A “Harry Potter”-inspired pop-up bar near Findlay Market will hold its grand opening Friday, and yes, there will be butterbeer.
Located on 1834 Race St. right down the street from Findlay Market in the back of the Cosmic Gorilla comic book shop and bar, Pennifold’s Pub will be open for the next two months on Wednesday through Sunday. It will be a Quidditch-themed bar, from the fictional sport on broomsticks in the “Harry Potter” books and movies.
And keep an eye out for Quidditch tryout posters scattered around: Those will lead visitors to Pennifold’s Pub.
People of all ages (or witches and wizards, to stay on theme) are welcome in the bar before 9 p.m. It will serve eight fall cocktails with the names of “key Quidditch plays,” according to a release, in both an alcoholic and nonalcoholic version. Pennifold’s Pub will, of course, also serve frozen butterbeer.
Here are the hours for Pennifold’s Pub:
Wednesday and Thursday: 3-10 p.m.
Friday: 3 p.m. to midnight.
Saturday: Noon to midnight.
Sunday: Noon to 6 p.m.
New hippo at the Cincinnati Zoo:‘American Idol’ star Fritz Hager III wants you to name Bibi’s baby hippo after him
If ever there was a mainstream Hollywood story that had the legs to run on the Indian cinematic terrain, it was Forrest Gump. Advait Chandan’s faithful adaptation of Eric Roth’s sweeping story of a gentle, simple-minded soul running away with the cruel world, promises that instead of opening a box of sweet chocolates, it will offer a box full of gol gappas, the crisp rounds of hollow bread that are consumed with spicy water.
However, writer Atul Kulkarni evades the unhygienic areas that the metaphor suggests it will take us to, and offers us some sanitised and bland water balls in a world that is a lot more complex and political than when Gump emerged on the scene in 1994, starring Tom Hanks.
Over the last three decades, with the shift in culture and advancement in cinematography, the Robert Zemeckis fable has lost some of its feel-good quality and technical brilliance. It percolates into LSC as well; we have already seen shades of Gump in My Name Is Khan and PK. But unlike the two, LSC hardly asks any hard questions. It races past the landmark events since the Emergency, providing more dressed-up nostalgia than nuance or engagement with pressing issues.
The inherent goofy humour of the original is intact and there are some leaps of imagination like Shah Rukh Khan’s cameo, Manav Vij’s turn as a Pakistani mercenary, and Naga Chaitanya as a solider whose ambition is to make briefs and vests. But somehow Kulkarni could not imbue the screenplay with the fragrance of the Indian soil. Despite some enchanting visuals, it remains a copy.
The romance between Chaddha (Aamir Khan) and Rupa D Souza (Kareena Kapoor Khan) fails to create ripples because though Chaddha says he understands love, the writer makes Rupa suffer for her wrong choices in profession and boyfriends. He could have at least asked Shah Rukh for help!
More importantly, Forrest Gump was essentially about how America withstood the internal and external threats in the 1960s and 70s and evolved only to run into new challenges. Here, apart from the anti-Sikh riots that affect a young Chaddha, the rest of the socio-political churn fails to create emotional upheaval. Once the umbilical cord between the events and Chaddha’s life is broken, the screenplay starts resembling Chaddha’s almost neurotic obsession with running. The film talks a lot, almost tutors the audience, and doesn’t allow the visuals to communicate. Pritam’s music isn’t bad, but doesn’t provide the much-needed local flavour to the narrative.
Similarly, Advait is competent, but is like that efficient factory worker who has to make a new product from an old dye. One wonders whether Raj Kumar Hirani and Abhijat Joshi would have been a better choice to bring Forrest closer home.
Laal Singh Chaddha is currently running in theatres
JK Rowling has denied that locations in Edinburgh inspired places and characters in her Harry Potter books. Fans of the novels flock to the city’s Victoria Street as it is thought to have been the inspiration for the wizarding world’s Diagon Alley.
However, the author has insisted she had never visited the street at the time she created the cobblestoned street where Harry and his Hogwarts friends stock up on their supplies.
