Ever since it was first published in 1954-1955, J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings has been embroiled in politics, much to the dismay of its author. Proponents of the political left and the right have taken turns deriding or laying claim to the fantasy epic. Peter Jackson's film adapation didn't escape political scrutiny either. Time magazine's Richard Corliss did a rather famous review of The Two Towers claiming that the film now evoked the War On Terror, and that Saruman looked "eerily" like Osama bin Laden, and USA Today's Michael Medved insisted Viggo Mortensen had tainted the role of Aragorn because he openly declared his anti-war sentiments.

The latest political controversy that the series finds itself embroiled in is the Iranian electoral protests. Time has a piece from an anonymous Iranian resident reporting that the government is using film to try and quell public unrest. "In normal times, Iranian television usually treats its viewers to one or two Hollywood or European movie nights a week. But these are not normal times, so it's been two or three such movies a day. It's part of the push to keep people at home and off the streets, to keep us busy, to get us out of the regime's hair. The message is 'Don't worry, be happy.'"

All television channels in Iran are owned by the state, so the government is choosing its films very carefully. One of their offerings has been a Lord of the Rings marathon, ostensibly picked because its length and epic content will keep people glued to their television. "We're glued to the trilogy. We are riveted. A child in the room loudly predicts that Lord of the Rings will put an end to the nightly shouts, that people will not take to the rooftops and windows because this film will keep them occupied."

Is it really so that one of the biggest geeks in the world has never attended Comic-Con? We have to cut Peter Jackson some slack, of course, since he's from New Zealand and has been so obsessed with making movies that his schedule hasn't permitted him to attend in the past. He will be making the trip this year, though, in support of District 9, which he produced.

Jackson will participate in a panel discussion on Friday, July 24, along with the film's director, Neill Blomkamp, and star Sharlto Copley. And if you said, 'Blom who? Sharlto what?' that's probably a good reason for Jackson to make the trip: he's the kind of marquee attraction that can draw attention to a film without other widely-recognizable names attached. The trailer for District 9 looks pretty darn good. William Goss described the premise as: "What if aliens landed in South Africa and were cooped up there for a bit too long?" In the teaser, one of the aliens says, "We mean you no harm. We just want to go home," which gave me visions of Predator crossed with E.T. The Extra Terrestrial. And to tie the film back into Comic-Con, a mysterious, pervasive anti-alien marketing campaign appeared at last year's con, as Elisabeth Rappe reported.

In a prepared statement, Jackson said: "After all these years, I'm thrilled that I finally have the opportunity to visit San Diego for Comic-Con ... I know that those who visit us on July 24th in Hall H will be in for quite a ride." District 9 hits theaters nationwide on August 14, so Jackson's appearance, no doubt with an extended clip from the film, should boost awareness. Not to mention thrill just about every fan boy in attendance!

Steven Spielberg's The Adventues of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn started filming with so little fanfare that I've nearly forgotten all about it ... but I doubt you diehard Herge fans have. Now you'll have a date to circle on the calender as Variety reports that Tintin will be hitting theaters on December 23, 2011, pitting it against Warner Bros Happy Feet 2 and Disney / PIXAR's The Bear and the Bow. (It may be two years away, but you can offer your box office predictions now if you like!)

At least, that's when it'll be hitting theaters on this side of the pond. Paramount and Sony plan to release the film in Europe first, as befitting its heritage and fanbase. There's no specific dates set, but they're eying a fall dates of late October and early November depending on what part of Europe you're in. If you're very wealthy, you could hop on a plane and catch it a few weeks early.

Variety also reports that the film will be released in 3-D. I guess that's a sign I've lost track of this project as I wasn't aware that was ever in doubt, but apparently the two studios have been debating that the past few months. Now after viewing dailies, they've decided that 3-D "would offer the best rendition" for the film ... and frankly the recent ginormous 3-D successes like Monsters Vs. Aliens probably helped convince them of that.

