Not only is playing a Harry Potter character one of the most sought after jobs for British actors, it apparently is a gig some of them wish they could keep. In an interview with MTV, Kenneth Branagh, who played Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor Gilderoy Lockhart in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, revealed that he was hoping to see his character's name prominently featured in the seventh and final book, Deathly Hallows. That way he could return to the movie franchise, something he had also hoped for with the making of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (the character appears briefly in that book). But Branagh didn't simply want a little cameo in the final movie, he jokes that he should have been revealed to be Harry's dad. At least, I think that's what he meant. I'm not sure how that plot revelation would have worked out, but I guess since the actor-director was kidding, it doesn't matter.

Branagh did also reveal that he was considered to direct Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, but it ended up going to Alfonso Cuarón. He said the main reason he wanted to direct an installment was because of the kids, who he liked working with a lot. He thought they had more potential than they were exhibiting -- perhaps he can cast some of them in one of his Shakespeare adaptations down the line? I think Emma Watson would make an excellent Viola/Cesario -- which I personally think they finally got to show in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, under Mike Newell's direction. However, when asked whether or not he'd like to helm the adaptation of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Branagh said he thinks Warner Bros. will likely choose one of the series' previous directors (Columbus, Cuarón, Newell or Yates), any of whom he thinks would do nicely. Anyway, Shawn over at MTV Movies Blog put out the question of what character the fans most wanted to see reappear in the movies. You could leave him a comment about that over there, or feel free to tell us below.

One of the most beloved literary classics of the 20th century -- and rightfully so -- the 1985 novel Love in the Time of Cholera by the Colombian-born Gabriel García Márquez made its first cinematic appearance in 2001. In Peter Chelsom's Serendipity, it was the book in which the playful Sara (Kate Beckinsale) wrote her name and phone number, in the hopes that her would-be lover Jonathan (John Cusack) would find it. He spends years searching for it, flipping through every copy of the book that he can find. That movie doesn't have many fans, but I'm fond of it, and in a way, it's truer to the spirit of Márquez's novel than Mike Newell's more straightforward movie adaptation that opens in theaters this week. Whereas Chelsom's film attempted to capture the feel of the novel, Newell's film attempts nothing more than a translation.

That's a big problem right there. The novel was originally written in Spanish, and though the English translation is quite beautiful, it's still a translation. The new movie is filmed in English, so it's an adaptation of a translation. Then, we have a director from England, Mike Newell, who has absolutely no cultural connection to the Caribbean, where the story is set. Of course, no director could perfectly, accurately represent the novel on the screen, but it's possible to start from a slightly better vantage point. On top of that, the story takes place over fifty years, which in a novel is no problem. But in a movie it requires layers of age makeup, a process that, as movie technology gets better and better, seems to get worse and worse (imagine how awful this will look on HD-DVD or Blu-Ray six months from now). And, on an emotional level, stories that cover that kind of immense time span tend to leave out life's most innocuous, but telling and truthful, moments in favor of great plot lurches and story highlights. It becomes like a Reader's Digest "condensed novel."

One of the greatest living filmmakers, Werner Herzog makes movies with an unquenchable curiosity combined with an intrepid fearlessness. His films brim with a kind of madness in an era when Hollywood wishes to control everything and leech out any unexpected qualities. Herzog's newest film Rescue Dawn (57 screens), starring Christian Bale and Steve Zahn, has opened to strong reviews and has pulled in over $1 million in U.S. box office. After a career stretching back five decades, it's his first film produced by a Hollywood studio. Though far from selling out, Herzog has brought his unique vision to the otherwise timid and brain-dead mainstream. This is good news for everyone; many Americans will see their very first Herzog film (though his 2005 documentary Grizzly Man didn't do half bad), Herzog himself may qualify for prizes usually reserved for those with half his talent, and his example may reverse an irritating trend that has prevailed for almost a century.

