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Potter preview works charity magic

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

By Jake May

The Grand Rapids Press

GRAND RAPIDS -- Harry Potter is back, and the fans say "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" is darker than Potter movies past.

But it didn't come unexpectedly.

"It was dark, man, relentlessly dark," said Grand Rapids' Deb Cleland Nowakowski, 50. "It rocked, it really did. The best part is it stayed true to the book."

The much anticipated movie opened at midnight, but local fans were treated to an advance screening Tuesday night at the fifth Wizard's Ball, a fundraiser for Make-A-Wish and the Pediatric Oncology Resource Team at Celebration Cinema North, 2121 Celebration Drive NE.

About 600 fans took part in the fundraiser, which featured a live owl, catered food from area restaurants, a magician, fire eaters, moving people in picture frames and costumed characters. Jim Fahner, Make-A-Wish chairman, said the event raised about $140,000 through ticket sales and auction items.

"It's always a little emotional when I come back here," Fahner said. "You can just see all the people in costume who enjoy this so much. It's just great."

For the most part, the movie was a big hit with fans.

Grand Rapids' Katie Dodge, 19, read the book five times before attending the Wizard's Ball. She said the nearly 900-page book translated very well onto the big screen.

"They followed the book really well," she said. "And I think they did a pretty good job taking different bits out. It wasn't missing much."

Her brother, Philip, 16, said he was impressed by the special effects, seeing things on screen he didn't expect.

"The scenery and the CGI (computer-generated images), it was amazing," Philip said. "Moving around in the scenery, the camera angles, it was intense. It would be pretty hard to put 900 pages into a two-and-a-half-hour movie, but they did very well."

Not everyone was happy with the movie or, for that matter, the direction of the books.

Kentwood's Cat Keezel, a 36-year-old who dressed as Molly Weasley, said the story seems the same through every book, and the movies could be better.

"After the second movie, it just got boring," Keezel said. "I didn't like it. Like I said, I got bored. It's the same storyline over and over again. This one is just like all the others."

Source: Grand Rapids Press

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Fans cheer latest Potter film

Wednesday, July 11, 2007 12:44 PM CDT

BY THE TIMES

Erin Kilhefner had one word to describe the latest film in the Harry Potter series after viewing the midnight premiere.

"Perfect."

The 15-year-old Valparaiso girl was among the 908 fans who flocked to the Portage 16/IMAX theater Tuesday night for the 12:01 a.m. Wednesday premiere of "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix." Three of the four screens showing the film -- including the IMAX screen -- sold out, with moviegoers trickling into the theater around 9:30 p.m.

When the film began to roll, the audience in the IMAX theater erupted in cheers. But when the movie titles cleared the screen and the camera panned to the opening scene, many movie-goers began to hush the rowdier fans.

Throughout the film, the group cheered for Harry and his cohorts and let out with a collective "woo" when the teen wizard had his first kiss.

Kilhefner hit the theater with friends Jamie Shriner, 14, Micah Niedner, 15, and Allison Holevoet, 15, all of Valparaiso.

Shriner said she thinks the new Potter film could become a classic.

"This would be like 'Gone With the Wind' in my book," she said. "('Gone With the Wind') is still better, but close."

Holevoet said the films brings viewers into the world of the young wizard.

"You want to be there with them," she said.

Niedner was impressed with the 3-D portion of the film featured on the IMAX screen.

"It felt like it could reach out and grab you," Niedner said.

Three of the teens plan to attend the July 21 midnight release of the final Potter book in J.K. Rowling's series, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows."

Lynne Stanko, 17, of Crown Point, attended the premiere dressed as a common student from Gryffindor, one of the houses at Potter's Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. After the end credits rolled, Stanko said the film was "wonderful."

"I actually thought there would be more people dressing up," Stanko said. "I was expecting a big nerd fest."

Times staff writers Dan Hinkel and Matthew Mace and Times correspondent Royal M. Hopper III contributed to this report.

Source: The Times, Munster, IN

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"Potter" film gets massive release

LOS ANGELES - The new "Harry Potter" movie drew lukewarm reviews on Tuesday, but millions of "muggles" are expected to ignore the critics and turn out in droves for the widest release ever for Warner Bros. studio.

"Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix," the fifth film in the series based on the best-selling novels about a British boy wizard, opens Wednesday in 4,285 U.S. and Canadian theaters and in 44 markets around the world. The studio is shipping out 22,000 copies globally, Warner Bros. said on Tuesday.

The widest U.S. and Canadian release was 4,362 theaters for Disney's "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End."

