Potter's House: is "Deathly Hallows" the end, or a prelude?

It's fitting, I believe, that our final post for July revolves around a finale. Not having screened the conclusion of the wizard series, I will refrain, as I have, from a direct review.

However, as this article implies, the runaway success of the franchise in general (over 10 billion in global grosses) and this movie in particular ( over a billion), certainly raises questions. Mainly, how will the franchise be kept alive, notwithstanding author JK Rowling's Pottermore web enterprise.

I expect that,apart from network TV screenings of the films, there will be special adaptations and iterations for cable and other TV audiences. An animated series must already be in the works, as are more documentary features on the series and the characters.


http://movies.yahoo.com/news/-harry-potter-and-the-deathly-hallows-part-2--hits--1-billion-in-global-box-office.html;_

A Giant Leap - Backwards: 'Transformers: Dark of the Moon' Trailer HD

So, Michael Bay has -incredibly - surpassed himself.

With the blessing of the "Overlord of Summer Movies", aka Mr. Spielberg, Bay has managed to make a film that's longer (slightly), louder, more self-indulgent and less tolerable than either of its two predecessors. This latest exercise in "bland blockbusterism" opens with a scene that's almost a direct lift from "Star Wars" (Spielberg paying homage to his buddy George Lucas?) and segues to a tedious re-enactment of the Apollo 11 Moon Landing.

Things go downhill rapidly from there.

its not that this instalment has no worthy moments, its just that they seem to happen almost by accident, so few and far between they are. "Star boy" Shia LaBeouf is pretty much doing this in sleepwalk mode and his new love interest (following the ungracious exit of Megan Fox, like we cared), Rosie Huntington-Whitely offers little other than collagen-fed pouting and lots of leg.

In order to shore up the star wattage, Bay & 'Berg have called in a kind of Hollywood Rogue's Gallery of "role-whores" (we're on a roll with the coined terms today), including two Johns, Malkovich and Turturro, and "it guy" Ken Jeong, who's reduced to reprising his "Hangover" movie persona for an office setting. Frances McDormand (as a CIA officer), alongside Leonard Nimoy and Hugo Weaving as the voices of Sentinel Prime and Megatron respectively, try their best to make us believe that there's actually something going on here behind the city-block set construction and product placements (the latter including Mercedes sharing screen time with Chevy), but to no avail.

Transformers simply is the kind of shamelessly mindless and tasteless drivel that gave summer blockbusters a bad name in the first place.

Truthfully, its audiences are pretty much assured but I for one am happy to be able to put a few critical bullets in the monstrous Hollywood exo-skeleton. Save time and money, and wait for the summer to unfold a little more.

Penis Galore: The Hangover : Part 2 - Official Trailer [HD]

Producers and execs: "Okay, so we made hundreds of millions with the last one. How do we top it?"

Answer: "Why, with penises, of course!"

One can almost hear the conversation unfolding in th Warner Bros. "Situation Room". Faced with honing the formula without making it unrecognizeable, director Todd Phillips and writers Craig Mazin and Scott Armstrong set out to exploit th still considerable shock power of the male organ. This time, when the guys wake up with temporary amnesia after a night of pre-nuptial debauchery, they find themselves in a Bangkok dive; instead of tiger, they're greeted by a monkey and, shortly thereafter, by the partially obscured penis of "international criminal" Mr Chow (Ken Jeong) with whom they hada drug-related run-in in the first movie.

Needless to say, the situation snowballs rapidly from there: Stu, the dentist, and the groom in this instance, has a tattoo on his face; Alan, the zany-raunchy idiot-savant of the first movie now has a buzz cut in contrast to his  bushy sideburns and beard, and Phil.....well, more on him later.

The challenge this time around is to find Stu's future brother-in-law, Teddy (Mason Lee, the son of "Brokeback Mountain" director Ang Lee), himself the favoured son of the Thai immigrant family that Stu is set to join.

the quest for Teddy leads through Bangkok's seamy nightlife, where one the city's notorious "lady-boys" (let's call them "intersexuals" - female faces, breasts and  - you guessed it - ding-a-lings) confesses to  a night of wild abandon with Stu with the following classic zinger: "I shoot load in you, you shoot load on floor." Bradley Cooper, as Phil, takes on the role of straight man with even more assurance than he did two years earlier and Zach Galifianakis smartly tweaks his "stupid is smart" schtick to suit the needs of the new locale.

Armed with that knowledge they journey from Bhuddist monastery to city centre high-rise to riverside cafe until the mission is accomplished. But whilst the film's pace is zippy, and the scenes in which Mr Chow - inevitably - reappears are almost worth the ticket price, a good portion of the thrill is understandably gone from this sequel. That air of "will they or won't they make it?" has essentially been replaced with "what other crap will they get into now?" The waste of Paul Giamatti, as an undercover Interpol agent, is almost unforgivable.

Still, if you're a big  fan, this extension of Hollywood's newest franchise offers just enough high-speed chase, ridiculous culture clash and super-raunch to meet your expectations. The rest will be scratching their heads every so often and wondering, in the words of the cast....."What tha --!"

Which Summer Movie Will Be the Biggest Blockbuster?

Fast Five will be the year's highest-grossing movie by the end of next weekend, but it has plenty of competition in the weeks to come, since this summer-movie season is jam-packed with sequels and expensive would-be blockbusters. So we put it to you: When all is said and done, which 2011 summer movie will be the biggest box-office hit? Pirates of the Caribbean and Transformersboth have an amazing track record, but can their latest movies come out on top in such a crowded summer? And then there's the last Harry Potter film, which is poised to score big even if last year's Potter installment was only the fifth biggest film of the year, coming in well over $100 million behind summer champ Toy Story 3 (a precedent that might bode well for Pixar's 2011 sequel, Cars 2). Give us your prediction, and don't forget about all the potential dark horses!