If you’re an adult that lists the Harry Potter series of books as one of your favourites then you likely need to be shot. In the face.

If you’re an adult that lists the Harry Potter series of films as one of your favourites then you need to be fired. From a cannon. Into the sun. Twice.

Needless to say, the idiots that do like this garbage – that’s ‘kids’ and the aforementioned persons that need to be killed in excessive fashions – will be upset to learn that the newest film, Harry Potter and the Simple Premise Drawn Out For Far Too Long, Thus Making Billions of Dollars, has been pushed back by eight months.

Why? Technical problems? Realising it’s crap? No – to make sure it comes out in the summer when Warner Bros don’t have much else to bring out. In other words: to make more money.

What a lovely, cynical, money-grabbing world we do live in. It makes us feel all gooey inside.

The film, actually titled The Half-Blood Prince, should have opened in November of this year, but evidently studio execs felt it was more prudent to make more money than it was to give their loyal fans what they’ve been promised for so long.

JK Rowling would probably care, but her mansion (built out of other mansions) is effectively soundproofed by all the piles of cash she probably keeps stored in the wall cavities. So instead she’s most likely sat around eating a money sandwich (made from money) with light money mayo. Or something.

Not only has the decision left the fans of the series in the lurch, it’s screwed over dozens of tie-in book deals, which were set to be released on or around the time of the movie. But hey – so long as the WB are happy who cares?

Warner Bros president Alan Horn used these words to form sentences, thusly:

“We know the summer season is an ideal window for a family… release, as proven by the success of our last Harry Potter film, which is the second-highest grossing film in the franchise, behind only the first instalment.”

So at least we know it’s a decision made for the fans. But maybe we’re being harsh – maybe there’s something actually wrong and the film hasn’t been completed or something… what’s that Alan?

“The picture is completely, absolutely, 100 per cent on schedule, on time. There were no delays. “I’ve seen the movie. It is fabulous. We would have been perfectly able to have it out in November.”

Ah. Hmm.

Well, one good thing that comes from this: we can see that movie executives are still oblivious plums who will happily put profit before the enjoyment of their loyal, paying audience. While an eight month wait isn’t the end of the world, it is a slap in the face of anyone who was looking forward to the film. We kind of hope that the movie goes on to fail as a result of alienating its audience, actually.

Take that, movie industry!

Madonna’s a busy lady, what with her old lady crotch about to go on a world tour and all.

And that means that nobody’s allowed to mess Madonna around. Nobody, that is, except the Malawi High Courts. Today was the day when Madonna was supposed to discover whether or not she’d gained permanent custody of David Banda, her adopted Malawian son.

But it didn’t happen – the court has delayed its final ruling until next week. That’s not ideal for Madonna, but it’s even worse for David Banda, who outgrew his tiny soiled lightless holding pen that Madonna keeps him in about 15 months ago and just wants to eat something other than hay.

Since Madonna has a new album out and a world tour about to commence, you’d expect to see Professional Madonna out and about – you know, the age-defying pop icon with the bulging arms and the escapologist vagina.

But because the final ruling over her adoption of David Banda is due now, Professional Madonna has to keep transforming into Caring Mother Earth Madonna now and again – you know, the middle-aged woman with the veiny arms and the vagina that’s kept tucked neatly under her bed for special occasions.

And it’s the latter who’s on the loose at the moment, because we’re getting to the time when we’ll discover if David Banda – the little semi-orphan that Madonna adopted from Malawi in 2006 to great controversy – gets to stay with Madonna forever or if he’ll have to fly back to Malawi again and live the rest of his short life as a kind of social pariah because he once lived in the house of the woman who’s come to be known locally as Claw-Faced Vagina Lady.

In fact, we were supposed to know the outcome of Madonna’s adoption process today, but thanks to the Malawi High Court’s decision to postpone its decision, we’ll have to wait until next week. BBC News reports:

A court in Malawi has delayed its final decision on whether Madonna can have permanent custody of a three-year-old boy until next week. The pop star began adoption proceedings for David Banda in October 2006. A social worker from Malawi has already recommended that the pop star be able to keep the child in London. Simon Chisale said the singer and husband Guy Ritchie had “shown a strong commitment in providing the infant with all essential needs”.

Simon Chisale does have a point there – David Banda hasn’t gone wanting for anything since he’s been under Madonna’s care. Kabbalah bracelets, macrobiotic grains, secondhand obscene leotards, crates of unsold Swept Away DVDs – whatever David Banda wants he gets, so long as it’s in that list of stuff we just gave you.

The social worker’s endorsement of Madonna will go a long way to making sure that she’s allowed to look after David Banda forever, but the questions about whether or not international adoption laws were bent while acquiring him will remain.

Let’s just hope that the Malawi court makes its decision quickly, because then Madonna can continue with her plan to divorce Guy Ritchie as soon as possible. We don’t know if that is her plan, by the way, but we assume it is. He is Guy Ritchie, after all.

Read more:

Madonna custody hearing postponed – BBC

Although the ongoing writers' strike means that you'll probably have to wait another year to see how crappy the new season of 24 is, it's not all bad – the strike has meant that the sequel to The Da Vinci Code has been delayed.

