Billy Connolly joins The Hobbit!?! Say whaaaaa....????

Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. This is pretty awesome news, actually. Billy Connolly not only joins The Hobbit, but he's going to be playing a badass warrior dwarf!

Mike Fleming at Deadline got the scoop that Connolly will be playing Dain Ironfoot, Thorin's cousin who answers the call to arms that becomes the Battle of the Five Armies.

Ironfoot's clan of dwarves are badass warriors even by dwarf standards and I can just see Connolly chewing the scenery just right.

So, there you go. Filming has started back up in Wellington and will wrap this summer. Now that I'm out of Sundance and have put a lot of my backlog of stories and interviews to bed I'll be returning to my Hobbit set reports. Still a ton of great stuff to come, including a visit to Beorn's house, helicopter flights up mountains and observations from the edge of Mirkwood.

Not that I minded, Deathly Hallows Part 2 was my favourite Potter flick. So I guess they're going from "Bilbo gets bashed on the head and misses the whole thing" to "Two and a half goddamn hours of battle! Then Bilbo gets bonked on the head.

I can't look at that picture without an entire scene playing itself out in my imagination.
I really admire how they are managing to make a complete narrative out of the journey of making the film, from the big production diary episodes to the little one-line items like this, to our faithful embedded reporter. It is still almost a year until the first half of the movie comes out and I feel like I've already gotten my money's worth.

He and Aiden Turner get off light. I love that you know the other dwarves are a bit peeved that the pretty boy doesn't have to wear a faux beard or a big honker, just a damn rockstar wig. First they cast Lee Pace as the King of the Wood Elves, Benedict Cumberbatch as Smaug (I believe he's doing the mocap...god yes) and now Connoly, the cast for this has me completely immersed already.

One of my favourite Connolly bits is when he talks about visiting Disneyland for the first time with his kids. He reckons DL is like mecca for fat people and he does this impression of the fat family, walking down the street, taking up the whole footpath so nobody else could pass. He mentions the strange fat mound between their legs and how it's this whole other growth that normal people don't have.
Thing is, it's done with Billy's usual rising anger and disbelief and sense of "WTF?!?!"
Cracked me THE FUCK UP!

Just get the much older guy to portray Dain and be done with it. Yeah, it doesn't REALLY matter in the Hobbit films who is older ... but you Tolkien geeks know you were thinkin' it!
For myself, I'm just hopin' I can understand what the Hell Dain is sayin'.

and his motorbike....
but its been a while since he used his guitar..
He used to be in a folk band with the late Gerry Rafferty called the Humblebums...
back in his wilder days before he his shrink of a wife. Dr pamela stephenson.
She threatened to divorce him by saying if you dont give up smoking, drinking and cursing I am leaving you.
this is the moment they met...
very funny...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlUb8jt0WP0

Or written any scenes for her, or given her any makeup or costuming. They just let her show up whenever she wants and wander in and out of whatever scene they're shooting, talking her cute little gibberish. It'll all make sense in the editing suite.

... if you don't understand it, I cannot help ya. ... ok, I'll try: In the books, Thorin is older than Dain (not a lot, 'bout 20 years or so, give or take a year or two). Here, in the film, the MUCH older actor is playin' Dain, when, really, he (well, maybe not Connolly) should be playin' Thorin. But, like I said, it doesn't really matter. 87.4% of the people seein' the film won't know that piece of Tolkien trivia, and 84.6% of them wouldn't give a crap about it if they did.

Fucking brilliant. I wanted to ask him about the little seen but brilliant Fido but alas I never got my chance. Me missus bumped into him in town though and her and her mate said he was absolutely charming.

YOU OBVIOUSLY KNOW NOTHING ABOUT THE MAN,OR HIS LIFE.AND FOR THE WALKING OFF BECAUSE OF HECKLING COMMENTS,IT WAS DRUNKEN ENGLISH IDIOTS WHO WERE SHOUTING AND BEING ABUSIVE THROUGH OUT THE FIRST HOUR OF THE SHOW,THEY RUINED IT FOR EVERYONE.

hoping that I will suddenly be interested in seeing these two films but they pretty much just keep driving me a way. I think I've figured it out. It's not Billy Connelly in this story that turns me away, it's the use of phrases like "bad ass warrior dwarf". Bad ass? In the hobbit? I don't understand the desire to make the hobbit cooler or bad ass. It's already a book that has stood the test of time and now it's written about and transformed into a movie by people who think it needs dressed up for the screen. Now I finally understand people who hated the Lord of the Rings movies. You know what hasn't stood the test of time? Those three movies. They were fine at first but their impact has decayed over time. They really are not an accurate representation of the spirit of the books. They are like Pornography. And these two hobbit movies...I'm sure they'll be well made but I think they'll be soul-numbing to any true Tolkien Fan.

