Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows: Part 1
Blu-ray Combo | DVD | On Demand
Directed by David Yates
Starring Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint
Warner Home Video
Release date: April 15, 2011

The tale of the wizard Harry Potter and his struggle against the evil Lord Voldemort has nearly reached its end in Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows: Part 1, the first of a two-part finale for the film franchise. The Harry Potter movies have come a long way in the 10 years since the first offering, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, when Harry was just a little boy and Voldemort was merely a named to be feared and never spoken. As Harry and his loyal friends grew older, the franchise got darker, with this latest one being the darkest and most frightening one of all.

Voldemort’s (Ralph Fiennes) power has grown strong and, as always, his one focus in life is to kill Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe), the boy who lived, the Chosen One, the one destined to bring about his downfall. Thanks to his friends and powerful allies, Harry has managed to either stay hidden from the dark lord or escape his clutches whenever they’ve battled. But unlike the previous installments, in The Deathly Hallows: Part 1, the wizard world itself has grown dark, too. Voldemort’s Death Eaters and other minions and loyal subjects have taken over the government with a mission to rule over the Muggle — non-magical — world and subjugate all Muggles and Muggle-born wizards and witches. No one is safe under this regime, so Harry and his friends Hermione (Emma Watson) and Ron (Rupert Grint) are forced to go underground on their own while searching for the hidden Horcruxes, the magical artifacts that house pieces of Voldemort’s soul that the trio must figure out how to destroy.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1
Directed by: David Yates
Starring: Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint
Warner Brothers
Release Date: November 19, 2010

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 is the seventh installment in the Harry Potter franchise, in which Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe), Hermione Granger (Emma Watson), and Ronald Wesley (Rupert Grint) are on a mission to find and destroy the horcruxes, mystical objects that grant immortality, so that the evil Lord Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes) is unable to use it to his advantage. The focus of this film is really the acting among the three actors who have been together for so long, and how they have made each character they play their own, and that’s really important when you have a setting when there’s not a lot of action going on, overall, but I’ll talk more about that a little later.

I’ve been a fan of the Harry Potter films for quite some time now, and if you haven’t been, The Deathly Hallows Part 1 isn’t going to change your mind. To everyone else, however… well, I hesitate to say that you’re going to love it.

Over the past ten years or so, we’ve basically watched the stars of the Harry Potter franchise grow up. From children to teens to young adults, we’ve watched, like a billion distant relatives who only see family once a year or less.

One of the more oft-wondered aspects of this was whether these kids would be cursed to live out their days as Harry Potter typecasts, or if they had the talents and youth to move on to many other films, and construct impressive careers. They’ve already made more money than most would have a clue what to do with, so now it’s really all about legacy.

The three main stars have all set themselves up nicely by doing smaller films and theatrical productions in between Potter films, but with the mega franchise’s filming all wrapped up, it’s time to set their future in motion. This begins with the announcement that Daniel Radcliffe has signed on to star in a new remake of the World War I classic, All Quiet on the Western Front.

NOTE: For structural reasons and to ensure that this list is super-duper pretty at all times, we’ll be posting this same intro for all sections of The Decade List. If you’ve already read all of this, you can just head down to the continuation of our list!

Let’s just get it out of the way right off the ol’ bat: yes, we know it’s been month since we left the decade. Most folks undertook this heavy task pre-2010, but we decided that it would be a little bit better to let the new year settle in a bit before hitting you with something of this magnitude.

So here we are, geeks: we’ve officially arrived in FUTURE *cue retro ’50s sci-fi music* and still we have no freakin’ flying cars yet. What’s the deal with that? While it is pretty exciting to be inside of the year 2010 — a year that always seemed unreachable to us mere mortals — we are also exiting another entire decade that leaves us staring at one majorly epic task. That task? To search, dig, locate, retrieve, organize, polish, and present the very best films of the past ten years!

The Super Bowl broadcast is known for having some really great commercials, as well as debut movie, TV, and game footage.

During tonight’s game (yay Saints!), as I was watching for the new TV spot for Alice In Wonderland, the first television commercial for Universal Orlando’s Wizarding World of Harry Potter came on, and I squealed. I did, I really did.

For those of you wondering what this is, it’s the new Harry Potter-themed section of Islands of Adventure, a theme park within the Universal Orlando Resort, that’s opening this Spring.

Watch the commercial, which includes an appearance by the boy wizard himself Daniel Radcliffe, here below.