Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince

HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE: Make Magic! Create a Potion!

Brew up your own potion—and maybe the judges will be in as great an awe of it as these two totally innocent bystanders, encountered on the street.

In what might be viewed as a sort of Hogwarts Correspondence Course lesson/lecture, an interactive video submission contest has been launched in support of the July 15th opening of HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE. The contest is being featured on YouTube, and invites visitors to create their own unique potion-making video. Fans can make a 3-D cauldron instantly appear on their computer screens and, with a little practice and a few keystrokes, throw in some ingredients to brew up a perfect concoction. As an alternative, the Standard Experience allows visitors to create a potion without the 3-D tool.

The contest is live and accepting submissions through June 24 (which doesn’t give you much time to whip up your magical entry). A group of semi-finalists will be announced on July 2, after which voting will be open to the public through July 5. The finalists will be featured on the YouTube homepage July 14 and the winner announced on July 15—the day that HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE debuts.
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Harry Potter Screenshots Show Off Expression

The new official video game for Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince will apparently be a little more emotional then the previous games. This all thanks to a new engine the development team is working to make characters more facially expressive.

In "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince", Voldemort is tightening his grip on both the Muggle and wizarding worlds and Hogwarts is no longer the safe haven it once was. Harry suspects that dangers may even lie within the castle, but Dumbledore is more intent upon preparing him for the final battle that he knows is fast approaching. Together they work to find the key to unlock Voldermort's defences' and, to this end, Dumbledore recruits his old friend and colleague, the well-connected and unsuspecting bon vivant Professor Horace Slughorn, whom he believes holds crucial information.

Check out the other screenshots below, there is a Wii screenshot in there as well.

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Waiting for "Harry Potter"?

Harry Potter fans have been patiently waiting for the next movie in the series based on the J.K. Rowling books. And finally, "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" opens in theaters at just after midnight on July 15. In the film, Lord Voldemort is tightening his grip on both the Muggle and wizarding worlds and Hogwarts is no longer the safe haven it once was. If you're a huge fan of the series who is anxiously awaiting the film's release, The Sun and Star-Banner would like to talk to you for an upcoming story. Have you ordered your tickets already? Are you planning a midnight viewing party? We want to know. Contact features editor Sarah Sain at sains@gvillesun.com, and include a name and contact phone number.

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Harry Potter director reveals Deathly Hallows cliffhanger plan

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DIRECTOR David Yates has promised fans a nail-biting cliffhanger between the two parts of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - and he revealed he knows just where the story will be divided.

Yates said he believes splitting the final Harry Potter book into two movies was the right creative decision.

He said it had been too difficult to cram Deathly Hallows into one movie, although skeptics have speculated that it was simply a Warner Bros marketing decision to boost the box ofice earnings from the climactic storyline of J.K. Rowling's blockbuster series.

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MSN Asks "Has Harry Potter Lost the Magic?"

The MSN Mom & Pop Culture Blog for Family Entertainment has an opinion piece today based on the question " 'Has Harry Potter Lost His Magic?.' " The article starts by mentioning the huge interest and media attention paid to the Twilight series, then discusses the delay of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, wondering if this would cause waning in the love of the series and films. The author notes that while some had been planning a boycott when the movie opens next month, the magic remains strong and firm for many of us, and mentions our own recent LeakyCon convention held last month in Boston. Quotage:

But on the other hand, there is reality. Harry Potter still has passionate fans. The Web site, TheLeakyCauldron.org reports more than 75,000 members in its online discussion community. These fans not only have no plans to boycott Warner Bros. for delaying the movie, some of them also traveled to Boston a couple of months ago for "LeakyCon," a convention that raised money for charities and featured the musical stylings of an astonishing number of Harry Potter tribute bands.
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The event, put on by TheLeakyCauldron.org, wasn't just about bands, though. Two major names in young adult literature, Cheryl Klein and John Green, gave a keynote speech on the writing process. Klein was on the U.S. editing team for Harry Potter, and Green is author of "Looking for Alaska" and "An Abundance of Katherines" and "Paper Towns."

The author then goes on to note a feeling that is shared by so many of us:

As impressive as this is, conventions aren't proof that the boy wizard retains his magic. That lies in the stories themselves, where the magic remains in abundance...I picked up "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" again to get myself ready for the movie, and loved it more this time than I did the first. Once you know how the series ends, you can see the incredibly way Rowling structured the story, weaving little bits into the tapestry that would have great meaning later. All the while, she stayed true to her central theme: that a mother's love is the most powerful magic of all. And she keeps things refreshingly complex. Many secondary characters are a mix of good and evil -- sort of like how people are in the real world.

These books are good enough that they should be considered classics. The movies, for the most part, have been good, too. This is why I'll be at the theater the day "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" opens. For me, at least, the magic is as strong as ever.

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Parenting teens: The true wizardry of ‘Harry Potter’ is in its humanity

So much time has gone by since I read “Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince,” I feel like I’ll need a refresher course before the movie, based on the sixth book, comes out in a few weeks.

Yes, the “Harry Potter” cauldron is brewing, stirring up what I’m sure some thought was a nice, peaceful slumber from the furor that swept up people of all ages.

Yet as many fans as JK Rowling had for her series, which ends with the seventh book, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” there have been detractors who have even burned the books, which are framed in a magical world populated by witches and wizards.

It’s a free country, but it seems to me if people pulled the themes out of the “Harry Potter” books, one would see the themes Rowling continually returns to are based more in humanity than the occult.

Take the quest for immortality. It becomes Voldemort’s Achilles’ heel — an evil lust, if one believes eternal life is achieved through death and the belief in Christ.

Less a being than force
In the sixth book, readers find Voldemort has, through a series of brutal murders, split his soul into seven parts, hiding six of them in horcruxes. When the horcruxes are destroyed, so is a piece of Voldemort, who is more a force than a being.

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Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince Making Of Media

Many of the film’s actors provided their voices for the game, and the development team at EA had access to photos and body scans of all the characters, so every raised eyebrow and fluttering cloak is accurately portrayed in the game. Plus, for the first time in a Harry Potter video game, it’s possible to read the emotion in characters’ faces as they talk, thanks to the advanced facial animation system used during development.

The Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince video game is also your chance to explore Hogwarts like never before. For the first time ever, you’re free to explore every inch of the castle and its grounds, and look at it from every angle. The EA development team worked with directly with the movie designers, sharing blueprints and ideas, to recreate a magical environment, full of moving staircases, disappearing rooms, and secret entrances. And Harry’s ghostly friend, Nearly Headless Nick, is always only a button press away, ready to guide you to your next destination.
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