Cinefantastique Online

HOBBIT MOVIES MEET DIRE FOE IN SON OF TOLKIEN: The Sunday Times reports on Christopher Tolkien’s legal attempt to quash the two Hobbit prequels currently in pre-production. He claims that New Line Cinema owes $150-million based on a 7.5% profit sharing agreement from 1969, when J.R.R. Tolkien sold film rights to pay off a tax bill. While we’re talking about Hobbits, producer Peter Jackson and director Guillermo Del Toro recently answered questions about the film on a live web chat; you can find a transcript here.

THE STRANGERS: DON’T BELIEVE THE HYPE is a post courtesy of Vault of Horror, which takes issues with the advertising tag-line insisting that the movie is “inspired by” true events. Universal Pictures marketing sought a little wriggle room by claiming that “inspired by” is a much looser terms than “based on.” It turns out that the film’s scenario is “inspired by” writer-director Bryan Bertino’s childhood memory of someone knocking on his door and leaving when his little sister answered - pretty much the opposite of what happens in the film’s home invasion scenario. Whatever the “reality” of its story, THE STRANGERS had one benefit: actress Liv Tyler discovered that acting in a horror film is a great weight-loss method: “It was a great diet. I actually lost about 10 pounds in two weeks because I was running all day. It was amazing. I was like, ‘Jeez, I need to do this more often.”