The 64-year-old filmmaker began in the 1960s as part of what would come to be known as the German New Wave, sharing the spotlight with, among others, Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Wim Wenders. Herzog made a small splash with his amazing early feature Signs of Life (1968), and followed it up with the peculiar Even Dwarfs Started Small (1970) and Land of Silence and Darkness (1971), which delved into the lives of little people and blind-and-deaf people with no hesitation or repulsion. His masterpiece Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972) made him an art-house sensation, with its use of the physical, jungle landscape intertwining with man's obsession and insanity. While Herzog continued this exploration of untamed nature and human foibles, Wenders heeded the siren song of Hollywood, while Fassbinder burned out and left a good-looking corpse, well before Hollywood even noticed him.

One of the most versatile filmmakers around, Michael Apted is no stranger to picking up franchises that were begun by other people. Most respected is his continued following of up of 14 individuals, who have been presented every seven years in what are collectively known as the _ Up documentaries (49 Up was the most recent). He took that project -- which was not originally intended as a lifelong series -- over from Paul Almond, director of Seven Up!, for which Apted served as a researcher. A few years ago, he took on the 007 franchise for a single shot effort, The World is Not Enough. Now a little bird has told Harry Knowles at Aint it Cool News that Apted will be taking over the Chronicles of Narnia series.

I haven't seen the first of the Narnia movies, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and I wasn't planning on it, but now I'm gaining some interest. Franchises are always more appealing to me when they switch up directors midstream. It worked great for the Harry Potter movies, which completely raised their cred by bringing in Alfonso Cuarón for the third installment, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, following Chris Columbus' welcome departure after the first two. Apted may not be as great a filmmaker as Cuarón -- I lost interest in his fiction filmmaking after the J. Lo vehicle Enough (not to be confused with his James Bond effort) -- but he should bring some freshness to the Narnia movies. If the little bird is correct, he will take on the third movie, The Voyage of the Dawn Trader, which also currently is rumored to have Neil Burger attached. One or the other will replace Andrew Adamson, who, like Columbus, has been the series' director for the first two installments -- he is currently directing the second, Prince Caspian.

There are about 43 million Hispanics in the United States, and more than half of them speak Spanish frequently. Of course, there are nearly 300 million people total in the country, so for Hollywood, there may not be enough of an audience for movies centered on Hispanic characters, especially if the predominant language of those movies is Spanish. But thanks to the hype surrounding the Mexican filmmakers Alfonso Cuarón, Guillermo Del Toro and Alejandro González Iñárritu, and the prideful excitement of actress Salma Hayek, Latin American cinema is superficially hot right now. Never mind that Spanish-language imports and homegrown indies marketed toward Latinos are not particularly big money-makers, the studios are presently interested in focusing on the "untapped" Latin market.

We've already witnessed partnerships between Lionsgate and Panamax, and between Warner Bros. and Cuaron's Esperanto Filmoj. Now Hayek is setting up another Latino division called Ventanazul; this one will be at MGM. The difference seems to be that neither Hayek or MGM is specifically interested in targeting Hispanic Americans. Instead, they plan to produce and distribute between two and four films with a Latino focus that are geared toward a wide, mainstream audience. I'm not sure how big they hope to be, but they'll have to do better than last year's Quinceañera, which had a lot of mainstream appeal and which was relatively successful considering its budget, but which still only made a couple million dollars. Hayek's last film hit, Frida, did much better, and her television success with Ugly Betty is huge, but neither one is specifically Latin-themed. So we'll have to see if a wide audience is accepting enough of Hispanic-centric movies to make the division work. It is especially interesting that MGM made this deal while Hayek is currently working on a Spanish-language project for Warner Bros.

The good folks over at CHUD have a nifty little promo going with Universal to coincide with the upcoming DVD release of Children of Men. CHUD readers can submit questions to director Alfonso Cuaron about the film, and he will personally answer three to five of them. I interviewed Cuaron back in December, and, trust me, he is a very passsionate interview subject, speaking eloquently about his film, the filmmaking process, and whatever else conversation may turn to. So turn on those brain cells, head over to CHUD, and toss director Alfonso Cuaron a question he hasn't answered 5,000 times already. Do not submit your questions for Alfonso here -- go to CHUD and enter them there.

