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!]

Yesterday the official LOTR Facebook page posted a set of fans’ questions and Alan Lee’s responses to them. As one might expect, there’s virtually no reference to The Hobbit. It’s about Lee’s work as a Tolkien illustrator and his contributions of the designs for the film trilogy. Well worth checking out!

Facebook seems to be the studios’ choice for communicating with the fans. Now “The Lord of the Rings (Official Page)” offers the following:

Ever wonder how the design & effects came together in The Lord of the Rings trilogy? Well, now you can ask the experts. Alan Lee & John Howe Illustrators & Conceptual Artists for The Lord of the Rings trilogy as well as Richard Taylor, Design and Effects Supervisor for The Lord of the Rings trilogy will be answering YOUR Facebook fan questions! Submit questions below & be sure to let us know who it’s for.

A lot of the questions so far submitted seem to be about The Hobbit, which isn’t part of what’s being offered. I’d suggest asking quite specific LOTR-related questions if you want to have a good chance of getting a response.

There’s not a whole lot of news about the impending Hobbit production flowing around the internet these days, so why not take a look at a story about a black hole in space that has generated a structure a bit like the Eye of Sauron in the LOTR film? It’s being studied closely, since it’s one of the black holes that’s closest to our own galaxy. I don’t think the thing has officially been dubbed “Eye of Sauron.” I suspect scientists may be using that phrase to attract journalists’ attention–which worked in this case. Anyway, it’s an interesting article with a pretty picture.

The Huffington Post has added a photographic travel feature, “Traveling with Tolkien: 6 Real-Life Fictional Landscapes.” It features some photos related to Tolkien’s life, like the “Eagle and Child” pub in Oxford (better known to Tolkien and his fellow Inklings as the “Bird and Baby” when they used to get together there to discuss their work and have a pint or two). Other photos relate to the Lord of the Rings films, including the Matamata setting of Hobbiton as it looked before the current sets for The Hobbit were built there. It’s a nice tribute to both Tolkien and the movie trilogy. You can vote on your favorites, and some might inspire you to do a little traveling.

Ian McKellen has started a blog in which he will report on his activities while playing Gandalf in The Hobbit. The blog home page is here, its first entry (one we’re already familiar with, confirming he would indeed be Gandalf again) here, and a new one about arriving in New Zealand here.

Fans who kept close track of doings during the making of The Lord of the Rings will also be familiar with the online journals Ian posted then: The Grey Book and The White Book. (Blogs didn’t exist in those days, but now the home pages of these “books” lists each as a “journal/blog.”) If you somehow missed those or just want a little bit of great nostalgic reading, you should check them out. Plenty of illustrations, and there are more LOTR-related photos here, here, here, and here. If you still want more, checkout the lengthy question and answer section on LOTR, where Ian replied to queries sent in by fans. (And yes, he did answer them himself!) Note that the index is in reverse chronological order.

For more on the background of Ian’s website, see Chapter 5 of The Frodo Franchise book. In researching that section, I was lucky enough to interview both Ian and his webmaster, Keith Stern.

I just caught up with a little gallery of seven photos of Matamata that the New Zealand Herald posted on October 21. These aren’t images of the movie sets on the farm outside the town; they’re pics of LOTR-themed places in the town itself. I for one would like someday to blog from the “Hobbit Hole Internet Cafe.” When I was in New Zealand in 2007, I took tours that drove through Matamata. I think I was there three times without ever touring the Hobbiton farm. I did see the famous green “Welcome to Hobbiton” sign, though I don’t remember the Gollum statue beside it. Maybe that’s a recent addition. At any rate, as people assemble for the pro-Hobbit rallies across New Zealand, it’s nice to see such peaceful images of this very special town in “Middle-earth.”

TheOneRing.net alerts us to the fact that the LOTR official website has been redesigned in preparation for the April 6 release of the theatrical-version DVDs. Pre-orders are available.

So far there’s not a whole lot there, and maybe it will never grow large. I’m glad I still have my “Wizards” screensaver, acquired c. 2002, since all those and the other free downloads seem to be gone. (They did remain available for a long time.)

Not surprisingly, the old New Line shop is nowhere to be found. LOTR stuff is now sold on Warner Bros.’ online shop. There are still a few of the old franchise items on offer in the various categories–the Noble chess set and a half dozen or so of the Sideshow Weta figures and so on.

There’s also a link to the LOTR Facebook site. I’m rather glad that Facebook and Twitter weren’t around when I was researching the LOTR film trilogy and the internet. I’m on Facebook, but I’m barely active there, and I don’t tweet. In those days it was mostly Yahoo! groups and personal websites. Live Journal wasn’t even a factor yet.

I have to admit that the trilogy is slipped further back into history, but the franchise, however reduced, continues

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.

I just ran across an interview with Rod Perry, the creative director and co-president of The Ant Farm. That’s the company that makes a lot of the trailers for Hollywood’s big releases, including LOTR.

He makes an interesting remark about LOTR: “Perry recalls how relieved executives at New Line Cinema felt when the very first focus group — yes, trailers get focus-grouped, just like movies — for the trailer the Ant Farm made for The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring responded enthusiastically to it.” Given how little finished footage those executives would have seen by then, I can imagine that they were relieved! Anyway, check out the interview to read about other trailers and the process by which they’re made.