29 November 2011

Hobbiton Reborn!

Just over a year ago Kuriositas reported on the state of the set of Hobbiton in Matamata, New Zealand. The news wasn't good.

After the filming of the Lord of the Rings, the owners of the farm upon which Hobbiton was created asked if some of the hobbit homes could remain to serve as an additional tourist attraction to the area. And they made it so, but soon things were being taken over by the sheep! Yet there is now good news from The Shire - what a difference a year can make!

Thanks to Sir Peter Jackson and his crew returning to Matamata to film the ‘prequel’, the set has been rebuilt – and how!  Sir Peter Jackson’s company and the farm have entered into a joint venture arrangement to allow movie fans to visit the newly reconstructed film set of The Hobbit. Sir Peter was recently pictured with New Zealand Prime Minister John Key (below) on the set which is now open again to the public - but with the set properly retained this time!

If you want to see how the set looked before Sir Peter’s return, please click here. However, below is a selection of pictures from the set which you are now able to visit, should you be (handily enough) in New Zealand any time soon! It seems odd, in a way, being able to visit the set of a movie which is yet to be released…


18 November 2011

Occupy Mordor!

29 July 2011

The Hobbit in Under 2 Minutes


If you are too busy lazy to read thebook and are listlessly waiting the never ending wait for the Peter Jackson movie version, perhaps you might want to consider filling your Tolkien knowledge in with this short animation by Declan Moran of The Brothers Grim and Grimy. 

It isn't quite like the Wikipedia entry either.  Described by Moran as Valley Girl + Hobbit + Lebowski = Most Concise Summary Ever, that pretty much gives you an idea about how you are going to spend the next two minutes.

As such, you are either going to love this or despise it with a passion.  You can guess my feelings by its presence on Kuriositas - though I must admit to being a fan of Moran's earlier work Dante's Inferno in Under 2 Minutes. It has spiked my interest in the book once again, so much that I can feel a scurry to the book shelves coming on...

28 November 2010

Has Gollum Finally Found Happiness?

In something of a shock to communities everywhere, not to mention fellowships, everyone's favorite wizened Stoor Hobbit seems, at last, to have found happiness.  No date has yet been set and it is not known under which name the Hobbit formerly known as Sméagol will marry.  Attempts to foil the paparazzi have seemingly failed and it seems that the wedding will be the usual media circus.

Yes, OK.  Not a real newspaper headline but a parody, spotted yesterday in London's Hackney.

1 September 2010

Treebeard is in the Car Park


There has been something slightly bothering me when I get to the car park for a for a while now. You know how it is - something at the back of your mind that makes you think that somehow you are being watched?  Well, I finally realised today what it was that had been bothering me for so long. Treebeard is in the Car Park.


Hobbit botherin'?  Not today.  Fast asleep is old Treebeard.


Look, there he is, in the center of this picture, as clear as day.  Ancient, sleepy and venerable, he has been there all this time, while I stagger in to work in a somnambulistic state.  I won't tell you how long I have worked there, but not to have noticed him before is a little shameful, to say the least.

Treabeard, perhaps I should explain, is from the Lord of the Rings.  He is the oldest of the species of trees called Ents and usually lives in the Forest of Fanghorn, when he isn't enjoying a sleepy sojourn in Lewisham, South East London.  And why not be sleepy?  After all his own motto is don't be hasty.

I can think of a few Orcs he can squish, right here, right now - if he would just wake up!

Still can't see the similarity?  OK, I don't do Photoshop (you will soon see why that statement did not really have to be made) but when Treabeard awakes, you may recall his features....

Bad?  What about this then?
OK, that is as good as it gets this end... can you do better?  I think so!  Crikey, I hope so.  All of you Photoshop experts out there - want to do something with Treabeard here?  Do what you will and email them to me - and they can take pride of place below!

Small hobbit sized prize to the best entrant!

4 August 2010

Hobbiton: Sheep 1, Hobbits 0

Matamata in New Zealand was the place chosen to film the Hobbiton scenes of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy of movies.  After the film was finished the farm upon which the Hobbit village was created asked if some of the hobbit homes could remain to serve as an additional tourist attraction to the area.

...And so it was.  However, it does look as if the sheep have discovered a new home and evicted the previous hobbit owners.  A shame in some ways.  However, the structures were never built and then fully furnished - all the scene's inside of Bilbo's house were shot in a studio far away.

In other words, don't go to Matamata's Hobbiton expecting Disneyland.  Yet while you may be enticed to this rural community by the ghosts of Peter Jackson's movies, there is more to the place than Hobbiton, even though it is still a quaint remnant of a supreme series of movies.

The set still has a charm all of its own.  OK, you may need to squint a little to imagine a populated village, with smoke rising from the chimneys.  Yet the New Zealand countryside here is at its most stunning and the farm on which Hobbiton sits offers tourists a tour, showing you how sheep are shorn (for breaking squatting laws, perhaps) and the opportunity to pet the lambs.

Just sit back, use your imagination and you will be in Hobbiton.  Just look at the scenery, after all.  You are in the Shire.


And no, you can't eat the lambs. Tsk.

See how Hobbiton has changed in 2011 after the completion of the filming of The Hobbit!