So, there you are, Tintin fans: December 23, 2011 in 3-D. Excited?

As William Goss noted earlier this week, District 9 seems to have caught us all unawares, despite the slow spread of viral marketing. In fact, the marketing was all over last year's San Diego ComicCon. There were anti-alien posters everywhere (very little pro-alien propaganda which says something about the crowd), especially over bathroom signage. I remember there were even protesters marching through the hall with anti-alien signs chanting about how they weren't wanted on Earth. No one knew what any of it was for! "Oh, it's some sci-fi movie. Peter Jackson has something to do with it, I think" was the refrain any time you asked about them. It was a fairly effective campaign in the "Wow, that's unsettling" department, but not so good on the "Hey! District 9 is coming out next year!" element.

But, the buzz is growing thanks to the effective teaser placed before X-Men Origins: Wolverine (go watch it on Goss' post if you haven't already), and now every movie fan is really chomping at the bit to see more. Over at Yahoo! Movies, they have a little bit to feed your curiosity ... the first official poster for District 9. It's pretty evocative of those ComicCon ones (which I'm throwing into the gallery just for posterity's sake) but with the violence amped up. Creepy stuff, isn't it? This may end up being more Cloverfield hype than substance, but at least it's low-key enough to stay interesting.

Somewhere in between last week's heated banter about X-Men Origins: Wolverine and its amnesia bullets, the teaser for August's District 9 (not to be confused with September's 9 or November's Nine) slipped through our nets.

This Peter Jackson-produced piece of speculative sci-fi -- what if aliens landed in South Africa and were cooped up there for a bit too long? -- builds upon director Neill Blomkamp's 2005 short, Alive in Joburg, and seems to revel in a similar mix of high-concept dilemma, low-key effects, and no-name actors.

The Apple page proves to be quite the one-stop shop for the film's viral marketing campaign to date. There's propaganda both for and against the film's central corporate entity, Multi-National United -- they're either harnassing alien technologies in order to produce better energy sources or using that as a cover to develop weaponry (and what kind of movie would we get if the former were true, hmmm?). Hey, there's even some viral marketing for the kids!

So all things considered, are you guys intrigued for District 9? Psyched? Pumped? Utterly uninterested?

Update: Trailer Addict has a version of the trailer that reveals the alien's face (see image above) and translates its pleas. We've embedded it after the jump...

Sure, all the early news and rumors about The Hobbit are fun to read, but we have to wait more than three years to see what Peter Jackson and Guillermo del Toro have cooked up. Three years is an eternity -- the world could end before The Hobbit (part one of two) arrives on the big screen in 2012! What's a Tolkien movie fan to do?

Hundreds of Hobbit-hungry volunteers in the UK came together to make The Hunt for Gollum, a 40-minute film based on the appendices of J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, according to The Guardian. Reportedly, the short "shows Aragorn's quest to find Gollum, the tortured creature who seeks the ring for himself. And faithful to Peter Jackson's trilogy, the lead bears an uncanny likeness to Viggo Mortensen." Chris Bouchard directed the film, composed the music, and served as executive producer. He told The Guardian: "It was really motivated by a love of the material. We couldn't wait for The Hobbit and wanted to try to add to the saga. We shot every weekend for a year and really tried to mimic the professional film process as much as possible on our shoestring budget."

Their budget was £3,000, which converts to about $4,500, which is rather incredible. The film debuted last night at the London International Festival of Science Fiction, a pretty cool event itself. I watched the first trailer for The Hunt for Gollum -- and it's pretty freakin' impressive. Head to the official site to watch one of the teasers or the trailers (or watch one trailer below) -- the entire movie is also supposed to be available online, though technical troubles kept me from connecting.