Victoria Street is featured on many Harry Potter walking tours of Edinburgh as well as Greyfriars Kirkyard where Rowling was said to have used names on gravestones for characters in the books, report the Record.
However, the writer said that story is also bogus and she only discovered it after one of her children went on one of the walking tours with a friend. Although real-life locations such as London’s King’s Cross feature in the books, Rowling said the only “wizarding world” place which has a real-life inspiration is Harry’s home at 4 Privet Drive.
The 56-year-old said it was based on the second home she lived in as a child. Replying to a fan on Twitter who asked what inspired Diagon Alley, she said: “No real street inspired Diagon Alley, I’m afraid. It came out of my head!
“I’ve never seen 99 per cent of the places that claim to be the inspiration and I’d never seen Victoria St when I created Diagon Alley (I have since, obviously, as it’s in Edinburgh, where I live). I feel bad for the tourist boards saying it, but all locations in Potter are entirely imaginary bar one, which is the most boring.
“It was only when I’d written the first three books that I realised I’d given 4 Privet Drive exactly the same layout as the second house I lived in as a child (which did have a cupboard under the stairs). Dull but true: I haven’t even been to many of the cities containing the self-proclaimed ‘real’ Diagon Alleys.”
The author was then asked by another of her 14 million followers whether there was any truth to the rumour about the Edinburgh graveyard.
She replied: “Afraid not, but I know the graveyard you’re talking about because unbeknownst to me, one of my children was at a loose end one afternoon and went on one of those Potter walking tours with their best mate for a laugh.
“They came home with a ton of information that was news to me.”
In 2020, Rowling questioned an Edinburgh cafe’s claim to be the birthplace of Harry Potter. The Elephant House proclaimed itself as the place where the boy wizard was dreamt up by the writer.
Rowling did write parts of the first Potter book at the cafe while a single mother on benefits in the 1990s. However, she said calling it the birthplace was wide of the mark and she had started work on the story long before she went there for cups of coffee.
She said: “I was thinking of putting a section on my website about all the alleged inspirations and birthplaces of Potter. I’d been writing Potter for several years before I ever set foot in this cafe, so it’s not the birthplace, but I did write in there so we’ll let them off!”
Rowling has said she first had the idea for Harry Potter while delayed on a train travelling from Manchester to London King’s Cross in 1990. Over the next five years, she began to plan out the seven books of the series.
A film adaptation of the arcade Sega classic Streets of Rage is in development, according to a new report.
Deadline claims that dj2 Entertainment, the company behind the Sonic film series, is working on the project.
A spec script for the project was written by Derek Kolstad, the man behind the John Wick franchise, it’s claimed.
Sega has yet to confirm the project, but following the record-breaking success of the Sonic the Hedgehog film adaptation, it’s likely that Sega will want to continue to capitalise on bringing its classic titles to the big screen.
VGC’s Sonic the Hedgehog 2 movie review called it a much better film than the original and said there’s a pleasant surprise to be found in the chemistry between its new characters, which include Tails and Knuckles.
Following the success of Sonic, it’s likely that video game movie adaptations will increase in prominence at the box office.
Author JK Rowling on Saturday said the police are investigating a potential death threat after a Twitter user hinted of a possible target on her in response to her posts on the stabbing of novelist Salman Rushdie during a literary event in New York. Rushdie, who has long faced death threats for his fourth novel, “The Satanic Verses,” was stabbed in the neck and torso by Hadi Matar, a 24-year-old man from Fairview, New Jersey. The incident took place 33 years after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Iran’s first supreme leader pronounced a fatwa, or religious edict, calling upon Muslims to kill the novelist and anyone involved in the book’s publication for blasphemy.
Following the attack on the author on Friday, the “Harry Potter” author in a tweet expressed her disbelief on Twitter. “Horrifying news. Feeling very sick right now. Let him be ok,” she said.
Rowling later posted screenshots of replies to her tweet by user Meer Asif Aziz who gave information about the attacker Hadi Matar and said he is a “revolutionary Shia fighter followed the fatwa of late ayotallah rohullah khomeini”.
To all sending supportive messages: thank you 💕 Police are involved (were already involved on other threats).
