An interview with Christopher Lee was posted on YouTube several days ago. He mentions having recently completed four days of filming on The Hobbit. That’s near the beginning of the interview. Later he refers to having had to shaved his beard in order to have Saruman’s long beard attached. He says he’s now growing his own beard back, which suggests that he doesn’t anticipate doing any further filming on The Hobbit, though one would think possibly next year there would be some pickups shot.

Thanks to davidlean for noticing this video and starting a thread about it on TheOneRing.net‘s message boards; there’s a discussion of it going on there.

Peter Jackson’s Facebook page now contains the third of the Hobbit Production Diaries, looking good in HD. It’s 13:26 minutes long.

This morning I posted a brief entry on the fact that Peter was now apparently in London. The jokey opening of the diary entry features a transition where he starts in Wellington and ends up on Pinewood Studios, London (where, as he points out, the early James Bond films were shot). This leads into a series of clips with cast and crew members talking about the first three months of shooting.

Day 3 featured Gollum’s Cave, and we get a generous look at the filming of the riddle scene. There are some jokes about an issue I’ve commented on: the difficulty of getting people to be able to recognize the dwarves. Peter says: “Thirteen dwarves is one of the reasons why I dreaded The Hobbit and why I really didn’t think I was going to make it for such a long time. But the irony is that it’s turned out to be one of the joys of the film.”

Indeed, there’s a lot of humor, both in and out of costume, from the actors playing the dwarves. One scene of them standing for a group portrait shows their scale doubles in costume as well. There are glimpses of Day 35, filming in the Trollshaw (being shot by second-unit director Andy Serkis in the big new sound stage at the Stone Street Studios–though I guess it’s not really that new anymore). Apparently the actors are being taught a bit of the dwarvish language, heard only briefly in LOTR.

A real treat comes about 8 minutes in, with Day 38 involving a scene at Rivendell between Elrond and the dwarves. Cate Blanchett shows up at Rivendell, leading me to wonder if that’s where the White Council meeting is going to take place. (I’ve always assumed it took place in Lothlórien, across the river from Dol Guldur.) Possibly it’s a flashback to an earlier meeting, though. Costume designer Ann Maskrey shows off a new Galadriel costume with a spectacularly long train.

At about 8:30 minutes in, we learn that the dwarves will play their instruments and sing, as in the book. Then, on Day 18, John Rhys-Davies shows up to visit the dwarves, including his “father,” Glóin.

The diary entry ends back in London, where shooting is going in what looks like the Rivendell set or some other similar set done in silhouette in green-screen. Then, in the last few seconds we get the confirmation of all the rumors about a certain treacherous White Wizard being played by a certain respected English actor. Well, I’ve pretty much given it away, so–Christopher Lee is back!

New Line saved the dwarf leader for last and gave the character’s image to TheOneRing.net to reveal. Not surprising, considering the long and close relationship between TORN, the filmmakers, and the production company. Congratulations to TORN!

Time has the latest exclusive dwarf photo, showing Ken Stott as Balin and Graham McTavish as Dwalin. Not surprisingly, Thorin has been saved for last.

IGN Movies has posted another in the series of Hobbit photos of the dwarves in full costume. This time it’s Stephen Hunter as Bombur, James Nesbitt as Bofur and William Kircher as Bifur. Not surprisingly, the designers have managed to make each dwarf look distinctly different from the others.

A photo of two more of the dwarves has been released on the Hitlist Movie Blog. This time it’s Dean O’Gorman as Fili and Aidan Turner as Kili. I suspect that the websites posting these exclusive images give us a good preview of the ones that will have special access as the publicity campaign develops.

Yahoo! Movies has posted a new photo, similar to the first one, of two of the dwarves in The Hobbit. They’re John Callen as Oin and Peter Hambleton as Gloin.

I’m back from the film festival in Bologna. I can’t say there has been a lot of real news about The Hobbit since I left–which isn’t surprising, given that the cast is having a break from principal photography. Location scouting and other technical work is going on behind the scenes, but that’s not making headlines.

Belatedly, though, I caught up with a nice interview that Elijah Wood did on Movieline. He talks quite a bit about his time spent living in New Zealand and working on the LOTR trilogy, including:

So were you apprehensive at all about having to go back to it every year for three years — plus press tours, premieres and the like?

That was actually a joy. That was a total joy. I think it was April or May of 2001 that I got the first call that I was going back to New Zealand for pick-ups. I was elated — so happy to go back and visit everyone again and be back in New Zealand for a month. I was excited. So we got used to the construct that we’d be going back. We thought, “OK, we’ll be going back next year and the year after that as well.” We got used to that.

The press was a different thing entirely. Press is work. Making a film isn’t work. Press is work. You don’t sign up to do press.

They always say that’s the job — that’s what you’re paid for in the end.

That’s the job. But our press schedule was intense; it certainly was the largest press tour — all three of them — that I’ve ever been on. It was still filled with fun, because it was our group of people. It was Peter and all the cast, or any number of the cast who was available to travel. Those experiences were a lot of fun, too: Going to Japan — twice — for Lord of the Rings, never having been to Japan before. Different parts of Europe where we went to screen the film. It was extremely exciting.

