These are photos from the NY premiere of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, which is out on December 14 and is sure to clean up around the holidays. I’ll probably see it, I loved the Lord of The Rings trilogy, although I found some of the movies too long to sit through. Let’s see… this film is 2 hours and 46 minutes long. WHY?!!! Please do not do this to us again, Peter Jackson. Cut some of the scenes where the merry band of travelers is hanging out around campfires and chatting while they trudge toward their destination. You know this movie is full of them. If I could just get away with skipping this film, I wouldn’t care, but I badly want to see it and I’m torn. I don’t give a three hour chunk of time to anything without multi-tasking.

Anyway everyone is focusing on the lovely Liv Tyler at the premiere, which is understandable since she’s the main female celebrity there. Cate Blanchett didn’t show up, but she was at the LA premiere so I’ll give her a pass. I would have loved to see her though. I adore Liv, and I’m giving her a pass for this bad outfit since she makes up for it by being Liv. She’s like Cate Blanchett to me in that way (not that she’s on the same level as Blanchett acting-wise, and I’m hoping I don’t offend Blanchett superfans with this declaration). Liv can wear a weird short satin skirt, a bizarre tattered ruffle shirt, a formal jacket, black pantyhose and some super fug red bow heels and not look awful. She’s wearing open-toed shoes with pantyhose, and you don’t do that Liv! Just no. I do like how she matched her lipstick to her shoes though. She’s so gorgeous. I don’t have a designer ID on that outfit but I’m betting Stella McCartney is involved somehow.

Also there was star Martin Freeman. He is so wonderful in Sherlock. I hope this is his big breakout role and that he’s cast in more movies now. I really adore him.

Elijah Wood looking like a cutie.

Sir Ian McKellen hugging Elijah. You shall not pass!

Aidan Turner. I haven’t heard much about him but I guess he’s a 29 year-old Irish actor. He’s playing a Hobbit dwarf named “Kili.” Very hot.

Gollum himself, Andy Serkis. I heard him explain that he got the inspiration for his character’s voice by hearing his cat cough up a hairball.

Lee Pace, he plays Thranduil. I love his sideburns!

Update: Richard Armitage, by request!

Update 2: Ooh VH1 morning buzz just sent us a link to an awesome interview with all of the dwarves from The Hobbit, in which they answer questions in rapid-fire. This was so much fun I had to embed it! Standouts: Graham McTavish and Dean O’Gorman.

Photo credit: FameFlynet and WENN.com

After what seems like an eon of production hell, the teaser trailer for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey has finally materialized. The movie, of course, will be the first of two Hobbit films based upon J.R.R. Tolkien’s works and directed by Peter Jackson (Lord of the Rings; King Kong). I’m not a huge fan of the source material because, to be blunt, I didn’t go crazy about all of that Middle earth stuff during my childhood (I was more of a Nancy Drew chick), but die-hard fans have been waiting forever to see this movie. And even after this trailer, they’re still going to have to wait another year for the first movie itself, which releases in December 2012, and even longer for the second installment, which arrives in December 2013.

Naturally, the promotion has already started, and EW.com has released the first few stills of the film in conjunction with the new teaser trailer. As far as the main casting goes, Martin Freeman (“Sherlock”) plays title character Bilbo Baggins; Ian McKellan will be, to borrow an expression from Tom Cruise, “amazing” as Gandalf; Cate Blanchett plays Noldorin princess Galadriel; and Elijah Wood shall pop in as Frodo. Here’s that trailer:

At first, I was wondering whether the fanboys (and girls) would tear this sneak peek to pieces because they’re probably so frustrated at waiting so long for the actual movie. Seriously, there have been a million false starts, so fans would have to be really devoted to hang onto any semblance of hope. Well, the YouTube comments on the trailer range from “I NEED TO CLEAN MY SCREEN NOW” to “Teasing this film one year before the release is pure evil…” to “omg omg omg omg want to see NAOW.” Yeah, this film will make far too much money when it finally arrives.

