As I’ve said before, I’m not the biggest Harry Potter fan at all. But I just noticed on my AppleTV the new HD movie preview for “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” so I watched it.

and I was very surprised when it gave me chills…

You can watch the Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince preview, but you’ll have to wait until November 21st for the rest. Be sure to pick the HD version if you have the processing power.

So I’m not the largest Harry Potter fan, I’ve read the books, but I think I missed the last movie. I got dragged to the latest one but I did enjoy it. Except for the flying in the opening sequence the effects were awesome. They cut so much out of the books (and the books keep getting bigger), it’d probably be better if they’d make the movies twice as long and just release them in two parts (but twice as often) and make them ‘to be continued’…

The parts when the magistrate (government) were nosing around the school with what should be taught and how it should be taught were hysterical, especially the parts about the standardized testing.

Harry is starting to look pretty old, I’m not sure how him and the gang are going to make it to the 7th movie without looking like 5th year college students.

So the new cover is out and IMHO it’s pretty generic. Not showing much at all, nothing to see here, just move along folks…

But if you take a look at how the whole wraparound looks. You can see quite a bit more, I don’t really know what it’s showing but it certainly shows more than just the plain old cover shows. I’m not the biggest HP fan, so maybe some HP geek knows what this is a drawing of but I don’t have a clue…I’ve seen a few mentions of the cover but I hadn’t seen much that showed the whole view of the cover so I wanted to mention it because it definitely shows a lot more…My only guess is it (the Deathly Hallows) ties into the Death Eaters. But the definition of Hallows doesn’t help much but it makes me think og “All Hallows Eve” (but doesn’t that have an apostrophe?)

Looks like they are getting some different covers in Canada.

First we digress: This post was supposed to be a follow up to a post that I thought I did but can’t find the message but I can’t really do the follow up first now can I?

So I’ve always thought there were connections between Alex Rider and Harry Potter. Young English boys who are orphans and get to go on the adventure of a lifetime. Harry gets to be a wizard and Alex gets to be a secret agent. Both had father’s in the business but didn’t get to know them (or all the secrets). Plus they’re always getting injured…

SPOILERS! If you haven’t read book four, Scorpia, don’t read on, I’m going to give the ending away.

Here’s the thing, in the last book Scorpia as I’m reading along and recalling the similarities. They’re wrapping up the story, no I’ll correct myself they wrapped up the story, and as he’s leaving the leaving the building the bad guys sent a new teenage trainee to assassinate him and as he gets closer and closer to pulling the trigger you wait for something to happen, but it doesn’t. He pulls the trigger. Alex dies in a pool of blood and sees his parents in the light and the story ends (for good). There really isn’t any room for interpretation, IMHO.

Here’s the other Harry Potter connection/question: Is this series similar enough that they did this to see how much outrage the reading public might have if they kill another English boy who is the hero of a story?!?

By the way, until the last few pages it was another great Alex Rider novel…

So I’ve seen many complaints on-line that they’ve never released harry Potter as an eBook, I’m not sure if they’ve every released it as a downloadable Audio Book (I’m thinking no). So the iTunes store has released the books are Audio Book and you can get the complete set for $249. Or you can get a specially engraved 20GB iPod with with the Hogwarts Crest and all the audio books for $549. A little pricey if you ask me, I’m assuming you can by the Audio Books on CD for about the same price (and still have a backup).

Did you know it was Harry Potter’s birthday today?!?

Here’s a short fan fiction birthday story I found.

So I kept seeing the name Mary GrandPré with all the Harry Potter stuff and realized she’s the one that does all the art. She has her own website (http://www.marygrandpre.com/) with all sorts of stuff there. Art you’ve seen, what she did for the cover of Time and more. Plus they’ve got a bio for her too.

In the July 25th edition of US News and World Report the cover story is about Harry Potter and reading. On page 50 there is a sidebar on “If kids made summer book lists…” and it has some good choices. My favorites are the Chronicles of Narnia, one of the HitchHiker’s Guide books and The Golden Compass. I want to check out the Time Warp Trio.

So print the list and get some kids some books to read. But don’t forget about the So You Want to Be a Wizard series by Diane Duane (my favorite kids books).

I stumbled on this Saturday Night Live ad spoof with Kelly Ripa and how her shampoo keeps her going all day long. I’m not going to say any more or it gives it all away…

Milk and Cookies has a bunch of different kinds of humorous ads. I found the above promo after I saw someone (can’t remember who) had posted the old SNL Harry Potter skit with Lindsey Lohan and I started digging around to see what was new.