Apparently Angels & Demons, the chronological prequel to last year's clergy-enraging The Da Vinci Code, is the first big-name movie to be hit by the writers' strike, and its release date of Christmas 2008 has now been pushed back to May 2009 at the earliest because the script isn't good enough. But, hey, let's not get glum because we have to wait to see Ron Howard grind out another tedious, tourist-baiting film about how rubbish it is to be a Catholic – in the intervening time, not only can Ron Howard try to make Angels & Demons look vaguely interesting, but Tom Hanks has gained an extra half-year to style his hair into a mullet that's even more preposterous than the one from The Da Vinci Code.

The Da Vinci Code was one of those universally-popular books that everyone seemed to enjoy, mainly because it meant that they could go on holiday to Paris and talk loudly about all the kids that Jesus had like some sort of titting theology professor even though all they'd done was read a vaguely trashy book about it once.

But when The Da Vinci Code was made into a movie it hit a wall of protests – Catholics and the Chinese and all of Pakistan hated it, as did most movie critics and all people with a properly functioning connection between their eyes and brain. But people still went to see The Da Vinci Code, so a sequel based on Angels & Demons – Dan Brown's prequel to The Da Vinci Code – was always an inevitability. That was until the writers' strike got underway.

Thanks to the striking TV and film writers, several TV shows are already up against the wall – with late-night talkshows so far being the worst hit – but as the strike wears on, the movie industry is started to get nudged to the brink as well. And the first casualty is Angels & Demons, because screenwriter Akiva Goldman went on strike before he could make the Angels & Demons script any good. Not that it stopped him from making The Da Vinci Code very good, of course. Or Batman & Robin. Or Practical Magic. Or Lost In Space. Or I, Robot.

Anyway, all that matters is that the striking means that Angels & Demons will come out in the summer of 2009 instead of Christmas 2008, with Angels & Demons studio Columbia putting out this statement:

"With the strike nearing its third week, Columbia Pictures has postponed production of Angels & Demons. While the film-makers and the studio feel the screenplay is very strong, we do not believe it is the fully realised production draft required of this ambitious project. At this time, there is no new start date, but we are setting a release date of 15 May 2009."

We understand that you're all probably devastated that you won't get to see Angels & Demons for six months longer than you expected, so in the name of good decency, we've decided to fill you in on the plot to tide you over:

When a man is murdered (just like in The Da Vinci Code), some bloke calls upon the help of Tom Hanks. Tom Hanks is busy trying to make his hair look as much like a pelican that's been caught in an oil slick as possible, but eventually agrees to assist. Turns out it was all the work of a secret society (just like in The Da Vinci Code) that has put a bomb in the Vatican. A bunch of dark secrets about the Catholic church are uncovered (just like in The Da Vinci Code) and in the end one of the main characters turns out to be a descendant of someone you didn't expect (just like in The Da Vinci Code). To celebrate solving the mystery, Tom Hanks goes home and varnishes his hair.

That's it. Strictly speaking you should all immediately send us the £7.50 that you would have spent buying a cinema ticket to see Angels & Demons, but we'll let it slide just this once.

Aside from the drugs, the self-harm, the wayward onstage performances and the erratic offstage behaviour, Amy Winehouse would be a model citizen if only her husband wasn't in jail for smashing some bloke's face up.

But he is, and he won't be getting out any time soon. Amy Winehouse's husband Blake Fielder-Civil was supposed to be in court this week over claims that he beat a man up so violently that the injuries left him needing metal plates in his face, but thanks to Blake Fielder-Civil getting arrested again last week for perverting the course of justice, the case has been pushed back. That means that a) Blake's going to be held in custody for a lot longer than he thought and b) it's looking more and more likely that the next Amy Winehouse album will just consist of 12 increasingly morose renditions of the Birds Of A Feather theme-tune.

It's often said that the greatest love between a man and a woman comes when the woman is publicly disintegrating due to an addiction to hard drugs and the man beats up barmen a lot and then tries to buy their silence. That's the reason why Amy Winehouse and Blake Fielder-Civil are the Romeo and Juliet of our times. Not Romeo and Juliet the fictional Shakespeare couple, you understand – we mean Romeo the Birmingham takeaway pizza outlet and Juliet Finch, the girl from our school who wet herself a lot.

That's not a title we bestow easily either – Blake Fielder-Civil and Amy Winehouse are always there for each other, whether Blake is helping Amy to freak out and run away from rehab or saving her life by initiating a bloody razorblade fight every time he catches her doing drugs with a prostitute in a hotel room.

But Amy Winehouse and Blake Fielder-Civil are going to have to get used to coping without each other's company for the next few weeks because it doesn't look like Blake will be released from custody any time soon. Although he was due to go to court this week over his role in the beating of barman James King with friend Michael Brown back in June, his recent arrest for perverting the course of justice following last week's police raid on Amy Winehouse's home means that the whole thing's been postponed.

It's thought that Blake Fielder-Civil had offered James King £200,000 to change his story to the police and leave the country – something that the law apparently frowns upon slightly. So while the judge has decided to delay the court case until November 23 so that the perverting the course of justice charge can be examined, poor old Blake has to stay banged up in Pentonville. Mark Williams, the prosecution lawyer, has said of the new charges that:

"Things developed last week amid allegations that Mr Brown and Mr Fielder-Civil have conspired to pervert the course of justice to offer Mr King a significant sum of money to tell him to withdraw the allegations and to leave the country. Some of that has video footage."

So now the only times that Blake Fielder-Civil will get to see Amy Winehouse is when she visits him in jail, as she has been today. But it's not all bad news – we hear that hardened convicts like to treat skinny pointless gold-digging trilby-wearing tossmunches like royalty in jail.