J.K. Rowling to Write New Novel for Adults

Via Scoop.it — Shezcrafti

Ever since Harry Pot­ter ended, rumors have been swirling that J.K. Rowl­ing has been work­ing on a new novel for adults. Today we get con­fir­ma­tion that the rumors are true.

USA Today reports:

The author of mega-selling Harry Pot­ter series has an agree­ment with Lit­tle, Brown in the United States and Britain to pub­lish her first nov­els for grownups. The title, release date and details about the novel, long rumored, were not announced Thurs­day. Her sev­enth and final Pot­ter story came out in 2007.

Via www.usatoday.com

Of the new pub­lish­ing deal, J.K. Rowl­ing says:

“Although I’ve enjoyed writ­ing it every bit as much, my next book will be very dif­fer­ent to the Harry Pot­ter series, which has been pub­lished so bril­liantly by Blooms­bury and my other pub­lish­ers around the world,” Rowl­ing said in a state­ment released by Lit­tle, Brown. “The free­dom to explore new ter­ri­tory is a gift that Harry’s suc­cess has brought me, and with that new ter­ri­tory it seemed a log­i­cal pro­gres­sion to have a new pub­lisher. I am delighted to have a sec­ond pub­lish­ing home in Lit­tle, Brown, and a pub­lish­ing team that will be a great part­ner in this new phase of my writ­ing life.”

We don’t yet know what the the book will be about, or even what genre it belongs to, so it’s anybody’s guess if Rowl­ing will stick to her fan­tasy roots or try some­thing new.  I seem to remem­ber a quote from a few years ago where Rowl­ing said she’d love to write mys­ter­ies one day, so that’s my best guess as to what we can expect.  Her pen­chant for intrigue is a big part of what made the Pot­ter series so great.

I’m sure many fans will be dis­ap­pointed that the big announce­ment isn’t Potter-related  (I’m still hold­ing out hope for a Pot­ter pre­quel about the the  Maraud­ers ).  It’s hard for me to imag­ine what a non-Harry Pot­ter book from J.K. Rowl­ing would be like, espe­cially one that is meant for grownups, but she’s a tal­ented writer and already has enough mass appeal for it to be a suc­cess­ful ven­ture no mat­ter what she writes.

Review: Reasons to Love ‘Deathly Hallows: Part 1′

When I first learned that Warner Bros. was going to split  Harry Pot­ter and the Deathly Hal­lows into two movies, there was much kick­ing and scream­ing on my part.  I was not alone.  There were plenty of fans and non-fans alike who felt it was a poor deci­sion, and one that fur­ther painted Warner Bros. as greedy stu­dio execs who were try­ing to milk the Harry Pot­ter fran­chise dry.

I saw Harry Pot­ter and the Deathly Hal­lows: Part 1 last night and I am happy to report that my atti­tude has changed.  My faith in David Yates still wan­ing, I went into the movie with slightly low­ered expec­ta­tions.  But when the cred­its rolled, I walked out of the the­ater with only pos­i­tive thoughts.  Reflect­ing on the fin­ished prod­uct, I now under­stand not only why it was nec­es­sary to make two films, but also why the film­mak­ers felt it was impor­tant.  They wanted to give us a proper farewell.

Right away, the decay­ing Warner Bros. logo sets the tone: this will not be a happy movie.  Dum­b­le­dore is dead, Volde­mort and his Death Eaters have infil­trated the Min­istry of Magic, and the wiz­ard­ing world is at war.  Times are so dark that even the Mug­gles are flee­ing their homes–nowhere is safe.  Harry, Ron, and Hermione have said their good­byes to Hog­warts (the warm, famil­iar school set­ting is notice­ably absent) and set out on a jour­ney to destroy the hor­cruxes: objects con­tain­ing the seven pieces of Voldemort’s soul that are the keys to his destruction.

The dan­ger is emi­nent from begin­ning to end; this is the dark­est Harry Pot­ter film yet (which should be no sur­prise to those who have read the books).  There are some gen­uinely fright­en­ing scenes and, of course, more deaths of beloved char­ac­ters.  Yet all this doom and gloom is punc­tu­ated by sur­pris­ing lit­tle moments of joy.  I found myself cheer­ing at grand entrances, for exam­ple, when Dobby bursts into Num­ber 12 Gri­mauld Place wrapped around Mundun­gus Fletcher; and at other times laugh­ing out loud like when Harry tests out the wand that Ron gives him, which unex­pect­edly shoots out a pil­lar of flame  (it’s much fun­nier than it sounds, trust me).

