Bilbo has Company - The Hobbit 2012

FROM: Totalfilm.com

While there’s been no shortage of promotional material from The Hobbit since the epic two-parter started production (Peter Jackson sure does love the internet), it’s always nice when something new arrives.

Another image has been revealed, and this one shows Bilbo in the midst of his unexpected houseguests: namely, the Dwarves he’ll eventually go on a quest with.

This glimpse is also a reminder that character interaction is going to play as big a part in the film as troll fights, massive spiders and dragon raids – which is why we’re so excited about seeing it.

It’s also reassuring to see that food – a key concern for Hobbits and Dwarves – is still at the forefront.

FROM: glo.msn.com

By Woman’s Day

Even if you don’t consider yourself a superstitious person, you likely say “God bless you” when someone sneezes or knock on wood. Though these rituals aren’t logical, the idea of luck can be comforting when so many things are beyond our control. In honor of this unlucky day, we set out to discover the source for some common superstitions.

Black Cats

Although in the U.S. we believe that having a black cat cross your path is bad luck, it’s not the same the world over. In Egypt, for example, all cats are considered lucky. This dates back to ancient times, when cats were considered sacred. Our modern-day fear of black cats may stem from the Middle Ages, when it was believed that a witch could take the form of a black cat.

Breaking A Mirror

The belief that you’ll have seven years’ bad luck if you break a mirror is said to come from the Romans, who were the first to create glass mirrors. But long ago, many cultures, including Greek, Chinese, African and Indian, believed that a mirror had the power to confiscate part of the user’s soul. The thinking was that if the mirror was broken, then the person’s soul would be trapped inside.

Walking Under A Ladder

An open ladder forms a triangle, and triangles were once considered a symbol of life, so walking through that shape was considered tempting your fate. It is also thought that because it has three sides, the triangle symbolizes the Holy Trinity, and “breaking” it by entering the triangle is bad luck.

Tossing Salt

The belief of tossing a pinch of salt over your left shoulder to get rid of bad luck come from the legend that the devil is always standing behind you, and throwing salt in his eye distracts him from causing trouble. Nowadays, most people only do this after spilling salt, which is thought to be bad luck because salt was an expensive commodity long ago and folklore linked it to unlucky omens in order to prevent wasteful behavior.

Knocking On Wood

Knocking on wood, or simply saying “knock on wood” after making a hopeful statement, is rooted in the idea that you’re tempting fate by acknowledging your good fortune. The expression comes from the ancient belief that good spirits lived in trees, so by knocking on something wooden, a person was calling on the spirits for protection.

Opening An Umbrella Inside

One explanation for this one comes from the days when umbrellas were used as protection from the sun; opening one inside was an insult to the sun god. Another theory: An umbrella protects you against the storms of life, so opening one in your house insults the guardian spirits of your home, causing them to leave you unprotected.

Saying “Bless You”

Considered a polite response to a sneeze, the phrase is attributed to Pope Gregory the Great, who said it to people who sneezed during the bubonic plague. “Blessing” someone after they sneezed originated from the erroneous beliefs that the soul escapes the body during a sneeze and that the heart momentarily stops as well. Therefore, saying “God bless you” was a way of welcoming the person back to life.

Rabbits’ Feet

This one can be traced as far back as the seventh century B.C., when the rabbit was considered a talismanic symbol, and the left hind foot was a handy way to benefit from the rabbit’s luck. In some cultures, this foot is believed to promote reproduction, so women carry one around to boost their odds of conceiving.

Crossing Your Fingers

It’s a near-universal sign of wishing for something, but there are many theories about its origin. One is that when Christianity was illegal, crossing fingers was a secret way for Christians to recognize each other. Another is that during the Hundred Years’ War, an archer would cross his fingers to pray for luck, before drawing back his longbow with those same fingers.

Four-Leaf Clovers

Legend says that when Adam and Eve were evicted from the Garden of Eden, Eve snatched a four-leaf clover as a remembrance of her days in Paradise. Since then, lucky attributes have been assigned to all four-leaves of the rare plant—each associated with St. Patrick and the Holy Trinity in Irish legend.

Horseshoes

There are several theories here. The first is that the devil appeared at the door of a blacksmith, who agreed to remove a shoe from his hoof if he promised to never enter a place where a horseshoe is hung over the door. The second belief is that witches rode on broomsticks because they were afraid of horses, so a horseshoe is a good charm for scaring them off.

Bird Droppings

Many people the world over believe that if a bird lets loose on you, then good things are coming your way. One idea is that it’s a sign of major wealth coming from heaven, based on the belief that when you suffer an inconvenience (albeit a pretty gross one), you’ll have good fortune in return.

