Let us weep for Rainbow the miniature Hobbit pony, whom animal wranglers on Peter Jackson’s Hobbit trilogy say was the first of 27 animals to die while being housed on a production farm filled with “death traps.”
“When I arrived at work in the morning, the pony was still alive but his back was broken. He’d come off a bank at speed and crash-landed,” wrangler Chris Langridge told the AP. “He was in a bad state.”
Langridge and fellow former and current Hobbit animal wranglers aim to blow the lid off of what they allege were unsafe housing conditions for their animal charges, up to 150 of which were kept at the same Wellington, NZ farm during Hobbit filming.
The American Humane Association monitored animal safety on set and investigated the farm following the first few animal deaths, making safety recommendations that were subsequently employed by the production company. Still, it’s hard to ignore the gruesome details of how some of the Hobbit horses, goats, and chickens died. Pour out some mead for these poor creatures, who are grazing for eternity in the Middle Earth in the sky:
- Rainbow the miniature, euthanized after suffering a broken back
- Claire the horse, who was found with her “head submerged in a stream after it fell over a bluff.”
- Zeppelin the horse, whose records say died from natural causes, but: “Smythe said the horse was bloated and its intestines were full of a yellow liquid; he believes it died of digestive problems caused by new feed.”
- Six goats and six sheep who perished “after falling into sinkholes, contracting worms or getting new feed after the grass was eaten.”
- Twelve chickens who were mauled to death by dogs.
- Doofus the…
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Also in Friday morning’s round-up of news briefs, Jodie Foster will be this year’s recipient of the Golden Globes‘ Lifetime Achievement Award; Jack and Diane and A Late Quartet are among this weekend’s previewed Specialty Release newcomers; And Showtime set for new Roman Polanski doc.
Skyfall Passes Last Harry Potter to Break 7-Day UK Record
The latest James Bond pic is now the biggest 7-day gross of all time in the U.K. with $59.86 million, overtaking Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 which grossed $57.4 million. The 23rd Bond pic opened October 26 in Britain and was its biggest 2-D opening weekend, Deadline reports.
Jodie Foster to Receive Golden Globes’ Lifetime Achievement Award
The Hollywood Foreign Press Assoc. said it will give the two-time Oscar and Globes winner its Cecil B. DeMille Award at the 70th annual Golden Globes ceremony on January 13th, Huffington Post reports.
Peter Jackson Makes Cameo in Airline Safety Video
Peter Jackson has made a cameo appearance in the on board safety film for Air New Zealand. The airline’s new safety video was made as an ode to Jackson’s upcoming Hobbit films, BBC reports.
Specialty Release Preview: The Bay, A Late Quartet, Jack and Diane, This Must Be the Place
Box office repercussions of Hurricane Sandy likely will continue this weekend in the Specialty market. Two releases, A Late Quartet and This Must Be the Place were set for launches at the Sunshine Theater in Manhattan’s Lower East Side which is still without electricity. Con Edison notified customers in the area today that power is estimated to return Saturday at 11PM. Magnolia Pictures will roll out Jack And Diane whose director Bradley Rust…
While dressed like Susan from Sesame Street, Lauryn Hill walked into a court room in Newark, NJ this morning and pleaded guilty to three counts of tax evasion and admitted to a judge that she purposefully didn’t pay any taxes in 2005, 2006 or 2007. Bitch is that bold.
The company that Lauryn owns made $818,000 in 2005. Did Lauryn go down to H&R Block to pay taxes on that shit like the rest of us do? Nope. Lauryn made $222,000 in 2006. Did she log onto Turbo Tax to pay that taxes on that shit? Nope. Lauryn also didn’t pay taxes on the $761,000 she made in 2007. Lauryn didn’t pay any taxes, because she says it was her way of protesting against the man. Three weeks ago, Lauryn took a break from not making a follow-up to The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill and wrote a rambling explanation on Tumblr for why she told the IRS to eat a fuck for three years in a row. Lauryn’s thesis was just a pile of crazy and I swear she co-wrote it with Randy Quaid. Here’s a piece of it:
I did not deliberately abandon my fans, nor did I deliberately abandon any responsibilities, but I did however put my safety, health and freedom and the freedom, safety and health of
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Full Story »Aubrey Plaza is taking the summer off from the Pawnee Parks Department to go back in time. In the sci-fi dramedy Safety Not Guaranteed — expanding to new cities this weekend — she keeps her signature scowl (mostly) in check, playing the polar opposite of her Parks and Rec counterpart. As a Seattle Magazine intern, Darius Britt not only takes initiative, but also takes other people’s shit — with half the snark.
Given that this is her first foray into a leading dramatic role, it helped that the character was crafted specifically for her by writer Derek Connolly, much like her Parks character April, whom she helped brainstorm with co-creator Greg Daniels during her audition. But Plaza couldn’t help but be skeptical when she first received the script.
“I was very excited, but I was afraid that it was going to be bad!” she said with a laugh. “I hadn’t done very many things up until then, but I was very flattered. And I read it and I liked it, which made it even more awesome.”
In addition to her crafted character, it was the movie magic that drew her to the script. “There’s something about the movie that feels very familiar; it has this sort of magical quality that I think Back to the Future and those movies in the ’80s did,” Plaza said. “But it’s also very unique and different — it’s about time travel, but it’s more about the relationships and the characters within.”
In the film, Plaza trades April’s dismissive intern duties for a gritty internship-turned-investigative-reporting gig, diving into the thick of it with her subject, a would-be time traveler named Kenneth (Mark Duplass), with whom she forms more than just camaraderie.
But Plaza is quick to point out the unconventional differences —…
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