Rowling Just Upped the Number of ‘Harry Potter’ Spin-Off Movies to 5Reuters"Harry Potter" fans got fantastic news on Thursday.Author J.K. Rowling said that the Potter spinoff movie franchise Fantastic Beasts will consist of five films, up from the previously announced three."We set a trilogy as a placeholder because we knew there would be more than one movie, but ... we're pretty sure it's going to be five movies," Rowling told participants in London gathered at a fan event.The British author of the best-selling "Harry Potter" books was a surprise addition at a question-and-answer event with the Fantastic Beasts cast in London and Los Angeles that was broadcast across the world.The news was welcomed by excited screams from the audience, while the cast, including Oscar-winner Eddie Redmayne, looked surprised as they heard it for the first time. The films will be released by Warner Bros, a unit of Time Warner (twx).A 4-minute Fantastic Beasts featurette shown at Thursday's event finally hinted at the wider plot of the film that has so far been under wraps.
The planned movies, designed as prequels to the Potter stories, will trace the rise of a powerful wizard named Gellert Grindelwald and his eventual 1945 duel with Albus Dumbledore, the popular wizard headmaster from the Potter stories."We're talking about the first time a wizard rose and threatened the world order. This was always where I was interested in going. This is what I wanted to do," Rowling said in the featurette.She added in the 4-minute video that the new films will tie to the Potter stories in "surprising" ways.Fans at the event were shown the first 10 minutes of Fantastic Beasts, which opens on Nov. 18.The film depicts Redmayne's "magizoologist" Newt Scamander arriving in New York City in 1926 with a case of magical creatures, amid growing strife in the wizarding world.When Scamander's creatures escape and wreak havoc, it poses a bigger threat to the magical community as they may be discovered by the nonmagical humans in the city.Fantastic Beasts taps in to the eight-film Potter franchise that officially concluded with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 in 2011.
That series took in more than $7 billion at the global box office.Rowling's seven-book series sold more than 450 million copies worldwide.Earlier this year, a new sold-out London play, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, cast a spell all over again, and the book version of the script become a best-seller.OK Go's latest (and astonishing) video, for the song "The One Moment," took only 4.2 seconds to film. But the whole thing — a series of rapid-fire explosions — was slowed down to fill the four-plus minutes it takes the band to sing the song. Remarkably, like OK Go's previous videos, the group manages to sync the whole thing using... I don't know, math? "You're right," frontman and director Damian Kulash sings, his image animated as bassist Tim Nordwind flips through a book. "There is nothing more lovely, there is nothing more profound, than the certainty that all of this will end." In real time, the pages fly by in less than a second. But somehow, slowed down, it matches Kulash's mouth.
"The song 'The One Moment' is a celebration of (and a prayer for) those moments in life when we are most alive," the band says in the video's credits. "Humans are not equipped to understand our own temporariness; it will never stop being deeply beautiful, deeply confusing, and deeply sad that our lives and our world are so fleeting. We have only these few moments. Luckily, among them there are a few that really matter, and it's our job to find them. (We had no idea when we wrote the song that we'd be releasing its video in such a critical moment for our nation and the world. It's one of those moments when everything changes, whether we like it or not, so the song feels particularly relevant)." OK Go reveals more details about how the video was made, including a cue sheet, on the band's website. "The One Moment" is from OK Go's 2014 full-length, Hungry Ghosts. Check out the band's previous videos for "Upside Down & Inside Out," "I Won't Let You Down" and their Tiny Desk performance.So, you're planning to visit Japan and want to come home with a pile of Japanese games.
There's only one place to go, the cultural hub of otaku everywhere, Tokyo's Akihabara. But there are hundreds of stores in Akihabara, so where exactly should you go to find the cheapest prices or the rarest finds? Book Off is a chain of stores that buy and sell used books. Many of the stores, however, resell movies and games as well. Underneath the station and off the main drag is Akihabara’s Book Off, with its entire first floor committed to used games of all gaming generations back to the Famicom. The prices here tend to fluctuate. Sometimes they are lower than the other game stores in the area, sometimes higher. The only way to know for sure is to compare prices the day of. There are nearly a dozen Sofmap stores in Akihabara and more than one of them sell video games. However, only one of them—the one of them next to the giant Sega arcade near the station—sells used video games. In this building, the first and second floors are new games for various systems; but if you take the side escalator and then climb the stairs to the third floor, you’ll be in a room filled with used games and consoles from the original PlayStation to the present.
This is also one of the rare stores where you can occasionally find games sold outside of their original mint condition cases. If you are buying to play instead of collect, you’ll never find a cheaper price than one of these boxless games. One block beyond the main drag and across from a KFC, you’ll find Trader. This branch of the store is filled with used games from this current generation and the last. Its prices are usually quite cheap and there’s occasionally a chance of grabbing a rare find out of one of its display cases.Super Potato is probably the most famous game store in Akihabara as far as retro gaming goes, with its arcade on the top floor and a life-size Naked Snake statue. Formerly, it even had a throne made of old Famicom cartridges (though it seems to have disappeared since my last visit). A block off the main street and near the KFC-adjacent Traders, this store takes up several floors—though not the first one; so keep a look out for its stairwell entrance.
Here you are likely to find any possible retro game you are looking for. However, that doesn’t mean it’ll be cheap. Fame and excellent selection make Super Potato one of the most expensive gaming shops in the area. The towering Mandarake monolith is home to far more than gaming as they buy any and all things otaku. However, they do have a huge floor (the sixth) where the walls are lined with glass cases, filled with only the rarest of the rare of Japanese gaming—not to mention the most expensive. The floor’s other gaming contents, while much less rare, are no less expensive. However, their catalog is quite extensive and covers all gaming generations. So if there is a game you just have to pick up while in Japan and price isn’t an obstacle, the chances are high you will find what you are looking for here. Another branch of Trader in Akihabara (there are three in total) is far down the main drag, almost at its end. The first floor of the store is devoted to modern gaming (with prices identical to the other location) but the second floor in the building is dedicated to retro (and import) gaming.