On February 19, TheOneRing.net published some photos that were thought to show a set from The Hobbit being built. On the same day, RaoulJ posted a comment on a message board there suggesting that the set was instead for a video game, “Cardinal,” that was also being made at Weta.

Now the website “King under the Mountain” has posted a quotation from Garrett Robinson, a fan who is trying to get hired to work on The Hobbit, that seems to support the idea that the set was for the video game. (I hope that Mr. Robinson has a NZ work permit, since otherwise it would be impossible for him to obtain the job he seeks.)

Thanks to Rob Irwin for alerting me to this post on his site!

By the way, I have not been posting a whole lot myself recently. As some of you know, I’m both a film historian and an Egyptologist. During February I’ve had a fellowship to study statuary fragments at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. I’ve not had time to keep up with all the Hobbit-related news, assuming that you would all get the basics. I posted a few items, but next week I’ll be home and able to be a bit more active on the blog. Thanks for your patience!

Today Ian added a brief third entry to his new Hobbit blog: “Partying with Dwarves (and a Hobbit)”.

The Huffington Post has added a photographic travel feature, “Traveling with Tolkien: 6 Real-Life Fictional Landscapes.” It features some photos related to Tolkien’s life, like the “Eagle and Child” pub in Oxford (better known to Tolkien and his fellow Inklings as the “Bird and Baby” when they used to get together there to discuss their work and have a pint or two). Other photos relate to the Lord of the Rings films, including the Matamata setting of Hobbiton as it looked before the current sets for The Hobbit were built there. It’s a nice tribute to both Tolkien and the movie trilogy. You can vote on your favorites, and some might inspire you to do a little traveling.

Ian McKellen has started a blog in which he will report on his activities while playing Gandalf in The Hobbit. The blog home page is here, its first entry (one we’re already familiar with, confirming he would indeed be Gandalf again) here, and a new one about arriving in New Zealand here.

Fans who kept close track of doings during the making of The Lord of the Rings will also be familiar with the online journals Ian posted then: The Grey Book and The White Book. (Blogs didn’t exist in those days, but now the home pages of these “books” lists each as a “journal/blog.”) If you somehow missed those or just want a little bit of great nostalgic reading, you should check them out. Plenty of illustrations, and there are more LOTR-related photos here, here, here, and here. If you still want more, checkout the lengthy question and answer section on LOTR, where Ian replied to queries sent in by fans. (And yes, he did answer them himself!) Note that the index is in reverse chronological order.

For more on the background of Ian’s website, see Chapter 5 of The Frodo Franchise book. In researching that section, I was lucky enough to interview both Ian and his webmaster, Keith Stern.

Tom Cardy has begun blogging for the Dominion Post under the title “Wellywood Confidential.” The first post is a meditation on the notion of the country’s capital also being the center of the film industry. He traces the first use of the term Wellywood back to August, 1998. That makes sense, given that that was the month when New Line announced that it would be producing the film. Of course, it had been in pre-production about 18 months by then, but then-producer Miramax had kept the whole thing a secret. Relatively few people knew about it, and there probably wasn’t any talk of “Wellywood” any earlier.

Naturally Cardy credits LOTR with having transformed Wellington into the thriving production center it has become.

Ian McKellen will be taking a break from principal photography on The Hobbit. He’ll be playing the part of a Mafia don at Chichester’s Festival Theatre. No information yet about the dates on that. According to the story at Mail Online, “McKellen, who appeared as ­Gandalf in Jackson’s triumphant Lord Of The Rings trilogy, instructed his representatives to carve out some time over the shooting schedule so he could take on other acting assignments.”

On his Facebook page, Ian has corrected a couple of mistakes in the story, in the process telling us the new date scheduled for his first filming: “With corrections to the last para, story in the Mail is accurate (I was on stage with Roger Rees not Patrick Stewart) and filming begins 3/21, with my call now 3/28.”

