A film version of The Hobbit is coming to a theater near you... although probably not until 2011. But those who can't stand the three-year wait can take some comfort in TheOneRing.net, which is working hard to keep fans abreast of the movie's progress. The goal of the site, founded in 1999, is to "provide an outlet for all Tolkien fans to express their enthusiasm for the world of J.R.R. Tolkien, from hardcore book fans to people who only enjoy Orlando Bloom's portrayal of Legolas," says Chris Pirrotta, one of the site's founders and the creative director.

Tolkien-related news, however esoteric, is the lifeblood of the site. "We will report anything related to the Tolkien universe to accommodate any fan, so we can have obscure headlines about Viggo Mortensen all the way to reporting on when pieces of an old Tolkien homestead are being auctioned off," Pirrotta says. "We have a great relationship with many of the people involved in the Tolkien world, so we also happen to get news and information to the community first." Indeed, director and producer Peter Jackson is unusually close to the fan site, even going so far as to attend TheOneRing.net's Oscar party first to address the fans after The Return of the King took home 11 Academy Awards.

Pirrotta's introduction to the Tolkien universe was the animated version of The Lord of the Rings (1977). After that, he discovered the books, re-reading them every year. His favorite of Jackson's film versions is The Fellowship of the Ring. "It was pretty uncanny to have someone take the imagery from my imagination and realize them onscreen in such an accurate and authentic way," he says. As for The Hobbit, he's excited that Guillermo del Toro will be the director, "as he brings such a unique vision, style and intelligence to the films." He thinks Tolkien's work has such enduring appeal because he had an "expert ability to capture basic human themes and movies. Unlike a lot of fantasy, Tolkien's work was based in a world that seems real because he used classic myth and legend to compose the story. There are many Tolkien fans who don't consider themselves fans of fantasy because they see the world he created as something that could have easily existed." ]]> tag:blogs.amctv.com,2008:/monsterfest//11.10261 2008-07-01T18:05:37Z 2008-07-01T19:31:33Z

When Choke debuts later this summer, it will have the honor of being Chuck Palahniuk's first big-screen adaptation since Fight Club. (No pressure, Choke!) But it won't be the last -- expect Survivor to follow soon, and then Lullaby. That's not just great news for Palahniuk's ravenous fans, it's great news for horror buffs as well. "Lullaby was my first shot at writing a horror novel, and it looks very likely that the Lullaby film will start shooting before the end of this year," says the author. "All I know is that it is a Swedish director, Rolf Johansson. They've told us that an Academy Award-winning actor wants to sign on as the male lead and executive producer, but they wouldn't tell me who that is." Diary is in the pipeline as well, so what about Haunted, the grisly collection of stories that famously caused dozens of fainting spells at public readings? "We had talked for a long time about trying to produce some sort of a miniseries that would be episodic like the book," comments Palahniuk. "Right now we haven't sold the rights. Maybe after we've done the other movies, it will be a little more marketable!" 

Palahniuk relished the process of adapting Choke, likening it to having one more draft in which to improve his work -- or for others to: "The parts that director Clark Gregg actually wrote are my favorite. His father's a minister, and so he was able to underscore a lot of the Christian messages in the story that I just didn't have the brains to do. I thought Clark had a really beautiful take on it, and he actually plays a fairly large role in the movie as well." So far filmmakers seem happy to include the author in the adaptation process, but Palahniuk insists he has his fans to thank for that: "The folks who read my books are so passionate about each one of them that the people making my movies are more afraid of my readership than they are of me." His fanbase, or The Cult as they prefer to be called, may be fiercely protective, but an early review of the Choke indicates they're prepared to call off their hounds.

