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Many fans of a certain boy wizard have already bought tickets to Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, opening Wednesday at 12:01 a.m. in theaters across the land. But have you considered this: This is the sixth film in the series. The last one came out two years ago. The first came out eight years ago. Have you faithfully watched and re-watched the movies enough to be up-to-speed for Half-Blood Prince? Or will you be as lost as a muggle in a wand store?

Sure, you could refresh your memory by watching the DVDs, but where's the fun in that? Carmike Cinemas is hosting an event this Tuesday at about 65 of its theaters where all five films will be screened back-to-back, starting at 9 a.m., leading up to a midnight screening of Half-Blood Prince. The cost is only $15 for all five (you have to buy your Half-Blood Prince ticket separately), and you get to enjoy the films on the big screen, surrounded by the other Potterphiles in your community who don't have jobs.

Not all the Carmikes are doing this, so check out the list on the company's website to see if there's one close to you. Don't just show up at 9 a.m. at your nearest Carmike wearing a quidditch uniform. Most of the participating locales are in the Southeast quadrant of the U.S., though a few are scattered elsewhere, too. If you go, be sure to tell us about it in the comments, especially if anything crazy happens like Dementors showing up and sucking everyone's souls.

Welcome back to another edition of Insert Caption -- the game that every boy wizard is instructed to play on Fridays while attending Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Last week we asked you to churn out some laughs for a photo from a very unfunny (but still awesome) film called The Hurt Locker. Congrats go out to our solo winner, who provided us with a caption too good (and hot and fuzzy) to pass up.




1. "You have no idea how badly I want to shoot this gun in the air and shout aaargh" -- Anthony T.

See full image and all captions






This week is a doozy ladies and gents, as it's finally time to celebrate the return of a dude named Harry Potter. Yes, on July 15th we'll all finally get to cram our sweaty summer selves into theaters and watch Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince TM. In honor of this momentous occasion, we're giving one lucky person a whole bunch of Potter awesomeness. The grand prize winner behind our favorite caption this week will fly away with one Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince TM laptop sleeve with embroidered patch, one Quidditch bag, one Mask paperweight, one Slughorn hat with screen-print & patch, one Avada Kedavra T-shirt, one Kids' custom dyed Slub Worm Potter Quidditch T-shirt, one Kids' custom dyed Girls' Ginny Weasley Ultra Worm T-shirt, one women's Avada Kedavra T-shirt with velvet print, one Sublimated Luna Lovegood women's T-shirt, one Next Level Quidditch T-shirt, one Nose biting tea cup, one 4x6 sheet of tattoos and one set of buttons. Phew. Now sound off below!


© 2009 Warner Bros. Ent.
Harry Potter Publishing Rights © J.K.R.

Harry Potter characters, names and related indicia are trademarks of and © Warner Bros. Ent. All Rights Reserved.

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It looks like Brooke Shields is making her way back to the big screen, and this time she won't be getting saucy in The Blue Lagoon. After a decade away, The Hollywood Reporter posts that Shields has signed onto the live-action comedy Furry Vengeance. Actually, considering the title, it's probably good to note that this is a family film. There's no word on what role she'll play in the Brendan Fraser flick, which follows a real estate developer who gets a hard time from a band of raccoons. One -- What's the obsession with coons lately? Davey Crockett on the brain? Two -- It might be the usual Fraser fair, but the cast does boast Ken Jeong, Samantha Bee, and Dick Van Dyke as well.

Meanwhile, in the shadow of Parenthood heading to the small screen, THR also posts that Freestyle Releasing has picked up Motherhood, and will release it this October. This is the Uma Thurman/Minnie Driver/Anthony Edwards project that has Uma trying to pull together her daughter's sixth birthday party in the midst of "urban challenges." As the ed note pointed out in the post about her casting last year, "More Goose!" But there's also the perk of a practically fully female production. Katherine Dieckman wrote and directed it, and it's produced by Pamela Koffler, Christine Vachon, Jana Edelbaum, and Rachel Cohen. They say: "From the outset, Motherhood has been a labor of love for us. As a collection of female filmmakers, we immediately took to the humor and honesty of the project."

Hopefully the labor is worth it!

For all that I Am Legend imploded with that awful doctored ending, it was actually really interesting for a while -- mostly because both Will Smith and director Francis Lawrence were willing to go surprisingly far in suggesting that isolation had actually driven Smith's Robert Neville to no-kidding insanity. It's the kind of bold move that can make an otherwise frivolous summer blockbuster into something special.

It's promising, then, that Lawrence and Smith are looking to team up on a project that reads like one enormous bold gesture. The City That Sailed, which Lawrence has signed on to direct and develop for Smith to star in, is about a father and daughter who live on different continents, he in New York and she in England -- until the daughter's wish for a reunion is granted in the form of the island of Manhattan breaking off from the U.S. seaboard and carrying dad across the pond.