In another tweet by the author on the attack on Rushdie, Aziz responded to Rowling stating, “Don’t worry, you are next.” Rowling tagged the Twitter support team and asked for assistance in view of the threat.
Shortly later, the British author thanked her well-wishers who had raised safety concerns and said she has received help and the police is looking into the threat and information. “To all sending supportive messages: thank you 💕 Police are involved (were already involved on other threats),” she wrote.
Meanwhile, Iran-backed Lebanese armed group Hezbollah said it was not involved in the attack on Salman Rushdie and had no additional information. “We don’t know anything about this subject so we will not comment,” the official told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The attacker, Matar, is originally Lebanese and his family hails from the south Lebanon town of Yaroun, Yaroun mayor Ali Tehfe told Reuters. The Matar’s parents emigrated to the United States and he was born and raised there, Tehfe said. When asked if Matar or his parents were affiliated with or supported Hezbollah, Tehfe said he had “no information at all” on the political views of the parents or Matar as they lived abroad.
Iranian state media has praised Matar following the attack on Rushdie. Kayhan newspaper, whose editor-in-chief is appointed by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, wrote, “A thousand bravos … to the brave and dutiful person who attacked the apostate and evil Salman Rushdie in New York,” adding, “The hand of the man who tore the neck of God’s enemy must be kissed”. The headline of the hardline Vatan Emrooz newspaper read, “Knife in Salman Rushdie’s neck”. The Khorasan daily carried the headline, “Satan on the way to hell”.
Rushdie was on a ventilator and unable to speak after the incident. His agent Andrew Wylie said that “the news is not good.” “Salman will likely lose one eye; the nerves in his arm were severed; and his liver was stabbed and damaged,” he said in a statement.
Film director Jean-Luc Godard, the godfather of France’s New Wave cinema who pushed cinematic boundaries and inspired iconoclastic directors decades after his 1960s heyday, died on Tuesday at the age of 91, his family said.
Godard was among the world’s most acclaimed directors, known for such classics as Breathless and Contempt, which broke with convention and helped kick-start a new way of filmmaking — with handheld camera work, jump cuts and existential dialogue.
“It’s not where you take things from — it’s where you take them to,” Godard once said.
French President Emmanuel Macron, in a Twitter post, said: “We are losing a national treasure.”
Godard died peacefully and surrounded by loved ones at his home in the Swiss town of Rolle, on Lake Geneva, his family said in a statement. The statement gave assisted suicide as the cause of death.
A medical report recently revealed the director had “multiple invalidating pathologies,” according to the family statement, which did not specify the conditions.
Face of New Wave movement
Godard was not alone in creating France’s New Wave, a credit he shares with at least a dozen peers, including François Truffaut and Eric Rohmer, most of them pals from the trendy, bohemian Left Bank of Paris in the late 1950s.
Godard is seen in March 1960 with actress Jean Seberg, the co-star of Breathless. (AFP/Getty Images)
However, he became the face of the movement, which spawned offshoots in Japan, Hollywood and, more improbably, in what was then Communist-ruled Czechoslovakia, as well as in Brazil.
“We owe him a lot,” former French culture minister Jack Lang wrote in an emailed statement to Reuters. “He filled cinema with poetry and philosophy. His sharp and unique eye made us see the imperceptible.”
Among those he influenced were American directors Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino.
British director Edgar Wright said on Twitter on Tuesday that “perhaps no other director inspired as many people to just pick up a camera and start shooting.”
Godard was born into a wealthy Franco-Swiss family on Dec. 3, 1930 in Paris. His father was a doctor, his mother the daughter of a Swiss man who founded Banque Paribas, then an illustrious investment bank.
This upbringing contrasted with his later pioneering ways. Godard fell in with like-minded folk whose dissatisfaction with humdrum movies that never strayed from convention sowed the seeds of a breakaway movement that came to be called the Nouvelle Vague.
‘Sometimes reality is too complex’
With its more forthright, offbeat approach to sex, violence and its explorations of the counter-culture, anti-war politics and other changing mores, the New Wave was about innovation in the making of movies.
“Sometimes reality is too complex. Stories give it form,” Godard said.