There were also many moments in the film that felt like a love let­ter to fans.  There was an espe­cially lovely scene where Harry coaxes a melan­choly Hermione into danc­ing with him; it was a touch­ing and fit­ting trib­ute to their seven years of almost sibling-like friend­ship.  We were also treated to an early scene where Hermione per­forms a mem­ory charm on her par­ents, know­ing she will have to leave them behind.  In the books, we never get to see Hermione’s “Mug­gle” life, so I really enjoyed this lit­tle bit.

I some­times take issue when this type of fluff is injected into books based on movies, espe­cially if they replace scenes that are more crit­i­cal to the plot, but I could not find much to com­plain about here.  Even the book’s most ten­der moments are han­dled with great care like the death of Dobby (which man­aged to make me cry) .  There are, of course, some dif­fer­ences between book and film that improve the flow and pac­ing of events, but over­all I felt Deathly Hal­lows: Part 1 was a very faith­ful adap­ta­tion that cap­tured the same feel­ings of iso­la­tion and impend­ing doom.

There were some low­lights for me, how­ever.  Let’s start with Xenophilus Lovegood–I didn’t care for Rhys Ifans’ per­for­mance.  I real­ize the char­ac­ter is sup­posed to be eccen­tric, but I felt really dis­tracted by his screen-time.  Also, I love Helena Bon­ham Carter as Bel­la­trix Lestrange, but with every Harry Pot­ter movie she gets more and more ridicu­lous.  When­ever she’s on screen I feel like I’m watch­ing the Helena Bon­ham Carter show–I wish she’d tone it down a bit.  Then there was Alexan­der Desplat’s score, which was not spec­tac­u­lar, but it gets the job done.  Those are my only com­plaints, and yes, they’re nitpicky.

Visu­ally, Deathly Hal­lows is a mar­vel of film­mak­ing, from the cin­e­matog­ra­phy to the spe­cial effects.  The spells, appari­tions, fly­ing and bat­tle scenes all looked amaz­ing.   As much as I missed Hog­warts, this film makes up for its absence with breath­tak­ing nat­ural back­drops.  See­ing it on an IMAX screen was truly a mem­o­rable experience.

But as spec­tac­u­lar as part one of Deathly Hal­lows is, it’s almost a bit unfair to review it as a com­plete film.  Even at a whop­ping two hours and twenty six min­utes long, I guar­an­tee you will be dis­ap­pointed when it ends; feel­ing rather like some­one pulled the rug out from under you.  And like all good two-part movies, this one ends on a major down note.  For those won­der­ing what part of the book serves as the end­ing to this film, I will only say this: they made a very good decision.

There were so many things to love about Harry Pot­ter and the Deathly Hal­lows , and I am con­fi­dent it will go down as one of the best films in the Pot­ter movie fran­chise, if not the best. The only bad thing about this movie…is that it ends.

Harry Potter and the Half-way Decent Movie

So it’s like 3:30 a.m., and I just got home from the mid­night show­ing of Harry Pot­ter and the Half-Blood Prince .  I could go to bed, but I had to get a few things off my mind first while my mem­o­ries are still fresh.  Legili­mens!

First, the good.  This movie was a LOT of fun.  As one of my Twit­ter pals put it, Half-Blood Prince felt like return­ing to high school and see­ing all of your old friends.  Harry, Ron, and Hermione have always been at the heart of every Pot­ter film, and HBP doesn’t devi­ate from this win­ning for­mula.  The film doesn’t waste any time get­ting right down to busi­ness, and it’s action-packed from start to fin­ish.  From a plot stand­point, it had a lot of ground to cover (as all the Pot­ter films do) and those two and a half hours just seem to fly by.  Over­all it was a solid Pot­ter film, and I’m sure it will hold up to many sub­se­quent view­ings, which are no doubt nec­es­sary to catch all the things you might have missed.  There was just so much going on in this movie it was almost overwhelming.

And now the not-so-good.  I don’t know if this is a byprod­uct of hav­ing been forced to wait an extra 9 months for its release and hav­ing inflated expec­ta­tions or what, but HBP def­i­nitely had its short­com­ings.  The down­side to cram­ming so much stuff in is that there’s quite a bit left out.  And I’m not even one of those book Nazis that insists all movies must be 100% faith­ful to the book; not even close.  I just didn’t under­stand some of the logic behind the deci­sions made in this film’s case.  They had time to throw in a bunch of lengthy scenes that never hap­pened, but they didn’t have time to include the ones that actu­ally did?  I would rather see a film where they’re forced to leave things out due to time con­straints ver­sus just mak­ing up what­ever the hell they want to.  With­out giv­ing any­thing away, the first 10 min­utes of this film is a prime example.

