Carl Ballantine dies at 92. Keith Barry’s Deal Or No Deal gets a big budget. Rudy Coby needs your help.
Newsmaker Interview:
• De’vo We are thankful to help with a really awesome charity partially put on by this XCM legend.
Click here for a letter from the creators. Head here for a computer-generated video map of the park, which will be located next to Universal Studio’s Islands of Adventure.
You’ve seen Mindfreak Criss Angel teach Harry Potter lessons in magic. Twice. So what happens when the A&E star watches the film version of the Hogwarts hero? Find out in this preview for the new celeb-sniping Mtv program Popzilla.
Meanwhile, what happens when three animated programs have the same idea for a joke and produce it only to realize they’re ungracefully trampling over well-worn territory? The world may never know.
Sure Robot Chicken kind of did it already, College Humor unleashes this little ditty about Harry Potter dealing with Hogwarts professors Angel, Blaine, Copperfield and Penn & Teller.
Hat tip to Jumpin’ Joe Hadsall at the Ellusionist blog for finding this.
Want to look like a real dork in public while losing yourself in an engrossing, competitive iPhone/iPod game? TechCrunch highlights Magic Wars, a Harry Potter-inspired app that asks you to use your handheld device as a wand. Basically, it gives you a specific movement and incantation, using the accelerometers it judges just how well you execute and the appropriate damage in inflicted on your opponent.
But while the gameplay is surprisingly fun, the app could really use some work — some parts of it look fairly polished, while others simply look like generic buttons (the developers should strongly consider getting some more professional art assets in the game given the demographic it’s targeting). Still, it’s a good start.
Lewis says that the application launched three weeks ago and is now pulling 2,000 downloads a day. The game offers a free version, but it’s also going to offer “booster packs” for its virtual currency, which allows players to increase the number of spells they can perform. The company also has a number of other games in the works, though Lewis declined to reveal any details (I suspect the new games will have a bigger focus on the iPhone’s GPS capabilities).
Arm yourselves, muggles. Download Magic Wars in iTunes with this link.
Bill Nighy is trading in his pirate’s hat for a magician’s wand – he’s reportedly set to join the cast of Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows.
The actor starred as Davy Jones alongside Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley in Pirates of the Caribbean franchise’s second and third installments, but he’s now being linked to the role of Minister of Magic Rufus Scrimgeour for the last movies in the boy wizard series, according to The Independent.
If the reports are true, Nighy won’t need to spend too much time in the make-up chair as he already shares some of the character’s features. Scrimgeour is described in the book the film is based on as an “old lion” with bushy eyebrows, tawny hair, yellow eyes and wire-rimmed spectacles. Talk about type cast!
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows will hit cinemas in two parts, with the first half of the story due in 2010.
Did David Blaine get punked by an emo rocker? Amazing Johnathan now accepting members for his recreated Drive-In movie theater, Criss Angel gets skewered by Robot Chicken, Dynamo levitates Little Britain’s co-creator and Derren Brown gets analyzed.
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