Peter Jackson

The volcanic alert for Mount Ruapehu in New Zealand, which was featured in the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, was raised on May 10.

Despite being an Oscar-nominated and twice nominated Golden Globes actor, Jake Gyllenhaal wasn’t very impressive to

While Hollywood continued to wrestle with the fallout of the Sony hacking scandal, the weekend box office offered the solace of a moviegoing truism: Hobbits sell.

Tis the season to make Top 10 lists. Why? Because we are hurtling with unavoidable haste toward the end of another calendar year.

Peter Jackson made zombie movies so studios could see he had the right stuff to handle J.R.R. Tolkien’s universe. So began his Hero’s Journey.

In 1937 a fairy tale about a reluctant hero with hairy feet was published by a tweedy English academic called JRR Tolkien. The Hobbit was an instant success – and its mighty sequel The Lord of the Rings followed in 1954.

The Desolation of Smaug addressed so much that was wrong with Peter Jackson’s second foray into Middle-Earth, after the light-hearted tonal shift of An Unexpected Journey. It was a more focused beast, with Martin Freeman’s wonderful interpretation of Bilbo placed front and centre into the action. He was a character in genuine peril, rather than one who’d previously been lost amongst any number of indistinguishable personalities thrown around in a visually impressive, but completely weightless CGI fairground ride.

“The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring in Concert,” presented July 5-7 at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa.