Tinseltown – Home for the Holidays

In the late ’90s, Peter Jackson was given an unenviable task. The director needed to recreate J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth as realistically and lovingly as possible to appease the fantasy author’s fervent fans while still delivering a blockbuster that would please studio heads more focused on profits as green as Hobbiton’s lush fields.

When news of Peter Jackson’s adaptation of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey — J.R.R. Tolkien’s child-friendly Middle-earthen odyssey — first reached my ears, the fantasy-loving reader inside of me cried out with joy.

Andy Serkis’ transformation from moppet-headed Londoner to feral Hobbit, thanks to the wonders of computer graphics technology, is one of the great marvels of 21st Century filming.

Last night at midnight and this weekend there will be plenty of people lining up to see The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and creating lots of memories about the first time they saw the movie.

Bilbo! Bilbo! Bilbo Baggins, only three feet tall. Bilbo! Bilbo! Bilbo Baggins, the bravest little hobbit of them all!

Traveling across the globe to promote a movie is an exhausting endeavor that can quickly suck the enthusiasm out of an actor.

Midnight premieres used to rival the best of Bilbo’s birthday parties. Devotees would stand in line, celebrating their mutual passion for a franchise.

We’ve delved passionately into many adventures over the course of these past few months. Political season spawned the frightful warfare between pack animals (Donkeys Vs. Elephants) and snack foods (Pizza Vs. Burritos).

Did you recently attend a midnight screening of Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey? Did you believe you had purchased a ticket to a magical fantasy world only to behold something that looked more like a made-for-TV affectation?

How do you know what you’re looking at is of the Fantasy genre? Is there magic of some kind? Yep. Robes and medieval-style garb?

Somewhere, out there, beneath the pale moonlight… someone’s thinking of us — that is, the Jewish population — and making a children’s movie to celebrate our often somber but wholly rich heritage and historical background.

Okay, so in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey there are 13 dwarves running about, all of whom have strange names, some of which rhyme.

Everywhere you look these days, you see a troll. Okay, that’s not really true. It’s not like trolls are Whitney Cummings or Joseph Gordon-Levitt movies.

Each year, the Screen Actor’s Guild, the biggest acting union in Hollywood, throws its two cents into the awards ring and bestows upon actors in both film and television with the coveted statues for excellence in performance.

Sure, everyone’s a critic, but not everybody gets to actually vote for which movies are nominated for the Critics Choice Awards.

Hugh Jackman is as tough as they come. Through his work as X-Men favorite Wolverine, he’s transformed himself time and time again into a ripped action machine.

On this week’s Naughty or Nice, we’re taking a more aggressive approach to the holidays. While the majority of Christmas movies tend to be comedies or dramas (or dramedies), one of the more delightful deviations is the Christmas action film.

You’re probably going to die. That’s what the powers that be would have us believe, anyhow.

You know what a “warg” is, right? It’s okay if you don’t. J.R.R. Tolkien’s works are full of words that require the ability to store an entire encyclopedia in one’s head.

As long as you didn’t grow up in a dry county, or someplace where everyone gets along with each other (like that dreadful Duluth, Minnesota), you’ve probably seen your share of bar fights.

When is an actor not an actor? For some critics, it’s when the actor is delivering a motion capture performance.

With 2012 winding to a close, only a few major releases remain, but that’s not to say there isn’t a healthy amount of anticipation brewing for these next few weeks.

You better watch out, you better not cry, you better not pout I’m telling you why…because otherwise creepy santa is going to haunt your nightmares.

Our excitement is brimming for the first of Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit movies, with a so-close-you-can-taste-it (and likely will, for second breakfast) release on December 14.

There was a time when buying a ticket was a thoughtless process: show up to the box office (or in the 21st century, head to the web page to buy in advance), hand over your cash, enjoy two hours of entertainment.

Holiday movies really are a genre unto themselves. The holiday season functions not merely as a setting for the various Christmas adventures, but instead it actually dominates the narrative and thematic structures of these movies.

