I’ve been working to a deadline on the revision of David’s and my textbook, Film Art: An Introduction. That has gone to the press now, though, so I can catch up on blogging. One item that has been sitting on my desk is Ted Turner’s 2008 autobiography, Call Me Ted.

To refresh your memory concerning Turner’s involvement with The Lord of the Rings, it arose from the fact that in 1994 his company, Turner Broadcasting System, bought New Line Cinema. In turn Turner Broadcasting System was bought by Time Warner in 1996. At that point, Miramax was negotiating with Saul Zaentz to acquire production rights to LOTR for Peter Jackson to direct. New Line eventually bought those rights from Miramax in the summer of 1998. more »

There is a long article on Guillermo del Toro in the March/April 2009 issue of The Believer. That’s an upscale arts and culture magazine published by McSweeney’s. Charles Burns did the cover, so you know it’s a cool magazine. The article, “Cathedral Head,” is by Victoria Nelson. The title refers to a painting of a monster in one of GdT’s notebooks, which is reproduced here, albeit quite small. more »

Yesterday The Wall Street Journal posted an interesting story about recent breakthroughs in the computer generation of convincing human characters. The occasion is rather belated coverage of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which pioneered virtual makeup to age and de-age Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett. (Well, so did the third X-Men, but not nearly as impressively.)

There’s a brief interactive time-line from Young Sherlock Holmes to the present, displaying still images from some key movies. Oddly enough, neither Jar Jar Binks nor Gollum is mentioned. Odd, because those two characters provided what is widely considered the breakthrough in digitally depicting the distinctive translucent look of human skin. Maybe it’s because neither is actually “human,” though they are “human-like”–plus Dr. Manhattan, from The Watchmen, gets discussed.

If you want to check out the story, do so soon, since I’m told that the WSJ only leaves stories online for a week.

Thanks yet again to TheOneRing.net for its link to Empire Online, which describes an important interview with PJ and GDT coming up in the 20th Anniversary issue, due out next week.

The sensational news is that The Hobbit will be made in two parts rather than as a self-contained film with a bridging sequel to follow:

“We’ve decided to have The Hobbit span the two movies, including the White Council and the comings and goings of Gandalf to Dol Guldur,” says Del Toro.

“We decided it would be a mistake to try to cram everything into one movie,” adds Jackson. “The essential brief was to do The Hobbit, and it allows us to make The Hobbit in a little more style, if you like, of the [LOTR] trilogy.”

I suspect there won’t be a LOTR fan out there who would disagree with that. In fact, I stated my own preference for a two-part Hobbit here back on December 27, 2007 and suggested that the structure of the novel itself makes breaking it in two quite feasible:

MGM’s original idea seems to have been to make The Hobbit in two parts. That would make sense. Of course, Tolkien’s first novel is shorter than Rings, but a lot had to be left out of the trilogy in the adaptation. The Hobbit breaks into two almost equal halves, with the break coming where Gandalf leaves Bilbo and the Dwarves at the edge of Mirkwood. Making two three-hour parts would allow the filmmakers to adapt the book without eliminating much of anything. Despite its quest/journey structure, The Hobbit is actually quite carefully structured, and there are no incidents that can simply be eliminated as easily as, say, the Tom Bombadil portion of Rings.

All this sounds very promising, and I’m keen to see the full piece on The Hobbit when the full issue of Empire appears!

Thanks to TheOneRing.net for alerting us to the fact that Amazon is now taking preorders for the Blu-ray set of LOTR.

A couple of things to note. First, there’s no release date given. It could be many months before the discs actually get delivered. “The Digital Bits,” which seems to have inside information, estimates that it might be the end of the year.

Second, these are the theatrical versions. There’s no indication of any extras, which makes sense. Again, “The Digital Bits” says that Peter Jackson is saving the Blu-ray box of the extended editions for later, timed to the release of The Hobbit. That will apparently be the “ultimate box set.” Maybe it’ll have all those fabled extras that we’ve all been hoping for. I would love to see the Cannes preview included, as well as the 37-minute pitch video that Peter concocted and and used to sell the project to New Line. Peter has also spoken of including deleted scenes-not edited into the films-in a possible future set.

Not a few people will recognize the release date, presumably late 2011, as the tenth anniversary of FOTR, so there’s another reason to make an “ultimate” set then.

So, as I never tire of pointing out, the franchise lives on, and will continue to do so.

Recently a gimmick has been popping up in the film blogosphere. You take three frames from a film, determined randomly by timing, and write something about each. A professor of English at the University of Detroit Mercy, Nicholas Rombes, came up with the idea on his blog back in February. He chose 10, 40, and 70 minutes as the moments when he would grab a frame from Oceans Twelve and “analyze” it.

Now Dan North, who teaches film in the Department of English at the University of Exeter, has taken this notion and applied it to The Lord of the Rings film. Given the length of the trilogy’s parts, he writes about four for each.

You can find the discussion of Fellowship here, Towers here, and Return here.

North admits to not being a big fan of the trilogy, and he didn’t rewatch the films for this little exercise. Not surprisingly, there are errors, as when the Council of Elrond is said to be taking place at Lothlórien. One of his research areas is digital performers, so in shots of Gollum or armies of orcs, he tends to talk about the effectiveness of the computer graphics rather than the importance of the shot in the context of the entire film.

Through sheer luck, for Return his random frames included two drinking scenes: Aragorn’s toast to the dead soldiers from the Helm’s Deep battle and the hobbits drinking in the pub late in the film. North makes some cogent remarks and comparisons. Overall, it’s not my idea of real film analysis, which is the opposite of random in its choices of significant relationships within artworks. Still, some of what North says is interesting and worth checking out.

TheOneRing.net has alerted us to a story in the New Zealand Herald online: “Jackson’s jet set upgrade.” The story starts out being about the rumor that PJ is buying a new private jet to upgrade from his old one. I was more interested in the rest of the story, however, since it sums up Peter’s ownings–houses and production firms–and his estimated net worth. It gives figures on things I didn’t know about, including a claim that his income from the trilogy was in the region of “at least $220 million.” more »

Film historian Stephen Prince has reviewed The Frodo Franchise for the Winter issue of Film Quarterly. My apologies to anyone who tried to follow the link I posted last night. Following it would just take you to our university library site, through which I was able to access the review. So I have removed the link and scanned the print-out of my pdf file of the review. more »

I’m slowly making my way through the stack of magazines that accumulated during the three weeks I was gone on my trip to Egypt. One surprising item that I discovered is an article in The Economist about the use of the Massive software developed for LOTR being used for practical, important real-world purposes. more »

I’m sure many of you had a good laugh from TheOneRing.net’s annual April Fools post. I have to admit I was ready to believe it was a real news story for the first two paragraphs–but the business about Gandalf and Saruman and other “young wizards” being educated at an “academy” began to sound a bit too much like a different franchise.

Now it turns out that the Moviefone website wasn’t so skeptical. They’ve posted it as a real news item in their round-up of the ten top movie-related items of the week. Congratulations to TORN on their successful jape!