Thank you monsieur Godard for expanding the boundaries of the cinema.brbrGracias Jean-Luc Godard por ampliar los confines del lenguaje cinematográfico.brbrRIP a href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/JeanLucGodard?src=hashamp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”#JeanLucGodard/a a href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/NouvelleVague?src=hashamp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”#NouvelleVague/a a href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/filmmaker?src=hashamp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”#filmmaker/a 🇫🇷🖤 a href=”https://t.co/YuAJ6wiBqo”pic.twitter.com/YuAJ6wiBqo/a
After working on two films by Jacques Rivette and Rohmer in 1951, Godard tried to direct his first movie while traveling through North and South America with his father, but never finished it.
Back in Europe, he took a job in Switzerland as a construction worker on a dam project. He used the pay to finance his first complete film in 1954, Operation Concrete, a 20-minute documentary about the building of the dam.
Returning to Paris, Godard worked as spokesman for an artists’ agency and made his first feature in 1957 — All Boys Are Called Patrick, released in 1959 — and continued to hone his writing.
He also began work on Breathless, based on a story by Truffaut. It was to be Godard’s first big success when it was released in March 1960.
The movie stars Jean-Paul Belmondo as a penniless young thief who models himself on Hollywood movie gangsters and who, after he shoots a police officer, goes on the run to Italy with his American girlfriend, played by Jean Seberg.
In 1961, Godard married Danish-born model and actress Anna Karina, who appeared in a string of movies he made during that decade, including My Life to Live, Alphaville and Crazy Pete — which also starred Belmondo and was rumoured to have been shot without a script. The marriage to Karina ended in 1965.
Godard is shown between Bill Wyman, left, and Mick Jagger while directing Sympathy for the Devil, on July 30, 1968. (Huton Archive/Getty Images)
In Week End, his characters lampoon the hypocrisy of bourgeois society even as they demonstrate the comic futility of violent class war. It came out a year before popular anger at the establishment shook France, culminating in the iconic student unrest of May 1968.
That same year he directed an experimental documentary featuring the Rolling Stones, Sympathy for the Devil.
Godard also launched what was to be a career-long participation in collective film projects, with directors such as Roger Vadim, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Roberto Rossellini.
Films steeped in politics
He switched to directing films steeped in leftist, anti-war politics through the 1970s. His controversial modern nativity play Hail Mary grabbed headlines when Pope John Paul II denounced it in 1985.
Godard harboured a life-long sympathy for various forms of socialism depicted in films ranging from the early 1970s to early 1990s. In December 2007 he was honoured by the European Film Academy with a lifetime achievement award.
Godard, seen at the 50th Cannes Film Festival in France in 1997, rarely ventured outside of Europe for work. (Getty Images)
Godard took potshots at Hollywood over the years.
He remained home in Switzerland rather than travel to Hollywood to receive an honorary Oscar at a private ceremony in November 2010, alongside film historian and preservationist Kevin Brownlow, director-producer Francis Ford Coppola and actor Eli Wallach.
Recent works, however — among them Goodbye to Language in 2014 and The Image Book in 2018 — were more experimental and slimmed the audience largely to Godard geeks.
RIP Jean-Luc Godard, one of the most influential, iconoclastic film-makers of them all. It was ironic that he himself revered the Hollywood studio film-making system, as perhaps no other director inspired as many people to just pick up a camera and start shooting… a href=”https://t.co/KFOnnQ1H6n”pic.twitter.com/KFOnnQ1H6n/a
Godard married his second wife, Anne Wiazemsky, in 1967. He later started a relationship with Swiss filmmaker Anne-Marie Mieville.
Godard divorced Wiazemsky in 1979, after he had moved with Mieville to the Swiss municipality of Rolle, where he lived with her for the rest of his life.
Take the proceeds straight to Gringotts: Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe has sold out of Melbourne’s property market in a $2 million-plus deal.
The English actor had used the stylish Toorak apartment as a base when he was filming in Australia, but it became superfluous to his needs.
The Toorak apartment owned by Daniel Radcliffe’s family.Credit:
It was bought new in 2004 for $1.9 million by Radcliffe’s mother Marcia Gresham, records show, and then transferred into her son’s name just before his 18th birthday in 2007.