Photos courtesy of EW.com and Coming Soon

The last time we covered Elijah Wood, he was complaining that he couldn’t even smoke his cigarettes outside like a civilized person, and he pledged to politely refrain when he was asked. That story fueled a mild debate about whether air was “free” and whether smoking outside also impinged on the rights of non-smokers. Well now Elijah has chimed in on the issue of smoking pot. He claims he doesn’t personally smoke pot, but that his “friends” do and it should be decriminalized. I had to look up where Elijah is from, because I kind-of knew he was American but momentarily confused him with his fellow hobbit Dominic Monaghan, who is British. (That’s relevant because pot is decriminalized in England.) Elijah thinks pot should be decriminalized here, too:

Elijah Wood “wishes” he had a higher “tolerance” for marijuana.

The 30-year-old actor can’t understand why the drug is still illegal because he believes it to be “harmless” but admits he rarely uses the substance himself because of the side effects it produces.

He said: “I think the whole notion that marijuana is illegal is past the point of ridiculousness. It seems a little silly to be uptight about something that’s so natural.

“To be honest, I’m not really much of a pot smoker – it never really sat well with me. I’ve got friends that smoke and have smoked for years. I’ve always wished I could achieve that comfort and tolerance, but I have no tolerance for it whatsoever.

“But I’ve always been an advocate. I just feel it should be decriminalized. We’re spending taxpayers’ money on putting people away for something so harmless.”

The ‘Lord of the Rings’ star believes marijuana use is widespread in Hollywood and has become a “normal” part of life.

He told High Times magazine: “It’s gotten to the point where it just seems a natural part of people’s lives. It’s certainly not taboo; I know a number of people who have medical cards. People feel very free talking about it. It doesn’t seem to be hidden or shoved under the carpet. It’s part of people’s lives in a very natural way.”

[From High Times, Bang via CTV.ca]

I guess pot-smoking features heavily in Elijah’s FX series Wilfred, about a guy who interacts with a man in a dog suit who seems like a regular dog to everyone else. So that could explain why he’s commenting on it, or why someone asked him about that issue.

It doesn’t make sense to me that medical marijuana is only legal in certain states while very powerful and potentially more harmful and addictive prescription drugs are available all over the US. I agree that pot should be decriminalized and that it should be more readily available for medical purposes. I live on the East Coast, where we don’t see as much pot use because we can’t get prescriptions for it. I do see people I know getting addicted to Oxycontin though and that ruins lives much more than smoking up.

Elijah is shown on 7/13 at Heathrow airport and on 6/20 at an event. How adorable is he in those glasses? Credit: WENN.com

When I first read this story, I relied on Contact Music’s secondhand account, which made it sound like Elijah wrote a whole essay on behalf of smoker’s rights. However I was able to read the full article and Elijah just mentions not being able to smoke outside as one of ten things that he found annoying. The whole article is actually pretty awesome, so while I’ll bitch about Elijah’s point about smoking in a moment I have give him props for writing a intelligent, funny list of things that bug him.

(Some of) Elijah’s Top Ten Irritants
1. Remakes and reboots. Have we not the balls to support original material? Why must the vast majority of our unique pieces be relegated to miniscule budgets and poor exposure, while hundreds of millions of dollars are put toward rehashing used ideas? How about we even out the budgeting a bit. Remember when we chose a little-known Polish director to helm a film about the devil impregnating Mia Farrow?

3. Anti-smoking laws that now extend to outdoor spaces. Can we not let the use of free air be determined by the people using it? Should someone have a problem with roving smoke, they could simply ask the offending smoker if he or she would kindly refrain. Most spaces are smoke free, and I accept that – particularly inside restaurants – but can smokers not have patios and general outdoor areas?

4. Truncated texting. Most of us have full keyboards on our magical mobile devices – use them. It was understandable on numbered keypads and even forgivable with the aid of T9. But now? C u l8r? No, you won’t.