How do you imagine heaven? Peter Jackson's vision of the place may not be the same, based on an advance look published by Empire Magazine, and that's probably a good thing. The director of The Lord of the Rings trilogy has revealed a glimpse of his concept of the heavenly realm, from his upcoming movie The Lovely Bones, and it looks a lot like ... the Empire Magazine logo (if you click through to their site and enlarge the image; see part of it above). Yup, the Brit zine promises many more pictures in their upcoming issue, but for now all we have is one shot that makes heaven look like a studio with some clouds in the background.

If you haven't read the book, it's an absolutely devastating read, written by Alice Sebold from the point of view of a 14-year-old girl. Susie Salmon (played in the movie by Saoirse Ronan) narrates the tale from her own personal heaven: she was brutally raped and murdered by a neighbor / serial killer and has to come to terms with her own death while watching her family and friends deal with extreme emotional trauma. Susie's heaven is not like Warren Beatty and Buck Henry's Heaven Can Wait or, really, like most other heavens depicted in film, so this initial image is promising.

It's also in line with what Jackson told USA Today: "It is quite like the world of dream, using the magic of metaphor to convey Susie's psychological and emotional life." USA Today also has a different, exclusive image (see above), which shows a shadowy Stanley Tucci as the neighboring serial killer. Mark Wahlberg, Rachel Weisz, Susan Sarandon, and Michael Imperioli also star. The Lovely Bones is due in theaters on December 11.

If you can't get enough of hobbits, elves, dwarves, and trolls, we have good news for you. A fan site has heard "a report that negotiations are under way for a third film," meaning that The Hobbit, already slated to be released as two separate pictures, may be extended to become a trilogy.

An anonymous source told TheOneRing.net that the main sticking points are the contracts for Peter Jackson and Guillermo del Toro to allow for three more months of principal photography and "temporarily suspending some of their other projects." The same source speculates that the third film would delve "into the back-story of the Istari (Wizards) including Gandalf and Saruman's youth in Valinor." Our own Elisabeth Rappe previously wrote about the desire of seemingly every Lord of the Rings actor to appear in The Hobbit, and this rumor might allow for that.

Del Toro has spoken about The Hobbit as "two episodes, or two parts, as if they were a single piece of narrative," so maybe the story has become so rich and complicated that he and Jackson don't want it to ever end (kind of like the concluding hour of The Return of the King). The original announcement of del Toro as director mentioned that he would be moving to New Zealand for four years to complete The Hobbit and its sequel, so what's another few months? Though I'm not a huge fan of the original LOTR trilogy, I am a huge fan of del Toro, so the more, the better. As it now stands, The Hobbit is due for release in December 2010, with its sequel to follow in December 2011.

I just love a good list, I really do. You can't tear me away from those Top 100 AFI specials, so for me, there is no such thing as a bad list -- even if I disagree with it. Because, isn't that half the fun of talking about movies in the first place? EW has just released a list of the top 25 active directors (which I guess was a nice way of saying 'no dead guys allowed'), and there are a few surprises, but luckily they haven't gone crazy and pronounced Joel Schumacher as the misunderstood auteur of our time. So who did make it to the top of the heap? Well, it's the usual suspects: Spielberg, Scorsese, Tarantino, Soderbergh, and The Coens rounding out the top ten. But there are some nice surprises to the list as well, like Judd Apatow, Jon Favreau, and Ron Howard (whose directorial talents don't always get the respect they should).

But, we film geeks love a good debate, and Anne Thompson has started us off with some passionate commentary on EW's choices; including a slap on the wrist for their habit of relegating directors of a certain age, gender, or race to the top 50 -- I told you she was feisty. So even though I think EW got it right most of the time, I am going to have second Thompson when she says, "their order does not compute." I like Zak Snyder as much as the next girl, but I'm not sold that he deserves the #16 spot on the list when P.T. Anderson is at #22, and Woody Allen didn't even crack the top 25.

Well, ladies and gentlemen start your engines; what do you think of EW's list? Are there any glaring errors? And if you had make a list of the best and worst working directors today, who would you nominate?

Sound off below....