This week, Fat Guy Kevin Carr dances with joy because it’s the only time you can dress up in flowing robes and head to the cineplex to see a movie based on an alleged children’s book and not get arrested. After cinching his wizarding cloak around his waist with his Gryffindor scarf, he sails off to check out Winnie the Pooh. Then, from the dysfunctional head cases in the Hundred Acre Wood, Kevin sneaks into the screening room next door to watch Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part II only to discover he doesn’t have his 3D glasses. Curses!

There’s a special kind of challenge in ending a story. Talk to the right writer, and he or she will most likely tell you that typing the last bit of punctuation can be the hardest ink to stamp into the page because even though that’s the goal, it also means saying goodbye to characters you’ve fallen in love with. Characters you’ve fought for and alongside of. Characters that have reflected the best parts of you, shown you your weaknesses and made you all the better for it. We may use stories as escapism, but we have to return to the real world eventually. There’s a special kind of challenge in ending a story because a final chapter has to encapsulate everything that’s played out in the much larger space that’s come before it. It has to confront the audience and its characters with choices they’ve been avoiding, trials that have been kept at arm’s length, and the lessons of all of the smaller tasks has to be used sufficiently against the most dire of consequences in order to be satisfying. It’s been a long journey, but in all of those undertakings, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 succeeds with incredible resolve.

What is Movie News After Dark? It’s the day’s best movie news and links exploding onto your computer screen. Can you handle that? MSN has debuted a new image of two new characters from The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. “Two of the youngest Dwarves, Fili (Dean O’Gorman) and Kili (Aidan Turner) have been born into the royal line of Durin and raised under the stern guardianship of their uncle, Thorin Oakensheild. Neither has ever travelled far, nor ever seen the fabled Dwarf City of Erebor. For both, the journey to the Lonely Mountain represents adventure and excitement. Skilled fighters, both brothers set off on their adventure armed with the invincible courage of youth, neither being able to imagine the fate which lies before them.” Quick, get me a Tolkein nerd to translate that. Are these guys cool, or not? Because they look cool.

What is Movie News After Dark? It’s a nightly movie news round-up that digs and digs and keeps on diggin’ until it finds the most interesting things from around the web. Tonight it’s pretty proud of its ability to find things that it thinks you’ll like. Do enjoy. Long after it was one of the most buzzed-about movies of the 2010 Sundance Film Festival, even after packing promotional screenings at SXSW months later, Eli Craig’s horror comedy Tucker & Dale vs. Evil had no distributor. Whatever the reason, no one wanted to bring these two bumbling hillbillies to the dance. Well now that’s all history, as Magnolia Pictures has acquired it. According to their press release, they will release it into theaters on September 30, with a VOD release on August 26. Personally, I can’t wait to see it again.

My family has been friends with a children’s bookstore owner for years, so when we got an advanced copy of something called “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,” I read it to give my feedback. I thought it was poorly written and wouldn’t go anywhere. I was incorrect. The books became the phenomenon, and the movies have translated that worldwide shared experience into something else entirely, but all that comes to an end this summer before someone at Warners decides to reboot the whole thing. This featurette shows off the main three in their first screen test, and takes a look back at the cinematic journey that’s brought us to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 is going to have to be a lot of things to a lot of people. It will need to be explosive but thoughtful, dramatic but lighthearted, focused and fearless. The movie has its work cut out for it, but as for the trailer, it does every single thing right. Check it out for yourself:

Update: Warners has confirmed that this trailer is not an official trailer. It’s fan made. No word yet on whether someone will hire whomever put it together though, because it looks great. Again, to make it clear, it’s not an official trailer for the movie. And now the original video has been taken down by the host site. Original post: Darkness. Foreboding. Wand fights. Explosions. Mobs of people running through the forest. Beachfront property. Dragons. Gingers kissing. Snape peeing himself. Yes, this teaser trailer for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 has everything except Danny Glover complaining about being too old. It just looks so damned good. If the excitement wasn’t at its peak yet, it will be soon. I have a feeling we’ll see more and more incredible stuff from the production leading up to July 15th (a day that cannot come fast enough). Check out the teaser for yourself. You might even get to see a sweet anti-smoking ad from the source site!

