Days after releasing the first trailer for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, Peter Jackson has given fans another Christmas gift by uploading the fifth video blog on to his Facebook page. This video follows the cast and crew as they move from shooting in a studio to shooting on location, and we get to see Elijah Wood, Martin Freeman and the team filming at the Hobbiton set.

Watch below:

The Hobbit follows the journey of title character Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman), who is swept into an epic quest to reclaim the lost Dwarf Kingdom of Erebor, which was long ago conquered by the dragon Smaug. Approached out of the blue by the wizard Gandalf the Grey (Ian McKellen), Bilbo finds himself joining a company of thirteen dwarves led by the legendary warrior, Thorin Oakensheild (Richard Armitage). Their journey will take them into the Wild; through treacherous lands swarming with Goblins and Orcs, deadly Wargs and Giant Spiders, Shapeshifters and Sorcerers.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is set to open December 14, 2012 and will be followed a year later by The Hobbit: There and Back Again on December 13, 2013.

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Peter Jackson’s video blogs from the set have kept us occupied over the past few months, but today Warner Bros. finally released the first official trailer for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.

Watch below:

The Hobbit follows the journey of title character Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman), who is swept into an epic quest to reclaim the lost Dwarf Kingdom of Erebor, which was long ago conquered by the dragon Smaug. Approached out of the blue by the wizard Gandalf the Grey (Ian McKellen), Bilbo finds himself joining a company of thirteen dwarves led by the legendary warrior, Thorin Oakensheild (Richard Armitage). Their journey will take them into the Wild; through treacherous lands swarming with Goblins and Orcs, deadly Wargs and Giant Spiders, Shapeshifters and Sorcerers.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is set to open December 14, 2012 and will be followed a year later by The Hobbit: There and Back Again on December 13, 2013.

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The fourth Peter Jackson video blog from the set of The Hobbit focuses on the 3D, specifically the way they use the RED cameras, shooting in 5k, how much of a difference the 48 frames per second will make for the viewers and probably for the first time in the making of a movie, 3D artwork. So grab your red-cyan glasses and watch this awesome video blog right after the break.

This 10 minutes and 46 second video blog goes very in depth on the 3D and shows probably the most we’ve seen from The Hobbit yet. Peter Jackson talks about the original Lord of the Rings and how he would have filmed it in 3D if he had the possibility back then. Instead he made a lot of 3D pictures on the set of the trilogy so look forward to those in some fancy The Hobbit: The Unexpected Journey 3D Blu-ray.

Because they use such big lens, getting the right separation with the RED cameras was definitely a challenge and we see how they solved that with special rigs that can actually adjust the convergence point of the 3D on the fly. We also see how challenging working in 3D is for the makeup and wardrobe team and how the sets had to be painted in very bright colors so that it looks right when shown in the darkening 3D.

48 RED cameras and 17 3D rigs are used to shoot The Hobbit and instead of giving the cameras numbers, they named them after family members or friends. At the end of the video they show how they made 3D artwork by having two artists, one working in red, the other in blue, side by side. To really appreciate their work you need a pair of red-cyan glasses.

The Hobbit: The Unexpected Journey is directed by Peter Jackson and stars Martin Freeman, Luke Evans, Hugo Weaving, Evangeline Lily, Orlando Bloom, Elijah Wood, Cate Blanchett, Andy Serkis, Christopher Lee, Ian McKellen, Stephen Fry and Ian Holm among others. The film follows the story of Bilbo Baggins and his journey to the Lonely Mountain accompanied by 13 dwarfs, to reclaim a treasure stolen from them by the dragon Smaug. It is set to open December 14th 2012 and will be followed a year later by The Hobbit: There and Back Again on December 13th 2013.

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Peter Jackson and his team have today uploaded a new video blog for The Hobbit, and it’s the longest yet at 13 and a half minutes. We begin with Jackson confused as to where he is (Pinewood Studios, England) and then the cast and crew share their stand out moments from the first 3-4 months of shooting (behind the scenes footage galore).

We see the dwarves in costume and the actors learning the dwarf language. Cate Blanchett and Hugo Weaving shoot scenes at Rivendell, John Rhys-Davies (Gimli) visits the set, and at the end we find out why Jackson is at Pinewood (you won’t be disappointed).

Watch below:

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The first trailer for Aardman’s 2012 stop-motion feature The Pirates! Band of Misifts has been unveiled online, and it looks great! Read on to watch!

As usual, Apple has all the HD encodes you could wish for.

