SMAUG! SMAUG! SMAUG SMAUG SMAUG SMAUG! EVERYBODAAAAYY! That’s right, the first trailer for The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug is finally here. And it’s got weird subtitles! This trailer really has everything: Hobbits in trees, dwarves in barrels, dwarves in barrels going down waterfalls, eyebrows, crappy titles, agile elves, dreadlocks, characters eschewing prepositions, gold-hoarding dragons, gay-acting Hobbits, and glitter, glitter everywhere. It’s New York’s hottest night club!

New faces in this leg of the journey include: Evangeline Lilly’s elf warrior Tauriel; Lee Pace’s Elvenking Thranduil; Mikael Persbrandt’s skin-changing Beorn; Luke Evans as Bard The Bowman; Stephen Fry as Master Of Lake Town, Orlando Bloom returns as Legolas, and guess who’s voicing Smaug? That’s right, Benedict Freakin’ Cumberbatch, which means that you’ll finally be able enjoy the gravitas of his voice without being distracted by his awkwardly-moving lips.

Rejoice, Hobbit lovers! Because on December 13th, Smaugs. Will. Desolate. (*WUB WUB WUB*) (*EXPLOSION*) (*CAT GIF*) I wish you all the three hours of grotesque character design and unfulfilled narrative that your hearts desire. Me, I’ll probably being looking to spend that time doing something more interesting, like watch the new C-Span channel about paint drying.

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Today brings us the first poster for Peter Jackson’s second of his three-part Hobbit trilogy, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. And what a poster it is! My gosh, is that the Lonely Mountain Bilbo is staring passively at?? I wonder if Bilbo and the boys will actually make it inside by the end of the movie this time! I hope so, but then I wouldn’t want to miss out on any extraneous side characters with bird poop running down their faces either!

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Along with another bout of crippling diarrhea for me, today brings us the first picture of Evangeline Lilly, aka Freckles from Lost, in the first official shot of the elf warrior Tauriel in The Hobbit: They Get Even Closer to the Mountain This Time The Desolation of Smaug. Wait, is this seriously going in the movie? Or was it some Make-A-Wish kid’s wish to be the costume designer for a day? Take away the ears and she could play Merida from Brave at Disneyland.

“She’s slightly reckless and totally ruthless and doesn’t hesitate to kill,” says Lilly. She’s also not found anywhere in J.R.R. Tolkien’s original fantasy novel, or in any of Tolkien’s other writings for that matter. Director Peter Jackson and his co-writers on the Hobbit trilogy, Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens, invented the character to expand the world of the elves of Mirkwood Forest — and to bring some more female energy to the otherwise male-dominated Hobbit narrative. “Tauriel is the head of the Elven Guard,” Lilly explains. “She’s a Sylvan Elf, which means she’s of a much lower order than the elves we all became acquainted with in The Lord of the Rings. She doesn’t hold the same kind of status that Arwen or Galadriel or Elrond or Legolas do — she’s much more lowly. She sort of goes against the social order of the elves a little bit.”

Tauriel isn’t only a fierce warrior; she has a softer side, too. “She will definitely have a love story,” Lilly says. “I can’t give away too much about it. It’s not a huge focus but it is there and it is important and it does drive Tauriel and her story and her actions.” Will that romance involve Orlando Bloom’s Legolas, by any chance? Lilly won’t say definitively one way or the other, but she does offer this much: “Tauriel’s relationship with Legolas is significant. They’ve known each other since they were children, and Legolas’ dad, [Elven king] Thranduil, has a soft spot for Tauriel.” [EntertainmentWeekly]

It’s nice that they’re adding to Tolkien’s story, considering the original book doesn’t have anywhere near the amount of material to support three three-hour films. Though it’d be cooler if their addition didn’t seem like another stock character. And if her outfit didn’t look like a little girl’s Halloween costume. But after the last Hobbit, I guess we should just be happy that she doesn’t have a big goiter or bird shit running down the side of her face.

When you’ve been in this blog game since the 1940s like I have, you get a lot of people telling you how “You just have to watch this!” and then you make a list of a million different movies and TV shows before falling asleep with a bag of Funyuns. But of all the shows that I “have to watch, bro”, Doctor Who has been the one that I’ve really wanted to give a shot, because of Karen Gillan, Kylie Minogue, Michelle Ryan and now Jenna-Louise Coleman (above).

Director Peter Jackson, though, has watched plenty of the BBC’s hit series, enough that he is openly begging to direct at least an episode of the show.

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(If the Prime Minister sees his shadow and goes back inside his Hobbit hole, New Zealand has six more weeks of hay rides)

As is pretty much standard practice for movies filming anywhere but LA these days (and hardly anyone shoots movies in LA anymore), the New Zealand government hooked up Warner Bros and the producers of The Hobbit trilogy with some valuable subsidies and tax breaks to keep the production in the country. The $67 million in tax breaks surely bought a production that was a boon to the local economy, employing an army of locals to hot glue mo-cap sensors to the crotch of Andy Serkis’ leotards, in parts of the country where the biggest industry is normally library book late fees. But now, like a lot of us who gave money in exchange for The Hobbit, some Kiwis, including prominent politicians, want their money back.

“Now the first movie has grossed more than $1 billion, Warner Brothers should repay the $67 million subsidy the movie moguls sucked from Kiwi taxpayers,” [leader of the NZ First political party Winston Peters] said. [StuffNZ]

Specifically at issue was Prime Minister John Keys’ claim, when pushing the subsidies, that the production would create “3,000 jobs.” Peters has since uncovered correspondence between Keys and Peter Jackson’s production company that he says proves that the number was plucked out of the air. The emails are his “smoking plum,” in New Zealand parlance, where the secret to gunpowder has not yet been discovered.

“The Government claims that filming The Hobbit in New Zealand created an extra 3000 jobs and this was value for money to taxpayers, but documents from John Key’s office show this figure was plucked out of thin air. “Questions have to be answered about how many of these jobs existed prior to filming, how many of them will exist once the final film has premiered, and how many of these jobs actually went to New Zealanders.”

Aw, it’ll take a little advertising, but once the people in Hollywood learn that near-television quality production studios and an army of unskilled-but-super polite craftsmen is just a 26-hour flight away, all those jobs will return and then some!

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