Salon.com > Harry Potter http://www.salon.com Fri, 04 Jan 2013 17:37:08 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Scientists’ perfect “invisibility cloak” http://www.salon.com/2012/11/12/scientists_perfect_invisibility_cloak/ http://www.salon.com/2012/11/12/scientists_perfect_invisibility_cloak/#comments Mon, 12 Nov 2012 23:11:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13069727 First, there was that recipe for butter beer. Then, Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans started appearing on the shelves of Muggle (translation: non-magical) candy shops. And now, at a considerably higher price point, the invisibility cloak has become a reality. And while you can thank clever marketing executives for the Hogwarts-inspired confections, the invisibility cloak is no gimmick -- it's a scientific breakthrough.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/11/12/scientists_perfect_invisibility_cloak/feed/ 6 Chicago anarchist sent to boot camp for lie about bomb in Harry Potter book http://www.salon.com/2012/11/07/chicago_anarchist_gets_4_years_for_lie_about_bomb_in_harry_potter_book/ http://www.salon.com/2012/11/07/chicago_anarchist_gets_4_years_for_lie_about_bomb_in_harry_potter_book/#comments Wed, 07 Nov 2012 21:30:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13065691 Sebastian Senakiewicz, 24, never made a bomb. He was never found with any explosive-making materials; authorities thoroughly searched his house. The Polish immigrant did, however, tell a boastful lie that has landed him a stint at boot camp.

Just days before the Chicago NATO summit last May, Senakiewicz drunkenly told undercover agents that he had two homemade explosives hidden in his Chicago residence in a hollowed-out Harry Potter book. A search of his home found the bombs to be as fictitious as the boy wizard -- there weren't even any Harry Potter books at the address. But the 24-year-old anarchist, who Tuesday pleaded guilty to one felony count of falsely making a terrorist threat, could face deportation.

The Chicago Tribune reported:

At a hearing in the Leighton Criminal Court Building, Judge Nicholas Ford imposed the 4-year prison term and recommended that Senakiewicz be admitted into a prison boot camp. If he successfully completes the program he could be released in as little as 6 months, but prosecutors said the Polish native would be subject to deportation on completing his sentence.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/11/07/chicago_anarchist_gets_4_years_for_lie_about_bomb_in_harry_potter_book/feed/ 6 Six examples of the right’s war on children’s characters http://www.salon.com/2012/10/05/six_examples_of_the_rights_war_on_children_characters/ http://www.salon.com/2012/10/05/six_examples_of_the_rights_war_on_children_characters/#comments Fri, 05 Oct 2012 13:17:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13031266 AlterNet Mitt Romney's comments, during Wednesday night's debate, about cutting funding for PBS despite his “love” for Big Bird, immediately got a response from the Internet: FiredBigBird popped up on Twitter shortly after the comments and was quickly joined by Sesame Street colleagues FireMeElmo and FiredOscar, as well as BigBirdRomney.

PBS has long been a conservative target, despite the minuscule amount of savings that cutting it would actually produce. As Laura Clawson noted at Daily Kos, “Romney's setting up the need for $9.6 trillion in non-defense cuts. His answer? Fire Big Bird to save $445 million.” Big Bird and his cohort are just collateral damage in the Right's war on anything public; Romney can sadly shake his head and say that even though he loves Big Bird, the big yellow guy just has to go because of the deficits!

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/10/05/six_examples_of_the_rights_war_on_children_characters/feed/ 9 Quote of the day http://www.salon.com/2012/10/02/quote_of_the_day_32/ http://www.salon.com/2012/10/02/quote_of_the_day_32/#comments Tue, 02 Oct 2012 20:54:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13028392 India's Sikh community has condemned J.K. Rowling's recent novel, "The Casual Vacancy," for describing one of the female characters, Sukhvinder, as "mustachioed, yet large-mammaried" and portraying her as a "hairy man-woman." (Traditionally, followers of the Sikh religion are forbidden from cutting or trimming their hair).

India’s Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC), a Sikh group, has spoken out regarding the depiction. The Daily Mail reports:

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/10/02/quote_of_the_day_32/feed/ 16 J.K. Rowling might write “director’s cut” of Harry Potter http://www.salon.com/2012/09/27/j_k_rowling_might_write_directors_cut_of_harry_potter/ http://www.salon.com/2012/09/27/j_k_rowling_might_write_directors_cut_of_harry_potter/#comments Thu, 27 Sep 2012 16:50:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13023515 "Harry Potter" author J.K. Rowling, whose adult novel, "The Casual Vacancy," comes out today, might not be done with the "Potter" series after all.  She told BBC that after rereading them, she'd like to spend more time on some of the characters. "And I read them, and I think, 'Oh God, maybe I'll go back and do a director's cut', I don't know," she said.

