Links of the week

A few pieces of news about The Hobbit leads this weeks batch of links, but there's also news for The Dark Knight Rises and some great dietary suggestions. Also, my strange addiction to Hunger Games casting reports has finally come to an end.

Titles and rumor confirmation for The Hobbit

A press release (via TheOneRing.net) from Warner Bros. and MGM reveals that the official titles for the two-part adaptation are: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and The Hobbit: There and Back Again. Those are fairly perfect subtitles, especially There and Back Again. The same release confirms casting that's been rumored for months: the return of Cate Blanchett as Galadriel, Orlando Bloom as Legolas, Christopher Lee as Saruman, and Hugo Weaving as Elrond. Also, Peter Jackson confirmed through his Facebook page that the White Council and Attack on Dol Guldor will feature in the film, which the return of Saruman and Galadriel basically confirmed. And he shared this picture of them preparing for battle.

The Volkswagen of the Apocalypse

I've never been a huge fan of the Volkswagen bus, though I'll admit it's a classic, but then I'd never seen one outfitted with tank treads either. So basically, this is awesome (via Jalopnik).

Final important role cast for The Hunger Games

I'm pretty sure this is only important role remaining, it's certainly the one I've been waiting to hear about. Lionsate has announced that Donald Sutherland has been cast as President Snow in Gary Ross's film adaptation of The Hunger Games and presumably that means he's signed up for the sequels. I'm not thrilled with this, not that there's anything particularly wrong with Sutherland, I just think I've seen him this type of role too many times.

First image from The Dark Knight Rises

Early promotional material for Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight& was mostly viral and focused on the film's villain. It looks like the follow-up is taking the same route. This image of Tom Hardy as Bane was released via some complicated Twitter scheme that I don't even want to explain, so you can read about it here. It looks like they've managed to combine the traditional comic-book villain with a more realistic look, as they did in the previous films with the Joker and Scarecrow. Now I'm just waiting to see the first pictures of Anne Hathaway as Catwoman and hoping the Tumbler gets a good replacement, because I was really sad when that blew up.

Drink coffee, eat chocolate, drink wine

From io9, here's some dietary advice that I can follow. Chocolate helps circulation and lowers the risk of heart disease. The benefits of red wine are fairly widely known and it's a powerful antioxidant, and now it looks like coffee lowers risk for cancer. So apparently my current eating habits aren't as bad as I thought.

Sucker Punch gets an extended cut

Still clinging near the top of my 2011 film list, Zach Synder's Sucker Punch is getting an R-rated extended cut on Blu-ray and DVD when it releases on June 28. I'm not a big fan of the movies that rush out an extended but, since it usually means that the original cut made some mistakes, or the studio is trying to cash in on the crowd hoping there'll be more violence or nudity, but I like Sucker Punch the first time around and the R-rating might probably won't hurt, since Synder's work on 300 and Watchmen earned that rating.