Rowling, who is all set to unveil her first adult fiction, The Casual Vacany, has now revealed that she has simultaneously been working on an adaptation and new stories for an interactive Book of Spells for Sony’s wildly popular Playstation 3.

In what could be another trend-setting move, Sony has created a new book-shaped device, the Wonderbook, “the closest a Muggle can come to a real spell book”. Players can be transported to Rowling’s world at Hogwarts where they can discover practice spells such as incendio, expelliarmus and wingardium leviosa , using the device’s move controller as their wand. For added adventure, they can use notes and facts scribbled into the margins of the book by previous Hogwarts students, as their clue.

The author, who has millions of fans around the world, thanks to the spell cast by Potter and his friends, has penned original content for the project with Sony including back stories for the spells and also put her imagination to use , creating a variety of new creatures for the Potter world. The entire new plot has been described as the advanced textbook written by Miranda Goshawk over 200 years ago and kept in the restricted section of the Hogwarts library, the Book of Spells, said Sony, “will assist students on their journey to becoming an accomplished witch or wizard”.

Now all that remains to be done is to wait and watch to see if the Playstation version of Pottermania will grip the world….In the meantime, we guess the author has gone back to putting the finishing touches on her fiction work in progress.

The good-looking prankster

HOLLYWOOD actor George Clooney is in as  enviable position as it can get for any man. First, he gets to remain single at over 50 years of age, with a nubile nymphet on his arm and then, he gets the admiration of a lot of important men, including former President Bill Clinton who said recently that he would anytime have Clooney playing him in a biopic as opposed to “too good-looking” Brad Pitt.

“He’s good looking, but, you know, you could put bulbous things on his nose and you could do makeup with him,” Clinton joked on the Piers Morgan Tonight show. Wonder what Clooney’s good friend Pitt thought about Clinton’s choice.

Meanwhile, the Brangelina couple are reportedly sweating about the prospect of having Clooney over at their upcoming wedding because of his reputation of being an incorrigible pranskster. Control freak Angelina Jolie is so fearful of what her spouse’s best friend will be up to at their nuptials that she recently called him and expressly told him to behave himself. And, to drive home her point, she had Pitt call him up to caution him against anything that will spoil their big day for them.

We wonder what Clooney thought about that…..

A breaking dawn for Pattinson

ANOTHER hollywood sweetheart, Twilight’s Robert Pattinson who plays reluctant vampire Edward Cullen, said recently he is through with playing his character in the franchise that made him a millionaire celebrity. He would not do it for even a billion dollars, he said recently saying he was tired of playing to a teenage audience and of having his eyes constantly smarting with the contact lenses he had to wear for the role.

Pattinson, who is currently romancing his co-star from the movie, Kirsten Stewart, said he had the happiest moments of his life shooting for his latest movie, Cosmopolis, where he plays billionaire Eric Packer.

The movie was showcased at the recently concluded Cannes Film Festival and to the good looking man’s utter delight, it was even competing for the Palme d’Or, the festival’s top prize. It did not win that prize but Pattinson said that doing that movie was meaningful and fulfilled him in a way the later editions of the Twilight series did not.

Whatever makes a man happy, is what we say….

—sudhamenon2006@gmail.com