Rowling also mentioned that it is "very likely" her next book will be for kids. "I have a children's book that I really like. It's for slightly younger children than the Potter books," she said.

Let J.K. Rowling's lit-world takeover commence.

 

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/09/27/j_k_rowling_might_write_directors_cut_of_harry_potter/feed/ 2 J.K. Rowling grows up — and gets knocked down http://www.salon.com/2012/09/26/j_k_rowling_grows_up_%e2%80%94_and_gets_knocked_down/ http://www.salon.com/2012/09/26/j_k_rowling_grows_up_%e2%80%94_and_gets_knocked_down/#comments Wed, 26 Sep 2012 13:54:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13021709 How did you deal with the stunning revelation, in Ian Parker's 9,000-word profile of J.K. Rowling in this week's New Yorker, that the author is not as warm as Rubeus Hagrid, as confident as Albus Dumbledore, or, alas, as brave and smart and accessible as her iconic hero, Harry Potter? Did it, as Gawker's Caity Weaver put it, "make you [not] want to hang out with J.K. Rowling," whose first adult novel, "The Casual Vacancy," is released on Thursday (and is, of course, already a best-seller). Were you as shocked as the Daily News, which announced that the author "is making no excuses for the very grownup prose and plotline" of the new book? Or did you feel a peculiar sense of satisfaction, knowing that the multimillionaire creator of one of the most beloved children's book series of all time comes off as an awkward, insecure woman who asked for – and was refused – quote approval on the story?

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/09/26/j_k_rowling_grows_up_%e2%80%94_and_gets_knocked_down/feed/ 23 Majoring in Potterology http://www.salon.com/2012/05/25/majoring_in_potterology/ http://www.salon.com/2012/05/25/majoring_in_potterology/#comments Fri, 25 May 2012 19:20:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12925540 Last week in Scotland, 60 scholars gathered over two days for the U.K.'s first scholarly conference on the Harry Potter series. The Guardian newspaper quoted John Mullan, a professor of English at University College London, questioning the wisdom of organizing such an event. Concluding that the host college, the University of St. Andrews, was primarily after "publicity," Mullan suggested the attendees would be better off forgetting kids' books and cultivating their gravitas. "They should be reading Milton and 'Tristram Shandy,'" he told the Guardian. "That's what they're paid to do."

The criticism brought to mind a lengthy discussion on Reddit last year, inspired by an anecdote from a bookstore clerk who sold copies of all four "Twilight" novels to a sheepish professor. The professor's explanation: "Every time I reference low forms of literature, I always use 'Twilight' as the example. Today a student asked if I’ve actually read them, and I had to say no. They demanded that I do."

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/05/25/majoring_in_potterology/feed/ 84 “Captain America” corners the box office http://www.salon.com/2011/07/25/captain_america_harry_potter/ http://www.salon.com/2011/07/25/captain_america_harry_potter/#comments Mon, 25 Jul 2011 13:30:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/feature/2011/07/25/captain_america_harry_potter If early estimates are to be believed (at Deadline, Nikki Finke had her doubts on Sunday), it looks like "Captain America: The First Avenger" has flown higher and faster than its summertime superhero rivals, "Green Lantern," "X-Men: First Class" and "Thor."

According to Box Office Mojo:

Captain America made an estimated $65.8 million on approximately 7,100 screens at 3,715 locations, edging out fellow Avenger Thor's $65.7 million as well as Green Lantern's $53.2 million and X-Men: First Class's $55.1 million to top the summer's superhero launches.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/07/25/captain_america_harry_potter/feed/ 7 Harry Potter: How it couldn’t have ended http://www.salon.com/2011/07/21/harry_potter_ending/ http://www.salon.com/2011/07/21/harry_potter_ending/#comments Thu, 21 Jul 2011 12:22:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2011/07/21/harry_potter_ending According to Greg Palast -- an American journalist who says he and J.K. Rowling became "buds" when they "shared the bestseller list" in England "years ago" -- J.K. Rowling considered ending the Harry Potter series in what one could reasonably term a highly unlikely fashion. New York magazine was quick to pick up on Palast's relevant blog post yesterday.