That was of particular interest to me, since I deal with the press junkets in Chapter 4 of The Frodo Franchise.

Here’s what he had to say about The Hobbit:

And now there’s The Hobbit. You are involved, right?
I am, actually. It’s a tiny little piece. Frodo’s obviously not alive at the time of The Hobbit — it’s about 60 years before Frodo’s birth. So they’ve written a bit of a piece with Ian Holm as well, reprising his role as the older Bilbo, that I’ll do. I can’t really talk too much about it; it might be a bookend sort of deal. The story of The Hobbit he wrote down as There and Back Again: A Hobbit’s Tale, and you see that in The Lord of the Rings. And Frodo then carries on finishing the book from his side, from his perspective of his journey. And so I think it’ll have something to do with the writing of that book and potentially getting into the story of The Hobbit that he ultimately wrote.

Are you looking forward to going back?
Yeah, very much. It feels like a family reunion that I’m going back for. A number of the cast members are coming back. Largely the same crew — the same first A.D. I went back a year ago in February just to visit. I was down in Australia, so I went over for nine days and caught up with a bunch of people. Alan Lee and John Howe, the conceptual artists for Lord of the Rings, were in the art department doing the drawings. Dan and Chris Hannah, who were our art directors, were busy planning sets they were building. It was wild, man, to be back in that whirlwind, see all those people, but working in Middle Earth again. And at the same time, Guillermo [del Toro] was there writing with Peter and Fran [Walsh], and he was set to direct at the time. I was visiting with Guillermo and seeing a lot of the conceptual art. Ultimately he didn’t wind up directing it. But it was wild. It was really cool to be back there, and I feel like it’s going to feel the same.

You know, there’s a production diary that Peter did leading up to the filming of The Hobbit, and at the end of the production diary it shows the first day: They did a Maori ceremony, which we had done on Rings as well. They’re on this big empty soundstage, and the crew’s there, and these incredible traditional Maori people, and they did the haka and there was a Maori speech. Then Peter comes up and gives a speech; they showed a bit of his speech. It was really interesting, because we’d talked about the fact that he’d never really wanted to do The Hobbit. And I remember asking him when we were making [Lord of the Rings] if he’d ever do it, and he said he wasn’t interested.

And now he said, “You know, we were to the point where Guillermo was going to do it, and then he didn’t do it, and now I’m doing it. And here I am standing with all of you; we’ve all been down these roads before.” And what made the impression on me — what I found so emotional to watch — was him saying, “Regardless of what we’re making together, so much of it is about the personal relationships that we’re about forge together, and the family we’re going to create.” That speaks so much to what our experience was on Rings. It was really beautiful to see that that’s the same atmosphere for which they’re creating this new one.

[Belated thanks for Paulo Pereira for the link!]

Apologizing for the long gap since his last entry, Peter has posted some news on his Facebook page. For a start, now that there’s a break in principal photography, he’s involved in some location scouting.

He also announces two new cast members for The Hobbit:

Evangeline Lilly will be playing a new character—the Woodland Elf, Tauriel. Her name means ‘daughter of Mirkwood’ and, beyond that, we must leave you guessing! (No, there is no romantic connection to Legolas.) What is not a secret is how talented and compelling an actress Evangeline is; we are thrilled and excited she will be the one to bring our first true Sylvan Elf to life.

I’m also highly excited that Barry Humphries will be portraying the Goblin King, in much the way Andy Serkis created Gollum. Barry is perhaps best known for his business and social connections as the long-time manager of Dame Edna Everage. He has also been an ardent supporter of the rather misunderstood and unfairly maligned Australian politician, Sir Les Patterson. However, in his spare time, Barry is also a fine actor, and we’re looking forward to seeing him invest the Goblin King with the delicate sensitivity and emotional depth this character deserves.

For those unfamiliar with Humphries, he is probably best known (at least in the U.S.) for his drag character Dame Edna Everage. (Peter maintains the widespread fiction that Dame Edna is a real person, with Humphries her manager.) His other major character, Sir Les Patterson, is an Australian cultural attaché in the U. K. (Humphries himself is Australian, and, having been born in 1934, will presumably be the third oldest cast member, after Christopher Lee and Ian Holm. Ian McKellen came in at third in the cast of LOTR.) But he has had a long career on stage and in films, as his Wikipedia entry details. (I note that it has already been updated to include the news of his casting in The Hobbit!)

Peter also promises “a flurry of answers to your questions,” coming soon.

Variety has posted an item saying that Luke Evans is confirmed to play Bard in The Hobbit:

Welsh actor Luke Evans has been cast in “The Hobbit” as the archer Bard the Bowman.

New Line confirmed the casting Thursday. Plans are for Evans — who will be seen next as Aramis in Constantin’s “The Three Musketeers” — to begin shooting his parts in August. In the J.R.R. Tolkien novel, Bard slays the dragon Smaug.

Evans will be seen in November as Zeus in Relativity’s “Immortals” and next year opposite John Cusack in “The Raven.” He’s due to start filming next week in the indie “No One Lives.”

Here’s a story on Evans from Entertainment Weekly, also confirming that Benedict Cumberbatch will provide the voice of Smaug.