical about 2006 as comparisons will be against a year that had a new Harry Potter book.

"There was a confident assessment of prospects for FY06, and there has been heavy investment in the future pipeline of books, but given the hurdle of Harry Potter sales in the prior year, growth is likely to be modest," ABN AMRO analyst Simon Davies wrote in a Tuesday note to clients.

Davies pared his Bloomsbury recommendation to "hold" from "add".

Bloomsbury shares fell 1.3 percent to 357 pence by 1023 GMT. They have gained about 18 percent since the end of March when the publisher raised its annual profit target after pre-orders for the sixth volume of the Harry Potter saga, "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince", were higher than forecastThe book sold more than 2 million copies in the first 24 hours it was on sale in July in Britain, where Bloomsbury publishes the series.

Scholastic (SCHL.O: Quote, Profile, Research) owns rights in the United States, where more than 6.9 million copies were sold during the first day.

Bloomsbury's pretax profit before exceptional items rose to 4.1 million pounds ($7.5 million) through June 30 on a 14.3 percent revenue gain to 35.4 million pounds, partly on the success of paperback editions of bestsellers "The Promise of Happiness" and "The Two of Us".

Because of the time needed to ship books to foreign markets like Australia and South Africa for the July release of "Half-Blood Prince", Bloomsbury did see some revenue and profit from the title in the first half, though it did not say how much.

The run-up to the release of the sixth Harry Potter title also helped boost sales of the five earlier books.

Bloomsbury's net profit in the half declined 13.2 percent as marketing and distribution costs, most of them associated with the sixth Harry Potter book, soared 60 percent.

The publisher said it would increase its interim dividend by 14.9 percent to 0.6 pence per share, which is to be paid on Nov. 18 to shareholders of record on Nov. 4.

Prolific? Well, exCUUUUUUSE him
By Bob Strauss, Staff Writer



How much Steve Martin can you stand?
"Now I've got three movies coming out in five months, and each one radically different from the other," says the star of October release "Shopgirl," December's "Cheaper by the Dozen" sequel and next February's "Pink Panther" remake.

"It'll be interesting to see how sick of me everyone gets."

Of the three, "Shopgirl" is the most Martin-esque. Based on the veteran funnyman's best-selling first novel, it stars Claire Danes as Saks Fifth Avenue glove seller Mirabelle and Martin as Ray Porter, the wealthy older man who competes for her heart.

Martin also produced the film and wrote its screenplay, though he initially had no intention of appearing in the movie.

"I really thought Tom Hanks would be the perfect guy," he says. "But, he's busy. So I thought, well, I'm gonna be standing around the set anyway and I'll probably be wearing makeup, so I might as well be in the movie."

It turned out to be a job like none the wild-and-crazy-guy ever played before.

"There's an actors exercise, which I've never done in my life, of writing out three or four pages of information about the character," he notes.

"Well, I'd already written 150, so not only could I play Ray Porter, I could play Mirabelle, I know her so well."

Martin didn't think that his bittersweet book would ever become a movie. Too internalized, its emotions too complex, he reckoned. Maybe a play, like his highly successful "Picasso at the Lapin Agile." But then visual ideas for "Shopgirl" came to him.

"My task was to stay true to my own work, and yet because the screenplay was my work, I had the right to change things necessarily," he says of the process.

As for all of this extracurricular fiction and play writing, Martin says that, despite his busy moviemaking schedule, there's always time to fill creatively.

"It keeps me interested. I can't think of anything worse than just sitting around waiting for the next script to come through the door. And I guess it's just my nature. None of this is new. I wrote my first screenplay in 1979 and I've done it periodically through the years, put pixel to screen and manage to come up with something."

Unlikely tale in the
realm of kid fantasy

Christopher Paolini's 'Eldest' is a best-seller

By Heidi Dawley
Sep 26, 2005


It's a fantasy tale of epic proportions. Topping The New York Times Best Seller List for children's chapter books again this week is "Eldest," the second book in the Inheritance Trilogy by Christopher Paolini.

But the book isn't the only epic fantasy tale in this story. How Paolini came to be a children's publishing phenomenon reaches that level too. What's more, in his unusual, indeed, unlikely background, Paolini is in the good company of so many other children's writers in this genre.

The likes of J.K. Rowling, of Harry Potter fame, C.S. Lewis, who wrote "The Chronicles of Narnia" series, and "Lord of the Rings" creator J.R.R. Tolkien have all captivated kids with tales of make believe worlds while themselves living particularly interesting lives.

But of them all, Paolini, who is only 21, seems the least likely children's book author. He was home-schooled growing up in the wilderness of Montana, and yet he managed to earn a high school diploma at just 15 years old. That was too young to go off to college, his parents decided, so rather than hang around the house doing nothing, the young Paolini set about scribbling down his his fantasies.

