Word: columbus
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...film two weeks ago, before any critics (including TIME's) were allowed to see and review it. Now it can be told: with Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone--the first film in what Warner Bros. hopes will be a long and profitable franchise--director Chris Columbus has bravely gone toe to toe with the imaginations of readers who have purchased 100 million Potter books and made the boy wizard one of the most beloved figures in literary history. (The author, once a struggling single mom in Edinburgh, Scotland, has become an international celebrity since Harry Potter...
...directors in the running, including City of Angels' Brad Silberling and Dead Man Walking's Tim Robbins, Columbus had the sappiest rep after his most recent movies, Bicentennial Man and Stepmom. But he also had two Home Alone movies to his credit, which meant that he knew how to work with child actors. Another plus: earlier in his career, as a screenwriter, Columbus penned the wickedly subversive action comedy Gremlins, which was a hit for Warner Bros. in 1984. Columbus admits that as a director, "I was going down this soft, sentimental road...I'm the guy who wrote Gremlins...
...promise to Jo that I wanted the film to be as faithful to her vision as possible. Her books work. That's the reason 100 million have been sold." Although she rarely visited the set, Rowling was involved during preproduction, when crucial design and plot decisions were being made. Columbus wondered early on where to put Harry's lightning-bolt scar, a souvenir from his infancy, when he had his first run-in with the evil Lord Voldemort, who killed his parents. Editions of the books all over the world showed the scar in various places, so the director went...
...hangar converted into makeshift soundstages, Diagon Alley is deserted. Hogwarts' magnificent staircase (partly constructed, then digitally finished onscreen) stands empty. But the lights will go on soon, as the sets will be recycled for Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, which is scheduled for release next year, with Columbus back at the helm. The entire Sorcerer's Stone cast will return for Chamber of Secrets, and just last week it was announced that Kenneth Branagh will join them in the role of the vain new defense against the dark-arts teacher, Gilderoy Lockhart. Meanwhile, Kloves has begun adapting...
Similar scares swept the Columbus Dispatch in Ohio and the rural biweekly Dickson Herald in Tennessee. Fox News in New York revealed that a letter addressed to its president, Roger Ailes--opened, as was Brokaw's letter, by an assistant--had also contained a mysterious white powder. And in Reno, Nev., officials said a letter returned to a Microsoft Corp. office from Malaysia, apparently having been intercepted and tampered with, had initially tested positive for traces of anthrax...