Warner Brothers France has sent over the official Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 synopsis to UHP.  Read a translation from French below, hopefully  WB USA will release the Official English version soon:

In Part 2 of this final episode, the battle between the powers of good and evil in the wizarding world becomes a war without thank you. The stakes have never been so great and nobody is safe. Harry Potter must make the ultimate sacrifice, as the final showdown with Lord Voldemort approaches. It’s the end of the saga.

In a new interview with Hero Complex Tom Felton discusses his upcoming film ‘Rise of the Apes’ where he will be playing a research facility employee named Dodge.  The film will be released on June 24th of this year.

“It’s one of my favorite scripts of any I’ve read,” Felton said. “It’s a brilliant script. It’s a prequel to the classic, ‘Planet of the Apes,’ so it explains how the apes came to power and it’s a fantastic story, really.”

He says he’s not concerned about playing another vindictive fellow in the “Apes” film. “I love playing a villainous role, and I would happily be known for that.  A lot of great English actors have been known for that, perhaps Ralph Fiennes and Alan Rickman and Anthony Hopkins being some of the finest.”

“I have to be careful here because they haven’t given me a clearance to divulge the entire plot — as much as I’d like to. I can tell you it’s a great story. I’m amazed, really, that they didn’t do [the original films] in this order and start with this modern-day story. It seems logical to start with this story and then go forward from there. But here we are; they’ve come back and done this interesting story. It essentially follows one particular ape. The story follows this one ape as he ends up in a primate facility, a facility where my character works. Needless to say, I’m not that keen on the monkeys at my facility. I’m not the most pleasant person they’ve ever come across in their life. I show this one particular ape that there is a dark side to humans, and I’m not very nice. And that leads to a backlash …”

Intelligent Life has a new interview with Ralph Fiennes who plays Lord Voldemort in the Harry Potter films.  The interview is mostly about his other projects, mainly Coriolanus, but he talks a about the Potter series VERY briefly.  Read the full interview here.

In the autumn he spent nine weeks on the permanent “Harry Potter” set at Leavesden Studios, filming Part 1 of “The Deathly Hallows”, his fourth appearance as the evil Voldemort. “It’s quite fun. I’m looked after; it takes the pressure off the huge anxiety.” We had lunch in his trailer, Fiennes in full make-up, with a veined scalp, yellowy little teeth, and long stained nails emphasising his feminine fingers. I asked if anything was different in his life. “No,” he replied firmly, “I’m a single man and I intend to stay that way. I think, ‘shall I call up so-and-so?’ and then I decide I’m too tired.”

Today, aged 47, Fiennes is no longer considered A-list by Hollywood. “He’s not hot,” says one studio executive. “Someone like Liam Neeson has a far more commercial sensibility in the films he takes on. Fiennes is a thesp.” The occasional shot at the mass market has backfired on him: “I felt completely lost as that Cary Grant type in ‘Maid in Manhattan’,” he says. “I didn’t know what to do.” But in roles that call for a transformation Fiennes is superb—never more so than as the disconcertingly fleshy, sadistic SS officer in “Schindler’s List”. “It freed him,” says Peter Eyre, who played Polonius to Fiennes’s Hamlet. “He wasn’t a romantic lead: he had to find something else. Olivier was said to be a character actor in the body of a matinée idol, and the same may be true of Ralph.”

To watch Fiennes’s films back to back is to be struck by his range, whether as the tatterdemalion clergyman in “Oscar and Lucinda” or the murmuring vagrant in David Cronenberg’s “Spider”. In 2008 he was both a foul-mouthed East End villain (“In Bruges”) and an 18th-century duke in “The Duchess”—an unforgettable depiction of an aristocrat whose chilly reserve masked a core of compassion. In “Bernard and Doris” (2006), an HBO film little-known outside America, he was a transvestite, alcoholic Irish butler. It would have been easy to ham, but Fiennes gave Bernard a quiet dignity, edging to decadence in tentative gradations.

“Ralph has made very specific choices,” says Juliette Binoche, his co-star in his first film, “Wuthering Heights”, and again in “The English Patient”. “He’s not part of the system, he hasn’t moved to Hollywood. He’s decided to follow his soul.” That soul keeps leading Fiennes back to the theatre. “I wouldn’t have had it any other way,” he says. “Theatre gives you an arena for emoting that film ultimately can’t compete with—that sense of something connecting in the room.”

Thanks very much to reader Vincent for the tip!

Several Harry Potter stars will be in attendance at the Entertainment Media Show and Collectormania London from March 6th-7th at Olympia 2, Hammersmith Road, London.

Afshan Azad who plays Padma Patil along with Anna Shafer, who plays Romilda Vane will be in attendance at the event.  They will each be attending on Saturday ONLY and autographs will cost £10.

Ian Whyte who was a stunt man for Madame Maxime and other characters in the films will also be in attendance.

As more stars are announced I will let you know!

In a new interview with USA Today Tom Felton, David Yates and David Heyman talked about Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2.

The second film comes out July 15. “The very last one’s a big old epic, with lots of battles and dragons and goblins. It’s going to be operatic. And then it’s over,” says director David Yates.

“The decision to split this into two was purely a creative one. By doing two, there’s more detail and more time to engage with the characters in the way that we do,” says producer David Heyman. “It allows the audience time to bring themselves to it. The audience has the time to project their own feelings and engage with the characters.”

Asked if he’s feeling nostalgic, Yates says, “I don’t think we ever took it for granted. We’d sometimes joke about what we’re going to do when it’s all over. We’ll never have this amount of resources again. We’re going to have to go back into the real world, after living in this bubble.”

“One of the greatest gifts that Jo Rowling and the whole franchise has given (the actors) is that we can really end up making a kid’s night just from saying hello,” Felton says. “I was 12 when we started shooting; 13 when it came out. I’m 23 now. It’s been a long journey. You don’t see people growing up, not when you’re there. It’s only when you look back at the films. … Look at Daniel! He was bloody tiny. My face was like a basketball. But those angelic features seem to have left me,” he jokes.

“The last film will be it. It’s never going to be like this again. You never take this for granted,” Heyman says. “You want to do the end justice, so there’s a little bit of anxiety.”

Thanks to TLC for reminding me that I forgot to post this yesterday.

Spotlight Events have emailed to let me know that they are holding a “Back to Hogwarts” event in Paris, from the 26th to the 28th of August 2011.  The tickets will be on sale from Sunday 9th of January at 5pm UK time. The link to buy them will be on the Spotlight Events website.

More information about the event may be found here.