At gregpalast.com, Rowling's "bud" writes:

Jo knows that I found the conclusion of her series a sorry let-down, a second-rate “Show Down at the OK Corral” for Wizards. In my opinion (and she does not at all agree), Jo was too distracted by a concern for how the ending would play on film. I bugged her about it until she told me the "other" endings. ... No, Jo wouldn’t show me typed copies, but she told me a couple of "I could have done this" endings. One of them knocked me over, and I have to share it.

Share it he does (with, unsurprisingly, a couple of caveats, e.g.: "If you want to say that I didn’t get her voice and story details exactly, keep in mind that I’m working from mental notes").

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/07/21/harry_potter_ending/feed/ 12 Wizards or Jedis? http://www.salon.com/2011/07/19/mzs_harry_potter/ http://www.salon.com/2011/07/19/mzs_harry_potter/#comments Tue, 19 Jul 2011 16:01:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/feature/2011/07/19/mzs_harry_potter My daughter Hannah is a ninth-grader, and my favorite person to see movies with. Sometimes we'll see a film and then instant message each other about it later, or tape ourselves talking and do a transcript, then publish the result at my friend Ed Copeland's blog, Edward Copeland on Film. This conversation is on the final Harry Potter film, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2." I was really looking forward to seeing this movie with Hannah, not just because it's the final installment in a franchise that's been around nearly as long as she has, but also because Hannah has read all the books and I've read exactly none, which makes her an ideal explainer.

Matt: So here's what I was thinking going into "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2." I was 8 years old when the original "Star Wars" came out in 1977 -- the movie that your generation calls "Episode IV: A New Hope." The timespan between that film and the conclusion of the original "Star Wars" trilogy, "Return of the Jedi," was six years. That carried me from fourth grade through freshman year of high school. Those movies dominated my imagination during that six-year period, and were almost as much a part of my life as any person I actually knew.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/07/19/mzs_harry_potter/feed/ 18 Harry Potter triumphs at the box office http://www.salon.com/2011/07/18/harry_potter_box_office/ http://www.salon.com/2011/07/18/harry_potter_box_office/#comments Mon, 18 Jul 2011 12:50:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/feature/2011/07/18/harry_potter_box_office The final Harry Potter film has broken the box office record for most successful opening weekend in history -- besting the previous record-holder, 2008's "The Dark Knight," by about $10 million.

"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2" took an estimated $168.5 million in domestic ticket sales between Friday and Sunday; "The Dark Knight" took only $158.4 million on its first weekend (although Deadline reminds us to consider that HP 7.2, unlike "The Dark Knight," was available in 3D -- and thus some tickets were more expensive).

According to a Warner Brothers press release, Harry Potter's last on-screen hurrah broke three records with its $92.1 in opening-day ticket sales, and sold more than $476 million in tickets worldwide. The studio further reports that fans paid $43.5 million for tickets to midnight Friday showings alone -- another first.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/07/18/harry_potter_box_office/feed/ 0 Five pop culture items we missed http://www.salon.com/2011/07/15/pop_five_harry_potter_tiger_woods/ http://www.salon.com/2011/07/15/pop_five_harry_potter_tiger_woods/#comments Fri, 15 Jul 2011 22:01:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/tv/feature/2011/07/15/pop_five_harry_potter_tiger_woods 1. Six degrees of marital separation: No, don't worry. Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick are fine. But after participating in an ancestry tracing program, "The Closer" star found out she was linked a lot closer to her husband than she may have liked.

2. In memoriam of the day: Sky the kitty, whose 77-year-old owner Luciana Matalon took out a full-page ad in a national Italian paper after the death of her feline friend.

3. Rebound of the day: Tiger Woods' ex-wife Elin Nordegren is dating investor and son of a billionaire Jamie Dingman. You'd think she'd have learned that rich and powerful men don't always make the best husbands ...

4. Obligatory "Harry Potter" quote of the day: Matthew Lewis (who played Neville Longbottom in the films) thinks "girls in general are scarier than Voldemort."