The Pirates! features a fantastic cast of voices: Hugh Grant, Martin Freeman, Brendan Gleeson, Ashley Jensen, Russell Tovey, Salma Hayek, Imelda Staunton and David Tennant, and a press release back in May summarised the plot as follows:

Hugh Grant, starring in his first animated role, is the luxuriantly bearded Pirate Captain – a boundlessly enthusiastic, if somewhat less-than-successful, terror of the High Seas.  With a rag-tag crew at his side (Martin Freeman, Brendan Gleeson, Russell Tovey, and Ashley Jensen), and seemingly blind to the impossible odds stacked against him, the Captain has one dream: to beat his bitter rivals Black Bellamy (Jeremy Piven) and Cutlass Liz (Salma Hayek) to the much coveted Pirate Of The Year Award.  It’s a quest that takes our heroes from the shores of exotic Blood Island to the foggy streets of Victorian London.  Along the way they do battle with the pirate-hating Queen Victoria (Imelda Staunton) and team up with a young Charles Darwin (David Tennant), but never lose sight of what a pirate loves best: adventure!

It’s based on the book The Pirates! in an Adventure with Scientists by Gideon Defoe, and is being directed by Peter Lord (Aardman veteran and co-director of Chicken Run).

I’m an enormous fan of Aardman (Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit is one of my all-time favourite movies), and stop-motion is my favourite type of animation. Plus, it tends to actually look brilliant in 3D, if Coraline was anything to go by. The Pirates! looks like a huge amount of fun, and I can’t wait for it – even if all it does is wash away the sour, sour taste of Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, it will have done a good job.

The Pirates! Band of Misfits is due out on 28th March next year in the UK, and 30th March in the US.

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The August issue of Empire Magazine will feature The Hobbit on the front cover, and they’ve released an image of the cover online for all to see. We get a new shot of Martin Freeman as Bilbo Baggins, along with a good look at Ian McKellen’s slightly different Gandalf costume (The Hobbit takes place 60 years before the trilogy so it makes sense to have a different robe).

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The Hobbit has been filming for three months now and Peter Jackson has been providing fans with video blogs and casting updates on Facebook. What we have been lacking though, is our first good look at the actors in costume, but all is well now as Entertainment Weekly got our first official look at Martin Freeman as Bilbo Baggins and Ian McKellen as Gandalf.

On Martin Freeman Jackson said:

”He fits the ears, and he’s got some very nice feet,” Jackson says of his Bilbo. ”I think he’s got the biggest hobbit feet we’ve had so far. They’re a little bit hard to walk in, but he’s managed to figure out the perfect hobbit gait.”

On Ian McKellen returning as Gandalf:

”He’s in fantastic form,” Peter Jackson says of McKellan. ”In a way, his role in The Hobbit has more technical difficulties than Lord of the Rings did, because he has scenes with 14 smaller characters — obviously the dwarves and the hobbit are shorter… I remember saying to him [laughs], ”Look, this isn’t Waiting for Godot or King Lear. This is The Hobbit. This is the real thing.”

You can see another image of Freeman and Jackson preparing for a scene here!

The first film, titled The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, will be released on December 14, 2012 and the second film, titled The Hobbit: There and Back Again, is slated for release the following year on December 13, 2013.

The Hobbit follows the journey of title character Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman), who is swept into an epic quest to reclaim the lost Dwarf Kingdom of Erebor, which was long ago conquered by the dragon Smaug. Approached out of the blue by the wizard Gandalf the Grey (Ian McKellen), Bilbo finds himself joining a company of thirteen dwarves led by the legendary warrior, Thorin Oakensheild (Richard Armitage). Their journey will take them into the Wild; through treacherous lands swarming with Goblins and Orcs, deadly Wargs and Giant Spiders, Shapeshifters and Sorcerers.

Read similar posts to First official look at The Hobbit! on Filmonic

We’ve known for a while that Warner Bros. and New Line were aiming to release the two Hobbit movies a year apart, with the first hitting December 2012. Well today the official titles for the movies were announced, and the 2012 and 2013 release dates have been set.

The first film, titled The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, will be released on December 14, 2012 and the second film, titled The Hobbit: There and Back Again, is slated for release the following year on December 13, 2013.

The press release from Warner Bros. and New Line doesn’t reveal anything else, but it does contain a list of the confirmed cast:

Ian McKellen returns as Gandalf the Grey, the character he played in “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy, and Martin Freeman, who just won a BAFTA TV Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in the BBC series “Sherlock,” takes on the central role of Bilbo Baggins. Also reprising their roles from “The Lord of the Rings” movies are: Cate Blanchett as Galadriel; Orlando Bloom as Legolas; Ian Holm as the elder Bilbo; Christopher Lee as Saruman; Hugo Weaving as Elrond; Elijah Wood as Frodo; and Andy Serkis as Gollum. The ensemble cast also includes (in alphabetical order) Richard Armitage, Jed Brophy, Adam Brown, John Callen, Stephen Fry, Ryan Gage, Mark Hadlow, Peter Hambleton, Stephen Hunter, William Kircher, Sylvester McCoy, Bret McKenzie, Graham McTavish, Mike Mizrahi, James Nesbitt, Dean O’Gorman, Lee Pace, Mikael Persbrandt, Conan Stevens, Ken Stott, Jeffrey Thomas and Aidan Turner.

