Club Jade

The interactive Harry Potter website Pottermore, announced in June, has finished enrolling its last beta testers.

I somehow lucked out on hitting the site when one of the Magical Quill qualifying rounds opened. This method involved having the hopeful answer a trivia question and then head to another webpage to find the magical quill. Click on it in time and you’re in! (more…)

Like Shatner before him, Daniel Radcliffe also has some words about Star Wars in this clip, but he’s pretty classy about it, focusing on how Potter has inspired kids to read. Here’s the quote:

“I always think that that’s one of the wonderful things about ‘Potter’ and the ‘Potter’ fan base,” he continues. “If you think about the other big costume-wearing [franchises] that go with it, things like ‘Star Wars’ and ‘Star Trek,’ with ‘Potter,’ because it started off as a literary thing, has created a generation of the same kind of mentality … with an appetite for reading and literature, which is kind of amazing.”

Sure, Star Wars and Star Trek have their share of successful tie-ins, but I doubt they’ve gotten as many kids reading as Potter, where books are the cornerstone.

UPDATE: Radcliffe tells Moviefone that the only Star Wars movie he’s seen is The Phantom Menace. Oh, Danrad. Someone is already getting him the Blu-rays. But then:

What ‘Star Wars’ and ‘Potter’ have in common is a huge devoted fan base. Where they differ, I think there is a — and this is my perception, I may be completely wrong — I think there is a slightly more balanced split between the sexes in the fan base of ‘Potter.’ I associate ‘Star Wars’ as being a predominantly male thing. And I think ‘Potter’ is split more evenly.

Sigh.

Why you can’t make your own Star Wars movie until 2072. (via)

Red Tails. MTV has a new trailer teaser for George Lucas and Anthony Hemingway’s upcoming World War II epic, as well as the first poster.

Harry Potter. Our pal Bryan Young got into Pottermore, and walks us through J.K. Rowling’s multimedia experience.

Comics! The Hairpin interviews Kate Beaton of Hark! A Vagrant, whose historic cartoons entertain history/literature nerds and plebeians alike.

Twilight. Bella’s wedding dress hasn’t even been revealed to the public yet, but the license to manufacture the Carolina Herrera-designed dress has been rewarded to Alfred Angelo, who will release it under the brand ‘Twilight Bridal by Alfred Angelo.’ (Does that mean there’ll be more?!?) The replica dress will be made in sizes 0 to 30W, sure to delight Twilight fans of all sizes.

This hilarious remix highlights the most typically high school movie-esque parts of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince — already the silliest of the adaptions.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 arrives in theaters just after midnight night. No time for a movie marathon? Recap with the video above.

And I’m off to pick up my tickets…

The final Harry Potter cast got together for a photo call as the premiere festivities get underway.

This will give the fans camping out something to look at to pass the time.

They’re calling this the ‘final trailer.’ Gasp!

Does that make you want to go to a midnight showing or what? July 15th cannot come soon enough.

And the catsuit goes to… Warner Bros. announced today that Anne Hathaway has been cast as Selina Kyle (aka Catwoman) in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises. Reaction has been mixed, but I’m willing to wait and see. (Remember when Heath Ledger was cast?) Earlier rumors claimed there’s a second female lead yet to be cast as well.

Also revealed is that Tom Hardy will play Bane, one of Batman’s newer (well, 1993) foes. Unlike Hathaway, whose performance is bound to be judged harshly against Michelle Pfeiffer’s take on the character (among others,) Hardy has much less baggage to overcome. Bane’s only film appearance thus far was in the much-derided Batman and Robin as a henchmen to Uma Thurman’s Poison Ivy.

X-Men: First Class. DC not your thing? Hero Complex visits the set of the X-Men prequel, which stars James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender as the young Professor X and Magneto. (Lingering question: Will January Jones actually convince us she’s not Betty Draper, budding supervillain?) There are another couple photos at /Film. And lastly, check out the teaser poster at AICN.

Buffy. Joss Whedon talks to Entertainment Weekly about the Season 8 comics. Warning: Massive spoilers. If you don’t risk them but still feel like getting depressive about something, Blastr has seven Whedon projects we’ll never see, almost all of which look better than Dollhouse.

Harry Potter. Another round of spoil-or-not: A pivotal death scene is being changed for Deathly Hallows: Part 2. Or, see Alexis Liddell’s concept art for ‘The Three Brothers’ sequence in Deathly Hallows: Part 1.

A Game of Thrones. There’s been so much news on the HBO adaption over the past few weeks that I can’t keep up, but one thing you don’t want to miss is the latest teaser.