Much to the chagrin of the adults who caught Star Wars in 1977, or even the ones who grew up with the film in years to come, George Lucas designed his follow-up prequel trilogy with a different audience in mind.

Do not go gentle into that good night — rage, rage against the dying of the light! Now, you probably recognize this rhyming couplet as one of the most prominent academic challenges facing Rodney Dangerfield at the end of Back to School, but it’s a little known fact that the lines actually originate from a poem by Dylan Thomas.

Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, Anne Hathaway, Amanda Seyfried. The upcoming Les Misérables movie has more stars than Lindsay Lohan has mugshots.

Everyone has their favorite holiday movie, and everyone’s favorite tells us exactly what sort of psychological problems they might have. It’s like a Rorschach test, but with multicolored lights!

Good tidings, good cheer, good will towards men… Christmas has a lot of positives attached to it. A lot of noble qualities, charitable endeavors, attitudes of self-betterment.

Whoa, there—Peter Jackson and Co. want you to get to those midnight showings, man. Or maybe they just want to reward you for not being a total grandpa and being able to stay up late on a work night to check out a film.

Taking our fierce anticipation for the first installment of Peter Jackson’s forthcoming The Hobbit trilogy were reports earlier this month that production on the film resulted in the injuries and deaths of many animals on set.

The big screen adaptation of the hit Broadway musical Les Misérables opens on Dec. 25, while Oscar-winning director Kathryn Bigelow’s chronicle of the assassination of Osama Bin Laden, Zero Dark Thirty, won’t open wide until Jan. 11, 2013.

With Thanksgiving safely behind us (except for the lingering calories) we can now set our sights on Christmas.

The holidays: a time to celebrate the joys of life, a time to give thanks for the things we have, a time to embrace the ones we love.

This Thanksgiving, people across America will devour meals of turkey, stuffing, various green veggies, and pie, slathering it all in gravy to ensure comatose will be reached by the time they hobble into the living room to take in football or the first of many holiday specials.

Every beloved holiday has its respective figure of staunch opposition. Christmas has the Grinch. Valentine’s Day has Liz Lemon.

Fans have long been anticipating the release of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey on Dec. 14, but before the release could happen, negative news about the film has spread around the internet like wildfire.

Looks like not everyone in charge of the J.R.R. Tolkien estate is happy with the way the man’s work has been utilized by film companies.

Peter Jackson’s upcoming The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey has excited many, promising the majesty that the director maintained through his The Lord of the Rings trilogy with the additional impish, fun-loving nature of the younger skewing tale.

Does anyone else hear the faint sounds of “Jingle Bells”? That’s right. Christmas has come early this year. And not just in department stores near you.

We’re in the final countdown: only a little over a month away from the theatrical release of Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey!

When news first broke that Tom Cruise would be playing the titular hero in the upcoming Jack Reacher film, fans were… displeased.

In an unprecedented event, Jason Segel has been cast in a Judd Apatow movie.

A sizable portion of the audience that flocks to theaters this December to see Les Misérables will be fans of the original Broadway show.

Welcome to Air New Zealand, the official carrier for all flights to Middle Earth.

When Quentin Tarantino released Inglourious Basterds in 2009, it was the first time that people really began to challenge the status of Pulp Fiction as his finest film.

For a second, let’s forget about Tom Cruise. Let’s forget that today is his fiftieth birthday, or that he’s currently undergoing a divorce from wife Katie Holmes.

Unlike most musicals, Les Misérables is told almost entirely through song.!

As we’re nearing the release date of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, Warner Brothers has begun the big marketing machine to get butts in the seats for the first part of Peter Jackson’s second epic J.R.R. Tolkien’s trilogy about Middle Earth.

“I spent my whole life surrounded by black faces. I only had one question: why don’t they just rise up and kill the whites?” – Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio) in Django Unchained.

In the quest to remind people that there are a lot of really, really, really good actors in Quentin Tarantino’s upcoming bloody western, Django Unchained, a slew of new posters have come out featuring just that.