Universal has released some concept art for the Three Broomsticks which will be part of the their new park, the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. It looks amazing!
Three Broomsticks
(Hat Tip: AF)
This just in:
In December 2007, J.K. Rowling unveiled The Tales of Beedle the Bard, a very special book of five fairy tales illustrated by the bard herself, embellished with silver ornaments and mounted moonstones. Amazon was fortunate to come into possession of one of the original copies, and it was our privilege to share images and reviews of this incredible artifact. Now J.K. Rowling is giving millions of Harry Potter fans worldwide cause for celebration with these new editions of The Tales of Beedle the Bard, available December 4, 2008.
Beedle the Bard Standard Cover
Beedle The Bard Deluxe Edition
You can pre-order the special Collector’s Edition of Beedle The Bard for $100 or the Standard Edition for $7.79.
All proceeds go to The Children’s High Level Group charity.
The biggest question for me is: Will Jim Dale narrate the “Tales of Beedle The Bard?”
(Hat tip: thehogshead.org)
Hopefully by now, you’ve seen the trailer for Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. We sat down immediately after watching to record out thoughts. What do you think of the trailer? Does the voice of the woman in the orphanage belong to J.K. Rowling?
You can listen to the podcast with the player below, or download it directly as an mp3.
We’ve all been anticipating the 9pm EST release of the official Half Blood Prince teaser trailer; but we can now see it an early released copy on MSN movies. It looks fantastic (although if one didn’t know better they might think that Tom Riddle was the main character in the story)!
AOL’s version is now up and it is beautiful in HD!! Wow.
Enjoy and tell us what you think!
Here’s a smaller version of the trailer:
UPDATE: We have put up screen shots of the teaser trailer on our Flickr page. Enjoy!
Screenshot of Young Tom Riddle
Screenshot of Dumbledore (not Moses or Gandalf)
UPDATE: The trailer has been released early on MSN. Check back here for more updates.
As we reported last week, AOL will be releasing the Half Blood Prince Trailer tonight at 9 PM EST.
We will make sure to post a link as soon as we can.
What do you hope to see in this trailer?
ps. while you’re waiting for the real thing, enjoy our version of the Half Blood Prince Trailer made at Portus 2008.
Yesterday it was announced that that the worldwide debut of the trailer for the sixth film, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, would take place via satellite on Tuesday, July 29th, from 9:00 - 9:15pm EST.
However, today we got a tip from the Spanish HP site, BlogHogwarts.com that the satellite feed of the trailer will be available on aol.com. Here is the report:
I inform you that we contacted Warner Bros. Mexico today, and they
have confirmed to us that the teaser trailer of the upcoming movie
‘Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince’ will be exclusively aired in
the AOL website for the USA, next Tuesday 29th. It’s not confirmed yet
if the AOL websites for other countries will have the trailer also,
but they say that this is the first time that a website is going to
set up his satellite signal to transmit the trailer directly =
We will keep you posted with any further developments.
One of the over-arching meta-themes of the Harry Potter books is, without a doubt, choice. From early on the books the theme of choice is empasised, when the Sorting Hat defers to Harry’s wish to be in Gryffindor, or when Dumbledore makes it clear to Harry that it is his choices, far more than abilities that make him the wizard that he is. It’s clear that J.K. Rowling is a proponent of the idea that we make ourselves who we are and are ultimately responsible for who we become.
Putting aside a scientific discussion of free will and determinism, a greater question, from within the stories themselves, comes to light. With the conclusion of Book 7, and the revelation of Dumbledore’s less than altruistic motives, does J.K. Rowling’s position on free will and choice change? Did Harry, in fact, make all those choices of his own free will, or, perhaps, was he influenced by forces beyond his control? Despite Dumbledore’s protestations to the contrary, could Harry ever have avoided the final showdown with the Dark Lord, had he simply chosen to walk away?
In this week’s episode, we examine the nature of free will and choice as presented in the books after Book 7, and what J.K. Rowling might be saying about what it means to be free.
This podcast is brought to you by Audible.com. Download a free audiobook of your choice today at audiblepodcast.com/hp.
Check out some of the books we talked about on this week’s episode.
Make sure to check out Penny’s post Deathly Hallows: One Year Later for a rundown on all that’s happened since Book 7 was released.
You can listen to this episode using the player below, or download it directly as an mp3.
We were almost the only HP fansite that didn’t acknowledge the one-year anniversary of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I tried not to think about this. Not because I am in denial, but more because I try not to make too big of a deal out of seemingly arbitrary dates.
But then I started to think about this past year. And about all that has gone on in relation to Harry Potter, the fandom, and HPProgs in general.
So now, please join me on a stroll down memory lane to remember the Harry Potter Happenings of the past year:
(We switched servers and this information was lost in the process so I am reposting it).
We are hosting a Post-Portus Call-In show THIS evening, July 20 at 10pm EST.