They proved to be worlds away from what one might expect from the typical 15-year-old. His parents thought his story, the tale of a farm boy named Eragon and his dragon Saphira who fight an evil empire, was good enough to publish. So they did it themselves in 2002.

As a rule, self-published books quickly sail off into oblivion, ignored by critics, the literary establishment, book-sellers and more crucially, the book-reading public. So Paolini's tale of Eragon and Saphira seemed all but guaranteed a quick trip to the trash heap of novels read by only a few friends and family. But wait.

It turns out that while on a fishing vacation in Montana, the step-son of novelist Carl Hiaasen discovered the book and became fascinated. Hiaasen took the book to his publisher, Random House's Alfred A. Knopf, who decided to publish it in 2003.

"Eragon" went on to sell 2.5 million and is set to be made into a major motion picture.

This summer the second book in the trilogy, "Eldest," was released and sold more than 425,000 copies in the first week, a record for a Random House children's book title.

Paolini's books have received mixed reviews by critics, some of whom believe the stories are too derivative and the writing is perhaps not as polished as it could be.

Writes L.A. Times reviewer Denise Hamilton: "It's precisely because of Paolini's storytelling gifts that one yearns for 'Eldest' to be consistently good, especially because so many of this book's shortcomings could have been fixed by a strong-willed editor with a sharp pencil."

Children seem not to mind.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Paolini is no longer so sure about heading off to college, feeling he may have already found his calling. The story of Paolini, while being different in detail, is similar in its unusualness to other top children fantasy writers. J.K. Rowling was famously a penniless mom on welfare when she penned the magical adventures of Harry Potter on a caf table.

C.S. Lewis, who created the "Chronicles of Narnia" (which has been made into another movie to be released later this year), was a great intellectual and scholar, a professor at Oxford and then Cambridge who became known around the world for his many Christian apologetics, the best-known being "The Screwtape Letters."

Another great mind involved in fantasy writing was J.R.R. Tolkien, creator of "Lord of the Rings," who was a friend of Lewis, an Oxford don and a fellow writer of fantasy.

It seems it takes an entirely different type of mind to reach into a child's imagination and make a fantasy world come alive, both the widely schooled, the unschooled and the home-schooled.

At the movies over the weekend, Jodie Foster's airplane thriller "Flightplan" finished No. 1 in its first week in release, bringing in $24.65 million. Tim Burton's animated "Corpse Bride" jumped up from No. 23 to take the No. 2 position with $20.13 million in ticket sales, followed by last week's No. 1, "Just Like Heaven," at No. 3.

In home movies, the ensemble drama "Crash" finished No. 1 on Billboard's top rentals chart for the week ended Sept. 18, pushing "Monster-in-Law" to No. 2.



There were a slew of new releases on the Billboard 200 album chart, with seven rookies in the top 10 for the week ended Sept. 18. Paul Wall's "The Peoples Champ" topped them all, finishing No. 1 and pushing Kanye West's "Late Registration" to No. 2. The Black Eyes Peas' "Monkey Business" and Mariah Carey's "The Emancipation of Mimi" were the other two non-new releases in the top 10.



Showing impressive longevity, Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code" topped the New York Times' hardcover fiction bestsellers list in its 131st week in release, the week ended Sept. 17, knocking Clive Cussler with Paul Kemprecos' "Polar Shift" to No. 2.



"Eldest: Inheritance, Book II" by Christopher Paolini topped USA Today's book chart for the week ended Sept. 18, followed for the second straight week by "Natural Cures 'They' Don't Want You to Know About" by Kevin Trudeau, "Hour Game" by David Baldacci and "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" by J.K. Rowling.

Some new shots from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

We have added a few new shots from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, the fourth film adaptation of J.K. Rowling's popular Harry Potter novel series, Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) must contend with being mysteriously selected to compete in the prestigious Triwizard Tournament, a thrilling international competition that pits him against older and more experienced students from Hogwarts and two rival European wizarding schools.

Meanwhile, supporters of Harry's nemesis, the evil Lord Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes), send a shockwave of fear throughout the wizard community when their Dark Mark scorches the sky at the Quidditch World Cup, signaling Voldemort's return to power. But for Harry, this is not the only harrowing news causing him anxiety – he still has yet to find a date for Hogwarts' Yule Ball dance.

Some new shots from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

We have added a few new shots from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, the fourth film adaptation of J.K. Rowling's popular Harry Potter novel series, Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) must contend with being mysteriously selected to compete in the prestigious Triwizard Tournament, a thrilling international competition that pits him against older and more experienced students from Hogwarts and two rival European wizarding schools.

Meanwhile, supporters of Harry's nemesis, the evil Lord Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes), send a shockwave of fear throughout the wizard community when their Dark Mark scorches the sky at the Quidditch World Cup, signaling Voldemort's return to power. But for Harry, this is not the only harrowing news causing him anxiety – he still has yet to find a date for Hogwarts' Yule Ball dance.