Devin and Nick at CHUD both had the film in their top tens, as did James Rocchi, Scott Weinberg and I -- a pretty diverse group of cinematic tastes to be drawn to one film. There's also a nice little discussion on the film in the forums -- a little outdated, but interesting to read. Check it out while you're over there, and toss your own two cents into the mix.

Who do you want to talk to? To which other directors would you most like to be able to submit questions?

The way the Writers Guild divvies up writing credits has always been a bit of a mystery, especially when there are controversies around who wrote what. When Oscar nominations get thrown into the mix, it gets even more interesting. Back in December, I interviewed Alfonso Cuarón, director of Children of Men, and he had some interesting things to say about his take on the writing creds for the film (the WGA credited Cuaron and his writing partner Timothy Sexton, along with three other writers -- David Arata, Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby, who had worked on earlier versions of scripts for the film).

When I interviewed Cuarón, the fiery director had this to say about the script that he used in filming Children of Men:

" ... So I asked my writing partner, Tim Sexton, to read the book, and I said, okay, I don't want to read the book because I don't want to sidetrack myself or second-guess myself. I had a very clear vision of the movie I wanted to do. So I said to him, you read the book, and based on this movie I'm telling you, there are elements of the book which you will write into the movie. That's what happened."

More after the jump ...

Talking with director Alfonso Cuarón (Y tu mamá también, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban) is a bit like trying to follow the lightning-fast motion of a hummingbird's wings. Get him started on a topic he's passionate about -- such as his latest film, Children of Men, which opens today -- and he metaphorically takes flight; you find yourself trying to think two paces ahead of him to where he's going, just to keep up with the rapid-fire pace of his thoughts.

Cuarón very kindly sat down with Cinematical recently to talk about Children of Men, his philosophical view of the world, and what might be next for him ...

One of the most striking things in the days following 9/11 was the absence of air traffic. The sound of planes taking off and landing, the sight of jets zipping through the sky, have become such a part of the background noise of our lives, we noticed them only in their absence, and the silence of the skies in those couple days was deafening. The absence of children in the film Children of Men has much the same impact.

Imagine, if you will, a world without children. Not the temporary, blissful, child-free retreat of, say, a fancy restaurant, or a weekend away from the kids, but an entire world without a single child in it. No pregnant women, no families pushing strollers and shepherding toddlers, no preschoolers chasing bubbles, no schools or playgrounds, no kids building sandcastles or snowmen ... no future. The year is 2027, and for 18 years all the women on Earth have been infertile. From New York City to Paris, from South Africa to the South Pole, not a single baby has been born on the planet for nearly two decades.

More release dates were moved around this week, as studios struggle to get the last quarter of 2006 in order. The most recent changes range from dumped indies to major releases rescheduled to increase Oscar exposure. Here are the details:

• First and most importantly, Alfonso Cuarón's spermless futuristic thriller Children of Men has been pushed back from mid-September to Christmas Day. Can you say ... Oscar? The buzz on this one is that the people at Universal think they've got an award-worthy film on their hands, and want to give it as high-profile a release as possible.
• Since we saw a production still from Killshot -- a story about a couple in witness protection (Diane Lane, Thomas Jane) being tracked by a hitman (Mickey Rourke) and his nutso protege (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) -- back in December, all of the perceptible progress on the film has been backwards. It was originally slated for release in March of 2006, but was then pushed back a full six months to October. And now? The movie's been pulled and not rescheduled. Yikes.
• Harsh Times, another film that has already appeared on release schedules several times this year (the most recent date was September 8), is now slated to hit theaters November 10. Directed by David Ayer from a script he wrote before penning Training Day, it's been described as very similar to that film in terms of character and structure, with Christian Bale in the central crazy guy role. It's hard to know here if the studio thinks Bale's reportedly flashy performance merits some attention during awards season, or if the date changes have been for internal reasons.
• Starter for Ten, an indie British flick, has been pulled by from its October release, and is now slated to hit some time in 2007. (From a personal point of view, I find this very irritating -- I already saw and wrote up a review of the thing, and it's not even coming out now?! Damn you, Picturehouse!) The movie is a well-acted coming-of-age story about a young man's first year at Bristol University; its 1985 setting is an excuse for a great freaking soundtrack, if nothing else.
  