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/07/15/pop_five_harry_potter_tiger_woods/feed/ 5 Midnight with Harry Potter http://www.salon.com/2011/07/15/midnight_with_harry_potter/ http://www.salon.com/2011/07/15/midnight_with_harry_potter/#comments Fri, 15 Jul 2011 21:16:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/technology/how_the_world_works//2011/07/15/midnight_with_harry_potter The lines started forming around Oakland's historic Grand Lake Theater around mid-day, visible from the 580 freeway that cuts through the city on its way to the San Francisco Bay Bridge. Built in 1926, the Grand Lake is one of the finest venues to watch a movie in all of Northern California. When my family and friends started making plans to pay our proper respects to the final installment in the Harry Potter saga, there was no question were we would end up. The Grand Lake is a majestic and awesome temple to celluloid delight even when empty seats far outweigh the filled ones; but when the theater is packed to the limit with adoring fans, the Grand Lake becomes as magical as Hogwart's.

My ears are still ringing from the ecstatic shrieking. While the average age of the audience seemed to skew around the early 20s, the sound that emanated from their collective throat at every conceivable opportunity was a closer match to the prepubescent ululations that greeted The Beatles in the early '60s than anything I have ever heard. And it was lovely.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/07/15/midnight_with_harry_potter/feed/ 40 Ranking the 8 Harry Potter films http://www.salon.com/2011/07/15/harry_potter_critics/ http://www.salon.com/2011/07/15/harry_potter_critics/#comments Fri, 15 Jul 2011 16:01:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/feature/2011/07/15/harry_potter_critics The Harry Potter film franchise's eight blockbuster installments have spanned an entire decade. As we are often reminded, that's a long time for any actor or actress -- particularly a young one -- to stick with a single series; it's also a lengthy stretch (albeit, of course, less gruelling) for a single movie reviewer.

Many critics have passed on one or more of the Potter films, but some have managed to be more steadfast. Here, we've ranked all eight movies based on the combined opinions of four reviewers who've seen the series through -- sometimes switching publications themselves in the process. We've also added Salon's take on each film, as delivered by either Andrew O'Hehir or Stephanie Zacharek. (We used MetaCritic to determine which reviewers had stayed with the series for all eight films, and for some of the quotes below. Rreviews that strayed significantly from the general consensus on a given film have been noted with an asterisk *).

1. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004)

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/07/15/harry_potter_critics/feed/ 15 Ralph Fiennes wasn’t in “Harry Potter” http://www.salon.com/2011/07/15/ralph_fiennes_harry_potter/ http://www.salon.com/2011/07/15/ralph_fiennes_harry_potter/#comments Fri, 15 Jul 2011 12:01:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/2011/07/15/ralph_fiennes_harry_potter Ralph Fiennes gave an interview to The Hollywood Reporter this week, explaining that his character in the "Harry Potter" movies, Lord Voldemort, was actually just a lonely guy. In the same interview, the Academy Award nominee admitted that he originally didn't want to take the role of the main bad guy in J.K. Rowling's teen wizard series.

You just know that there are days when the British thespian wished to God that he hadn't been working on these films since 2005. In fact, that's probably every day for Ralph Fiennes, now. Wondering what could have been...

Ralph Fiennes woke up with the sun streaming through his loft windows in New York. Even though he was British, Ralph loved to travel. He had just flown in from Barcelona the night before, where he had been hanging out with Geoffrey Rush, with whom he co-shared a private villa and a deep friendship. The two men had been drinking 'til dawn, swapping stories about their experiences on the set of "The King's Speech," which had brought Fiennes the third Best Actor Oscar of his career for his portrayal of the stuttering ruler.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/07/15/ralph_fiennes_harry_potter/feed/ 21 “Harry Potter’s” gifts to pop culture http://www.salon.com/2011/07/14/slide_show_what_harry_potter_gave_culture/ http://www.salon.com/2011/07/14/slide_show_what_harry_potter_gave_culture/#comments Thu, 14 Jul 2011 11:30:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/feature/2011/07/14/slide_show_what_harry_potter_gave_culture  Since the first release of "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" in June 1997, author J.K. Rowling and her young wizards have helped define more than a decade of pop culture. Where would we be without the homosexual-Dumbledore controversy, sorting-hat jokes, and the knowledge that these books and movies are secretly turning our children into godless heathens?

It's hard to imagine a world without "Harry Potter" and its various franchise tie-ins, and though I'm not the hugest H.P. fan out there, I'm eternally grateful to Ms. Rowling for making Quidditch a real sport played by college students, and for bringing "Doctor Who" scarves back in style.

