According to Ian McKellen‘s official website, director Guillermo del Toro is getting ready to begin filming his epic two-part adaptation of The Hobbit in July.

McKellen, who is set to return to his role of the powerful wizard Gandalf, says that casting has begun in many different parts of the world and del Toro is now living in New Zealand near producer Peter Jackson and the studio where the movies are set to film. The Hobbit is of course based on the novel by J.R.R. Tolkien, and is a prequel to the Lord of the Rings trilogy that Jackson turned into a massively-successful set of films in early this past decade.

Since a devastating fire destroyed much of the Universal Studios in June of 2008, the damage has slowly-but-surely been restored. Over this time period, many exciting announcements have also been made — namely, that the legendary King Kong ride would not be rebuilt, but re-imagined as a brand new and amazing attraction for visitors to check out.

A few details for this new ride — which was to be based not on the classic 1933 film, but Peter Jackson‘s latest epic film — were shared in June of 2009, but they only described what the ride would be. Now, almost two years later, we’re starting to get a really strong idea of what to expect if we find ourselves visiting Kong this Summer when the ride opens.

Jackson got together with a team of both theme park ride experts and film making talents inside of a giant hangar cloaked in green screen to put it all together and create one of the wildest cinematic adventure rides ever conceived.

Continue on down below to read more about how insane this ride will be, and also to check out the ride’s short teaser trailer.

NOTE: For structural reasons and to ensure that this list is super-duper pretty at all times, we’ll be posting this same intro for all sections of The Decade List. If you’ve already read all of this, you can just head down to the continuation of our list!

Let’s just get it out of the way right off the ol’ bat: yes, we know it’s been a few months since we left the decade. Most folks undertook this heavy task pre-2010, but we decided that it would be a little bit better to let the new year settle in a bit before hitting you with something of this magnitude.

So here we are, geeks: we’ve officially arrived in FUTURE *cue retro ’50s sci-fi music* and still we have no freakin’ flying cars yet. What’s the deal with that? While it is pretty exciting to be inside of the year 2010 — a year that always seemed unreachable to us mere mortals — we are also exiting another entire decade that leaves us staring at one majorly epic task. That task? To search, dig, locate, retrieve, organize, polish, and present the very best films of the past ten years!

We must once again declare that this list is also simply opinion. You are are without doubt going to find movies here that you hate and do not think deserve to be included. You will surely think of movies that you think should not only be on here, but that should be at the very top of the list. There will even be some that I have not seen and thus, can not add. Even at this very moment, I sit, worrying and wondering if I’ve forgotten any that I would include; that’s just the way things fly when compiling something this massive.

With all of that said, we invite you in to relax and check out Chapter IV our list, The Decade List: The 59 Best Films of the Past Ten Years!

NOTE: For structural reasons and to ensure that this list is super-duper pretty at all times, we’ll be posting this same intro for all sections of The Decade List. If you’ve already read all of this, you can just head down to the continuation of our list!

Let’s just get it out of the way right off the ol’ bat: yes, we know it’s been month since we left the decade. Most folks undertook this heavy task pre-2010, but we decided that it would be a little bit better to let the new year settle in a bit before hitting you with something of this magnitude.

So here we are, geeks: we’ve officially arrived in FUTURE *cue retro ’50s sci-fi music* and still we have no freakin’ flying cars yet. What’s the deal with that? While it is pretty exciting to be inside of the year 2010 — a year that always seemed unreachable to us mere mortals — we are also exiting another entire decade that leaves us staring at one majorly epic task. That task? To search, dig, locate, retrieve, organize, polish, and present the very best films of the past ten years!

For we the movie fanatics of the world, the Academy Awards are just as exciting as the Super Bowl. Many of us throw or attend Oscar parties, and even go so far as to print out that ballot and lock our picks into place.

Over the past few years, this and a lot of other awards shows have kind of lost their flare. It has become apparent that deciding nominees and voting for winners is not about who is the best and who is most deserving, but about what has the best side-story and what the popular names and titles are. This massive flaw is hard to swallow, and the appeal of the whole event is bordering on non-existent.

To help bring more appeal to the game, the folks behind the Academy Awards chose to make a few changes in the format of the show. The biggest of these alterations was of course changing the amount of Best Picture nominees from 5 to a whopping 10, which meant that all of the deserving but not-so-traditional contenders (The Dark Knight) could get their chance to be underdog heroes.

Continue reading on for more and to check out the full list of this year’s nominees!