Harry Potter movies aparating away on December 29th

This has got to be the stoopidest marketing maneuver in the history of anything...

The folks at Warner Bros. are planning to remove all the Harry Potter movies from store shelves come December 29th. After that date, your only chance of getting Harry Potter on the shelves of your personal library (legally 'course) is to buy it secondary market a'la eBay.

Apparently Warners thinks that Disney's "Vault" model is the way to go with a film series that has already generated $12.1 billion. That should be enough money for anyone, right?

I haven't watched a Harry Potter movie since the fifth one, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, came out in theaters. Guess I could be honest and say that I've just been... waiting for the right time to revisit that film franchise (for a number of reasons). If that time comes in the near future, looks like I'm gonna have to buy the Blu-rays now and put 'em in the trunk for later. Not something I particularly care to do (also for a number of reasons).

Dumb, dumb, dumb business move. The one rationale that I've heard for Disney's treatment of the home market is that it allows for its movies to take advantage of whatever is the dominant technology at the time (VHS, then DVD, now Blu-ray etc.) I can't see how that possibly figures into Warner's strategy here. The only reason I can think of why the company is doing this, is to compel people to rush out and buy the Harry Potter movies as soon as they can for this holiday season.

Guess it'll be several more years before I or my children (Lord willing that I have any) will get to enjoy the Harry Potter series in the comfort of our own home...

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Animated THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS. 'Nuff said...

What is regarded by many as the greatest Batman story ever told may be getting the DC animated treatment very soon...

Entertainment website Bleeding Cool is reported that The Dark Knight Returns is being adapted by the same team that worked on All Star Superman and the upcoming animated rendition of Batman: Year One.

Hailed as the defining treatment of Batman for the modern era, Frank Miller and Klaus Janson's The Dark Knight Returns is as bold and striking today as it was when it first hit comic book stores in 1986. The tale of Bruce Wayne - now 55-years old and having stopped being Batman ten years earlier - having the ultimate mid-life crisis and coming out of retirement into a world indifferent and even hostile to justice, not only broke new ground: it put Batman back on track to where he was perhaps always supposed to be.

I first read The Dark Knight Returns in the summer of 1989 (the summer of everything Batman) and ever since, I've been dreaming of a full-length feature adaptation of this story. Here's hoping that Warner Bros. won't be timid and will allow this film to have the hard "R" rating that it deserves. Yeah Warners, don't skimp on anything. Not even Bruno's exposed and swastika-tattooed breasts and buttocks (something that Batman creator Bob Kane confessed being mystified about). And however much money it takes, bring on Clint Eastwood to voice Batman!

Between that and nice long sequences of the scenes where Batman and his retinue are on horseback, this is already set to be animated glory.

(And hey, nice to have some good Batman news hot on the heels of those horrid costumes from the Batman Live show :-P)

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Warner Bros. launches on-demand DVD service

Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze is coming to your living room... and he's bringing a few thousand of his friends with him. The 1975 action film based on the classic pulp hero is just one of many movies that Warner Brothers is making available via a first-of-its-kind "on-demand DVD" service that's launching today.

By visiting warnerarchive.com you can select from many films that have previously not been made available in the DVD format. You pay twenty bucks and a week later a custom-made DVD - complete with nice case - comes in the mail. I just scanned through the catalog (only a fraction thus far of the complete library that Warners aims to make eventually available) and there are some real gems in there, including Abe Lincoln in Illinois and Countdown, the 1968 pre-Apollo 11 flick starting James Caan as an astronaut caught up in a mad race between the United States and the Soviet Union about which country will be the first to land on the Moon. There's even 1982's Yes, Giorgio starring Luciano Pavarotti (wait a sec... Pavarotti made movies too?!?).

This is one site that I am going to be watching with great interest. I think this is a very cool business model that Warners is experimenting with, and hopefully it will succeed enough for other studios to consider doing likewise.

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HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE movie delayed 'til Summer '09!

Warner Bros. is pushing back the release of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince from it's originally scheduled date of this November... to July 17th, 2009!

Why? Officially the word is that the writers strike several months ago means that there will be a dearth of "tentpole movies" next summer and Warners wants to make up for it somehow.

It also means that by the time the adaptation of Half-Blood Prince comes out that there will have been two years since its release and the previous movie in the series, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. And it'll be two years still after that before the series finally wraps up with Part Two of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

I'd hate to be the poor lady who's answering the phone at Warner Bros. when more people start hearing about this later this morning...

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TRANSFORMERS: THE SCORE charts on Billboard in debut week despite limited store release

NOW can we see a wider release for this thing?