The actor listed the home for sale in 2015, when it had price expectations of about $2.5 million. Despite receiving three offers, he decided not to sell because he was expecting to spend more time in Australia for work.
Meantime, the accused in the murder of Subair will be produced before the court on Wednesday. Ramesh, Arumukham, and Sharavanam were taken into custody on Monday. According to the police, Ramesh is the mastermind of the murder.
Hogwarts Legacy, the upcoming action RPG based on the world of Harry Potter, has bagged a firm release date… Just not for the Switch.
If you’re on PlayStation, Xbox, or PC, you’ll be playing Hogwarts Legacy on February 10th, 2023. It seems, however, that developer Avalanche Software needs a bit more time with the Switch version to “deliver the best possible game experience”, though this statement could potentially have applied to all versions of the game given it had a projected launch window of “Late 2022” until today.
So, the release date for Switch is up in the air for now, and it almost begs the question: will Hogwarts Legacy for the Switch be a Cloud Version? Hmm… Food for thought. [Update: As pointed out in the comments, a physical box release has been announced, but hey — stranger things have happened!]
Nevertheless, we’re still looking forward to seeing how this one turns out, and delaying a game with a goal of improving upon its overall quality is a win in our minds.
When do you think Hogwarts Legacy will launch on the Switch? Let us know in the comments!
Jacob Elordi has become an increasingly notable presence in the spheres of both film and television in recent years.
His biggest roles to date have arguably been as Noah Flynn in the trilogy of The Kissing Booth films on Netflix, in which he co-stars with Joey King. On the other hand, many know him best as Nate Jacobs from the hard-hitting HBO drama Euphoria.
He was also recently in the erotic thriller Deep Water (he played Charlie De Lisle) on Amazon Prime Video.
Looking ahead, Deadline reports that the 25-year-old Australian actor is set to portray the iconic Elvis Presley in Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla, based on the memoir Elvis and Me by Priscilla Beaulieu Presley.
In the wake of the news, some are curious about Jacob’s Height compared to Elvis’.
THE WHITE LOTUS: WHERE TO WATCH
Photo by Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic for HBO
Jacob Elordi and Elvis Presley heights
Celeb Heights reports that Elvis was 5’10” / 1.82 m whereas Jacob is considerably taller at 6’5″ / 1.96 m.
Of course, we’re yet to see any footage or images of Jacob in the role of the Jailhouse Rock singer, so there’s little for audiences to go on when it comes to seeing how he’ll look in the forthcoming A24 movie; they’re handling distribution in North America.
The most recent portrayal of Elvis we’ve seen on the big screen has been Austin Butler’s in Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis.
Celeb Heights reports that the 31-year-old American actor is 1.83 m /5ft 11 ¾, which is obviously a lot closer to Elvis’ actual height.
Nevertheless, fans can hope that Jacob’s is a towering performance.
THE WHALE: RELEASE DATE
Who is playing Priscilla?
Jacob is set to star alongside Cailee Spaeny.
The 25-year-old American actress is perhaps best known for her recent role in the mini-series Mare of Easttown (Erin McMenamin) and other TV roles including Devs (Lyndon), and The First Lady (Anna Eleanor Roosevelt).
However, some film fans will no doubt remember her from How It Ends (Young Liza), The Craft: Legacy (Lily), Vice (17-year-old Lynne Vincent), On the Basis of Sex (Jane Ginsburg), Bad Times at the El Royale (Rose Summerspring), and Pacific Rim: Uprising (Amara Namani).
Deadline reports that Cailee was Sofia’s first choice from the project’s inception but she met with a number of actors for the role of Elvis, although Jacob ultimately landed it.
A highly coveted role
Going back to Baz’s 2022 Elvis biopic, IndieWire reports that both Harry Styles and Miles Teller were once considered for the role.
However, the director felt that Harry was “already an icon” and the way he speaks makes it sound as though Austin had to be cast after blowing him away.
“I didn’t pick him,” he explained. “It’s as if he was drawn, like the role drew [him] in, because he was almost born to play it.”