Here is a link to the call in page: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/hpprogs/2008/07/21/Harry-Potter-Prognostications-Post-Portus-Call-In-Show
You will be able to listen to the show as well as take part in a chat on this page.
The number to call in is: (646) 595-4635
The service we use claims that there is a “click to talk” feature for VoIP- but I haven’t seen it work yet, so unfortunately for most of you (and us) it will be a long distance call.
Greg and I recorded a post -Portus podcast last week but we realized that there was no way we could capture all that went on at the conference.
Even if you aren’t a regular HPProgs listener, we’d love to have you call in so that you can give your own perspective on Portus. I think it would be a great way to showcase what these conferences and the HPEF are all about.
We can’t wait to talk to everyone about your Portus experiences!!
-Penny
The first official Half Blood Prince Teaser is now being shown at Imax viewings of the Dark Knight movie. BlogHogwarts.com put it up on youtube and you can see it here:
I think we can all agree that the HPProgs/Hogshead collaborative trailer is MUCH better than this one. Can’t we?
As you may have read, we just got back from Portus 2008, a Harry Potter convention that took place July 10-13 in Dallas, Texas. And, guess what? We had a blast! From Jim Dale giving a live performance, to meeting lots of fun and interesting people, it was a great time. We sat right down as soon as we could after we got home to record some of our thoughts on what the Harry Potter fan-world is like one year after the release of Deathly Hallows, along with details on the all the great sessions we went to, movies watched, conversations had, etc. It really was a great time, and special thanks to the HPEF for going all out and putting together an amazing weekend.
If you were there, leave a comment or send us an email. And make sure to check out www.hp2009.org for Azkatraz, in San Francisco! Hope to see you there!
This podcast is brought to you by Audible.com. Download a free audiobook of your choice today at audiblepodcast.com/hp.
Don’t forget to check out Harry Potter Prognostications on the new Odeo. Subscribe, why dontcha?
You can listen to the podcast using the player below, or download directly as an mp3.
Hey Y’all! I apologize for not updating sooner. Things have been going very well at Portus.
We left off before the Podcast Palooza. We started the podcast with a Panel of representatives from each of the podcasts. As I mentioned previously, there were representatives from SnapeCast, AlleyCast, Fandom Forecast, SpinnersCast, MuggleCast, Travis from the Hogs Head and me. The panel was moderated by Zorb from SpellCast. The panel was fun. We talked about our podcasts, our favorite moments, the future of our podcasts and the future of the fandom. I started off sort of nervous but got much more comfortable as the panel continued. What is funny is that I wasn’t nervous at all when I gave my presentations, but for some reason this thing got to me a bit. Oh well. All in all, it was a fun time. The folks from AlleyCast put some pics of the Palooza up, so check them out.
We had a half an hour to do our Live Podcast and we did it with Travis. We spoke a bit about our thoughts on the theme of Deathly Hallows. Greg and Travis speculated it was death, and I disagreed and spoke a bit about faith and trust. We then had audience members come up and talk about their thoughts on the theme of Book 7. All of the comments were well thought out and interesting. I enjoyed giving out lolly pops to the audience (”Don’t be a Dum Dum, listen to HPPROGS!”). Once we get a copy of the podcast, we will put it up for you all to listen to. I know the panel will be online as well.
After our podcast, we hung around for the rest of the podcasts. We had a wonderful time sitting at the “merch table” talking to different conference attendees, podcasters, and HPPROGS listeners. Speaking of “merch”, the “Always” t-shirt has been a HUGE HIT here. We brought a bunch with us and they “flew off the shelves.” It was incredibly gratifying to see people walking around the conference in the t-shirts. It was even crazier that there were a bunch of people who came *to* the conference with the t-shirts they bought off our website. We also brought the “Hogsmeade is For Lovers” t-shirts. Those have been popular, although not quite as universally appreciated as the Always shirt. In any event we are thrilled with the response to our t-shirts. Stay tuned for some new original designs and ideas.
We had to get up early the next morning because there was a small press gathering for *stay calm, Penny* JIM DALE!!!!! We, as well as around 12 other “press people” and featured Portus speakers sat around a table and talked to Jim. I hope to get an audio of this press conference and hopefully we will be able to play parts for you. We talked about the process of recording the books, other books that Jim has narrated, and Jim’s thoughts on the conference. I gave a personal plea to Jim to record “The Adventures of Winnie the Pooh” by A.A. Milne but he sort of laughed at that- I thought because he didn’t recognize it as a work of literature, Greg speculates because Disney now owns Winnie the Pooh. All I know is that it is a beautiful piece of children’s literature and Jim Dale’s voice would do amazing things for it. Jim spoke about the dumbing down of children thanks to prolonged computer and video game usage and how he hopes that his book narrations help pull children away from their computers and game consoles.
I also asked Jim about his use of accent and dialect versus just voice (I can’t leave my profession, I apologize). He spoke about the stereotypes and characteristics of people who live in different geographic areas of the UK and how those same stereotypes helped him create the accents and dialects of the different characters in the books.
