ANSWER from Peter: Sheep's blood stuffed sheep loin.

ANSWER from Guillermo: Chips with sour cream and lots of Al Pastor.

ANSWER from Harry: A Brisket a day keeps the doctor away!

Darn it, thehobbitblog.com is saying that the 2nd movie will bridge the Hobbit with Fellowship. That news is dated from April 24th. I can swear the other article had a correction saying the two movies would focus only on the Hobbit book. The truth will out eventually, whatever is the case.

So the only way I can reconcile this with the correction is if studio people changed their minds. Or if the correction was itself a mistake. I don't know.

Question #2: What parts of the Hobbit do you plan on changing because you think you're somehow better than Tolkien?

Question: One of the things in the book that imparts a childlike tone is the use of a narrator. Do you expect to keep him or no? If you do, will he be voiced by Sir Ian McKellen?

Statement: Don't listen to these nabobs of nagativity about the second movie, go right ahead with it...great idea and I've always wanted to see that period fleshed out. I wants me some Necromancer!

Statement Number Two: James McAvoy as Bilbo!

Oh yeah, rock on PJGDT!

The Club is doing splendid though a few technical sangs have popped up. Please drop by and have a pint and a chat.

I keep coming back until someone REMEMBERS seeing Richie!

I know that in the original adaptation, Arwyn would have been with the heroes at Helms Deep (another thing which made no sense to me) and that THAT would have been the reason the Elves turned up.

But since they wisely dropped the accompanying Arwyn idea, WHY THE HELL DID THE ELVES TURN UP LIKE THE GOD-DAMNED AMERICAN CALVARY?

The Helms Deep one though... that REALLY pissed me off. You might as well have had the Millennium Falcon show up and blow the Orcs to fuck with some lazers.

James McAvoy isn't a bad suggestion either, but Toby Jones would be absolutely perfect.

And maybe Ernest Borgnine for Beorn. ;-)

He needs to cast Burt in it somewhere.

IAN HOLM FOR BILBO!

1) Gandalf has rabidly-pierced overly-tattood sidekick since he ain't "kewl" enough by himself

2) Beorn falls off a cliff, twice

3) Mirkwood is replaced with a post-apocalyptic city with goth teens instead of spiders

4) No Rivendell, period. "We felt it just wasn't relevent to what we consider the story should be"

5) Gollum and Bilbo have a wire-fu match, winner takes the neckband (rings are *so* last century)

6) Oh, and shot after shot after shot after fucking shot of Dwarf tossing. Lots of Dwarf tossing.

Let the ass raping commence. That is all.

Wait, I forgot one. Two words. Uwe. Boll. Now....that is all.

Ringy's off at a LARP convention- he had to make a new cardboard sword and it takes him a long time in Special Ed.

Wouldn't it be better to answer the 20 most UNIQUE questions?

There are quite a few Oscar awards, based on temporary fads and enthusiams, which haven't stood the test of time.

Most honorary Oscars seem to go to people whose career work, in retrospect, wasn't properly recognised but still stands up.

Anyone: Will Bilbo's house, inside & out, and the view from the front look ANY different than it did in LOTR? Asking because I'm a nit-picking GEEK.

Anyone: Can Nick Frost be cast as Bombir?

The original plan was for two movies. There are interviews with Jackson in which he outlines the condensed plot.

Check 'em out. Tolkien purists would have rioted at the excisions and compressions.

Thanks to Bob Shaye's grandiosity, Jackson was offered 3 movies, but was given very little time to come up with a dramatically shaped middle movie. Some weak script decisions occurred during the accelerated development of TTT.

On top of that, the fate of the second and third movies hinged on the success of LotR. If the first movie did poorly, there would be tiny FX/ post production budgets for the second and third.

That tends to explain why so many popcorn elements were inserted. Mass appeal was a commercial necessity to recoup the huge investment required for art direction authenticity. So we have "comic Gimli", "skateboi Legolas" etc. The marathon shoot went forward on this theory. They didn't know if it was safe to reduce the popcorn level because there would be no audience feedback until Dec. 2001

Even though the movies were made, effectively for half-price at NZ prices, with a high proportion of inexperienced crew, and relatively inexpensive actors -including some brilliant choices like Bernard Hill, Billy Boyd, Miranda Otto, McKellan, Lee and Holm - it was never an option to make a movie which was totally loyal to the earnest tone of the novel. The question was, what compromises could they live with.

