• This is old news, but I suppose it must be said: Avatar is a massive hit, and its prospects are growing better by the hour. Even more interesting to me, surveys find that every single demographic gives the movie an “A”!

• Speaking of which, Stephen Spielberg liked Avatar a lot, saying it’s as revolutionary as Star Wars.

• The first issue of the returning Realms of Fantasy magazine is available for free download.

• The X-Men: First Class project means that the Magneto: Origins movie is now off the table — the Xavier/Magneto origin will now be part of the former film.

• A (dubiously sourced) rumor says that Taylor Swift will play Supergirl.

• 28 Star Wars mashups. Good Lord, some people have way too much time on their hands!

• Hasbro, which owns Wizards of the Coast (which makes Dungeons & Dragons) is suing Atari, which owns some digital rights to the game and recently sold them. Can I be honest? I didn’t even know Atari still existed.

• Tobey Maguire as Bilbo was a rumor with no basis in fact. Really? People on the internet are just making shit up? Who knew?!

• The decade’s most “profitable” actress was … Harry Potter’s Emma Watson. Which just kinda proves how stupid these kinds of surveys are.

• A great blog with all the news about HBO’s upcoming A Game of Thrones.

• A new website does for sci-fi/fantasy books what RottenTomatoes and Metacritic do for movies: it compiles and composites all reviews for particular books. Helpful!

• Liza Minnelli is not a fan of The Wizard of Oz – but only because she has a hard time watching what they do to her mother.

• Oh, and Happy Holidays!

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Four and a Half Torches (Out of Five)

It’s really, really good — the best Harry Potter movie so far (by far).

As great as it is, it’s important to keep in mind that this isn’t just a movie; it’s a movie based on a book.

And not just any book: part of one of the most popular, most beloved book series of all time. The pressure to stay true to the book, and not disappoint its legions of fans, must have been enormous.

But as every screenwriter knows, and as the producers of this franchise have surely learned by now, a movie is not the same thing as a book. They are completely different mediums. For a book adaptation to be successful, it must be reinvented for the screen.

Past Harry Potter movies haven’t always succeeded at this (then again, they didn’t have source material as good as Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince — possibly the series’ best book).

But this time it all comes seamlessly together. Director David Yates (who also directed Order of the Phoenix and will direct the final two movie installments), and screenwriter Steve Kloves (who has written all the previous Harry Potter installments except Phoenix) made significant edits from the book, but they were all sound choices.

In a summer that, as usual, is full of movies like Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen — not even real movies, but, rather, mere excuses to show explosions and merchandising tie-ins — it’s particularly gratifying to see a movie about thoughtful, articulate teenagers — not the cocky, arrogant ***holes I’m so used to seeing on American theater and television screens.

“You’re kind,” Dumbledore tells Harry, “a trait people repeatedly undervalue.”

When a female approaches a dinner table, Harry frickin’ stands up!

This is one part of these British books that the movie is extremely faithful to, and it gives Half-Blood prince an old-fashioned, yet timeless feel.

Visually, it’s hard to imagine a movie looking any better. It’s pure professionalism all the way.

Of all the great actors that have toiled in Harry Potter movies, Jim Broadbent may be the best of all, delivering a truly impressive performance as Professor Horace Slughorn. And Michael Gambon shines even brighter than usual as Dumbledore, with a particularly meaty role in this installment.

Likewise, Half-Blood Prince benefits greatly from decisions made years ago, long before Yates was involved: the casting of Daniel Radcliffe and especially Rupert Grint and Emma Watson, who have all never been better.

In a better world, Broadbent and Grint might both be up for Oscars, and I’d give the movie a shot at Best Picture as well (at least in the Academy’s new incarnation with ten nominees). Alas, Half-Blood Prince will probably have to console itself with merely being the year’s top-grossing movie.

Much of the Half-Blood plot revolves around burgeoning teen romance. For the most part, it’s touching, but there are a few times when it plays things a little too broadly — the one thing that the movie takes straight from the book that it probably shouldn’t have.

Still, if you’re a fan of this movie series, you’re sure to love this latest installment.

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