Many parts of this film just didn’t feel like a Harry Pot­ter movie at all when com­pared to the pre­vi­ous five.  I think a lit­tle too much lib­erty was taken, to the point that some of the things that make Pot­ter movies feel like Pot­ter movies was lost–which is really sur­pris­ing, because I felt Yates did such a fan­tas­tic job with Order of the Phoenix.  Maybe I’m expect­ing too much; it’s just Harry Pot­ter after all.  Or maybe I’m just get­ting too old for this shit.  I cer­tainly felt old dur­ing the romcom-y bits when 90% of the the­ater was squeal­ing like giddy school­girls.  It could not have been more appar­ent who this film’s tar­get audi­ence was.

Speak­ing of get­ting old, when did the stu­dents of Hog­warts all turn 30?  I real­ize Daniel Rad­cliffe and com­pany have aged quite a bit since the first film, but I don’t think I saw any younger stu­dents at all in HBP.  You know what else I didn’t see?  Any infor­ma­tion about the Half-Blood Prince what­so­ever.  I feel bad for any­one who has never read the books that tries to watch this film; you will be hope­lessly lost.

For the rest of you–the ones who’ve read the books–despite my pithy com­plaints, there’s a lot to love about the film ver­sion of Half-Blood Prince:

(Warn­ing: HERE THERE BE SPOILERS.  Beware! )

Things I liked:

• The bits about Harry & Hermione’s friend­ship, par­tic­u­larly Dumbledore’s “curios­ity.” So cute.
• Jim Broadbent’s turn as Slughorn; great job!
• Aragog’s funeral and Hagrid’s sub­se­quent drink­ing binge.
• Snape bein’ all Snape-ish as only Snape can.
• Happy to see Tonks & Lupin together , how­ever brief.
• Both kids who played Tom Rid­dle (age 11 & age 16) were fantastic!
• Michael Gambon’s Dum­b­le­dore was much bet­ter played this time around.

…And of course,  there were some things that needed improvement:

Things I could have done with­out:

• Jessie Cave as Laven­der Brown.
• Pan­der­ing to the HP fan­girl set.  Yes I real­ize HBP is the “O.C.” of all the Pot­ter books, but the teen romance por­trayed in this film was just over the top, to the point where I felt like the roman­tic sub­plots over­shad­owed the main one.
• Ran­dom black woman who comes on to Harry in a cafe.  Seri­ously, what is up with ran­dom black char­ac­ters appear­ing in the Pot­ter films?  It’s almost like the direc­tors throw them in there for diversity’s sake.
• The heavy-handed direc­tion.  I swear in some shots you could almost feel Yates think­ing “Hmm, what crazy cam­era wiz­ardry can I do to make this scene look cooler?”
• The Weasley’s house burn­ing down.  Um, WTF??
• Fen­rir Grey­back.  Although an impor­tant char­ac­ter in the book, his pres­ence added noth­ing to this movie.

Things I missed:

• The “feel” and spirit of Hog­warts just wasn’t there for me this time around.
• Did they even bother to put the main char­ac­ters in uni­forms dur­ing classes?
• Where the hell were all the younger stu­dents?  I don’t think I saw even one.
• Dumbledore’s funeral.  I won­der if we’ll see it in the begin­ning of Deathly Hal­lows? I felt the end­ing in gen­eral was kind of a cop-out.
• Cho Chang. I thought we’d at least see her in the back­ground or something.
• Any back­ground infor­ma­tion what­so­ever about the Half-Blood Prince.

P.S.  Did any­one else almost pee a lit­tle bit when Dum­b­le­dore (whom J.K. Rowl­ing pro­fesses to be gay) starts telling Harry how he’s been fond of him since he was a lit­tle boy, and that they need to fig­ure out the deal with the closet??  Unin­ten­tional hilar­ity FTW.

Top 5 Most Anticipated Fantasy Flicks for 2009

#5 –The Elf­s­tones of Shan­nara

The Elf­s­tones of Shan­nara is the story of two inter­twined destinies–that of Wil Ohms­ford, grand­son of leg­endary Shea Ohms­ford, and Amberle Elessedil, who must go on a quest together to save the Ell­crys, the dying Elvish tree.  Ell­crys remains the last strong­hold of magic pro­tect­ing The Four Lands from the onslaught of the Demon World, and only Amberle, last dis­ci­ple of the Druid Allanon, has the power to save it.

