Eye Candy – VFX Of The Hobbit: The Desolation Of Smaug Featurette

Weta Digital, the masterminds behind the stunning virtual cinematography in The Hobbit: The Desolation Of Smaug, have posted a quick featurette about their work. It’s a neat little package that shows the process from soup to nuts on a small portion of the film. For those of you who were convinced the effects of the movie were the work of digital dark elves on a never ending quest to kill creeps and grind up through levels while leaving magical pixie dust pixels behind in their terrible wake, here is a peek behind the curtain. Also, please stop huffing your keyboard cleaner. It’s becoming a real problem.

Via Bleeding Cool.

Robots, Dragons and Sandworms, or: Stephen Colbert in The Hobbit

Yeah, I’m not gonna lie to you: not only is there still a baffling lack of comics news today with it being two days before New Year’s, but today I had to bring the Crisis On Infinite Midlives mascot, Parker The Kitten, to the vet, and not only that, but I took delivery on, installed and configured a top-of-the-line robotic vacuum to clean up after Crisis On Infinite Midlives mascot, Parker The Kitten. And those activities in and of themselves would have led to a busy day even if making the robot chase Parker around the house while I shrieked, “Exterminate! Exterminate!” didn’t lead to hours of hilarity.

But they did lead to hours of hilarity, and I am still working on my Best of 2013 piece, which means that there is fuck-all of genre news to report today. But there is one nifty little thing that I found today: anyone who watches The Colbert Report on Comedy Central knows that Stephen Colbert is a world class J.R.R. Tolkien fan. The man can argue the vital nature of Tom Bombadil the same way I can argue what a shame it is that Frank Herbert dropped dead halfway through writing Children of Dune, making that half-book the final word written about the Atreides family.

However, it is unlikely, despite my fandom, that I will be cast in the Dune movie, since it was released when I was 13 years old and, in the way I can argue that Children of Dune was the final book, I can argue that there was actually no Dune movie.

Colbert, however, was cast in a Tolkien movie, specifically the most recent Hobbit movie, The Desolation of Smaug. He wasn’t cast as one of the major players (not even one of the major players that director Peter Jackson and his writers made up – hi, Kate from Lost!), but as some dude in the background, easily missed. But we have found some screen grabs of Colbert’s appearance, which you can see in more detail after the jump.

Brain Bleach – Gary Busey Says “Pray For The Best. Prepare For The Worst. Here Come The Hobbits.”

Gary Busey has put the word out: he is interested in anyone who may have “had past life regressions and been a hobbit in a past life” to let him know, because he would like to discuss Hobbitism ^TM with you. He is under the impression that the males and females can’t tell each other apart…until they get a chance to hook up and do a package check, “which must make it exciting for them!”. Also, hobbits really enjoy using dead cockroaches for all game playing, jewelry, and hair accessory needs. I had no idea.

Check out Gary’s other deep, hobbit-y musings, after the jump.

Crisis On Multiple Earths: Hurricanes and Hobbit Trailers

Busy day here at the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office, what with Frankenstorm preparation in full swing: running around, buying bottles of drinking water, emptying them and refilling them with beer.

So as we flail about, charging every piece of personal electronics we own so we can keep ourselves entertained and productive in the event of power failure (it’s hard to try and convince the neighbor kids to read Black Kiss 2 when they’re hiding from downed power lines), it’s important to remember that the summer storm season is almost over, to be followed by the holiday movie season. And that means we will soon be able to put aside our mortal world of shitty tropical storms in favor of Middle Earth, where the sun shines on the Shire, Elevensies includes ale, and it only storms when you get too close to Mordor.

So in that interest, let’s all stop boarding up our windows for a moment, and watch the latest TV spot for the first Hobbit movie, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, which is out in American theaters on December 14th. A time of year when there are no hurricanes or tropical storms… only crippling blizzards. Because one does not simply walk into genre movies.

Previews Are The Best Part: SDCC 2012 Preview Night

So Preview Night is past us now, and while I know it’s not even theoretically possible that it was busier than last year – after all, Preview Night passes have been selling out since about 2009 – it sure feels like it was. A few years ago it was possible on preview night for someone to, say, get ripped to the tits on Stone Arrogant Bastard IPA for four hours before he doors opened and then cruise around the floor, staging stupid and adolescent photographs with the Jabba The Hutt prop at the Hasbro booth. If you tried that now, you would inevitably stumble into someone waiting in a truly horrific line for an exclusive S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier playset, be unable to convince said line-waiter that you weren’t claim jumping, and wind up instigating a pathetic slapfight.

There is very little convention programming that occurs on Preview Night, so the action is centered on the main convention floor. The night’s original and intended purpose is to allow people who are attending the con to obtain exclusives, or who are looking for some particular, special item, piece of art or back issue, to have access to the vendors early and get the purchase out of the way so they can enjoy the rest of the convention. As such, any actual comic news is few and far between on Preview Night… but there is certainly some, and if there isn’t? There is spectacle.