The new Gollum in The Hobbit is technologically updated from the LOTR trilogy.Our own staffer Justin brought this excellent chat between Stuff magazine and Weta Digital’s Joe Letteri to light. Letteri discusses some of “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” and the challenges of shooting in 3D at 48 fps, but he also has some interesting things to say about Smaug.
Letteri on Smaug: “Really, we could’ve done Smaug in the traditional way – just ask Benedict Cumberbatch to come into a voice booth and record his dialogue, and do everything entirely with keyframe animation. But when we record what Benedict’s body is doing, it frees him up to give us some idea of the physicality and intimate the poses, so that what he’s got on his mind can come through in how he’s performing it – and we’ll take that and extend it into what we do with the dragon.”
Letteri on revisiting Gollum: “I don’t think so – it’s not something that Peter’s ever indicated that he was interested in doing, and for my mind I’m happy to just have the film be finished as a film. We were lucky to be able to come back and do Gollum now with what we know ten years later – we have the best of both worlds, we can do that in new scenes. But even if that hadn’t been the case, I’m inclined to say a film exists in and of its time – and if you want to see something new, go and make a new film.”
You can read the rest of the excellent article right here!
The MTV Movie Awards just announced that Bilbo beat out all the other contenders, including Iron Man, The Hulk, Catwoman, Batman, and Snow White, for the coveted “Best Hero” award. A massive fan effort that spanned continents lead to Bilbo’s victory by a margin of more than 100,000 votes. Using the hashtag #votebilbo, fans cast their votes on Twitter and Instagram and forged a dedicated fellowship committed to showing the world that even the smallest person can change the course of the future.
With more than 1.63 million votes, Bilbo was the clear winner, much to the chagrin of legions of Kristen Stewart and Twilight fans who gave our little hobbit a run for the money. In addition to tweeting, fans created thousands of images that they uploaded to Instagram to share their love for our favorite hero. We’ll have a gallery of some of our favorites online soon.
It’s been a true adventure riding the wild voting rollercoaster, and it’s brought many Ringers together and strengthened our community. From #votebilbo, we’re now united under #BilboTheHero. Click to read about how TORn’s MrCere went from thinking this campaign was “harmless but pretty useless,” to wholeheartedly jumping on board the #votebilbo train as, “A funny thing happened during the process: It became really fun on Twitter to #VoteBilbo!”
Readers will already know about the hashtag war going on out there, from Rasputin the Evil Balrog’s post here and MrCere’s post here. The MTV Movie Awards are this weekend, so we have about twenty-four hours to go, to get as many #votebilbo counts out there as possible. Ringers cannot be beaten! – and here’s proof that, for amazing creativity, that’s certainly true. This brilliant video, created by Speigel Ei, shows that even Bella Swan would be won over by the genius that is Lord of the Rings. #votebilbo today!
TORn staffer Saystine found us another great interview video from Yahoo! Movies UK in which Hobbit cast members Richard Armitage, James Nesbitt, and Andy Serkis discuss how the second film in the trilogy, The Desolation of Smaug, will differ from An Unexpected Journey.
“It will get more dangerous and dark as Bilbo gets further away from home and in more jeopardy,” says Andy Serkis, who, in addition to playing Gollum in the films, is Second Unit Director on the trilogy.
Will we enjoy the departure from the more lighthearted nature of Unexpected Journey? Well Richard Armitage will, at least. He says, “Obviously I favor the dark.”
Our TORn community all know he’s the bravest little hobbit of them all, but the world needs to know, too! A few days ago, TORn staffer MrCere posted a call to arms. The MTV Movie Awards are asking the public to choose the Best Hero of 2012 using Twitter or Instagram. Our favorite Hobbit, Bilbo, is running neck and neck with (can you believe this?) Snow White. This cannot stand! We need to mobilize our community to show our support for the Master of Bag End.
Use the link above or choose from one of the #votebilbo messages below and tweet your support now! We’ve provided 20 more automatic tweets below. Just click on the vote link and you will be automatically setting up your next tweet. Tweet early, and tweet often. You can also use #votebilbo to share your vote through your Instagram account. MTV says, “Get creative on Instagram—dress up as your favorite hero, tag a selfie, etc. Any photo with the hashtag is a vote, but only the best will be displayed… during the Movie Awards!”
Louisville may have won the NCAA men’s college basketball tournament last night, but the only match-up that Middle-earth fans were watching was that between Thorin Oakenshield and Gandalf the Grey. After an initial significant lead, Thorin’s army of fans brought him back from the depths. These two popular Hobbit characters scraped and scrounged for every single vote resulting in an amazingly close final.
As promised, we carefully reviewed the voting process and as it turns out, we are pleased to report there was not a lot of significant over-voting. Any small adjustments made did not affect the final result. So without further delay, we are pleased to announce that the 2013 Middle-earth March Madness Champion is….
See the UPDATE below for final tallies and some additional notes on voting.
