Young wizard Harry Potter is the latest victim of last winter's writers' strike: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, originally slated for Thanksgiving release, has been pushed back to next July to fill the void in the Warner Brothers' summer blockbuster schedule left by a hundred days without writers.

The irony is that the special effects-heavy film was apparently on schedule for its Nov. 21 release – in fact production is reportedly already complete. It's being moved to July 17 not because director David Yates needs more time to finish the movie, but because the studio needs a summer cash machine and expects the climactic Half-Blood Prince, the sixth film in the Harry Potter series, to deliver in spades.

"We are still feeling the repercussions of the writers strike, which impacted the readiness of scripts for other films – changing the competitive landscape for 2009 and offering new windows of opportunity that we wanted to take advantage of," said Warners president Alan Horn. "We agreed the best strategy was to move Half-Blood Prince to July, where it perfectly fills the gap for a major tentpole release for midsummer."

In other words, Half-Blood Prince is going to sit in a can for eight months just so that Warners won't have a weak summer. This despite the fact that its screenwriter, Steve Kloves, fretted to Entertainment Weekly that the Potter movies might start to tank without regular book releases to support them.
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The spate of Star Wars parodies that started turning up last year wasn't just about the original film turning 30. After all, stuff turns 30 all the time. Operation Petticoat turned 30 last year as well, but you don't see very many splashy claymation specials featuring the likenesses of John Astin and Jamie Lee Curtis. Which is a shame, really.

Star Wars, more than any other science fiction phenomenon, inspires a creative desire in those who love it most, which is why parodies like Star Wars: Robot Chicken and Family Guy: Blue Harvest, both now out on DVD, wear their devotion on their sleeves even as they send up the best and worst bits of the six-film franchise.

And the Star Wars franchise is, despite George Lucas's best (or worst) efforts, very much alive (there's a new movie out now, in case you haven't heard, setting up a CGI series coming in the fall), which means amateur Star Wars satire-tributes are still cropping up. YouTube is already littered with folks cutting their desktop special-effects teeth on videos in which AfterEffects clones try to kill each other with light sabers and finger-lightning, and the video snarks have jumped on the Star Wars bandwagon, creating clips that range from awful to hilarious to gasp-inducing (perennial parodists the Fine Brothers have discovered a use for a light saber so very, very wrong I can't even link to it).

The best of the lot is still Robot Chicken: Star Wars, if only because its rapid-fire blackouts are a perfect way to jar you into looking at Boba Fett, Emperor Palpatine, and all those minor characters only the true geeks know the names of, in a whole new way. And there's more geek-fest comedy to come: Cartoon Network has announced a sequel to the Robot Chicken special is in the works, slated to premiere Nov. 16. That's news good enough to make even Ponda Baba smile.

• Review: Robot Chicken: Star Wars
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