Can't be Thorin, he's on the left as the camera pans over. Thorin is the one who starts singing.

I'm fine with breaking canon to make a better film. I'm fine with reasonable deviations. It's impossible to turn the book into film precisely, and each is a separate medium of entertainment. The point is to keep to the heart and soul of the story, which Jackson consistently does. I have a few quibbles here and there, and REALLY don't like the Witch King seeming to be clearly more powerful than Gandalf at their confrontation at the gate in the extended edition of RoTK. That one really pisses me off, but by and large, he did an amazing, fantastic job.

Looks like you're probably right. Better than any guess I can make anyway...

Alright, I gotta ask...

I've read The Hobbit as well as FotR, TTT & RotK (although the last 3 have been awhile ago, re-reading them now) and have heard those names before, but don't know much about them.

Basically, what the hell is Appendix A and where can I get more of my LOTR fix? TIA.:)

Here's my private hope:

You know how the FoTR opens with the Great War against Sauron on cutting the ring from him. My hope is that they do something similar, but with this story:

I imagine the movie starts out with Bilbo telling Frodo about the history of his own adventure, but it could easily incorporate an early history of Hobbits as well.

It is Kili

I know nothing about Tolkien, but a fellow projectionist and big Tolkien fan said something about after "Hobbit" and "LOTR" Tolkien wrote short stories to fill in some of the gaps, and that Peter Jackson liberally included a lot of stuff from those to better the continuity between the films. Apparently, from what I'm told, "Hobbit" as a stand-alone book isn't very good (e.g. characters wander in and out, like Gandalf saying "I have something to take care of" and vanishing for half the book or something like that).

Oh, yeah, and I ran the trailer for myself last night (as it's actually not on any films right now that are in release) and it looks damn good on the big screen. I wasn't even that big of a fan of the three "LOTR" movies and this trailer made me want to see the film pretty bad. Quality is good too. (I also ran a "Wrath of the Titans" trailer and it was amazing how bad the quality of that looks compared to "Hobbit", both in terms of the special effects and simply the image clarity.)

He's also thin for a dwarf. The "reasoning" behind it is that they are nephews of Thorin and are "young" dwarves, and have not yet attained the stockiness and full beards of more mature dwarves.

http://img12.imageshack.us/img12/350...s10newp.th.jpg http://img824.imageshack.us/img824/3...s10newp.th.jpg http://img151.imageshack.us/img151/3...s10newp.th.jpg http://img809.imageshack.us/img809/3...s10newp.th.jpg http://img208.imageshack.us/img208/3...s10newp.th.jpg http://img40.imageshack.us/img40/350...s10newp.th.jpg http://img213.imageshack.us/img213/3...s10newp.th.jpghttp://img204.imageshack.us/img204/3...s10newp.th.jpg http://img834.imageshack.us/img834/3...s10newp.th.jpg http://img171.imageshack.us/img171/3...s10newp.th.jpg

I guess theres been some discussion over the way Jackson shot this. He shot it at 48 frames per second which is a new process. Apparently it gives it an ultra realistic look which some fans didn't like. Not like traditional film. More like HD video. JD could probably expand on this.
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Cool.

Another cure for Insomnia...

I'm all for it.

The whole reason movies like this exist is because Lucas pushed the boundaries of cinema 30 years ago.

Yes, I heard he screened some of the movie not too long ago and the people watching it absolutely hated it. At 48fps the image moves so quickly that it looks too realistic. Your analogy is right on: think about prime-time cop shows from a decade or two ago (filmed on film) vs. daytime soap operas (filmed on videotape). Or, think about any "Entertainment Tonight" footage you've seen of a movie being filmed, where you can see the director and lighting guys as the star runs through the scene, and they yell cut, and it's all being filmed for ET using video cameras, and you think, "Wow, that looks horribly fake and cheesy". Same thing. The human brain has been conditioned to expect a movie to look a certain way. We don't WANT it to look like we're watching it in real life, because "real life" doesn't look like film. But apparently Peter Jackson was adamant that he's not dumbing it down to traditional 24fps, and that this was the future of cinema and people would "get used to it". I'm not sure he's going to be able to stick to his guns on this, though, if the studios think it'll ruin the box office. Or maybe they'll do a 24fps release and a 48fps release. (Why not, they already have 2k and 4k, and 2D and 3D.)

Fascinating....

Your right, our brains have been trained that films are supposed to look a certain way. I hated the look of the Mann flick Public Enemies. I think it was shot on HD digital?

Theres something to be said fo traditional film. People want and expect to be transported out of real life for a few hours. They don't want it to look like real life.
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We've been conditioned to think 48 fps looks like television news. I think with time, we would get used to it... that doesn't mean that's what's best for the art form.

:harumph: