Hero Complex has a bunch of interviews about THE HOBBIT up, which is a reminder that OHMIGOD THE HOBBIT OPENS IN 12 DAYS!!! OH MY GOD! IT IS HAPPENING! DON’T LET ME ALMOST DIE AGAIN!

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One interview, with famed costume designer Ann Maskrey reveals that her favorite “look” she designed is for Radagast, the obscure wizard that Tolkienistas have been begging for for decades and are finally getting!

AM: It was lovely doing things for Cate Blanchett, but she could make a plastic bag look good. There are favorite other ones that are coming up on the screen next year. [In the first film,] I’m very fond of Radagast. I’m very, very fond of that one. It’s just everything about it. The actor [Sylvester McCoy] I knew before, had worked on a movie with him before. He’s a very likable man, and the character’s lovely. The costume used every part of the workshop to the fullest. We had embroidery done, we had fabrics made, we had fabrics dyed, the break-down team worked on it, the milliner did a great hat, the boys that made all the footwear did really nice shoes for him. To me, that was one of the most successful ones. And he’s a new character.


Maskrey reveals she had to update the WETA sewing department on modern techniques for HD stitching:

“I’d be checking over what they were doing for the hobbit accessories or hobbit bodices, and how they were finishing them off, and I’d find that they were doing something that I didn’t particularly like, and I’d say, “Why are you doing it that way? I’d like it this way.” And they’d say, “That’s how we did it before.” And I’d say, “Well, ‘before’ is 10 years ago. And that’s not what we’re going to do now. We’re in 3-D, we want something better. … That was then, and this is now, and you’ve got to lift your game accordingly.”


§ Another piece interviews Dean Gorman who portrays Fili, one of the sexy young Dwarf brothers, namely Fili and Kili:

Together, the brothers are the youngest dwarves in the company, and as many “Hobbit” enthusiasts have noted, the sexiest.

“I think that’s pretty relative,” O’Gorman said, laughing. “I mean, we’re a company of dwarves. The bar’s not set very high. … I think the idea was as you get older, your beard gets longer, and your nose gets bigger, but when you’re younger, you’ve got a smaller nose and less facial hair.”

While other dwarf actors wore enveloping whiskers and bulging prosthetic foreheads and noses, O’Gorman and Turner had fewer prosthetic pieces to deal with—nose extensions, fake hands and hairpieces with ears.


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That’s Gorman, left, along with Richard Armitage who plays Thorin in THE HOBBIT, Part 1…uh, has anyone read the end of this book?

I’ll say no more.