By Tim Cuprisin Media Columnist Published Jul 12, 2011 at 11:00 AM

Marcus Theatres is offering moviegoers a chance to catch up on all seven "Harry Potter" flicks in advance of the Friday opening of the series finale, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2."

The marathon culminates in the midnight showing of the latest film.

The eighth film is certain to be one of the biggest movies of the summer the kids we were introduced to in the first film, "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" end a decade ago are now young adults facing unearthly dangers in the special-effects driven tale.

The marathon is running at Menomonee Falls Cinema  and New Berlin's Ridge Cinema and a ticket for all eight films is $45. Tickets are available at the theater box office or at the Marcus website.

If you've already bought a ticket for the midnight showing, an upgrade to see the rest is $30, with tickets only available at the box office.

Here's the schedule:

Wednesday
3 p.m.: "Sorcerer’s Stone"
6 p.m.: "Chamber of Secrets"
9 p.m.: "Prisoner of Azkaban"

Thursday
Noon: "Goblet of Fire"
2:55 p.m.: "Order of the Phoenix"
5:30 p.m.: "Half-Blood Prince"
8:20 p.m.: "Deathly Hallows – Part 1"

Thursday night/Friday morning
Midnight: "Deathly Hallows – Part 2"

Here's the trailer for "Deathly Hallows – Part 2:"

On TV:  Time Warner Cable, the area's biggest program provider, has added six channels to its high-definition lineup: DIY (Channel 1157), Cooking Channel (Channel 1158), Lifetime (Channel 1211), truTV HD (Channel 1220), Crime & Investigation (Channel 1222), HBO on Demand (Channel 1601.)

  • Turner Classic Movies reports that long-time host Robert Osborne is taking a three-month break for "minor surgery" and a vacation. Among the fill-ins: Robert Wagner, Jane Powell and Tippi Hedren.
  • The audience for Diane Sawyer's ABC interview with kidnap victim Jaycee Dugard on Sunday night averaged nearly 15 million viewers. It repeats at 8 p.m. Saturday on Channel 12.
  • By all accounts, Jennifer Lopez is announcing her return for another season as a judge on Fox's "American Idol."
  • ESPN has picked up the reruns of NBC's "Friday Night Lights," which wraps up its network run with Friday's series finale.

An appetite for Ron Swanson: NBC has kindly compiled the best food moments of Ron Swanson on "Parks and Recreation." Here's the video:

Tim Cuprisin Media Columnist

Tim Cuprisin is the media columnist for OnMilwaukee.com. He's been a journalist for 30 years, starting in 1979 as a police reporter at the old City News Bureau of Chicago, a legendary wire service that's the reputed source of the journalistic maxim "if your mother says she loves you, check it out." He spent a couple years in the mean streets of his native Chicago, and then moved on to the Green Bay Press-Gazette and USA Today, before coming to the Milwaukee Journal in 1986.

A general assignment reporter, Cuprisin traveled Eastern Europe on several projects, starting with a look at Poland after five years of martial law, and a tour of six countries in the region after the Berlin Wall opened and Communism fell. He spent six weeks traversing the lands of the former Yugoslavia in 1994, linking Milwaukee Serbs, Croats and Bosnians with their war-torn homeland.

In the fall of 1994, a lifetime of serious television viewing earned him a daily column in the Milwaukee Journal (and, later the Journal Sentinel) focusing on TV and radio. For 15 years, he has chronicled the changes rocking broadcasting, both nationally and in Milwaukee, an effort he continues at OnMilwaukee.com.

When he's not watching TV, Cuprisin enjoys tending to his vegetable garden in the backyard of his home in Whitefish Bay, cooking and traveling.