Costume Designer Guild Awards

BEST COSTUME DESIGN (Period Feature)
W.E.- Arianne Phillips

BEST COSTUME DESIGN (Contemporary Feature)
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo- Trish Sumerville

BEST COSTUME DESIGN (Fantasy Feature)
Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows Part 2- Jany Temime

Art Directors Guild Awards

BEST ART DIRECTION (Period Film)
Hugo

BEST ART DIRECTION (Fantasy Film)
Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows Part 2

BEST ART DIRECTION (Contemporary Film)
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

Hugo will be and certainly is the frontrunner of the Art Direction Academy Award, but one wonders if the sentiment factor of Harry Potter might be able to sneak in here.  Certainly since the Art Direction of the 7-film saga is the most Oscar-nominated piece that Harry has been recognized.

Harry Potter and the Holy Cow Box Office

The final installment of the Harry Potter series netted the highest single day gross in history with $92.1 million.  This is including an almost ungodly $40-plus million from midnight showings alone.  It earned nearly $20 million more than it's runner-up, The Twilight Saga: New Moon, which rather pathetically held the record at a mere $72 million.  Harry is also ignited the global box office with $249 million worldwide, calling to question if the poster's premise, "It All Ends," will actually be true.

Top Ten Single Day Grosses:

1. Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows: Part II- $92.1
2. The Twilight Saga: New Moon- $72.7
3. The Twilight Saga: Eclipse- $68.5
4. The Dark Knight- $67.1
5. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen- $62.0
6. Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows: Part I- $61.6
7. Spider-man 3- $59.8
8. Harry Potter & the Half Blood Prince- $58.1
9. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest- $55.8
10. Spider-man 3- $51.3

The keys to a top single day record gross:

• Be a sequel (all of them are)
• Be an adaptation of teen-lit (Harry Potter & Twilight)
• Be a product of Time Warner (Harry Potter, Twilight, The Dark Knight)

It All Ends

After nearly a decade of movies, over $2 billion in the bank (and plenty more to come), seven movies (adapted from seven books), three words are all that are needed for marketing of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part II: "It All Ends!"  It will come as a relief to the less devout and sorrow for the worshipful; of course distributor Warner Bros. didn't really have to say anything at all to elicit something for the opening of this film-- of course all will come it droves.  The film has already made over $25 million in pre-sales in the North American box office and it hasn't even opened yet, provoking and teasing the notion of whether this will indeed be the record-breaking weekend that 2011 has been long waiting for.  What else matters; not much but even for the slightly curious observer of the Potter movies (like myself) who appreciates the skilled texture, if not the rudimentary, stop and go subplots, this is the end of the era, and the past decade of its attack on the pop cultural lexicon is something that nothing else could ever match.  It's a series that got children (even those who would never dare pick a book) read with joyous delight, and the movies have their odd pleasures outside the material itself.  It's a fascinating four director series-- the cluttered and insecure first two volumes directed by Chris Columbus, the most triumphant and cinematic third chapter by Alfonso Cuaron (I haven't read the book, I freely admit, but that movie singed), the clunkier fourth volume by Mike Newall, and the final dark chapters by Peter Yates.  The series has in total earned 9 Oscar nominations, mostly for Stuart Craig's production design.  There's also the great curiosity of the three leads we've seen grow up before our eyes in the past decade-- Daniel Radcliffe seems more at home on Broadway these days, Emma Watson has My Week with Marilyn to test out post-Potter waters with later this year, and Rupert Grint has a few others as well-- but they will always be Harry, Hermione and Ron, and all rich beyond belief...sigh!

Also opening this week (yes other films open as well):

• Winnie the Pooh- For those who miss hand drawn 2-D animation, this is all you have for some time...
• Life, Above All- South Africa's submission for last years foreign language Oscar...it didn't make it, but is well reviewed (in limited release.)
• Salvation Boulevard- Religious satire starring Pierce Brosnan, Greg Kinnear, Jennifer Connolly, and Marisa Tomei (in limited release.)
• Snow Flower & the Secret Fan- Director Wayne Wong (The Joy Luck Club) returns with a historical drama that features a singing cameo by Hugh Jackman (in limited release.)
• Lucky- A serial killer wins the lottery...stars Colin Hanks and Ari Graynor (in limited release.)
• Tabloid- The triumphant Errol Morris returns with his latest enticing documentary about a 1970s beauty queen who kidnapped and imprisoned a Mormon man for love, becoming a scandal celebrity in the process (in limited release.)

Harry Potter and the Order of Phoenix

Let me preface by stating I have read not one word of J.K. Rowling's six (about to be seven) book opus and with the exception of Alfonso Cuaron's Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, haven't been all that impressed with films spawned. However watching Peter Yates' (a veteran of BBC television movies, most notably The Girl in the Cafe) Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, for the first time I actually want to pick up the damn book. This a darker, more brooding film. Harry is more brittle and rattled and the change makes for the best Potter film to date. The sense of whimsy is little, but the magic is there.
The fifth film picks up where the clumsily put together Goblet of Fire ended; Lord Voldemort has returned, Cedric Diggory is dead, and Harry (Daniel Radcliffe, nailing the angst and vulnerability beautifully, possibly learning a thing or too from the seasoned actors that take part in this films) is downtrodden and haunted. Order of the Phoenix works better than the other films because it's less about plot and more about Harry's emotional state-- it's not brimming with climaxes every five minutes, and stops to breathe every couple of minutes. It's the most nimble of the series so far, and with the shortest running time.
Things get grimmer for Harry and gang as the next year at Hogwarts commences. A new Defense of the Arts teacher is on board, Dolores Jane Umbridge (played with delight and rage by Imelda Staunton.) She's a member of Ministry of Magic sent to Hogwarts to cleanse the school of it's values, and the possibly dangerous intentions of headmaster Dumbledore (Michael Gambon), one of the few personages who believes Harry that the Dark Lord is indeed back. Another new edition to the story is Helena Bonham Carter as Bellatrix Lestrange, and without giving anything away, she's crazy and wonderful, and without reading the original text, I may not be shrewd in stating, but perfectly cast. The whole story of the Ministry and Ms. Umbridge adds a smidgen of political commentary to this segment (an ineffectual governement, unburdened by evidence, and with a knack for fear mongering, come on.) So not only does Harry have to defeat Ms. Umbridge, and Voldemort, but also his own psyche, which makes for the darkest, deepest, and most cinematic Potter film to date.
Yates, a Potter neophyte, along with newcomer screenwriter Michael Goldenberg have concocted the most imaginative and splendid of the five films, this is only one that has a sense of real magic and real doom, it's the best realized of the films to date, not so focused on slavish adaptive rendering for the fear of upset fans. The acting is a lot better too-- Radcliffe seems sharper and more focused, even as Harry is more withdrawn and complex and Staunton gives an award worthy performance for her Miss Brodie Jean role on crack. So kudos are in order here-- it's really the first Potter film that made me give a damn. A-