After the question and answers, each of us had the opportunity to take our picture with Jim. The Portus people took the pictures so I don’t have the links to them yet but you better believe that when I get them, I’ll post them as soon as possible. Jim graciously bent down to my five feet so that I wouldn’t look so short and I nearly died from happiness.
After this, Jim spoke to all of the attendees here. He related that he was fascinated how this conference is like a scene out of the Harry Potter books. The wizards and witches are dressed up and doing their thing; while the muggles (the non-convention attendees) sort of just ignore us all, just like in the books! I had a laugh at this because obviously he wasn’t here on Thursday when the conference began and the muggles at the Hilton Anatole got their first glimpse of the Portus attendees; they were most certainly NOT ignoring us.
Jim then gave a reading of several chapters from the Harry Potter series. All I can say is WOW. If I was a fan before, it was nothing compared to how I feel about Jim Dale now. It was amazing to see how he actually acted the parts out as he read them. Jim is a stage actor, and unfortunately this doesn’t come across in the audiobooks. He also informed us that he has to remain completely still while recording or else the sound quality is sacrificed. He read selections from Books 1, 2 and 3 (including the Sorting Hat scene from Book 1, which was simply amazing). It’s really hard to put into words how incredible it was to see this, it was definitely one of the highlights of the weekend.
The rest of the conference flew by, but not without me giving my iPod to Jim Dale to autograph. Bearing his signature, it will now remain in it’s plastic case forever. There were lots more great sessions, movies and the ball. It was really spectacular. We’re going to do an episode early this week with out first thoughts, and we’ll go into greater detail about Portus, how it was different from last year at Prophecy, and give you details on next year’s gathering in San Francisco. Stay tuned!
We showed this teaser trailer (which may or may not…ok, may not, be the teaser trailer for the Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince movie) at our panel at the Portus Podcast Palooza (which was awesome, thank you so much for everyone who came to our panel).
Thanks to Travis for joining us!
Hey Y’all!!! (I actually only just heard my first Y’all since I got here) We are at Portus!!
I am going to try to update this post throughout the day so make sure to keep checking in.
So far Portus is going great and we are having an excellent time. Last night we attended the Opening Feast and like the good Press people that we are, we got some video footage. I know Greg had a good time interviewing the Malfoy family. I overheard Professors Quirrel and Snape talking and got a good laugh.
There was some wizard rock last night- courtesy of the Moaning Myrtles and the MudBloods. I checked them out for a few minutes and they did a great job and everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves.
I moderated my first round table discussion, “Does Dumbledore’s love for Grindelwald Change Canon? ” this morning. Here is the description:
When JK Rowling announced Dumbledore’s homosexuality, many fans were not upset with his sexual preference but rather with the notion that this proclamation changed cannon. When considering the Dumbledore/ Grindelwald relationship, one has to wonder whether Dumbledore was truly attracted to the ideals that Grindelwald espoused or whether it was his infatuation with the man himself that led him to be tempted with the notion of wizard dominance and “the greater good” ideal. Is Harry Potter cannon changed now that there is a possibility that a childhood crush and not a naïve sense of ideology led Albus Dumbledore to a pursuit of power that could have caused not only his moral downfall, but also the downfall of all Muggle/ wizard relations?
It was a lively discussion with a great (large) group of people and I had a great time. Greg video’d it so perhaps we will put it up on the blog.
My next round table, “Voldemort Understands Nothing: Why this Led to His Ultimate Downfall” is later this morning and I will report on that when I finish.
We have hung out with Travis from the Hogs Head a bunch and finally got to meet Leanne and Dave who we have corresponded with for a while. We have also met some other really nice people.
So far, so good. Will report in later.
-Penny
UPDATE:
Things are still going well. My second roundtable went really really well. It ended up being standing room only. I am not sure whether that had to do with me, the topic, or the fact that there were a bunch of death eaters who attended because they wanted to defend their Dark Lord. In any event, I was satisfied with how it went.
I attended the lunch Keynote Address by Dr. Henry Jenkins. Dr. Jenkins spoke titled: “Beyond the Borders of the Book: The Transformative Power of Fandom in the Age of Media Convergence.” This was an interesting lecture and he did a great job dissecting the Harry Potter Fandom.
Travis lectured on: “Christ in the Forest: Aslan and Harry Walk to Their Deaths.” In this lecture, he compared how Rowling, Lewis and Tolkein all used Biblical references when writing the stories of their “Christ-like Heroes.” Travis was not only educating but entertaining as well. He had the room laughing out loud several times.
We are now getting ready for the Podcast Palooza. We look forward to taking part in it. Talk to you soon 
Hi everyone. We will be leaving for Portus 2008 in just a few hours but we wanted to check in first.
OK. That is all for now. You better believe you’ll be hearing from me within the next few days.
-Penny
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