For Warner Bros., "Phoenix" nearly double its previous wide release of "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" in 24 markets. Along with strong fan interest, the theater count should drive strong ticket sales for a "Potter" movie, box office watchers said.

In total, the first four "Potter" movies raked in $3.5 billion in theaters, starting with "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" in 2001.

Online ticket seller Fandango.com said advance sales for "Phoenix" were outpacing earlier summer hits "Spider-Man 3" and "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End," and hundreds of debut screenings set for midnight Tuesday were sold out.

"These 'Potter' movies are a phenomenon, not only in the U.S. but worldwide, and I fully expect this film will live up to the box office success of its predecessors," said Paul Dergarabedian of box office tracker Media By Numbers.

That is good news for Warner Bros., a unit of Time Warner Inc., which makes and markets the "Potter" films, because so far major critics have been less than joyous.

HARRY ON DEFENSE

"Phoenix" finds Harry, portrayed again by Daniel Radcliffe, having to defend his use of magic in his recent confrontation with the evil Lord Voldemort, while his protector, Professor Dumbledore, is strangely distant.

The New York Times said, "Although (it) is not a great movie, it is a pretty good one." And The Los Angeles Times called it "no more than a way station in an epic journey," referring to the fact a total of seven films are planned.

In London, The Times newspaper gave "Phoenix" three stars out of five after its Tokyo premiere and said, "It is a film where the balance of narrative tips from action to intrigue, and there are some that will find that tedious."

To be fair, Web site rottentomatoes.com, which compiles reviews, gives the movie a 74 percent favorable rating. Box office watchers call the "Potter" movies "review-proof" because their legions of fans and other muggles -- the term for normal humans in the wizard world -- typically ignore critics.

The first film, "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone," grossed $976 million worldwide in 2001, and four years later, the box office for the fourth film, "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire," slipped only 8 percent to $892 million.

The latest "Harry Potter" adventure to hit the big screen comes less than two weeks before the July 21 release of the seventh and final book in J.K. Rowling's series, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows."

Source: International Business Times

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Gary Oldman Shook Up Daniel Radcliffe For Sobbing Scene In New 'Harry Potter' Film

Gary Oldman literally shook Daniel Radcliffe up for one emotional scene in new film Harry Potter & The Order Of The Phoenix - so the teenage actor's sobbing would be for real. Radcliffe reveals the Batman Begins star asked if he could "get physical" with him to prepare him for a scene in which Potter hears of the death of his mentor Sirius Black, played by Oldman.

The young star recalls, "We'd been doing a few takes, we'd been going at it for about two hours we were probably doing the scene and then he said to me, 'Dan, do you mind if I do something a little bit more physical with you this time?' I sort of said, 'Yeah, fine,' thinking maybe he was gonna give me a hug or something like that. But actually he took me by the shoulders and shook me incredibly hard for about 30 seconds and shouted at me. The bizarre phenomenon is you sort of regress very quickly into this childlike state and I just started crying... I think it really worked for the scene."

Source: Star Pulse News

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Harry Potter 5 Opens to $12 Million

Source: Media by Numbers

July 11, 2007

Warner Bros. Pictures' Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix earned an impressive $12 million from the Tuesday going on Wednesday midnight screenings. The screenings took place in 2,311 theaters. The fifth installment in the popular franchise opened fully this morning in 4,285 theaters (or over 9,000 screens), the second-widest ever trailing only Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (4,362).

This opening foreshadows a huge first five days for the film. "At World's End" brought in $13.2 million its first night with screenings that started at 8pm. Transformers recently earned $8.8 million from its first evening with screenings that began at 8pm.

"Order of the Phoenix" is playing digitally on 579 screens in 325 locations, more than any Warner Bros. film to date. Internationally, it is also the largest digital cinema release to date for any Warner Bros. title with over 750 screens.

The film had the largest number of day-and-date international openings of any film in the franchise, with simultaneous releases in 44 markets worldwide today.

In addition, Warner Bros. has generated the greatest overall number of prints for the film, with over 22,000 prints going to exhibitors around the world.