Below, a guide to some of the best gifts "Harry Potter's" world has bestowed on our own.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/07/14/slide_show_what_harry_potter_gave_culture/feed/ 4 “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2″: An action-packed curtain call http://www.salon.com/2011/07/14/deathly_hallows_part_2/ http://www.salon.com/2011/07/14/deathly_hallows_part_2/#comments Thu, 14 Jul 2011 00:01:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/andrew_ohehir/2011/07/13/deathly_hallows_part_2 Conclusions to fantasy epics and quest narratives pose a diabolical problem for their creators, one that calls to mind a remark I once read in a journal by Edmund Wilson, one of the 20th century's greatest cultural critics. Late in his life Wilson had decided to give up reading history, he wrote, because "I know the kinds of things that happen." Epic fantasy is, if possible, even more familiar than history, in that we know exactly what will happen: Good will triumph over evil at great price, but only after the hero endures a crisis of self-doubt and agrees to sacrifice himself for the greater good. So the execution of such a conclusion becomes largely a technical matter, a matter of How more than What, and still less Why. In the case of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2," a movie with no beginning and no middle but two-plus hours of thundering, momentous ending, all of this is carried to a comical extreme.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/07/14/deathly_hallows_part_2/feed/ 50 Five pop culture items we missed http://www.salon.com/2011/07/12/pop_five_buscemi_dress/ http://www.salon.com/2011/07/12/pop_five_buscemi_dress/#comments Tue, 12 Jul 2011 21:13:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/tv/feature/2011/07/12/pop_five_buscemi_dress 1. Fixer-"Up"-er of the day: Yes, there's already been a home that floated away on balloons, but this house is an exact replica of the one from Pixar's "Up"! 

It's for sale in Utah for $400K, meaning that someone put that much time and energy into creating a life-size model of a cartoon home, only to put it right back on the market. And in this economy? Feh, forget about it.

2. Celebrity defense of the day: Kanye West, as explained by Justin Bieber:

"He’s not really an asshole like everyone makes him out to be. I mean, he can, he can do bad things, but he’s really generally a good guy."

"He can make bad decisions, you know, as well as everyone can," he added, "but generally I think he is a good guy."

Now you have Justin Bieber's word: Kanye is not an asshole; he just makes bad decisions. Like acting like an asshole.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/07/12/pop_five_buscemi_dress/feed/ 4 “The Dark Knight Rises” and the art of the teaser poster http://www.salon.com/2011/07/12/teaser_trailer_dark_knight_rises/ http://www.salon.com/2011/07/12/teaser_trailer_dark_knight_rises/#comments Tue, 12 Jul 2011 21:05:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/feature/2011/07/12/teaser_trailer_dark_knight_rises Today the Web is buzzing about just one image. It's a pretty cool picture -- looking up at a crumbing city skyline that is falling away into the shape of a bat -- but without knowing the context of the photo, most people would be left wondering why the Internet is in an uproar over the pic.

Of course, the teaser poster for Christopher Nolan's "The Dark Knight Rises" (the second of its kind, after the Bane photo) is obvious to anyone who hasn't been living under a rock for the last year. Teaser posters, which often come out way ahead of the film itself, can be self-explanatory, or totally baffling. They're like puzzle pieces leading up to the movie itself, and with the hyper-aware Web culture that grabs on to every leak and spoiler, they can be used to raise a film's buzz to a near-deafening screech.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/07/12/teaser_trailer_dark_knight_rises/feed/ 13 Draco Malfoy to become a rapper? http://www.salon.com/2011/07/11/tom_felton_rap/ http://www.salon.com/2011/07/11/tom_felton_rap/#comments Mon, 11 Jul 2011 19:12:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/music/2011/07/11/tom_felton_rap Many of the "Harry Potter" films' young actors and actresses have already branched out into non-Potter-related artistic territory; for example, Daniel Radcliffe has landed major stage roles on both sides of the Atlantic, and Emma Watson has found success as a model.

What of 23-year-old Tom Felton, who played Harry's on-screen arch-rival, Draco Malfoy? Now that the "Potter" films are finished, U.K. tabloid The Sun quotes Felton as saying he is "looking to get into the grime rap scene." ("I'm going to change my image -- backward caps, the lot," he reportedly adds.) According to the paper, Felton has even "clinched a recording deal with an independent label."

Felton has a YouTube channel with five music videos (none of them raps). Here's one from 2009: 

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