The publicity campaign for The Hobbit finally seems to be underway. A press conferences was held yesterday at Park Road Post, Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh’s state-of-the-art editing, sound-mixing, laboratory, and effects facility. (It was formerly called The Film Unit, for those of you who have been watching the making-of information since way back when LOTR was still being made.)

Tehanu, whose spy reports for TheOneRing.net gave that site a high profile early in the filming of LOTR, has contributed her own account of the press conference, with comments.

A full video of the press conference is here. Unfortunately the microphones aren’t set up in a way that makes the questions from the press out in the audience easy to hear, though the actors’ responses are plenty audible. (You can hear Tehanu–dimly–at about 14:45 minutes in.) A lot of the discussion is pretty predictable, how wonderful New Zealand is and how the actors are bonding. Around the 9-minute mark there’s some discussion of the 1000+ people working on the film, the actors’ preparations, and so on. Around 10:30 in there is a mention that at least some of the songs in the book will be in the film.

About 12:30 in, there’s a discussion about the casting process. At 33:30, some information on the scale doubles.

At the end, the cast all go out into the courtyard garden for a photo op. That garden, with its little waterfall and pond, were under construction during my 2004 visits to Wellington for interviews relating to my book. It’s thriving now, and a bright Wellington summer sun was shining for the photographers.

The thing that struck me about the press conference was how low-key it was. None of the big film trade papers like Variety or The Hollywood Reporter was apparently invited. The reporters all seemed to be local, and there weren’t all that many of them. There weren’t reporters all jumping in to ask a question. Indeed, there was a long pause at the beginning, and gaps between questions. That seemed like a good idea to me. No doubt there will be big press junkets later on, but for now the publicity is being handled in a casual way that seems very Kiwi in spirit.

TheOneRing.net has posted a story about a new venture between Wingnut Film Productions and Rings Scenic Tours to run “Shire Tours” of the Hobbiton set. There had been an announcement late last October that the new set, built for The Hobbit on the same farm outside Matamata that had hosted the trilogy, would be kept permanently. (After LOTR shot there, the hobbit-hole doors were removed, leaving white backings that were all that tourists could see of the built portion of the set.)

That announcement came just as the dealings between the New Zealand government and Warner Bros. had ended with the studio agreeing to keep the production in the country in exchange for further incentives. It has never, as far as I know, been revealed whether the permission to keep Hobbiton as a permanent tourist attraction was part of the government deal, but certainly Warner Bros. agreed to that arrangement at exactly the time when the negotiations ended. If it was part of the deal, then the government has helped ensure that income from tourism will be boosted by keeping The Hobbit in New Zealand.

Variety announced today that Sir Christopher Lee will receive the Academy Fellowship at this year’s British Academy of Film and Television Arts awards ceremony on February 13:

The Fellowship, which is given out annually by the academy, is the highest accolade bestowed on an individual in recognition of an outstanding and exceptional contribution to film.

Lee will join a number of lauded industryites: Previously honored Fellows include Charlie Chaplin, Alfred Hitchock, Steven Spielberg, Sean Connery, Elizabeth Taylor, Julie Christie, John Barry, Stanley Kubrick, Anthony Hopkins, Terry Gilliam and Judi Dench.

Last year’s recipient was Vanessa Redgrave.

Lee has a stellar track-record, having appeared in nearly 200 pics including “Dracula,” “The Man with the Golden Gun,” “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” and the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy.

Congratulations to Sir Christopher, who will play Saruman in The Hobbit!

3 Foot 7 today announced a start date for principal photography on The Hobbit after a delay caused by Peter Jackson’s operation for a perforated ulcer. According to Variety:

Production company 3Foot7 Ltd. made the start date announcement Monday in New Zealand.

“This date has been chosen following practical considerations of the filming schedule requirements, actor availability and the NZ seasons,” it said. “Shooting will take place at Stone Street Studios in Miramar and on location around New Zealand.”

The new start date is scheduled to be March 21.