The Hobbit follows the journey of title character Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman), who is swept into an epic quest to reclaim the lost Dwarf Kingdom of Erebor, which was long ago conquered by the dragon Smaug. Approached out of the blue by the wizard Gandalf the Grey (Ian McKellen), Bilbo finds himself joining a company of thirteen dwarves led by the legendary warrior, Thorin Oakensheild (Richard Armitage). Their journey will take them into the Wild; through treacherous lands swarming with Goblins and Orcs, deadly Wargs and Giant Spiders, Shapeshifters and Sorcerers.

What do you think of the titles?

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More stop-motion goodness! Hot on the heels of LAIKA’s announcement of ParaNorman for 2012, Aardman Animations have issued a press release for their film The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists. Hit the continue reading button to…continue reading.

The film is due out on March 30th 2012 in the UK, and will be the first stop-motion feature from Aardman since 2005′s fantastic Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. It’s being developed for Sony Pictures Animation, and will be distributed by Columbia Pictures.

Again, animated movies always have a hell of a cast, and this one has a large array of mostly British talent, all of whom should be great in their roles: Hugh Grant, Martin Freeman, Brendan Gleeson, Ashley Jensen, Russell Tovey, Salma Hayek, Imelda Staunton and David Tennant. It’s certainly going to be lively. The press release summarises the plot of the movie in the following:

Hugh Grant, starring in his first animated role, is the luxuriantly bearded Pirate Captain – a boundlessly enthusiastic, if somewhat less-than-successful, terror of the High Seas.  With a rag-tag crew at his side (Martin Freeman, Brendan Gleeson, Russell Tovey, and Ashley Jensen), and seemingly blind to the impossible odds stacked against him, the Captain has one dream: to beat his bitter rivals Black Bellamy (Jeremy Piven) and Cutlass Liz (Salma Hayek) to the much coveted Pirate Of The Year Award.  It’s a quest that takes our heroes from the shores of exotic Blood Island to the foggy streets of Victorian London.  Along the way they do battle with the pirate-hating Queen Victoria (Imelda Staunton) and team up with a young Charles Darwin (David Tennant), but never lose sight of what a pirate loves best: adventure!

It sounds like it will have the humour and charm present in Wallace & Gromit, Chicken Run, and basically everything else Aardman have done.

You can see basically all of the image above, but for purists, here’s the larger version:

I’m loving the style that’s going on here. And The Pirates! will also be released in 3D. Usually I sigh at that being tagged onto an announcement, but considering Coraline was the best film I’ve seen in 3D (Harry at AICN agrees) by a mile, this should be beautiful too.

Aardman Animations are also currently working on a CGI project for Sony Pictures Animation; Arthur Christmas, which is due out on November 11th this year in the UK, and November 23rd in the US. It also boasts a great list of voice actors: James McAvoy, Hugh Laurie, Jim Broadbent, Bill Nighy, and again, Ashley Jensen and Imelda Staunton. It tells the story of Father Christmas’s son, and while I’m sure it’ll be a large amount of fun, my fondness for stop-motion makes me much more excited for The Pirates!

So, I can’t wait for this. I first read about it back in a large press release from Aardman in 2007. Stop-motion is my absolute favourite type of animation, and there truly isn’t enough of it. The detail and care that usually goes into it makes it a joy to behold. Aardman in particular continue to release quality products, so this is high up on my list of anticipated movies. What with LAIKA’s ParaNorman too…2012 is looking good.

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In a lengthy post about shooting The Hobbit at 48 frames per second earlier this week director Peter Jackson said a video from the set was on its way, and now it is here. All 10 minutes of it.

In the video, titled ‘Start of Production’, Jackson shows us around various sets including Bag End (the home of Bilbo Baggins), Elrond’s Chambers and The Goblin Tunnels. We also get a peak at the costume department, and we see all the dwarf actors, along with Ian McKellen and Martin Freeman, preparing for a scene. It’s a must watch for all Lord of the Rings fans.

The production will be posting many more videos like this over the next few years, so follow Peter Jackson on Facebook for the latest on the movie.

The Hobbit follows the journey of title character Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman), who is swept into an epic quest to reclaim the lost Dwarf Kingdom of Erebor, which was long ago conquered by the dragon Smaug. Approached out of the blue by the wizard Gandalf the Grey (Ian McKellen), Bilbo finds himself joining a company of thirteen dwarves led by the legendary warrior, Thorin Oakensheild (Richard Armitage). Their journey will take them into the Wild; through treacherous lands swarming with Goblins and Orcs, deadly Wargs and Giant Spiders, Shapeshifters and Sorcerers.

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