Potter Spell Smashes Records in First-Day Sales

Yet Martin Scorsese's 'Hugo' gets acclaim, actor laments

(NEWSER) - Daniel Radcliffe is "slightly miffed" that none of the Harry Potter films have won an Academy Award, whereas children's movie Hugo was nominated for Best Picture and 10 other categories this year. "I don't think the Oscars like commercial films, or kids' films, unless they're directed by Martin Scorsese," Radcliffe tells the Radio Times . "I was watching Hugo the other day and going, 'Why is this nominated and we're not?' I was slightly miffed. There's a certain amount of snobbery." More»

More dope on boy wizard's battle with whiskey

(NEWSER) - Everyone's favorite boy wizard has made a startling confession: He sometimes acted in Harry Potter scenes drunk. "I went into work still drunk," Daniel Radcliffe tells Heat magazine. "I can point to many scenes where I'm just gone. Dead behind the eyes." He never drank at work, but was still reeling from earlier binges when he turned up on the set, says Radcliffe. "It was bad. I don't want to go into details, but I drank a lot and it was daily, I mean nightly," he adds. "I have a very addictive personality. It was a problem. People with problems like that are very adept at hiding it." More»

Daniel Radcliffe makes post-Hogwarts debut

(NEWSER) - The boy wizard is back—but this time, he's a 19th-century gentleman. Daniel Radcliffe is generally successful playing a spooked lawyer in The Woman in Black, a throwback haunted house thriller. What the critics are saying:

• The film "makes the most of its old-fashioned virtues," writes Manohla Dargis in the New York Times . It "isn’t especially scary, but it keeps you on edge, and without the usual vivisectionist imagery." For his part, Radcliffe "has the haunted eyes of the eternal mourner."

Middleton reportedly dating George Percy, heir to Alnwick Castle

(NEWSER) - Pippa could become the second Middleton with access to a castle. Her Royal Hotness is back together with a noble ex-fling, George Percy, a rich earl who is heir to the Duke of Northumberland. That dukedom just happens to include Alnwick Castle, otherwise known as Hogwarts in the Harry Potter movies, the Sun reports. Middleton, 27, had her first fling with Percy back in 2008 while they were both at Edinburgh University. More»

Questions fly over lengthy investigation

(NEWSER) - A simple Google search on Jerry Sandusky could have saved police a lot of time. Instead, it wasn't until a year into the investigation of Sandusky's alleged child abuse that authorities learned about his autobiography, Touched—which helped them track down four more victims. In late 2009, police found the second alleged victim through a campus police report; the victim's mother told them about Touched, available in the campus bookstore. More»