it's the reaction of certain people in the audience.
It's a safe bet that THE HOBBIT will NOT feature ANY "bad ass dwarf warriors" but that won't stop some people from raving about how bad ass the dwarf warriors were.

a spectacle.
I believe it's only one chapter in The Hobbit (correct me if I'm wrong), but you can tell from casting (Connolly, Evangeline Lilly, etc.) that they're fleshing out characters or adding them outright, and a lot of it revolving around the Battle of Five Armies in the second movie.
PJ is going to amp that sucker up to be the mother of all battle sequences.

Jackson shouldn’t try to make it more of a spectacle than the one in RotK. He should try to make it exciting by giving it a different dynamic rather than a larger scale, which should be easy given the types of people/animals fighting in the Bot5A vs. the Pelennor. That’s my opinion, anyway.

Christophe Lee said in an interview after being cast as Saruman that Lord of the Rings is his favorite novel and he's read it every year, or just about every year, since the first time when he was a younger man.
He was simply PERFECT as Saruman. Even other, arguably better, actors would not have come close to his interpretation in my mind.
He wasn't just getting a paycheck. Not even close.
Personally, I don't want people calling themselves actors who only show up because they want a paycheck. In the world of art and creativity, pay, while obviously necessary, should be the icing on the cake, not the sole reason for bothering to even do it.
We don't call those people anything other than what they actually are: hacks - doing only the absolute bare minimum to get the job done and get paid.
Now, while I love Connolly's stand-up and liked some of the roles he's done that I've seen, if he actually has any real gripes against the film then I'm not so sure this is a great thing.
Now, in reality, it was probably just a part of his bit at the time and not how he really feels.

Whether or not you think they an accurate rep of the book doesnt make a bit of differance..As three films they are amazing...Unlike Star Wars, everything about LOTR was well done. SW acting and dialog was cheesy ( and im a huge fan) and thats what dates sw so badly...LOTR was well acting, the screenplay was great and of course the fx are incredible.Although those will soon be dated if not already. But because the films were so well made i think there no doubt that they will age very well. I can understand people not liking them in relation to the books, but if you look at them as just three films and nothing more its hard to argue that they are not great films.. Capturing every detail, or even most details, in a film is impossible and i can tell you the hobbit wont manage to do it either. but if you go in just hoping to see a good and fun movie i bet this will deliver

Forget that crap, Empire strikes back is a masterpiece of not just a blockbuster but of filmmaking in general.
It holds up to any of the three LOTR films, the fact it cameout in 1980 is even more amazing.

the acting improved alot as they grew into their roles and the screenplay was much more polished...i think its one of the greatest film ever made...My point is that LOTRs will hold up reguardless of its relation to the books because a well made film of that quaility can stand on its own...I can enjoy The Game Of Thrones even though i think they missed the tone of the books and got some of the characters all wrong...I never go into a film adaptation of a book expecting it to be anything like the book therefore i can judge the film on it own terms..

Empire will hold up because the acting was good as they grew into there roles and the script was more polished, but a new hope has not aged well for me at all...LOTRs will hold up because great films usually do..especially when its so well made...i mean say what you will about its relation to the book but how can anyone deny its quality..what is its weakness as a film?

..of the spirit of the books."
Really?
Since Jackson and co. hit every major theme and even managed to throw in some pretty cool backstory, I'd say the spirit of the books was perfectly captured. Quibble all you want about Bombadil or the Scouring of the Shire being omitted but the fading of the Elves to the ascension of Men to Galadriel's final observance to the Valar...it was every bit there. Both in spirit and flesh.
Good heavens, with a tome so dense it's amazing how much WAS included! I do agree there were additons which only served to complicate some story threads. Nonetheless, I thought THE major theme, which perfectly captured the spirit of the overall story, was nailed perfectly. That is the scene where Aragorn, now crowned, and the gathered masses bowed down to the four Hobbits atop the Citadel of Minas Tirith. The elevation of the humble to positions of the high and mighty, as Tolkien said of his own work.
Hah! I can already picture a diminutive Bill Connoly (**SPOILERS**) laying waste to that fucker Azog. And, years later, announcing to the Elves and Men gathered in front of the gates of Erebor to, in essence, get the fuck out of our way or we will stomp the living shite out of all of you! Hey, Dain was a bad-assed Dwarf warrior!