]]> When it comes to horror, Palahniuk's inspiration hearkens back to the grim and grimy films of the 1970s. "It was the time of romantic fatalism in film, where in all the big movies, the hero lost." he says. "The Bad News Bears, Rocky, Saturday Night Fever: All these quest movies where the hero never achieved the goal, but achieved something else that they never anticipated. Horror movies fit in perfectly with that. Of the big horror movies of the '70s, you have The Omen, The Sentinel, Rosemary's Baby, The Stepford Wives, Burnt Offerings -- these are all romantic fatalist movies where there's a sort of glimmer of hope... but darkness wins." The harsh political and economic climates of that decade have returned, and Palahniuk believes, so will the bleaker endings. "For so long we'd been drawn to Steven Spielberg endings, the happily-ever-after endings of the '80s. But when society is hit by all of these all too real setbacks, it leaves us wondering: 'Can we win?' Remember Alien?" he explains, "We really knew we were in the sh-- when Tom Skerritt got killed. The good-looking male captain gets killed, and it suddenly starts to look like everything is going to turn out horribly. And in a way it does, despite that thin sliver of hope in Siguorney Weaver getting away -- a really conflicted success."

Writing such stories isn't always a picnic, either. Palahniuk goes through the same dread that his readers do. "It's much more gradual and accumulative, though," he says, "I'm thinking of these things one by one over a long period of time, and stringing them together in a much more dense way." Humor is the sharpest tool in his belt. "You can't turn up the tension to get people to go places they wouldn't readily go if you didn't have the laughs in there," he explains. "It gives people a greater freedom around things like violence or disease or drugs or mutilation. It gives them a way to accept things without being stopped by the idea. We shut ourselves off from many things we know we're going to have to deal with one of these days -- you might as well get used to them through a story or a funny movie."

]]>

After creating The Ren and Stimpy Show in 1988, John Kricfalusi's rambunctious style of animation became recognized (and imitated) worldwide. Having made music videos for Björk and Tenacious D, as well as a whole slew of bizarre independent cartoons, Kricfalusi now runs a blog on the finer points of cartooning. When it comes to horror, he prefers the classics, choosing the monster movies of his childhood over the modern gore of today. "My parents would always tell the babysitter, 'Whatever you do, don't let Johnny watch Horror House Theater. I don't care if he begs or bribes, don't let him, because he always has nightmares, and then we have to shut him up,'" he recalls. "And then they'd leave and the babysitter would give in... The Deadly Mantis or something would come on, and the special effects were things like a grasshopper walking up a photo of a skyscraper -- but I'd be crapping myself."

As he grew older (and braver), Kricfalusi grew to appreciate the camp value of these films. "Even my favorite horror movies, I laugh all the way through them. Like Strait-Jacket -- it makes every storytelling mistake that you can think of. And they do it so boldly! The ending is one of the best endings to a movie ever, because it's so wrong." Would Kricfalusi ever try making one himself? "I wouldn't mind making my own live-action horror movie, if I had another lifetime to live. I'd make up for all the things that pissed me off about monster movies when I was a kid -- get rid of all the filler and give them what they want!"

John Kricfalusi's Top 10 Horror Films

"I've seen Night of the Hunter probably a 100 times. I experience 50 different emotions at the same time while watching it -- my skin is crawling, but at the same time I'm laughing. It's so extreme -- I can't believe someone was able to put everything into a film all at the same time."

Orson Welles was 20 years younger than the character he was cast to play in The Long, Hot Summer. Perhaps that's why chose to wear heavy make-up and a prosthetic nose to play the part. It's also possible he thought the big nose would make him more menacing (an appropriate attribute for the forceful patriarch, Will Varner), or -- let's face it -- Welles had a thing for fake noses. Whatever the reason, it made for a difficult shoot.

Shooting took place near Baton Rouge, Louisiana in September of 1957. The weather was as steamy as the Faulkner-inspired script. "There's nothing worse than having someone start a scene," recalled Newman, "and then the make up guy comes over and starts picking and gluing your nose back on." Newman and Joanne Woodward (who starred as Varner's daughter) sympathized with the classically trained actor who had fallen out of fashion. "It must have been a terrible, terrible feeling for him to have to be confronted by all these young hot shots... trained at the Actors Studio," said Woodward.

With the help of the disguise, or in spite of it, he gives a great performance. "There was something you couldn't resist about Orson," said Lansbury. "Even though he was a son of a b--- at times."

For the full schedule of The Long, Hot Summer on AMC, click here.

To review the movie yourself, click here.