During 2003, the massive increase in CGI shots apparently turned the process into a death march and an editing epic which might explain some of the disjointed quality of RotK. The CGI ranges from brilliant to dodgy (eg Trolls enter the gate at Minas Tirith)

So yeah, Le Vicious, there were some disappointing decisions. I guess Jackson, Walsh and Boyens wince through some of the scenes you mentioned.

On the other hand, they somehow pulled off the impossible. Who could have imagined how the brilliant the supposedly unfilmable elements (Gollum, the huge armies, orcs and trolls) would turn out.

It's the best Lord of the Rings film we'll see in our lifetime.

But of course, Jackson did rightly claim that writing and making the films was like laying the tracks down in front of the moving train. An epic scale movie usually finishes people off in the best of terms, I imagine making it on the hoof so much was always going to run into some serious flaws. Having met a number of the SFX people who worked on the trilogy I can safely say none of them were entirely happy with some of the decisions as they wanted perfection but had little to no time, and deadlines that frankly would have scared a low budget indie movie. I can only hope that the pre-planning pre-production on the Hobbit and Hobbit-to-Trilogy movie will give them chance to try out some of the weaker options and abandon them before momentum gets ahead of them.

And merely from the brief scenes in Pan's Labyrinth, I'd say it's fairly obvious Del Toro can stage a bloody but comprehendable battle in a style that doesn't fall into Avid slo-mo. Jackson did some epic scope scenes beautifully, he worked like he was trying to bring some of the best Tolkien fantasy art-work to life, but his in the thick of it fighting just, as many have pointed out, smacked of a director overwhelmed, filming too many random shots and hoping it would cut together nice in the edit.

I'd hope Del Toro wouldn't fall into that and would just have the guts to do the films he wants.

MTV: Just two years ago, you were quoted as saying, "I was never into heroic fantasy." Did your views change?

Del Toro: I wasn't. I completely gravitated towards horror. For whatever reason, I never hooked into sword and sorcery. I really rediscovered fantasy through my love of filmmakers as a filmmaker. Something kind of popped and jelled. I now can empathize with one side of the fantasy genre without ever wandering into lubricated musclemen with giant swords. "The Hobbit" occupies a particular seat in fantasy that is irreplaceable. They can dredge up old cadavers in my closet. I'm not running for president. I'm a f---ing filmmaker! I'm just trying to make the movie I want to.

Amazing how history repeats itself…back when harry first started breaking LotR stories, it was the same thing only different Talkback posters. Many were just so worried at every little syllable that popped out of PJ’s mouth that contradicted that person’s perception of their personally perfect LotR (more p’s please). Now here we go with GDT and folks have already written The Hobbit movies off because, OH NO! GASP!!, GDT HATES Hobbits and hairy feet! Would that YOUR lives were viewed under the microscope of fandom and you were never allowed to change your personal taste over time.

Is there really any comparison between Conan the Barbarian and The Hobbit? Not hardly, other than some folks insistence on shoehorning both into the nebulous realm of “fantasy” literature. At any rate, Pan’s Labyrinth proved he can certainly direct a fantasy movie so don’t get hung up on something he said in the past. And remember, even if you loath Peter Jackson, you must admit that he, like GDT, knows the difference between a movie and a book.

I suspect the second film, if it brings back many of the original actors for Aragorn etc will actually do a lot more business than the Hobbit. But, yes, seriously the idea of the film industry making films for profit is pretty revolting. But, hey, Del Toro never makes a Euro off his acclaimed films so it might be safe as art.

Pan's Labyrinth is the benchmark for Del Toro to live up to. Of course I'm into sure how crackling the dialogue would have been in English. But I think it's a shame Del Toro will really have to scale back on the in your face fantasy darkness without a hard rating to keep everything family friendly. I'm sure he can manage terror and fantasy and blood-letting and humour without the harder edged adult content but it'll be a step away from Pan's.

I just think these films will be interesting to see if they can stand alone, be great films even for the one or two people who never saw the Trilogy, or whether it really is a case of turning a trilogy into a Quintology (whetever the word is.)