Direc­tor Mike Newell (Harry Pot­ter and the Gob­let of Fire) will bring The Elf­s­tones of Shan­nara, the sec­ond book of The Orig­i­nal Sha­narra Tril­ogy by Terry Brooks , to the big screen in 2009, release date to be announced.

#4 — The Alche­myst: The Secrets of the Immor­tal Nicholas Flamel

The Alche­myst: The Secrets of the Immor­tal Nicholas Flamel is a cont

empo­rary fan­tasy that mixes ancient phi­los­o­phy and renais­sance his­tory with a modern-day set­ting. Twin teens Josh and Sophie New­man work at a San Fran­cisco bookstore/café for a book­keeper whom they soon dis­cover is actu­ally Nicholas Flemel, the leg­endary ancient alchemist and keeper of The Codex. Nicholas and his wife Perenelle have been liv­ing eter­nally by drink­ing the Elixir of Life. When necro­mancer Dr. John Dee steals The Codex, Josh and Sophie are unex­pect­edly drawn into a world of magic and mys­tery to help Nicholas recover The Codex or face the world’s destruc­tion at Dee’s hand.

The first book of the six-part The Secrets of the Immor­tal Nicholas Flamel series by Irish author Michael Scott , The Alche­myst will be a major motion pic­ture by New Line Cin­ema in 2009. The film is cur­rently in pre-production, with no offi­cial release date yet.

#3 — Ink­heart

Ink­heart is the story of a book­ish young girl named Meg­gie and her father Mo, who has an extra­or­di­nary abil­ity: when he reads books aloud, he brings them to life. The first book of the widely suc­cess­ful Inkworld tril­ogy, Ink­heart is a charm­ing tale by beloved children’s author Cor­nelia Funke . Sim­i­lar to 2008’s The Spi­der­wick Chron­i­cles, Ink­heart is geared toward a younger audi­ence set, and a def­i­nite fam­ily film.

Although not one of my favorite books (sur­pris­ing, con­sid­er­ing how much I adored The Thief Lord also by Cor­nelia Funke), the film’s trailer looks promis­ing enough, and full of action, which is some­thing I felt the book sorely lacked. Ink­heart stars Bren­dan Frasier as Mo and child star Eliza Ben­nett as Meg­gie, and is set for a Jan­u­ary 2009 release.

#2 — War­craft

What we know: War­craft will be a live-action movie by Leg­endary Pic­tures based on Blizzard’s hugely pop­u­lar War­craft series of PC games and World of War­craft, the mas­sively suc­cess­ful MMO. The PG-13 rated movie will be told from an Alliance per­spec­tive, and its sto­ry­line will be set one year before the events that unfold in World of Warcraft.

What we don’t know: Any­thing else. There’s still no images, no trail­ers. Not even an offi­cial web site. Yet Bliz­zard has con­firmed, through a series of cryp­tic winks and nudges, that this movie is still very much in pro­duc­tion. It’s hard to believe this movie will be a real­ity in 2009, con­sid­er­ing how shrouded in mys­tery it seems to be. Not a word was breathed about the film at Bliz­zCon 2008, a huge dis­ap­point­ment for thou­sands of fans anx­ious for any kind of update they can get.

Update 1/23/2009: Quote from Bliz­zard:

“We are in fact work­ing on a movie with Leg­endary Pic­tures, but we don’t have any new infor­ma­tion to share with every­one just yet. At the 2007 Bliz­zCon, we even had a spe­cial panel with a lit­tle bit about the plans for the film. I’m sure you can find video on it or reports on it.

Just as an addi­tional infor­ma­tional bit, it will be Live Action.

I’m quite sure there will be plenty of action, but there’s a story to be told too. I couldn’t tell you more though. ”

Update 7/22/2009:  Sam Raimi con­firmed as direc­tor!!

#1 — Harry Pot­ter and the Half-Blood Prince

Imag­ine look­ing for­ward to a movie you’re really excited about. Not just any movie, but the sixth and most cru­cial film adap­ta­tion of the best­selling book series of all time. The release date draws near. You start see­ing posters, pro­mo­tions, pro­duc­tion stills. Your excite­ment builds. You watch the trailer, and it looks amaz­ing. You can­not wait to pre-order your tick­ets. And then you find out it’s get­ting delayed. By eight months.

That’s exactly what Warner Bros. did to mil­lions of excited Pot­ter fans eagerly await­ing the release of Harry Pot­ter and the Half-Blood Prince . Just two months before the film’s originally-scheduled Novem­ber 2008 release date, Warner Bros. announced it would be mov­ing the release date to July 2009. The back­lash was imme­di­ate. There were peti­tions, boy­cotts, and a flood of strongly-worded emails to Warner Bros. stu­dio execs. Their reasoning—some vague excuse about the writ­ers’ strike impact­ing their bot­tom line—was hard to swal­low, espe­cially after watch­ing them rake in hun­dreds of mil­lions from last summer’s box office megahit The Dark Knight. Yet despite our out­rage, we all know that come next July we’ll still be pre-ordering our tick­ets and lin­ing up in droves at the even­tual mid­night release.