Tales of a Viewmaster movie have been floating around for a few days now, and I thought it was just the fevered imagination of Twitter. But no. Now it's in The Hollywood Reporter. DreamWorks is talking to Mattel to acquire the rights to the toy, and has asked Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci "to do some Transformers-style magic on it."

The reason I thought it was a Twitter joke is that Brad Caleb Kane announced via 140 characters that he was penning the script. "It'll be like the old '80s Amblin movies: Goonies, Young Sherlock ... in that vein." The Tweet was subsequently deleted, though the plan is still in the works. DreamWorks really wants to make a family friendly film out of the ViewMaster, and is trying to get everything signed and official. Let's stress that -- it's not signed, and Kurtzman and Orci seem to be the deciding factor. One can hope that if they declare it to be ridiculous, DreamWorks will come to its senses and realize you cannot make a film out of an inanimate object. I mean hey, I loved the ViewMaster too, and I felt like I was transported into a magic film cell world, but it doesn't mean it can actually be a movie.

Besides, the ViewMaster already tried to make it onscreen in the 1980s, and failed. Go below the jump and remind the toy it's just not ready to be a feature after this performance.

Carriers
A decent looking tale of an apocalyptic plague and four friends attempt to survive it. If you've read The Stand or seen the mini-series based on it the idea seems kind of similar. Chris Prine, the new James T. Kirk stars and I thought the faces drawn on the surgical masks were a nice touch. Things start getting germy on September 4.

Couples Retreat
Four couples head to a tropical resort where they learn that couples' therapy is a mandatory part of the program. The impressive cast includes Vince Vaughn, Jason Bateman, Jon Favreau, Malin Akerman, Kristin Davis, and Kristen Bell. The retreat commences on October 9.

Planet 51
There's a new full length trailer for this animated comedy about a human astronaut landing on an alien world that looks strikingly like an American suburb. The residents of the planet see the visitor as a threat and it looks like there's probably a decent message for kids about prejudice, but this one doesn't thrill me. The idea is cute and they get points for the use of The Killers' song "Spaceman" but it didn't have me laughing. Planet 51 touches down on November 20.

Pixar and everything else - them's the breaks when it comes to judging computer-animated fare these days. Although Pixar has rightfully earned themselves the lead among studios, and by a significant margin, it's all too easy to then marginalize the performance of others.

DreamWorks has certainly raised their game beyond pure pop-culture recitation with the inventive and entertaining likes of Over the Hedge, Kung Fu Panda, and Monsters vs. Aliens (and Aardman or no, I'd even include the winning Flushed Away among their finer efforts). For every Open Season, Sony has given us a Monster House (okay, so that's just one-for-one at the moment). And every time that Fox bequeaths to unwilling audiences something like Space Chimps or Everyone's Hero, Blue Sky has nothing to do with it.

Fox/Blue Sky, however, is the precise pairing that gives us the visually engaging and moderately amusing outings like Robots, Horton Hears a Who!, and the Ice Age films, with the latest of which -- Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs -- falling right in line with that modest-yet-reliable tradition.

When Toy Story 3 was announced to the wider world thanks to that little teaser before Up, a lot of people groaned. I don't know of a single person who hates either of the Toy Story films, and I don't think it's too mushy to say that they hold a pretty special place in everybody's heart. You don't want to see that watered down and exploited.

Thankfully, it's PIXAR at the helm rather than sequel-squeezing Disney, and they assure everyone that the third installment will actually bring closure to the series. SciFi Wire caught up with animator Angus MacLane at the Saturn Awards (he was responsible for Burn-E, and has been with Pixar since Toy Story 2 where he created the crazy Buzz clone), and he spilled a few secrets on the newest adventures of Buzz and Woody. To the surprise of no one that saw Up, their final installment will be a bittersweet one. Lee Unkrich will be directing, and the storyline will center on Andy leaving for college.

"I feel like we've grown up making these movies, and each of the films represents where the filmmakers were at the time of making the films," MacLane said. "Certainly we're approaching this film 10 years later, so I think we're sort of coming at it from the standpoint of [Andy] has grown up, and we've grown up with these toys, and we have a reverence for them, but we also have different things as a priority." In other words, you should start stocking up on Kleenex now, and prepare to feel old and tired when you leave the theater.

Disney buffs are no doubt aware of the theme park's "Living Character Initiative," where guests of Walt Disney World (and the surrounding parks, like Disney's Hollywood Studios and Epcot Center) are treated to a live-action experience with some of the more memorable Disney/Pixar animated characters. I believe the initiative began a couple years ago with the Muppet Mobile Lab, and it continues now with the character Remy from Ratatouille (who hangs around French restaurants at Epcot Center) and the newest edition -- Luxo Jr. (aka the hopping Pixar desk lamp), who visitors to Disney's Hollywood Studios can now see hanging out over at Pixar Place.

We posted videos of both Luxo Jr. and Remy after the jump, as well as the inflatable Up house stationed over at Downtown Disney. And now if you'll excuse me, Wall-E is about to start on cable and the thing looks absolutely smashing in HD. Enjoy your Sunday!