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.

We've all known for a while now that Guillermo del Toro and Peter Jackson's teams of merry filmmakers were planning to make TWO movies out of JRR Tolkien's The Hobbit, but now we have confirmation of the plan by the filmmakers themselves, and they doled out a few small details to Empire Magazine in honor of the publication's 20th birthday. And those quotes go a little like this:

Del Toro: "We've decided to have The Hobbit span the two movies, including the White Council and the comings and goings of Gandalf to Dol Guldur."

Jackson: "We decided it would be a mistake to try to cram everything into one movie. The essential brief was to do The Hobbit, and it allows us to make The Hobbit in a little more style, if you like, of the [LOTR] trilogy."

As Empire's Chris Hewitt observes, this should put to bed those theories that one film would focus on The Hobbit and the second would be some sort of bridging appendices miscellaneous whatnot. Expect a lot more on The Hobbit over the next three years, including every nerdly little tidbit we can get our pipeweed-lovin' hands on.

And hey, Happy Birthday Empire!

I can never decide if the quotes from various Lord of the Rings actors on their participation in The Hobbit are merely wishful thinking on the part of all involved, or if they represent actual plans to bring back every last hobbit, Ent, and Ranger.

The latest rumor comes from Dominic Monaghan, who caught up with MTV at Sundance, and implied there had been talks to include our faithful hobbits in that much desired adaptation of The Hobbit. "They really want us to come back, and I think there's a really strong chance that we might be back. We're not in The Hobbit, no, but I think the idea in [Jackson's, Del Toro's and the other producers'] heads is that the trilogy of the Lord of the Rings films was so beloved by the fans that they're really keen to try to say thank you for the support that they gave to the Lord of the Rings movies and possibly bring back some of those characters that they know and love."

Now, I think the last solid Guillermo del Toro update we had suggested that The Hobbit might be split into two films, but keep strictly to the adventures of Bilbo, Gandalf, the dwarves, and their fight with Smaug, and the battle of Laketown. That sounds so much more sensible than a "bridge" film, as much as Middle Earth geeks would like to see some of those appendices.

On the other hand, everyone from LOTR seems to think they're coming back. I can accept Aragorn since he was actually alive and fighting during the events of The Hobbit. But Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin weren't -- and while the actors could ostensibly play other Baggins, Gamgees, Tooks, and Brandybucks, I really don't want that. The characters I know and love exist solely in Lord of the Rings, and I want to be thanked with an adapation of The Hobbit that is true to J.R.R. Tolkien's novel, not by weird cameos.