With his film due out in a couple of weeks, Harry Potter is beginning to make some waves. First up is an update on the Potter IMAX delay. Long story short, Half-Blood Prince won't be arriving on IMAX screens the same day the film hits conventional theaters because of a deal IMAX made with Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen for an exclusive four-week run. However, three theaters will be getting Harry Potter in IMAX on opening day, July 15th, but if you don't live in New York, Los Angeles or Chicago, you're out of luck. Collider tells us those three theaters are as follows: Century City IMAX (Los Angeles), Henry Crown (Chicago), and AMC Loews Lincoln Square (NYC). The first 12 minutes of the movie have been converted to IMAX 3D, and so I'm sure it's worth the trip for those who live in the surrounding areas. Unfortunately, everyone else will have to wait another two weeks.

Read the rest over at SciFi Squad

Now that the Academy Awards have extended the best picture category to include ten nominees instead of five, you bet your bottom half we're going to start seeing some pretty bold claims when it comes to fan favorites, like Star Trek, Watchmen and the upcoming Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. With a couple weeks still to go before Half-Blood Prince finally hits theaters, Hollywood.com's Paul Dergarabedian looks to be the first to champion the film for a possible best picture nomination.

Having watched the movie at an advanced screening, he says, "... the Potter loving beast in me has been unleashed after having witnessed a film that was not only exquisite in its production values, but was also charming, funny, scary, enchanting, moving (stop me, the adjectives could go on and on) and dare I say, sexy. Brilliantly directed by David Yates (he directed 2007's "Harry Potter and the Order of The Phoenix"), "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" is a tour-de-force that combines style and substance, special effects and heart and most importantly great performances from all of the actors young and not-so-young. Not only that, half-way through I'm thinking the unthinkable - "ten academy awards nominations are available this year, hmm I wonder...."

Granted, the folks from Hollywood.com could be angling themselves for some Potter quotes in print and in future trailers, but seeing as Lord of the Rings had its time in the Oscar spotlight -- coupled with the fact that Potter is nearing his big-screen finale -- I wouldn't be surprised if Half-Blood Prince nabbed one of those ten spots. You?

When you hear the word boycott, your mind probably goes to big moments in history like the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955 or President Carter boycotting the Olympics back in 1980; what you probably don't think about are summer blockbusters. Over at The New York Times, Michael Cieply looks at a rare summer season that saw almost all of the big studio releases experience a fan boycott. So even though there are the obvious targets like Angels and Demons; it didn't stop there. Practically all of the big summer releases have earned a spot on a list that included: Terminator (thanks to a very unpopular PG-13 rating), Star Trek (in hopes of a little fund-raising for space exploration), and even Wolverine (and no, not because of the amnesia bullets; instead it was due to the political leanings of one of the film's consultants, Richard Donner).

You almost have to wonder why anyone would go to so much trouble? Even though I totally get how a film can inspire protests because of content that a group may find offensive or inappropriate; to me it seems a little extreme to organize online petitions and custom-design logos just because you might have to wait a little longer for the next installment of Harry Potter. But the voice of experience in this debate is New Line's President, Rolf Mittweg, who told the Times, "If you have a group that might speak out against the movie, and they're large enough to affect the box office, you have to do something about it," Mr. Mittweg knows better than anyone the effect a boycott can have on a film's bottom line, having dealt with the backlash for The Golden Compass; saying, the film could have "done 50 percent better in the United States had there been no organized opposition."

After the jump; why movie studios still aren't losing sleep over fan boycotts.

Not many movie-going summers have had the good sense or fortune to formally kick themselves off with the likes of Hugh Jackman and his razor-sharp jazz hands, but as these are the times in which we live in, it's a clear indication that we're in for about eighteen weeks of spectacular spectaculars worth gulping down popcorn and guzzling down pop* with.

Eugene's already shone the spotlight on a fair amount of smaller titles worth your while, so our staff tried to keep the focus on that which we haven't seen, those spectacles for which we're most excited and least likely to text during. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls: sit down and shut up, because these are the seven movies that we're fairly f**kin' pumped for.

(*Okay, I pretty much never call soda that, but you get the idea.)

Click below to enlarge image

UPDATE: Check out the new trailer below ...

Cinematical has just received this exclusive screengrab from the brand spanking new Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince trailer, which premieres online tonight at around 9pm EST over on AOL Moviefone. It's taken awhile for this latest Harry Potter installment to reach theaters (after the original release date was pushed from November '08 to July '09), but knowing the boy wizard and his wild cohorts, this sixth (!) adventure will definitely be worth the wait.

Directed by David Yates, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince finds friends Harry, Ron and Hermione a bit older, wiser and, well, more attracted to the opposite sex. As Harry begins his sixth year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, our hero discovers a mysterious book that helps him learn more about the evil Lord Voldemort's dark past.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince will arrive in conventional theaters and on IMAX screens on July 15, two days earlier than the previously scheduled July 17. Check out a larger version of the above image in our official Half-Blood Prince gallery below ... and make sure you tune in later on tonight for that new trailer.

So Erik-with-a-k covered the coming comedies of 2009, Scott was all over the horror picks (though his inclusion of Race to Witch Mountain still boggles my mind), Eric-with-a-c nabbed the family-friendly fare, and Elisabeth went over the geek fodder that awaits. But while I respect their calendar years and made-up math alike, I've opted to divide my list of 2009's action and adventure flicks into four categories: Action Flicks I Couldn't Care More About, Action Flicks I Couldn't Care Less About, Action Flicks That I Hope Surprise Me, and Those Which Fell In Between. Enjoy!