What is Movie News After Dark? This is a question that I am almost never asked, but I will answer it for you anyway. Movie News After Dark is FSR’s newest late-night secretion, a column dedicated to all of the news stories that slip past our daytime editorial staff and make it into my curiously chubby RSS ‘flagged’ box. It will (but is not guaranteed to) include relevant movie news, links to insightful commentary and other film-related shenanigans. I may also throw in a link to something TV-related here or there. It will also serve as my place of record for being both charming and sharp-witted, but most likely I will be neither of the two. I write this stuff late at night, what do you expect?

This week, Fat Guy Kevin Carr puts on a wizard’s robe, wears a colorful scarf and dances around in the woods with his magic wand yelling, “Stupify!” And that’s just to celebrate the release of Fair Game in his home town. He also takes a look at this little independent film that few people have even heard of, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I. Sadly, a bizarre mishap with his wizarding skills causes a boulder to fall on his hand and pin him for 93 minutes, which was actually quite fortunate because it gave him just enough time to watch 127 Hours.

One thing that the Harry Potter series has always gotten right is the humor. It doesn’t matter who directed it, each film seems to have that unique comic sensibility that mostly comes from the trials and tribulations of puberty and young love. With the last installment, the focus is decidedly off of the awkwardness and onto the bloodbath on the horizon. Fortunately, it looks like the humor is coming from giving Emma Watson the eyebrows off of Daniel Radcliffe’s face. Plus, you just can’t beat the punch line from the twins. Well played. Check it out in HD over at their facebook page.

As the years have passed, many a worldy moviegoer has noticed that there’s something to this Harry Potter franchise. And as it embarks on its homeward stretch, we can’t help but think about how much the scale of said movies has grown from parts one to five. With Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the two-part finale, lurking on the horizon, the time has come for the big finish. Based on what we’re seeing from the marketing team over at Warner Bros., a big finish is exactly what we’re going to get. After the jump you will see exactly what I’m talking about — a new featurette that promises an epic scale for the big end of the world’s favorite wizard story.

I don’t have a catchy title for this one. No snarky comment. No hilarious anecdote about wizards and their need to overcompensate with big wands. No, I’ve got nothing but awe for the first trailer for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. From the looks of things, I would predict that I will have nothing but awe for the films as well. They look, for lack of a better word, monumental.

Among the new footage to debut at this evening’s MTV Movie Awards show — did anyone watch it, did Twilight win? — was a new minute-long trailer for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. The film, directed by David Yates, will be part one in the epic two part finale of the Potter series.

According to Variety, Emma Watson is currently in talks to co-star in the teen drama The Perks of Being a Wallflower, based on Stephen Chbosky’s popular and undeservedly controversial 1999 novel. Also in talks for the adaptation is Percy Jackson star Logan Lerman.

Over the course of the last few days, Warner Bros. has released two new stills from the upcoming fantasy film Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1. And unfortunately, neither one of them is really all that interesting.

We’d love to hear what you loved (or hated) about Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Spoilers inside, friends, so if you haven’t seen the movie…move along…I hear there’s an awesome news story just below this post.

This week Landon watched Harry Potter 1-5 in a row, and wants to share with you every passing thought he had along the way.

Kevin Carr reviews this week’s new movies: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and (500) Days of Summer.

Neil continues to lurk around our nation’s capital on a clandestine assignment, so FSR’s Features Editor Cole Abaius steps in as guest Fat Guy this week (although he insists he’s very appropriately body-proportionate).

Daniel Radcliffe makes fun of Film School Rejects, then claims they are doing something incredibly different with the last two Harry Potter films. Plus, Emma Watson talks about being chased through the forest by Snatchers. I have no idea if that’s a Potter thing or if it’s wacky British slang for paparazzi.