The Hobbit Trilogy According to Peter Jackson

Director Peter Jackson announced yesterday that his film version of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit will be made into three movies instead of two. He seems to imply that the screenwriters will stretch-out the backstories of the main characters using material from The Simarillion. Needless to say, the idea of three movies squeezed from one book is rather controversial among fans, who see it as exploitation of Middle Earth's popularity, and at worst, price-gouging.

MTV ~ Are Three Movies Necessary?
Salon: Terrible Idea or Geek Opium?
Washington Post: The Internet Rejoices

From Peter Jackson Via E!Online

"It is only at the end of a shoot that you finally get the chance to sit down and have a look at the film you have made," the Oscar-winning filmmaker wrote on his Facebook page this morning. "Recently [collaborators] Fran [Walsh], Phil [co-screenwriter Philippa Boyens] and I did just this when we watched for the first time an early cut of the first movie—and a large chunk of the second."

Jackson continued: "We were really pleased with the way the story was coming together, in particular, the strength of the characters and the cast who have brought them to life. All of which gave rise to a simple question: Do we take this chance to tell more of the tale? And the answer from our perspective as the filmmakers, and as fans, was an unreserved ‘yes.'"

. . ."We know how much of the story of Bilbo Baggins, the Wizard Gandalf, the Dwarves of Erebor, the rise of the Necromancer, and the Battle of Dol Guldur will remain untold if we do not take this chance. The richness of the story of The Hobbit, as well as some of the related material in the appendices of The Lord of the Rings, allows us to tell the full story of the adventures of Bilbo Baggins and the part he played in the sometimes dangerous, but at all times exciting, history of Middle-earth."

Get More: Martin Freeman, Ian McKellen, Evangeline Lilly, Orlando Bloom, Cate Blanchett, Elijah Wood, Movie Trailers, Movies Blog

Three Entertaining Autobiographies

Carole King is A Natural Woman


From Kirkus Reviews

Bitten by the music bug at an early age and subsequently converted to rock ’n’ roll in the ’50s, she began writing her own songs, landing a record deal at the age of 15. She would experience far greater success, however, when she and co-songwriter Gerry Goffin turned out hit after hit for such artists as Aretha Franklin, the Shirelles and the Monkees. . . . when her marriage deteriorated, she set off for Los Angeles to seek her own voice. That voice comes through strongly on every page of this memoir, an engaging assortment of recollections comprising a journey that started in her working-class Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn, took her to Manhattan and Laurel Canyon and saw her escape what Joni Mitchell called "the star maker machinery" to settle in rural Idaho. In one of the book's best sections, King explains her decision to retreat from fame in the mid ’70s, chronicling the joys and sorrows of going “back to the land.”

Anchorman Dan Rants in Rather Outspoken



From the Daily Beast

Nearly eight years after his fabled career at CBS News imploded like a death star over the notorious George W. Bush/Texas Air National Guard segment on 60 Minutes Wednesday, he can’t stop combing the debris for shards of vindication.
“I have a story to tell from my point of view,” he says about his new book, Rather Outspoken: My Life in the News, which roasts network management for its “spineless” behavior during the Bush episode; takes potshots at his successor in the CBS Evening News anchor chair, Katie Couric, as a purveyor of “News Lite”; and settles scores with former colleagues who, as he writes, “after pretending to be friends for all those years, stealthily snuck around giving anonymous newspaper quotes and otherwise scheming to put the dirk in deep when I was down and hurting.”
Rather explains: “I wanted to tell it as honestly and as candidly as I could with—as Lyndon Johnson used to say—the bark off.”

Sunday, Monday, Happy Days in Hollywoodwith Garry Marshall


From NPR

He calls his mother the primary influence behind his show business career and those of his sisters: Ronny, who's worked primarily behind the camera, and Penny, who is now a director but also starred in one of his most popular sitcoms, Laverne And Shirley.
. . . Happy Days suddenly acquired a new star in Henry Winkler's Arthur Fonzarelli. Marshall says the character grew with Winkler's development of his peculiarities. Some of those "aaaay" and "whoa" sounds that made Fonzie so famous, it turns out, were additions from the actor. "And then slowly, he became Richie's best friend, and the character developed, and it went on."
His daughters loved Happy Days, he explains, but his young son wasn't interested. Why? "There are no space people," Marshall remembers his son complaining. The show being set on ... well, Earth, and in the '50s, it wasn't immediately obvious how to make it happen. So Mork's appearance was a dream sequence at first. And then came the show Mork And Mindy, which made Mork — played by a very young Robin Williams — real. "The dream was so funny, it suddenly wasn't a dream anymore," Marshall says.  Chalk another one up for something Garry Marshall believes is often a smart place to start in entertainment: "Please the people in your house."