FROM: glo.msn.com

Freaky Friday

By Julie Fishman

It’s that time again, when Friday and 13 align. But with 2012 already shrouded in supernatural predictions, the traditionally dreaded date just seems a bit eerier this year. For the occasion, Glo set out to discover the meaning behind the day’s superstitions and to marvel at the surprising—and sometimes ridiculous—behavior it induces. You might want to cross your fingers and avoid walking under any ladders—at least for today.

Three’s a Charm

In 2012, we will see three Friday the 13th’s (the others fall in April and July), the maximum number that can occur in one calendar year. Interestingly, another year with three Friday the 13th’s had a notoriety similar to that of 2012, although prophesized via literature: George Orwell’s book 1984, about a Big Brother–controlled society, also had many concerned over the eponymous year’s fate.

The Back Story

There are different theories on how Friday the 13th came to be, but the prevailing one is linked to The Last Supper. Judas, the apostle who betrayed Jesus, was the 13th person to arrive at dinner, making 13 an unlucky number on any day of the week. Add to that the fact that Jesus died on a Friday, and Friday the 13th gets its bad rap.

Fear Factor

Although people are far less superstitious now than they were in the past, the Stress Management Center and Phobia Institute in North Carolina estimates that 17 to 21 million people in the U.S. have a diagnosable phobia of Friday the 13th. The illness Is called friggatriskaidekaphobia. (We couldn’t make that up.)

Baker’s Dozen?

Part of the reason the number 13 is considered so treacherous, is simply because it’s right after 12. Numerologists consider 12 a “complete” number: 12 months complete a year, 12 signs complete the zodiac and 12 inches complete a foot.

Addressing The Issue

You may have noticed that most buildings leave out the 13th floor, but did you know that planes often lack a 13th row and some hotels eliminate a Room 13? In Florence, the house between 12 and 14 is actually addressed as 12 and a half.

Risky Business

Some estimates suggest that the U.S. economy loses up to 900 million dollars every time there’s a Friday the 13th—many people avoid business deals, or even work altogether, on the allegedly doomed date.

Proceed With Caution

Fearing an increase in accidents, many Americans won’t hit the roads on Friday the 13th. While traffic crashes do peak on Fridays—probably due to alcohol intake—there’s no decisive data that Friday the 13th is more dangerous than other Fridays in the year.

Nature’s Wrath

There’s no proof that natural disasters are more likely on Friday the 13th, but Australia’s biggest wildfire, Florida’s especially costly Hurricane Charley and Kansas’s “Great Flood of 1951” all occurred on a Friday the 13th.

The Naysayers

To prove Friday the 13th superstitions as nonsense, a group of affluent New Yorkers started a “Thirteen Club” in 1881. Thirteen people met every Friday the 13th and dined in Room 13. During the gathering, guests walked under ladders and through piles of spilled salt. Take that, superstitions.

The Followers

Some of our nation’s most famous 20th-century luminaries feared the day. Henry Ford declined to do any business, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt avoided travel. Rumor has it that FDR refused to roam not only on Friday the 13th, but also on the 13th day of every month.

Charles Addams

FROM: PCMag.com

by Chloe Albanesius

Halloween was more than two months ago, but the Google homepage still has a rather ghoulish quality to it today. The search giant is celebrating the 100th birthday of Addams Family creator Charles Addams with a doodle featuring the famously spooky family.

Helping celebrate is the entire Addams family—Morticia, Gomez, Cousin It, Pugsley, Wednesday, Lurch, and Uncle Fester. They are drawn in black and white and shown standing in front of their mansion and the Google logo.

A New Jersey native, Charles Samuel Addams was born in 1912 (on Elm Street, no less).

By the age of 21, his artistic talents help him land his first cartoon in The New Yorker, though he did not become a full-time contributor until 1940. Addams remained at the magazine until his death in 1988, drawing more than 1,300 cartoons. The first Addams Family cartoon made its appearance in August 1938.

“It depicted a curvaceous, dark-haired woman in a spidery black dress inside a dark, dilapidated Victorian house listening patiently to a vacuum salesman who was oblivious to the home’s disrepair—cobwebs, bats, and broken balusters,” according to a biography from Pennsylvania State University. “More cartoons about the vamp, soon christened as Morticia, and her ghoulish family followed.”

The family truly came to life in 1964, when a producer asked Addams to turn his comics into a TV series. The Addams Family was only on the air for two years, but can still be found in syndication.

The Addams Family

The series became a feature-length movie in 1991 (with a sequel in 1993), starring Anjelica Huston and Raul Julia as Morticia and Gomez. Throughout the 90s, there was also an animated series and another live-action TV show. In 2010, the family came to Broadway in a musical starring Nathan Lane and Bebe Neuwirth as the famous couple; it ran until Dec. 31, 2011.

