Warner Bros. has released a brand new trailer for Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, part one of Bilbo’s journey towards Middle Earth. While there are still those who are hesitant about the decision to change The Hobbit from a two-part film to a trilogy, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey looks like it will have plenty of action, adventure, and comedy.

Check out the full trailer here below.

While the previously released teaser trailer established who the characters are, this new trailer focuses on the plot of the film. The dwarves are set out to reclaim the land that is rightfully theirs, and Gandalf the Grey (Ian McKellen) believes that they can accomplish that if they bring the hobbit Bilbo Baggins along on this adventure.

Director Peter Jackson revolutionized fantasy cinema with his epic adaptation of J. R.R. Tolkien‘s Lord of the Rings trilogy, a monumental task, in spite of the author’s insistence that it could never be filmed. Given the phenomenal success with which Jackson pulled that off, how well would he tackle Tolkien’s earlier saga of Bilbo Baggins, The Hobbit? San Diego Comic-Con Hall H fans found out earlier today with the panel for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.

Moderator Chris Hardwick(The Nerdist podcast) kicked off the Warner Brothers/Legendary Pictures panel with a surprise, by pulling open curtains across the back of the hall to unveil projection screens double standard size, larger than I’d ever seen in Hall H history. Over these screens they displayed a collage of images from the film, which gave fans a hint to the epic scale of the panel to follow. Then, they screened a behind-the-scenes reel of footage documenting the exhaustive 266-day production shoot, including some of the amazing epic sets and characters of Tolkien’s Middle Earth.

The sixth video production blog from The Hobbit has been released and you can watch it here below.

Now that filming at the Hobbiton set has wrapped director Peter Jackson and his hale and hearty cast and crew have taken the production to even more scenic locales in New Zealand, which has no shortage of gorgeous scenery. Andy Serkis, obviously returning as Gollum, is also enjoying his new job on the shoot as second unit director and gets to go up in a helicopter to film scenic footage… in 3D!

This year marks the tenth anniversary since The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring took the global box office by storm (one month after the first Harry Potter movie debuted). To celebrate that milestone, the British film magazine Empire is dedicating a chunk of its December issue to paying tribute to the LOTR movies in typical Empire style.

The issue will spotlight a reunion of the four actors who played the brave hobbits of J.R.R. Tolkien‘s fantasy epic – Elijah Wood (Frodo Baggins), Sean Astin (Samwise Gamgee), Dominic Monaghan (Merry), and Billy Boyd (Pippin). To promote the issue, Empire has put together a short video preview of the hobbit reunion which you can watch here below, as well as an image from the reunion.

At one time or another, you’ve probably seen one of the paintings that various people in a position of power have had commissioned of themselves. One particularly notable portrait out there is that of the Russian general, which someone has taken to an extremely entertaining new level.

George Dawe, an English portrait artist who has painted 329 portraits of Russian generals, uses a digital copy of his work as a basis to add his friends, family, and some celebrities into the paintings using Photoshop.

So far he’s done a bunch of celebrities, and most of them look amazing. If we didn’t know who these people were, you wouldn’t think twice about whether most of them were a legit Russian general or not. Some look a little off such as Sean Connery, for example, who looks as though he’s just passed gas in a room full of people, and is pleased that none of them can figure out who it was.

Continue on below now to check out the pictures, and to the source link for even more.