5. Orcs. Ugly f’ers

6.(Most) clubs. Crowds of people dressed in their finery, standing outside, lining up around the block yearning for acceptance – only to enter a loud space with predominantly awful music, bottle service, and neither the room to move nor the ability to utter words that can be heard without shouting. I’ve often wondered why hordes flock to these overstyled douche cantinas.

7. When people aren’t held accountable for their actions. If you f*ck up, deal with it – it’s your responsibility. Somehow we’ve created a world where a person spills coffee on himself, sues the coffee company and wins.

8. Relationship statuses on Facebook. Breaking up with someone in the real world is hard enough. There’s no need to do it digitally. That there’s some weight attached in changing your status from “in a relationship” to “single” is ridiculous.

[From Black Book]

“Overstyled douche cantinas,” that’s priceless!

In terms of the smoking issue, I get headaches from second hand smoke and am extremely sensitive to it. When I’m in Berlin I live in a big apartment building. Since there are so many places where people can smoke in Europe, it’s still very common. People go outside and smoke on their balconies and the smoke inevitably drifts into my windows and bothers me. I wouldn’t dare tell people not to smoke on their own balcony, but it does make me ill. Plus, I’ll be honest, there’s nowhere in the entire city that I can comfortably eat outdoors because so many people smoke. So I have to go inside the restaurant in the summer and smoke still comes inside anyway.

When people are allowed to smoke anywhere outside they often huddle near doors to buildings. Non smokers have to pass through all that smoke and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been affected by clouds of smoke that have stuck to my hair and clothing, right after I got all cleaned up to go out.

It’s also not enough to tell people that we can ask smokers to stop. Elijah Wood is surely considerate about it, as are the majority of most smokers I would guess. Just a few a**holes can ruin it, though. Once I was at a Shakespeare in the Park festival when I was visibly very pregnant and the couple seated right next to us refused to stop smoking because it was “outside.” When my husband pointed out that I was pregnant, the people were like “so?”

So I get that smokers think that it should be fine to smoke outside, but that doesn’t mean that noxious stuff doesn’t bother non-smokers, that air is somehow “free” for the taking, or that we’re all just going to get along fine. Instead of trying to figure out where he can smoke, maybe Elijah should quit. That’s the point of these laws restricting smoking, and if they save lives they’re worth it.

Also, in regard to #7 – I used to feel the same way about the McDonald’s coffee lawsuit until I saw the HBO documentary Hot Coffee. The lady wasn’t driving despite what you may have heard, she was in the passenger seat and the car was parked. She got 3rd degree burns all over her thighs and the photos were horrific. There were hundreds of other burning incidents that McDonalds completely ignored until that lawsuit was brought against them, so I have a different view of it now. I do agree with his statement on personal responsibility though, and I loved reading him bitch about so many different things.

Wood is now starring on a new FX series called Wilfred. Kaiser has been watching it, and she says he’s awesome and that the show is incredible and funny. I can’t wait to check it out!

Wood is shown on 6/20/11. (He’s wearing different outfits but the photos have the same date. Credit: WENN

Earlier this week, we saw some promotional posters for a new campaign to raise money on International Aids Day for a charity founded by Alicia Keys called “Keep Hope Alive.” The campaign featured many celebrities in caskets as a metaphor for their “digital death” including Justin Timberlake, Jennifer Hudson, Ryan Seacrest, Kim Kardashian, Usher and Lady Gaga, with the promise that they’d all stay off social media starting Wednesday, December 1, until $1 million was raised. It’s Friday and the latest update on the “Buy Life” website has less than $200,000 being raised for charity. Does this mean we’ll have a quiet holiday season? Will someone call time on this experiment and let these celebrities start tweeting again? Yahoo’s OMG has this news, along with some analysis of why the campaign has been unsuccessful.

The nifty campaign by Alicia Keys’ “Keep a Child Alive” charity launched on Wednesday (World AIDS Day), declaring that Hollywood would die “a digital death” until a casket full of cash was raised.