I've been looking forward to Alfonso Cuarón's Children of Men ever since we first heard about it last year, and I swear it's not just because Cinematical boyfriend Clive Owen is the star. The movie, based on a PD James novel about a future without sperm, sounds creepy and weird and is in fantastic hands with Cuarón -- what's not to love? Alongside Owen, the film stars Julianne Moore as his ex-wife (a small-ish part, it appears), Michael Caine as a pot-smoking pal of Owen's (no lie) and the very pretty Charlie Hunnam as ... someone.

The movie is due in theaters at the end of September and, based on the appearance of a couple of reviews at AICN, it looks as if test screenings have begun. While most of the screening reports that show up at AICN tend to feature wildly mixed reactions and lots of fanboy ramblings, the offerings on Children of Men are both reasonably well-written and incredibly positive, not to mention wildly complimentary about the work Cuarón has done in the film -- go check them out for yourselves. Me, I'm officially really, really excited.

Warner Brothers, it seems, just isn't happy with its original adaptations of Roald Dahl's books. First we were given a polarizing (I say dreadful) redo of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Now it seems they want a different take on The Witches. Guillermo Del Toro is planning to write the script and may direct, while Alfonso Cuarón will produce. The book was first brought to the screen in 1990 by screenwriter Allan Scott and director Nicholas Roeg.

I've been meaning to see that first version for some time now, but despite my affection for Roeg's work, I have never felt a craving for the story. Now that I'm reaching the stage in my life where I'm growing old enough to appreciate the family films I couldn't warm up to as a cynical teen, though, I'm torn. Should I still check out the 1990 film or should I just wait for Del Toro's vision? The best argument for the former is that Roeg's film stars Anjelica Huston. Is there any other?

Anyway, why can't somebody just make a good movie out of The BFG?

Fernando Eimbcke's Duck Season is on the surface such a simple film that I keep forgetting how much of it I enjoyed. There are some personally relative morsels that remain vividly in my consciousness, but above all it plays out with such a soothing, leisurely calm, its resonating effects easily go unnoticed. Though filled with ideas, it hardly sparks reflection let alone discussion. Instead it affects a negligibly warm sensation, not like a feel-good movie does, but like an afternoon with friends or a piece of candy taken for granted in their accessibility.

Yet it appears to be significant to some, enough to sweep Mexico's Ariel Awards (their equivalent to our Oscars), win the Grand Jury Prize at The AFI Fest, contend for the best foreign film at this year's Independent Spirit Awards, and find a gracious fan in director Alfonso Cuarón (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban), who secured its American distribution by presenting it under his new Esperanto Filmoj banner. Not bad for a glorified student film, black and white and all, about two pals in an apartment with nothing to do. With its inordinately stylish direction Duck Season would work best as a calling card, but surprisingly it has served Eimbcke as an all-out initiation into the club.

Since it stars our collective boyfriend Clive Owen, Cinematical would be excited about The Children of Men pretty much no matter what we heard about it. But, given that Owen's costars include Michael Caine, Julianne Moore, and Chiwetel Ejiofor, and that the film is being directed by Alfonso Cuarón, who also wrote the screenplay (based on the P.D. James novel), it's sounding pretty good. Throw in a crazy, sci-fi plot involving a future full of spermless men and a mysterious pregnancy, and you've got a movie that's got a chance to kick a whole lot of ass no matter who's in it.

Sadly, since the film began shooting in September, updates have been few and far between. Now, though, Universal has thrown us a bone with the first two official pics from the movie - though there's nothing in them that's mindblowing, one does offer a tantalizing glimpse at the world in which the film is set. Let's see: a weird, wooden structureand guys in casual clothes, hanging out with guns and wearing masks? Yep, I'm still excited.

The movie, currently in post-production, is due for release in September.