Peter Jackson and the other members of the team that wrote the Lord of the Rings film trilogy have signed on to pen the movie’s Hobbit prequels, Variety reported on Wednesday. The two Hobbit movies will be directed by Guillermo del Toro, who will join Jackson, Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens in adapting the J.R.R. Tolkien book for the screen. The news caps off an eight-month search for a scribe to tackle the coveted task of bringing the literary classic to the big screen.
The Hobbit, written by Tolkien for his children years before the Rings trilogy, follows a young Bilbo Baggins, who finds his comfortable life turned upside down when the wizard Gandalf takes him on a journey for a hoard of treasure that involves trolls, humans, Gollum and his ring of invisibility, and a dragon named Smaug. The films will be shot simultaneously starting in late 2009 with the first movie hitting screens in 2011.
In other news about films concerning people of diminutive stature, singer-songwriter Elton John is to showcase his major hits in a new animated film called Gnomeo and Juliet, the Hollywood Reporter reported on Wednesday.
The movie is an adaptation of the Shakespearean classic, and substitutes lovers from rival clans of garden gnomes for the dueling Montagues and Capulets.
Scottish actor James McAvoy and Emily Blunt are lined up to play the heartbroken garden ornaments. The movie will be produced by Miramax and Elton John’s Rocket Pictures, and features several John classics and possibly a few new tracks.
Much as these films may be anticipated, the attention of the movie-going public is currently focused on the Venice Film Festival, which will open on Aug. 27, especially with the looming presence of the American Academy Awards over this year’s official competition. Many Oscar hopefuls and past winners are included in the selection of 21 films vying for the Leone d’Oro.
The Hollywood link coupled with the box-office success that usually accompanies films associated with the Academy Awards has helped raise the Venice Film Festival’s commercial profile, but the event, which was first held in 1932, has a long-established reputation for showcasing emerging cinema, including films from Asia and Latin America, and this year proves no exception.
Burn After Reading, perhaps the most eagerly anticipated film at this year’s Venice Film Festival, is not running in the official competition and thus won’t win any prizes in the lagoon city.
But if a recent trend is to be confirmed, the film is likely to make a splash at the next Oscars.
Made by Joel and Ethan Coen, it has the honor of opening the festival in a world premiere that will lift the lid on the latest effort by the siblings whose No Country For Old Men triumphed at the last Academy Awards.
Billed as a spy story laced with black humor, Burn After Reading boasts a high-powered Hollywood cast including George Clooney, Tilda Swinton, Brad Pitt, John Malkovich and Frances McDormand.
Last year, two films launched in Venice, Atonement and Michael Clayton, garnered seven Oscar nominations each, while in 2005 Brokeback Mountain scooped Venice’s top Leone d’Oro (Golden Lion) award and later earned Taiwanese director Ang Lee an Oscar as Best Director.
In family news, actor Matt Damon and his wife, Luciana, have become parents of a second baby girl.
Their daughter, named Gia Zavala, was born on Wednesday, the Oscar winner’s spokeswoman was quoted as saying by the US entertainment magazine People.
The couple tied the knot in December of 2005. They met two years earlier in Miami Beach, where Matt Damon was filming at the time. Luciana Damon, who was born in Argentina, worked in a nightclub.
Matt Damon, 37, is working now on a CIA thriller entitled Green Zone. He has also agreed to star in the forth installment of the highly successful Bourne action movies.
That US assistance was a model for Taiwan’s spectacular development success was early recognized by policymakers and analysts. In a report to the US Congress for the fiscal year 1962, former President John F. Kennedy noted Taiwan’s “rapid economic growth,” was “producing a substantial net gain in living.” Kennedy had a stake in Taiwan’s achievements and the US’ official development assistance (ODA) in general: In September 1961, his entreaty to make the 1960s a “decade of development,” and an accompanying proposal for dedicated legislation to this end, had been formalized by congressional passage of the Foreign Assistance Act. Two
March 31 to April 6 On May 13, 1950, National Taiwan University Hospital otolaryngologist Su You-peng (蘇友鵬) was summoned to the director’s office. He thought someone had complained about him practicing the violin at night, but when he entered the room, he knew something was terribly wrong. He saw several burly men who appeared to be government secret agents, and three other resident doctors: internist Hsu Chiang (許強), dermatologist Hu Pao-chen (胡寶珍) and ophthalmologist Hu Hsin-lin (胡鑫麟). They were handcuffed, herded onto two jeeps and taken to the Secrecy Bureau (保密局) for questioning. Su was still in his doctor’s robes at
Last week the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said that the budget cuts voted for by the China-aligned parties in the legislature, are intended to force the DPP to hike electricity rates. The public would then blame it for the rate hike. It’s fairly clear that the first part of that is correct. Slashing the budget of state-run Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) is a move intended to cause discontent with the DPP when electricity rates go up. Taipower’s debt, NT$422.9 billion (US$12.78 billion), is one of the numerous permanent crises created by the nation’s construction-industrial state and the developmentalist mentality it
Experts say that the devastating earthquake in Myanmar on Friday was likely the strongest to hit the country in decades, with disaster modeling suggesting thousands could be dead. Automatic assessments from the US Geological Survey (USGS) said the shallow 7.7-magnitude quake northwest of the central Myanmar city of Sagaing triggered a red alert for shaking-related fatalities and economic losses. “High casualties and extensive damage are probable and the disaster is likely widespread,” it said, locating the epicentre near the central Myanmar city of Mandalay, home to more than a million people. Myanmar’s ruling junta said on Saturday morning that the number killed had
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