Action Flicks I Couldn't Care More About: First and foremost -- Watchmen (March 6th). It's one hell of a graphic novel and looks to be one hell of an adaptation (with or without the Giant Blank), but the only problem is it may not hit theaters on time if 20th Century Fox has anything to say about it. Both Fox and Warner Brothers are fighting over who actually owns the rights, and if a judge favors Fox comes January 20th (when the court date is set), we're looking at a delayed release and a whole ton of angry fans. Then there's Public Enemies (July 1st), which has me sold on not the subject matter, but sheer pedigree: Michael Mann directs Johnny Depp and Christian Bale as '30s gangsters. (It doesn't hurt that the earliest word ranges from damn good to great.) On the skimpier side, I can only hope that Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (July 17th) streamlines its source material as the previous one had, and I can only hope that Crank 2: High Voltage (April 17th) lives up/down to the depravity of its predecessor. There's one last action movie that I couldn't care more about because, well, I've already seen a version of it. The international cut of Taken (January 30th, though reportedly opening with some R-dodging trims) is about as brisk and butt-kicking as one might hope out of a man-on-a-mission kidnapping thriller, and if you disagree, I'll send Liam Neeson to change your mind.

Gallery: Watchmen

If you thought the delayed release of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was too much to bear, what about never ever getting to see how things wrap up on the big screen? In the wake of news that Disney had dumped Narnia, The Independent reports that Harry Potter could be next.

Now it's not a completely out of left-field thought created for the article. It seems that screenwriter Steve Kloves "said recently that Warner Bros was worried about the prospects for the last three films in the series, since JK Rowling is no longer driving anticipation for the titles by producing new books." I guess Warner Brothers didn't hear the world-wide sighs and cries of pain after delaying Half-Blood.

While it's natural for a studio to entertain movie-cutting ideas when money is tight, it would be utterly ridiculous to end the Potter franchise with one left to go. Yes, The Subtle Knife won't follow The Golden Compass, and there's a good chance we won't get more Narnia, but there's a difference between almost flops and the most successful franchise ever. And if this rationale is true, that's just silly. The mere act of adapting books for the big screen means that the books have to wrap up before the movies do.

What to make of Twilight's $70.5 million bow? Well, it's not quite Harry Potter, whose first-weekend outings have ranged from $77 million to $102. But when you consider that Twilight is basically a niche film -- certainly it has a lot less cross-demographic appeal than Harry Potter -- its success starts to seem pretty remarkable. Are there any teenage girls who didn't see it this weekend? And what will happen to it next weekend? All the fans may have seen Twilight already -- then again, many of the die-hards may grace it with repeat viewings. Given the incessant shrieking at the screening I attended, that wouldn't surprise me.

Disney's Bolt didn't take despite favorable reviews. The studio continues to have trouble getting its non-Pixar animated features off the ground as tentpoles. Its best go was Chicken Little three years ago; Bolt looks to land about on par with Meet the Robinsons. Disappointing.

What else. Quantum of Solace remains on track to be the top-grossing Bond film of all time. Just below the top 10, Slumdog Millionaire is riding a deserved wave of great word-of-mouth to a $31,000 per-screen average on 32 screens. It'll continue to expand in the coming weeks, and should hit the top 10 before long.

The full estimates after the jump.

That's the new two-minute trailer for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince below, which Warner Bros. is hoping will help stave off death threats from fans who are still resentful that the film was pushed back to next July from its original release date of next week. (Just think! If it weren't for that, you'd be seeing the film less than seven days from now!) We featured it earlier today in Trailer Park, but come on -- a Harry Potter trailer deserves special attention.



One thing that's notable is that there is no reference, not even a hint, to the Big Surprising Terrible Thing that occurs near the end of the book and that presumably also occurs in the movie. (Although it would be funny if it didn't happen in the movie. "Oh, yeah, So-and-So's death? Eh, we cut it. No room. Maybe in the next film.") It's not exactly a well-kept secret anymore -- hard to do that when the book has sold 65 million copies -- but I appreciate that the trailer keeps a lid on it for those who watch the movies but don't read the books.

For those who have read the book, though, the trailer has glimpses of things that surely relate to the Big Surprising Terrible Thing: a shot of Draco Malfoy looking panicked and sickly, a shot of Snape firing his wand, etc. The scenes of Death Eater attacks on London look great, and I hope the film makes full use of how scary that aspect of the story is. (Magical people fighting each other, meh. Magical people fighting each other and harming innocent bystanders, yikes!)

Geez, poor Sybill Trelawney has the crappiest luck. First, Dolores Umbridge goes after the zany teacher and tries to get rid of her, and then we learn that she's been written out of the next installment, even though she plays an important part in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. And now, well, now we don't even get to look forward to her in the final double installment. No big-screen goodbye for us, unless Order of the Phoenix heads back to theaters. (This is assuming the Harry Powers That Be don't recast her for the final film.)

Emma Thompson has told MTV that she's given up the Harry Potter world to make another Nanny McPhee film. It makes sense -- she wrote and starred in the first, so naturally it "means much more" to her. So, while she won't be magical with Harry, Hermione, and Ron, she will delight in magic with the tentatively titled Nanny McPhee and The Big Bang. This time around, it's one hundred years after the first film, and focuses on "The big war, and a war between these two sets of extremely different children."

I can't help but wonder -- is this why she wasn't in Half-Blood Prince too?