After its first week out, Transformers: The Score, Steve Jablonsky's orchestral soundtrack for the blockbuster movie, has debuted at #172 on the Billboard 200 chart and is #13 on Billboard's Top Soundtracks. This comes in spite of what MTV has noted was a limited store release with about 4300 scans at the cash registers.

Meanwhile, the Transformers score CD continues to do well at Amazon, where it is now #39 in overall music (having increased in rank in the past few days) and is currently #5 in soundtracks.

Someone... probably a lot of someones... at Warner Brothers Records needs to very strongly consider getting this thing out to a lot more outlets. They are sitting on a goldmine with this CD and the demand is only going to get bigger now that the DVD is out and folks who didn't see Transformers during its theatrical release will be just now discovering both the movie and its beautiful orchestral soundtrack.

Don't make us have to start up another online petition now ;-)

Thanks to Transformer World 2005 and Seibertron.com for the heads-up!

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TRANSFORMERS Score CD Roundup: "Good first day!" at Warners but distribution problems plague Canada and elsewhere

Okay, let's try to make sense of this...

Earlier today reports came in that Transformers: The Score was being found at a number of stores across the United States. I'm wondering how many copies those places got though 'cuz I've been asking these same folks who wrote in then and they all said that they got the last or next-to-last copy on the shelves. So some went out. But were they enough?

Apparently not 'cuz the vast majority of people who've written me are saying that they can not find the CD anywhere where they live. Count me among those 'cuz I haven't been able to find it either. I'm going to Greensboro tomorrow (the "big city" south of us here in Reidsville) and will be checking out Best Buy, Target and other stores, to see if it turns up there.

Like I said before, I'm not going to be 100% satisfied until I see the CD on the shelves with my own two eyes, and can put a couple o' copies down on the counter at the cash register. This Knight's crusade is still on: everybody needs to be able to get the score.

Unfortunately, I am hearing nothing but bad news from our friends in Canada: nobody there at all has been able to find it. Or at least nobody in Canada who has either written in here or on any of the Transformers-related forums has reported being able to find the score. Oddly enough, I'm hearing that the CD is on sale in Europe.

I intend to contact Warner Bros. Records tomorrow to ask about this. And if they can tell me what might be going on with Canadian distribution, I'll pass that along to y'all.

In spite of this, I am hearing from a source at Warner Records that "we had a good first day!" regarding sales of Transformers: The Score. "The results are better than we imagined: the pre-orders which have been placed all over the world just shipped out today, and web stores like Amazon are asking for more and more CDs!" The source later added that these outlets "can't handle the large demand for score CDs of Transformers."

Since Amazon was mentioned, according to its product page on Amazon Transformers: The Score is currently #30 on the music sales rank and is #3 on the movie soundtracks, after High School Musical 2 at #1 and then Hannah Montana 2: Meet Miley Cyrus.

I am already hearing that the unexpectedly high sales may bode well for the chances of a 2-disc edition of the soundtrack.

And that's basically it right now for the first day of this album's release: some folks are getting it, but most aren't and that needs to be fixed as soon as possible. Pray that the morrow brings better news :-)

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Paramount confirms: TRANSFORMERS score CD is rolling out!

Warner Bros. Records will "shortly" be releasing the album of Steve Jablonsky's orchestral score from the movie Transformers, according to a Senior Vice President in the Music Department at Paramount Pictures.

The Knight Shift blog received this confirmation a short while ago. And you've no idea how happy I am about being able to report this!

The word comes from a source wishing to identifying himself as "Sam Witwicky all the way from New Zealand" (and in case you're wondering, I already asked if his eBay username was "ladiesman217" and he said that it's not :-). "Sam Witwicky" was able to correspond directly with the good people at Paramount Pictures: the studio which along with DreamWorks was responsible for producing Transformers. Our man Sam told them about the interest there's been in a CD release of Jablonsky's score and he mentioned the online petition (which may hit 5,000 signatures in the next few days).

Here's what Sam received back...

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Dan Butler at Paramount
Date: Aug 16, 2007 4:12 AM
Subject: RE: Transformers Original Score
To: Sam Witwicky

There will be a score album released shortly on Warner Bros. Records. Thanks for your interest!

Dan Butler

Senior Vice President

Business Affairs & Legal - Music

Paramount Pictures

So there's the word pretty much from the top: soon, we'll be getting to put our grubby lil' paws on a shiny new CD containing that majestic score from Transformers by Steve Jablonsky!

To all of you who have signed the petition and have otherwise been showing support for this album and getting the word spread about how much we'd love to have it in our collections: THANK YOU!! Nothing would please me more than to be able to shake hands with every single one of ya :-)

And very special thanks to Dan Butler and the folks at Paramount for having this great news sent along to us!

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