“The world’s top celebrities are sacrificing their digital lives to give real life to millions of people affected by HIV/AIDS in Africa and India,” the campaign states. “That means no more Twitter or Facebook updates from any of them. No more knowing where they are, what they had for dinner, or what interesting things are happening in their lives. From here on out, they’re dead. Kaput. Finished.”

Celebrities including Ryan Seacrest, Kim Kardashian, Lady Gaga, Serena Williams, Justin Timberlake, and Elijah Wood all took part in the campaign — many posing “dead” in caskets for the cause and recording video statements before their figurative demise.

The organizers promised that when fans donate more than $1,000,000, “everyone will be back online and tweeting in no time.”

As of 7 p.m. EST Wednesday, however, just $70,000 had been donated — meaning unless Seacrest’s fans come up with $930,000, the “American Idol” host and the rest of the “dead” celebrities won’t be tweeting for the foreseeable future.

(UPDATE: As of 7:30 p.m. EST Thursday, the total is $180,950 — still more than $800,000 shy of their goal.)

Kidding aside, two fundamental problems with this fundraising stunt:

1. The organizers put a $10 minimum on donations. Alicia Keys or Lady Gaga fans might be willing to part with a cup of coffee, but not what it would cost to download their next album on iTunes. The economy hasn’t recovered that much.

2. Another critical error — by keeping the celebrities off Twitter and Facebook during the donation process, the campaign is losing an enormous amount of social media marketing — from the “dead” celebrities themselves. What they should’ve done was have the threat of their collective “digital death” build up while they were allowed to solicit donations from their 30 million-plus followers on Twitter and Facebook today. If fans didn’t meet the stated goal, then kill them off, one by one.

[From OMG.Yahoo.com]

That’s sad, considering that it’s a good cause. The threshold donation should be $2 or less and maybe they would be able to make this work. They could also offer incentives, like random retweets and follows from celebrities for donors. I agree with OMG’s point that it was kind of dumb to tell the celebrities they couldn’t tweet until a million was raised. It must have been Alicia Keys’ idea. Most of the celebrities’ twitter accounts I checked are still inactive. Who is going to call time on this experiment? Will Kim Kardashian be the first to break the silence after she freaks out that she’s losing so much money for paid tweets? Why don’t these celebrities pony up the rest if they want to be back online? All joking aside, they should have asked for a million bucks to get the celebrities to stop using Twitter and Facebook for a day.

Photos via Amy Grindhouse and Zap2it

Elijah Wood is Frodo. He was born to play Frodo. I would even suspend disbelief if they announced he was playing Bilbo in The Hobbit.

It seems that even Elijah has accepted his inherent Frodo-ness and kept a pretty low profile since The Lord of the Rings films, taking parts in indie films or voices of cartoon penguins and running his record label while the other actors have done bigger projects: Orlando Bloom, Viggo Mortensen, Sean Bean, Dominic Monaghan. Heck, even Karl Urban is a bigger box office draw than Elijah — he’s Bones McCoy after all.

Now, Elijah is going to star in an offbeat TV show called Wilfred, playing a guy named Ryan who makes friends with a man dressed in a dog suit that everyone else sees as an actual dog.

“It reminded me of Harvey, for sure,” Wood says. “Clearly you could interpret Jimmy [Stewart]‘s character as having a mental problem, or you can interpret his character as having checked out of reality. Ryan’s come to a point in his life where he has reached a crossroads and needs to push himself to live life to its fullest. Wilfred represents that side of his psyche that presses him to do things he wouldn’t normally do. But I wouldn’t call Wilfred a sage. There are precarious situations that Ryan will be put in as a result of Wilfred.”

[From Entertainment Weekly, print edition, November 12, 2010]

Wood also plans to at least visit the set of The Hobbit, which will be filming in New Zealand since the labor dispute has been resolved.