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Meet the world-traveling Weasleys

Posted Wednesday, July 11, 2007

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The Weasley twins — aka James Phelps and Oliver Phelps — landed in Chicago on Monday night after a whirlwind tour through Switzerland, Belgium and London, all for their film "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix," opening today. We caught up with the bleary-eyed siblings Tuesday at Chicago's Hotel Monaco where the Phelpses, who play Fred and George Weasley, conducted a fast chat on what it means to be student wizards. Q: What's the best thing about being part of the "Harry Potter" movies? James: One of them has to be traveling around the world doing this kind of stuff. I don't know too many 21-year-olds who've been to the places we've been and done the things that we've done. We've been fortunate to have this kind of life. Oliver: Yeah. Definitely. Q: You both have grown what, like eight inches since you started the movies? Oliver: Probably. We're about 6-foot-2 or -3 inches now. Q: Has anyone mentioned replacing you because of your height? James: No, not that we know of. But when we're in a shot with someone, they'll stand them up on a box so we don't look so tall. Tricks of the camera, you know? Q: How long do you dye your hair? James: It's dyed pretty much nine to 10 months out of the year. That's when people know we're filming again when we walk in with ginger hair as opposed to brown. That's when people kind of recognize us. We're quite fortunate we really have brown hair. Then we're under the radar. Oliver: They don't just do our hair, but our eyebrows as well. It takes a while to do it. Then every three weeks we have to go and get our roots touched up, which isn't much of a macho thing to say. It's like, "Hey, do you want to go out for a drink, lads?" and you say, "No, I've got to get my roots done!" It doesn't always sit very well. Q: How did you get the roles of the Weasleys? James: We found out there were auditions going for the Harry Potter film. We went to Leeds, about three hours travel, and went to a hotel like this one. Thousands of kids there all going for different roles. Had it been in our own hometown, we probably would have gone home. We were waiting three hours. There was two rooms, one on the left and one on the right. We went into the one on the left. To this day, I think about what would have happened if we'd gone into the right room. Would we be where we are right now? Q: Now for the National Enquirer question: Do you have girlfriends? James: We're single at the moment. When you're away for six days out of the week, it's very hard to have a girlfriend. Q: Do you guys ever get big Hollywood heads? James: I don't think so.

Oliver: You can't get a big head around friends like ours. They're very good to us.

Source: The Daily Herald

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Toronto fans spellbound by Harry Potter actor

Last Updated: Wednesday, July 11, 2007 | 3:10 PM ET

He didn't arrive by Hogwarts Express but Harry Potter fans were nonetheless excited to welcome British actor Rupert Grint, who plays Ron Weasley in the film series, at a Toronto cinema for the latest movie's opening day.

"It's all really crazy," Grint, who arrived in a black Hummer plastered with Harry Potter artwork, said on Wednesday.

British actor Rupert Grint says it's 'really cool' to be in Canada for the first time. (CBC)

"It's really exciting and I've really enjoyed it, but getting recognized and that is really sort of a strange experience, and I don't think I'll ever really sort of get used to it."

The 18-year-old British actor was greeted by eager teenage fans, some screaming, who leaned over each other to touch hands with Grint. Some had been waiting for hours.

"We want him to smile at us," said 16-year-old Becca Ferguson, who had been waiting for three hours with her friend Emily Wilken. The pair were rewarded 45 minutes later when Grint went over to get a picture taken and sign his name.

"Oh my goodness," was all Wilken could muster after the actor left. < = =text/> // <\/>'); // ]]> < = src="http://ad.doubleclick.net/adj/aolc.cbc.ca/local/toronto;ptile=3;sz=300x250;ord=6631586780888200?" =text/> < src="http://m1.2mdn.net/879366/flashwrite_1_2.js"> dcmaxversion = 9 dcminversion = 6 Do On Error Resume Next plugin = (IsObject(CreateObject("ShockwaveFlash.ShockwaveFlash." & dcmaxversion & ""))) If plugin = true Then Exit Do dcmaxversion = dcmaxversion - 1 Loop While dcmaxversion >= dcminversion

The Toronto visit is Grint's first time in Canada.

"It's really cool," he said. "It's really good to see everyone sort of excited about the film and stuff."

The actor signed autographs and spoke to reporters. Grint revealed that he didn't realize the book and the films would balloon into a global phenomenon. The first six Harry Potter books by author J.K. Rowling have sold 325 million copies worldwide.

There was much anticipation surrounding the launch of the the fifth movie, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, and the final instalment of the book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, due out July 21.

"When we first started, I didn't really think of this far on," Grint said.

"It was enough of a crazy experience as it was because obviously I came from quite the normal background."

Grint is the eldest of five children born to Nigel Grint, a memorabilia dealer and Jo, a homemaker, who live in Hertfordshire in southwest England.

The young actor recently bought an ice cream van and joked that if the acting work dries up after Harry Potter, he'll just start a new career as an ice cream vendor.

Source: CBC, Canada