Del Toro tackles Tolkien

Curious about this. If he can bring the same mood to the material as he did Pan's Labyrinth and The Devil's Backbone then I'm in the queue.

Sounds like a good choice. I hope he does it in English.

I think Benicio Del Toro should play Bilbo. Preferably in the style of his character from The Usual Suspects.

And Toro Toro to play a particularly pugnacious Gandalf.

Toro toro is more of a hobbit than anything else, even down to the curious, non-functional, elongated hairy feet.

The story, as I recall, is a little less wanky than Lord of the Rings. A little.

(WARNING TOLKIEN NERD APPROACHING)

Well I always thought the Hobbit would be a better Disney animation than a "real" film, too many comedy characters (dwarves with coloured beards tsk.) Less wanky indeed.

And the idea of a film joining it up with LOTR, Why (apart from more $$$$$$)?

The interesting life of Aragorn as a young ranger scout earning his woggle, Denethor redecorates his room with posters of raunchy Balrogs, perhaps...
Nowt much happened really, well not enough to have a movie about it.

I was hoping for the making of "Beren and Luthien" or the "Children of Hurin" from the Silmarilion - but that would be too much of a stretch, plus I would cry at the sad bits.

Thinking about it, Guillermo and Peter Jackson do have a similar look going on don't they, plus a kind of rotund-cheerfulness-hiding-artistic-brilliance thing too. Yes. Good stuff.

Del Toro



Jackson

Yes - they both look like they've spent far too long sitting round book- and junk-food-strewn dining tables arguing over how pure a 20th-level paladin would really be and lifting nothing heavier than a pair of dice!

Jackson lost weight.

I was under the impression, based on a Charlie Rose interview with Jackson that he's had a massive falling out with the people at New Line over money from LOTR and that's why he's not doing The Hobbit.

The first Hellboy film is underrated, I think and the second will be good too. He collaborates very closely with Hellboy creator Mike Mignola* which shows that he's willing to be faitful to source material. The casting is perfect and apparently Del Toro had to really fight for it with the studio, so that's a very good quality he brings to the Hobbit job.

*If you can find it, I highly recommend renting the DVD of Amazing Screw-On Head . It's a short animated film by Mignola (and others, of course) based on Mignola's comic. It was meant as a pilot to a Sci-Fi channel series, but it never got picked up, which is a shame because its one of the most delightfully fucked up animated stories I've ever seen. The titular character, voiced by Paul Giamati, is a sort of secret agent/superhero living during the American Civil War. He has one head but many different bodies, each suited to a particular kind of mission. He reports directly to Abraham Lincoln. The villain Emperor Zombie, voiced by David Hype Peirce, absorbs victims knowledge by smoking them in a big bong thingy.