Club Jade

Prepare to feel old: The Harry Potter series is turning 15 this year.

Yes, it’s been 15 years since the release of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, and Scholastic is re-releasing the entire series in trade paperback in September, complete with new covers by Kazu Kibuishi.

Check out the new cover for Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone under the cut.

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Or is it Attack of the Clones? Well, I suppose that depends on your certain point of view…

Earlier this week, Vulture posted a massive list of what they’re calling the most influential fan bases, and Star Wars came in number 2 – pretty good, all things considered. Occupying the #1 spot is Game of Thrones, which I can’t really be all that bitter about seeing as they’re peaking right now. (And, well, I’m a fan, if not technically in the fandom.)

It’s an interesting series, but one major qualm with the Star Wars listing: Warsies? Dude, no one with an actual clue uses that term. It’s not even a Trekker/Trekkie situation: No one uses it.

The Harry Potter, Doctor Who, Star Trek, Joss Whedon and Lord of the Rings fandoms also made the list. It’s all part of a week-long series, which also covers things like naming your fandom (don’t,) psychology and the crazy shit fans buy.

They’ve also profiled several influential fans, including the Leaky Cauldron’s Melissa Anelli, The One Ring’s Erica Challis and TFN’s Dustin Roberts.

A British newspaper is reporting that a 40-foot He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named and Mary Poppins – among other noted characters of British literature – will be featured in the Opening Ceremonies of the London Olympics on Friday. The Sunday Times writes:

About 30 actors each depicting Mary Poppins, the magical English nanny played by Julie Andrews in the 1964 Disney film, will descend from the roof of the stadium on wires and “float” to the ground with their opened umbrellas. The nightmare will be banished and happiness restored. “It’s a jaw-dropping sequence,” said one source.

If this is true, it’s going to be completely batshit. I hope it’s true.

In other news, I hear they’ve reached out for some rather unorthodox help in other areas.

The Pottermore Shop has finally opened to sell the eBook version of the Harry Potter series. Their eBooks are compatible with all the major readers.

Servers will be groaning, I’m sure.

The Pottermore beta has been going on so long and the opening delayed for so long that I, for one, had almost forgot about it. But today, the site announced that the interactive Harry Potter site will be opening for everyone in “early April.”

Part of the holdup, it seems, has been a move to “an entirely different platform” that should (hopefully) hold up to the expected amounts of users. (The beta was/is notoriously slow.)

Per usual, the Academy Award had little accolades for genre, though Industrial Light & Magic Rango took advantage of the Pixar-free spread to take the Oscar for Animated Feature.

Martin Scorsese’s Hugo – one of the few lead nominees that had any (tentative) connection to genre – swept the technical awards, with Oscars for Cinematography, Art Direction (beating Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallow Part 2,) Sound editing (over Potter and Transformers 3,) Sound Mixing, and Visual Effects (over Potter, Transformers, Real Steel and Rise of the Planet of the Apes.)

Harry Potter also lost out in Makeup, to The Iron Lady. One bright spot: The Muppets took Original Song.

As for the show itself…. It seemed like they just gave up on the younger demographic entirely. The whole show had a tone of ‘Remember how great movies used to be? Before blockbusters and computers? When we, the voting members of the Academy, were young?’ (Nothing, perhaps, says this better than The Artist wins: Old stuff and Hollywood self-absorption.) Billy Crystal may be ‘classic’ but about halfway through his painful song melody I was checked out of his performance and wishing for someone new. (Tom Hanks? Everyone loves Tom Hanks. And he doesn’t sing!) Or just bring back Jon Stewart, who made the montages actually fun. (Also, blackface? How far we’ve come, America.) Hell, let the Muppets host the whole damn thing. Last year may have been a disaster but is the answer really to pretend that anyone who’s clocked less than half a century cares? The Oscars have never been known for being populist, but this year the gap was especially glaring.

I’m glad the Oscars haven’t gone the Grammy route of rewarding their industry’s biggest moneymakers (no offense to Adele, but that path would lead to Oscar nominations for Twilight) but just… Mix it up a little, will ya?

We’re generally not used to seeing a lot of science fiction and fantasy films up for the big prizes at the Academy Awards, but this year does hold a few suprises. Although neither the final Harry Potter film or Andy Serkis’ motion-capture work failed to procure any major nods, there are still a handful of genre films in the big spots.

Martin Scorsese’s Hugo, a steampunk-tinged story of early film based on Brian Selznick’s novel The Invention of Hugo Cabret, is one of the 9 nominees for best picture, along with Woody Allen’s time-travel comedy Midnight in Paris. (Allen’s Annie Hall beat out Star Wars for the same prize in 1977.) Hugo scored 11 nods, including best director, making it the most-nominated film.

Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows: Part 2 got a nod for Visual Effects, where it will compete against Hugo, Real Steel, Rise Of The Planet of The Apes and ILM’s Transformers: Dark of the Moon.

ILM can also celebrate an Animated Feature nomination for Rango, which is up against Shrek spin-off Puss and Boots, Kung Fu Panda 2, A Cat in Paris and Chico & Rita.



We continue to look back at 2011 by looking at interesting fandom happenings outside of Star Wars.

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Taking a page from the Disney handbook, Warner Bros. announced that they will stop shipping all the Harry Potter films on December 29, 2011 – less than two months after the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 and the 8-film collection on November 11.

Marketing ploy? Sure. But is Warner Bros. sacrificing long-term sales for a blockbuster holiday season? Or will we see the next release just in time for the 2012 holidays? One interesting sign of the times – the moratorium will not include digital methods of delivery.

Pottermore finally speaks to what’s going on with the website. As we whined about earlier, the site has been having a hard time dealing with the volume since the last big batch of beta testers was added.

The Pottermore staff says they were surprised by how people have been using the site and that this has contributed to the load problems. They have decided to delay the general public opening until the end of October and, even then, they will bring people on in waves.

And sorry, folks. Dueling is still down for now!