(I’m still bit­ter, can’t you tell?)

The Twilight Effect

Last Fri­day night, I dragged three of my girl­friends out to the movies to see a lit­tle film called Twi­light . Per­haps you’ve heard of it?

If you haven’t, I will assume you’re either a shut-in or a male.  After all, it was a 75% female-dominated audi­ence that con­tributed to Twilight’s stag­ger­ing $70 mil­lion open­ing week­end , a huge coupe for direc­tor Cather­ine Hard­wicke and Sum­mit Enter­tain­ment.  To help put that fig­ure in per­spec­tive, Twilight’s suc­cess ranks in the top 4 Novem­ber box office fig­ures of all time–ahead of sum­mer block­buster Trans­form­ers, and the lat­est James Bond flick . As it turns out, Twi­light also boasts the high­est rank­ing box office debut ever for a female direc­tor.  Con­sid­er­ing the eco­nomic cri­sis we’re sup­posed to be in, these num­bers are even more impres­sive.  So impres­sive, in fact, that Sum­mit Enter­tain­ment has already announced plans to begin pre-production on Twilight’s sequel, New Moon.

But none of this news comes as a sur­prise to Twilight’s legions of diehard fans , whose fierce dis­play of buy­ing power pre­vi­ously helped pro­pel all four books of The Twi­light Saga onto the best­seller list, and keep them there, mak­ing author Stephe­nie Meyer a huge suc­cess.  Even Eclipse, Meyer’s third book of the series, dethroned Harry Pot­ter and the Deathly Hal­lows from the best­seller list.

But let’s back up to a few months ago, before I had so much as read a sin­gle page of this hugely pop­u­lar series, before I saw the movie (twice), and before I knew I was on Team Edward, or that there even was a Team Edward.  I remem­ber casu­ally surf­ing the inter­webs, mind­ing my busi­ness as usual, and com­ing across an occa­sional Twi­light glim­mer: a movie ad, a book review, some obsessed fangirl’s glit­ter­ing “Bella ♥‘s Edward” forum sig­na­ture.  It was easy enough to ignore–at first.  But it wasn’t long before Twi­light pro­pa­ganda seemed to creep into every facet of every web site I ever vis­ited.  (My hat’s off to whomever is behind Twilight’s aggres­sive web mar­ket­ing cam­paign, by the way.)  So I guess it was inevitable that I’d even­tu­ally click one of the ads and watch the movie trailer, right?

My reac­tion went some­thing like this:

• That looks pretty cool, I guess…
• And that vam­pire guy is pretty hot!
• Oh hey, it’s Cedric Dig­gory from Harry Pot­ter and the Gob­let of Fire.
• I’m a Harry Pot­ter fan, maybe I’ll like this movie too?
• And Paramore is on the sound­track!? I LOVE Paramore!
• Novem­ber 21st? What a coin­ci­dence, because that’s the same week­end Half-Blood Prince was sup­posed to come out…

The next thing I knew, I was headed for the local library to check out the first book, which I soon dis­cov­ered was a com­plete impos­si­bil­ity.  Checked out; on hold; back-ordered; trans­ferred to another branch–every sin­gle one of the fifty-something copies fell into one of these cat­e­gories.  What was going on here?  Why is Twi­light so pop­u­lar?  Like many unini­ti­ated fans before me, I set out to unravel this mys­tery.  Hell, I thought, maybe if the books are that good, I should just buy them.

So I did.

And that’s how I dis­cov­ered the secret sauce, if you will, of what makes The Twi­light Saga so suc­cess­ful.  The recipe con­sists of teen angst, sex­ual ten­sion, impos­si­bly good-looking main char­ac­ters liv­ing impos­si­bly ide­al­is­tic lives, and a heavy dose of romance deliv­ered to the sap­pi­est degree pos­si­ble.  Sim­ply put, these books are pure escapism.  No real sub­stance, but no real need for it, either.  I could elab­o­rate fur­ther, but I’ve already done that  here , here , and here .  Yet despite how unre­mark­able these books really are, I spent an entire week con­sumed by them.  And I’ve already seen the movie twice.  And I’m anx­iously await­ing its sequel.

What the hell have I got­ten myself into?