“Ghoulish, macabre, demonic, depraved, bizarre, eerie, and weird have all been used to describe his work and the characters therein,” according to a biography from the Tee & Charles Addams Foundation. “Adorable, sweet, charming, humorous, enchanting, tender, and captivating are also adjectives used to describe the same body of work, as well as the man himself, the extraordinary artist Charles Addams. His rare gift was the ability to enjoin such dichotomies in wonderfully crafted cartoons and drawings loved by millions worldwide.”

The foundation was created in 1999 by Addams’ widow Tee, who passed away in 2002. It is housed at the couple’s Sagaponack, New York property, dubbed the Swamp.

For more on Google’s doodles, meanwhile, see the slideshow below. One of the company’s more popular doodles last year was a playable image in honor of musician Les Paul, which eventually got its own standalone site. The company has also honored Gumby creator Art Clokey, Muppets creator Jim Henson, Queen frontman Freddie Mercury, and Intel co-founder Robert Noyce.

In 2011, it was revealed that Google obtained a patent for its popular homepage doodles, covering “systems and methods for enticing users to access a Web site.”

For more from Chloe, follow her on Twitter @ChloeAlbanesius.

For the top stories in tech, follow us on Twitter at @PCMag.

Helena Bonham Carter - Jon Furniss/WireImage.com

Helena Bonham Carter may not have nabbed an Oscar in 2011, but the Academy Award-nominated actress will be bringing home an honor of a different sort in 2012, courtesy of the Queen.

The King’s Speech star, who portrayed Queen Elizabeth in the Oscar-winning biopic (and went on to receive an Oscar nomination for the role herself), was awarded with a CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) in the Queen’s New Year Honors list, published Saturday, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

Bonham Carter was among an elite group of entertainment industry professionals who received the coveted CBE honor, along with comedian Ronnie Corbett, Australian entertainer and writer Clive James, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire creator Paul Smith, former Oasis frontman Liam Gallagher, and record producer Steve Lillywhite (who’s worked with U2 and the Rolling Stones), among others.

Blood Diamond actor David Harewood was awarded an MBE (Member of the Order the British Empire), while TV exec vet Peter Bazalgette, who brought Big Brother to the U.K, received a knighthood in the list.

The Queen’s honors list, which is released twice a year (on her birthday in June and on New Year’s Eve), recognizes outstanding achievement and service across the U.K.
Read more: http://www.eonline.com/news/helena_bonham_carter_receives_queens/283400#ixzz1iEAs3cDU

Sam Wothington in Wrath of the Titans

FROM: RopeofSilicon.com

By: Brad Brevet

The first look at Sam Worthington, who returns as Perseus in Wrath of the Titans, isn’t really the story here. What is more interesting is the plot synopsis as provided by Entertainment Weekly who writes about the story for the Clash of the Titans sequel with apparently spoilerish comments from director Jonathan Liebesman:

In the Greek-gods-run-amok sequel Wrath of the Titans (out March 30), Perseus (Sam Worthington) must journey into the underworld after his dad, Zeus (Liam Neeson), 
is kidnapped by Hades (Ralph Fiennes). The trident is but one of several celestial weapons Perseus has to bring together “in order 
to create an über-weapon,” says director Jonathan Liebesman (Battle: Los Angeles). “But that’s probably a massive spoiler. I 
haven’t practiced being spoiler-
proof yet.”

So Zeus is kidnapped? That happens? Is this the “weight” Worthington was talking about when he said the following to Buzzine:

You make Clash 2 weighty. Clash 1 is a video game. You make Clash 2 weighty. You take everything you’ve learned and go, “I’m not doing this f*cking shit! I’m going to do a weighty script in a blockbuster.” That’s the bigness of a blockbuster. They’re very hard because they’re done by such a machine, so you try to get that weight that an independent can allow you — that freedom that they have on an independent script — and then you try to fit it into a blockbuster where there’s a whole set of people who have a say. With something like Clash 2, that’s definitely what we’ve aimed for.

I guess we’ll find out soon enough.

As it says, Wrath of the Titans is set to hit theaters on March 30, 2012 and it will again be converted into 3D. Along with everyone mentioned above, the cast also includes Edgar Ramirez as Ares, Toby Kebbell as Agenor, Rosamund Pike as Andromeda, Bill Nighy Hephaestus and Danny Huston as Poseidon.

The Munsters

FROM: EW.com

By James Hibberd

TV’s original American horror story is taking another step toward returning to primetime: NBC has ordered a pilot of Bryan Fuller’s remake of the classic TV show The Munsters.

The new version of the half-hour sitcom is bring re-imagined by the Pushing Daises creator as an hour-long series exploring how the monster house came about, and will have a darker and less campy feel than the black-and-white original.

The Munsters was launched the same year as the rather similar Addams Family, which goes to show in this season of dueling fairy tale dramas (Grimm, Once Upon a Time) that networks haven’t changed all that much. While Addams was based off Charles Addams’ New Yorker cartoons, the Munsters patriarch Herman was basically a play on Frankenstein.

