The Harry Potter Blog – Harry Potter News, Movies, and Books

Do you often get confused between Death Eaters and Dementors, Dumbledore and Fudge, and likes? Then you could use the help of a wizard glossary to help you sail effortlessly through the Harry Potter movies. Here is one for your consultation for when you go to catch the latest Harry Potter film.

Last week saw the Potter mania reaching a fever pitch!

Harry Potter and Deathly Hollows, the last adventure of the boy wizard, is hitting the book stores this week! The 5^th Harry Potter film, Harry Potter and the Order of Phoenix, has opened in most of the countries in various parts of the world.

With the frenzy reaching an extent like this, it is nearly impossible to resist the urge to sneak into the world of good and bad wizards!

But if you happen to be one of the skeptic Muggles that couldn’t find time to surf through one of these most dramatic of J.K Rowling best sellers, yet can not escape the lure of two hours long revelry into the world of wizardry – the guide below can help you get a better grip over the world in and out of Hogwarts.

Here is a brief Order of the Phoenix glossary for those who may need them in the movie hall.

Order of the Phoenix: This is a group of wizards, led by Hogwarts headmaster Albus Dumbledore, dedicated to fighting evil Lord Voldemort and his followers.

Albus Dumbledore: The Headmaster of Hogwarts – the aged wizard that is believed to be the only one feared by Lord Voldemort.

Cornelius Fudge: Dark and corrupt, he heads the Ministry of Magic, and refuses to believe that Lord Voldemort has returned.

Dolores Umbridge: Originally an employee of Fudge and appointed as High Inquisitor of Hogwarts, she refuses to teach her students how to perform Defense spell. Umbridge openly dislikes Harry, and eventually bans him from the Gryffindor Quidditch team.

Sirius Black: He is the godfather of Harry Potter and lives in number twelve, Grimmauld Place, London: The headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix. Like Dumbledore, he is also dedicated to fighting evil Lord Voldemort and his followers.

Daily Prophet: The wizard newspaper

O.W.L.s: Ordinary Wizarding Level examinations

Occlumency: The lessons Harry Potter was advised to take for clearing his mind against invasions by Lord Voldemort.

Death Eaters: Voldemort’s associates creating havoc under the thumb of the Lord of evil world.

Dementors: The keepers of Azkaban, they can suck all feelings of happiness out of a person.

The above glossary is sure to provide you the perfect backdrop when you are busy soaking up into Harry Potter’s heroic acts amidst shattering glasses and swirling dust, in the dark movie hall. Besides the increasingly attractive Daniel Radcliff, Emma Watson (playing the role of Hermione) proves to be a treat for your eyes with her growing glamour and beauty.

With the release of The Harry Potter and the Order of Phoenix is at your doorstep, the whole world seems to share the passion to the point of hysteric frenzy! In the mean time, have command over your nerves and let’s have some peppy talks such as how it feels to be kissed by the King of Wizardry!

You will be hard pressed to find a teenage girl who has never visualized herself sharing passionate kisses with Harry Potter!

By the way, how it might feel to be kissed by Harry Potter? It might be exciting. It might be exhilarating, it might be scintillating! Katie Leung, who is playing Cho Chang in the film, is the best person to tell you how it exactly feels like sharing a kiss with Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe).

As you know, Cho Chang is the teenage wizard’s first girl friend with whom he shares his first kiss. As such, it was not going to be in any case a perfect smooch—but at the same time it had to look sweet on screen—sweet enough to remind anybody of the first kiss of his/her life!

And at least Katie believes that she and Radcliff have done it to the perfection by making it turn out to be pretty awkward, but at the same time romantic. They decided not to go for much practice for the scene, so that it did not appear to be impeccable.

How did the shooting of the sequence go? Katie says she was made nervous by the crew of the film that kept on reminding her about the scene every five minutes.

But the actual filming was not as bad. It took some twenty takes to get it done to the director’s satisfaction—but it is rather pretty common for any scene. For Leung, the whole episode turned out to be quite funny—- being monitored by a group of cameramen while you are trying to concentrate on an act as sensational as kissing.

When asked about her experience about facing the reaction of the jealous girls all over the world, Leung says that her female fans actually congratulated her on her extraordinary experience than bombarding her with hate mails.

But the pretty co-star of Radcliff seemed to be floored by the question as to what she thinks her parent would think when they catch her in that scene! Leung says, she would prefer to watch the reactions on their faces as they watch the lip-lock scene on the screen.

Well, it is now your turn to discover how it all went—-how did the young wizard take his first stride into the world of manhood!

If you are worried that you’ll be suffering from Harry Potter withdrawals after all of the movies and books are released – then rest assured – you can always pay a visit to the Harry Potter Theme Park – ‘The Wizarding World of Harry Potter’ – set to open in Orlando in 2009!

Full story: MSN

Harry Potter fans will be thrilled to discover that ‘Phoenix’ is now scheduled to open two days earlier than its original release date.  The movie will now open in U.S. theaters July 11 instead of the previous July 13 date.

Full story: Yahoo

Looks like the final 20 minutes of OotP will be in 3D in IMAX theaters:

“IMAX Corporation and Warner Bros. Pictures today announced that select scenes of the IMAX DMR(R) version of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix will be digitally converted into An IMAX 3D Experience(R).”

Full press release.

Both the 3D and the regular versions will be released in theaters on July 13, 2007.

Okay, being a Harry Potter fan and a Lego fan, I couldn’t resist posting this – silly as it is Have you seen any of the Harry Potter Lego spoofs?

Here’s the Harry Potter clip from ‘The Today Show’

Here are some sites that with think do a top job with their Harry Potter sites as far as creativity, aesthetics, interactivity, and content:

5. Harry Potter Fan Zone: The site keeps readers up-to-date on the latest Harry Potter news, and also has lots of media to browse and loads of informational content.

4. MuggleNet: This site is chock full of stuff to keep even the most avid Harry Potter fan busy for hours on end, including a huge forum, movie info, quotes, and more.

3. Veritaserum: This site is probably the most creative in my book, they’ve got an interesting layout (and not cluttered like many other HP fan sites are), loads of photos to peruse, a nice fat forum, and more ~ definitely not one to be missed!

2. The Leaky Cauldron: With a super cool design, loads of images and information, and a massive forum, you can’t really go wrong here. A few of their more interesting links weren’t working, like the links to ‘crafts’ and ‘quizzes’ – but hey, it’s still great.

1. HPANA: Has the largest Harry Potter forum out there, tons of photos and content, the latest news - what it lacks in its somewhat plain (yet very organized and clean) design, it certainly makes up for in content.

Did you agree with our list?  What are your favorite HP fan sites?  Fill us in!

Entertainment Weekly goes behind the scenes of the upcoming  ”Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix”

Secret schemes! Bloddy battles! A first kiss! Go behind the scenes of this July’s eagerly awaited ”Harry Potter” movie, and mull over seven key talking points

You’ll find five photos from the film and interviews with Daniel Radcliffe and director David Yates.

Read more at EW

Yesterday on “The Today Show,” the cover art was revealed for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. 

The U.S. version of this seventh and last book in the Harry Potter series will have 784 pages and the British version will have 608 pages.

The final book will be released on July 21st, 2007.