From Joe Utichi at rottentomatoes.com: Sir Ian McKellen is spending the week at the San Sebastian Film Festival in Spain, where he was last night presented with a special Donostia Award in recognition of his career as an actor. RT was in town to catch the presentation, and earlier in the day we sat down with McKellen to discuss the award and his work. Of course, as Guillermo del Toro readies to direct The Hobbit, which will see McKellen pull on the cloak and hat of Gandalf the wizard for the first time in seven years, we couldn’t help but look to the future and find out how things were going with the project. In fact it was McKellen who raised the wizard’s name before we asked, rather controversially declaring to RT, “I don’t want to play Gandalf again.” But before a million Rings fans cry out in terror at the thought of another thesp stepping into the role, McKellen was actually discussing the risk of typecasting the wake of a big success. “If you play a part that gets an awful lot of attention,” he explained, “forever after you’re being asked by directors to play the same part in their movie. But I played the best wizard, and I’m happy to revisit him, which I shall do in The Hobbit with Guillermo del Toro.” More..
Category: Hobbit Movie
Cynthia sends this in: Film.com has posted the next stage in their “The Best Male Performance of the 00’s” poll: The Final Four. Elijah Wood’s Frodo is pitted against Heath Ledger’s Joker. Voting ends Wednesday, September 30. Go here to vote, and vote often!
For the record, there’s nothing wrong with “The Road” star Viggo Mortensen not knowing much about the plans that Peter Jackson and Guillermo del Toro have in place for their two-part big screen telling of J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Hobbit.” Aragorn, his “Lord of the Rings” character, doesn’t actually factor into that story. That doesn’t mean he can’t be written in, but clearly no one’s mentioned anything to Mortensen. More..
SAN SEBASTIAN, Spain (AFP) – British actor Ian McKellen was Wednesday honoured with a lifetime achievement award at the San Sebastian film festival in Spain. The 70-year-old “Lord of the Rings” star received the festival’s Donostia Award, which goes to “a great film personality in recognition for their work and career.” “I’m very gratified for this Donostia Prize because it’s not just for a character, but for a career,” he told a news conference. More..
Mormegil: Clip from Australian travel show Getaway showing some of the work currently going on at the Hobbiton set. From the site: Back in 1998, sheep farmer Dean Alexander was enjoying a quiet day on his farm on New Zealand’s North Island when a visitor changed his and his family’s lives forever. Jules Lund travelled across the Tasman to see just why. It seems the makers of the film trilogy Lord of the Rings needed the perfect place to build the Hobbiton village. Peter Jackson, the award-winning New Zealand filmmaker, spotted Alexander Farm during an aerial location search. The Alexander family knew nothing about Lord of the Rings but they soon learnt. Their property has the three main elements the makers were searching for: a lake, a big tree and a field. More..
It’s great news that New Line and the Tolkien Estate have settled their lawsuit, but looking at the amount of work going on at the Hobbiton set in the past month, it seems as though the outcome was never in doubt. Here’s images from Holly, who saw this during her Red Carpet Tour through Hobbiton in August.