There’s a couple other projects that could impact The Munsters‘ fate. NBC is also developing a remake of Frankenstein from House producers Garrett Lerner and Russel Friend, while Fuller is working on another monstrous project for NBC — a series version of Thomas Harris’ Hannibal Lecter novels.

Elijah Wood

FROM: www.deadline.com

By Mike Fleming

Elijah Wood has been just set for the lead role in Maniac, and believe me, Frodo is a long way from the Shire in this one. In the indie that will be directed by Franck Khalfoun and produced by Alexandre Aja and Gregory Lavasseur, Wood plays the role of a serial killer who works at a shop that sells antique mannequins. He finds victims on the Internet and stalks them like prey, all the while suffering from hallucinations that throw him back into the past, when he was abused by his own mother. In his twisted mind, he gains a measure of revenge against his mother with each kill. It will shoot later this year.

Elijah Wood in Sin City

This isn’t the first deranged killer role for Wood, who played the creepy cannibal Kevin in Sin City. Wood has been working up a storm, in the upcoming Happy Feet 2, the indie Celeste and Jesse, Sky TV’s Treasure Island, and, of course, he reprises his signature role in The Hobbit. Wood also reprises his starring role in the series Wilfred, which begins production early next year. He’s repped by Brillstein Partners and WME.

Evil Dead 2: Deadite Ash

FROM: Horrorbid.com

By Shakelford, J. Rusty

NECA’s Ash figure and the entire line of figures taken from EVIL DEAD 2 are coming along nicely says NECA via their Facebook page today. Not only are these figures “dead” on with accuracy but NECA has really stepped their game up by offering fans many different versions of Ash here along with a complete “Necronomicon” or “book of the dead” companion and even the infamous “dear head” will be represented in figure form as part of an accessory pack. Bellow is a picture of “Deadite” Ash (Bruce Campbell) right before paint. Finished pictures should be coming soon.

See more NECA Evil Dead 2 Figures from Horrorbid Here!

FROM: www.salemstatelog.com

By By Vanessa Fernandes

The new series on the FX network, “American Horror Story,” is not only a horror but also a psychological thriller. Every Wednesday night at 10 p.m. the show keeps you on your toes and makes you think twice about what is really happening. This show is not for the light-hearted or conservative audience. It’s anything but ordinary, as it brings to life the most disturbing, sexual and paranormal fears possible.

Dylan McDermott

It will leave you not wanting to turn off the lights before going to bed. This nontraditional yet seductive horror show surrounds a family who has just moved across the country so that they can try reconnecting with one another. The unexpected miscarriage the wife had and the ghastly adultery committed by the husband has left them torn apart.

When the family moved into their new home, they were only notified about the last murder that had happened under the cursed roof. Unaware of the other gruesome murders that had also occurred there, they accepted the house without hesitation. Unfortunately, moving into a house that was supposed to bring new hope only brought worry and paranoia to the family. After getting settled into their new home, husband Ben Harmon (Dylan McDermott), wife Vivien Harmon (Connie Britton), and daughter Violet Harmon (Taissa Farmiga) have had a lot of unexpected encounters with ghosts who formerly lived and died in the house. Thinking that these ghosts are normal people, the family hesitantly socializes with them, not realizing that the spirits have hidden agendas. Ben Harmon is someone who is trying to correct his mistakes. He still loves his wife and is doing his best to keep her. Unfortunately, trouble keeps finding him, whether it’s the ghost of a seductive maid tempting him, or his former mistress showing up pregnant and ending up dead in his backyard. One can only hope he doesn’t turn out like Larry Harvey (Denis O’Hare), who lost his mind and burned his family to the ground some years back in that very house.

Connie Britton

Vivien is having a difficult time forgiving her husband. She’s also dealing with the fact of having a miscarriage, and now another baby is on the way. She has an instinct that there is something wrong with the unborn child and she’s probably right, as it seemed as if she had sex with one of the ghosts or demons in her house and not her actual husband. The daughter, Violet, might be the most obnoxious character on the show. She constantly demands stuff from her mother, whom she has no respect for; but that’s probably something that’s expected of a teenager. She seems to have an odd relationship with Tate Langdon (Evan Peters). It looks as if Tate is a ghost who lives in her house, unknowingly, and Violet thinks he’s real and trusts him even though he seems psychotic.

It would be awkward and unusual, but at the same time it’d be original if they began to have a relationship with one another. The characters of this show have personal and paranormal problems. They aren’t aware that they are surrounded by entities that are no longer with the living, and it seems like one keeps popping up after another. It’s evident that before the Harmons moved in, history kept repeating itself with murders in the house. Will their disturbing, personal issues, along with their evil house result in their deaths too? Sit back, America, and find out while relishing in this addictive horror phenomenon.