“I’m relieved the dispute with the unions was figured out and the film is staying in New Zealand. If I could continue to make movies there for the rest of my life, I would be very happy. I know what it’s going to be like for a number of the actors who are going out there for The Hobbit. I’m excited for them, and envious to a certain degree. That experience marked an amazing time in my life.”

[From Entertainment Weekly, print edition, November 12, 2010]

I know it’s corny, but Lord of the Rings was a good time in my life too. In fact, I have a set of Gollum bookends and a lifesize Legolas cut-out I’m willing to sell if anyone’s interested.

Wilfred is expected to debut on FX in mid-2011. Elijah will also be appearing November 15 in 24 Hour Plays on Broadway, along with Claire Danes and America Ferrera.

Elijah Wood is shown on 9/7/10 at The Romantics premiere. Credit: Fame Pictures

These are some of the cutest paparazzi photos I’ve seen and I just had to share them. Elijah Wood, 27, was photographed at the Apple Store in LA on Saturday and he looked genuinely pleased to get his photo taken.

Best known for his role as protagonist hobbit Frodo in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Wood has not had as many big screen roles since the series wrapped. He’s done a lot of voiceover work, with a role in animated film Happy Feet and on videogames like “The Legend of Spyro: Dawn of the Dragon.” He last appeared in The Oxford Murders, a film based on a novel by Argentinian mathematician Guillermo Martínez. Wood plays a graduate student in mathematics who tries to solve serial killings that are being committed using an elusive formula. The film was out in international markets earlier this year.

Last month, Wood appeared in the first episode of the third season of Jack Osbourne’s reality series Adrenaline Junkie. The show airs on UK station ITV2 Wednesdays at 9:00. He set a death-defying world record while taping the show, and was the first person to cross Victoria Falls, the largest waterfalls in the world by some measures, on ropes.

Earlier this year, Wood confirmed that a two part Hobbit film directed by Peter Jackson is in the works. He said he wasn’t sure his character, Frodo, would be involved as the story is “an ancillary tale” but that he would gladly reprise his character as it brings back good memories for him. Peter Jackson and Guillermo Del Toro announced late this summer that they would be writing the Hobbit themselves, and there is buzz that it may be released in Imax format.

[Some details from Wikipedia]

Photo credit: Fame Pictures

Sometimes good things really do happen in this crazy world. And this is one of them. First watch, and then we’ll mock. I’ll wait.

That’s right, Elijah Wood is teaching us all how to do his favorite dancey dance. Which could not be timed better, because last night as I was lying in bed with incurable insomnia, I asked myself, “Self, what would Elijah Wood look like if he danced?” I was really hoping it involved a skintight yellow shirt and matching yellow shoes, but I didn’t want to get myself so wound up that I couldn’t sleep even more, so I didn’t dare whisper about the yellow shoes.

That’s right, Elijah Wood’s favorite dance is the puppet master. Which is also a super creepy horror film, so it’s good for kids on a lot of levels. I think he used one of Britney Spears’s fired choreographers for this awesome bit of puppetry. Elijah seems way too into his dance, and not in the “I’m-doing-this-because-I-got-three-DUIs-and-I-need-to-do-something-to-help-my-
public-image” way. More in the “I-practice-this-at-home-with-my-pants-off” way.

And I’m sorry but that green striped guy on the left? He’s totally phoning it in.

The best part is when he “goes craaaaaaazy!” and whips out his “I just got kicked out of Roxy” dance moves. This leaves me confused, and with a lot of questions. Is this the kind of thing that kills a career or helps it? Does this mean Elijah Wood is unbalanced, or so ultra-balanced and secure with himself that he’s alright with it? Did he lose a dare, or does the producer of this show (Nickelodeon’s “Yo Gabba Gabba”) have something on Elijah that he’s using to blackmail him? These are the questions that will torment me tonight as I lay awake, trying to fight the insomnia. That and the dancey-dance, and that yellow, yellow shirt.