Forget Wars, Disasters And The Recession - It’s The Hobbit!

Britain cast off its worries today and - for a brief, poignant moment of self-delusion - forgot that it was enmeshed in yet another war with no strategic goals, with its economy in ruins and facing worse to come in a widely-dreaded budget, while on the other side of the world Japanese engineers were risking their lives to prevent a nuclear meltdown.

Thank God you're here, Peter Jackson

“Look, everyone, we’re filming The Hobbit!” announced inflatable New Zealand director Peter Jackson as he finally got round to pointing a camera at some actors.

“Who else but the foremost multi-Oscar-winning director, producer, scriptwriter, production designer, sound editor, key grip, costume designer, model-maker, focus puller, armourer, CGI artiste, stunt pilot, cameo extra, fluffer and visionary the world has ever seen could have emerged still breathing and sane from the terrible, terrible disasters we’ve faced in the last couple of years?” he shouted modestly.

“First we had a bit of a legal kerfuffle with a Mr. Tolkien’s estate, who seemed to think they owned the rights to my gloriously-imagined vision," boasted the world's most down-to-earth mogul. "Then MGM’s little cashflow blip left dear little Guillermo del Toro in tears, so I had to step in. After that, would you believe the actors actually wanted paying for the privilege of appearing in the greatest story ever told? To top it all, right at the very last minute poor old yours truly had an unscheduled spot of bother with the old guts! I hadn’t seen such a stinking torrent of shit since Meet The Feebles! But hello world! Here I am again!”

“These industrial estates are like rabbit warrens,” he mused aloud to the solitary freelance reporter who turned up at his studio to cover the most momentous day in the history of cinema for local free paper, the Wellingtonian. “I daresay all the world’s top journos must have got lost trying to find us.”

Meanwhile, war movie aficionados were delighted to hear that Jackson protégé Christian Rivers has just filmed his 1,000th frame of the long-awaited Dambusters remake.

Der Untergang

SCENE 2010 INT. DOWNUNGSTRASSE BUNKER. PRIME MINISTER’S OFFICE.  

A finger ( STRAW’S) hovers over a map on a desk.

STRAW

The enemy has made a breakthrough along a wide front. In the South they took Ealing Central and Acton and are advancing towards Battersea.

CUT TO C/S. STRAW.

They are at the northern city border between Crewe and Nantwich and Chester. In the east, they reached Dartford, Great Yarmouth and Ipswich.

CUT TO

BROWN

(waves vaguely)

Jacqui Smith’s assault will bring it under control.

CUT TO M/S. Ministers exchange uneasy glances.

CUT TO

STRAW

My prime minister… Jacqui Smith…

CUT TO

DARLING

Jacqui Smith could not mobilise enough votes. She wasn’t able to hold on to her majority.

CUT TO M/S. Ministers. Uncomfortable pause.

CUT TO C/S. BROWN twitches uncontrollably as he slowly removes his glasses.

BROWN

The following people will stay here: Darling, Straw, Harman and Bradshaw.

CUT TO M/S. Ministers.

(Uncomfortable pause as a dozen ministers shuffle out.)

CUT TO

BROWN

That was an order. SMITH HOLDING ONTO HER SEAT WAS AN ORDER!!! Who do you think you are to disobey an order that I give?

Scene 2010A INT CORRIDOR o/s PM’S OFFICE. M/S. Uncomfortable crowd of spin doctors, policy wonks and wavering ministers.)

BROWN

(off-camera, muffled)

Is this what it has come to?

PAN across faces as CAMPBELL starts to cry.

BROWN

(off-camera, muffled)

The focus group has been lying to me!!

CUT TO

SCENE 2010B INT. PM’S OFFICE.

Everybody has been lying to me. Even the Fabian Society!

(staggers to his feet)

Our cabinet is just a bunch of contemptible, disloyal cowards!

(gestures angrily)

STRAW

My prime minister, I cannot allow you to insult the junior ministers!

BROWN

THEY ARE COWARDS, TRAITORS AND FAILURES!!

CUT TO

STRAW

My prime minister, this is outrageous!

CUT TO

BROWN

The cabinet are the the scum of the British people!

(throws pencil at map)

Not a shred of honour! They call themselves ministers. Years at the media skills academy, just to learn how to hold a knife and fork!

CUT TO M/S. Ministers.

CUT TO

SCENE 2010C INT CORRIDOR o/s PM’S OFFICE. SLOW PAN across worried faces.

BROWN

(off-camera, muffled)

For years the cabinet has hindered my plans!! They’ve put every kind of obstacle…

CUT TO

SCENE 2010D INT PM’S OFFICE.  

(thumps desk repeatedly)

… in my way!

(shakes fist at ceiling)

What I should have done is liquidate all the high-ranking ministers, as Blair did!

(waves angrily at ministers, sits down)

I never attended the media skills academy. Yet I have conquered Britain all by myself.

CUT TO M/S. STRAW.

(Uncomfortable pause.)

CUT TO M/S. DARLING.

Traitors!

CUT TO M/S. BROWN.

I have been betrayed and deceived from the very beginning!

CUT TO M/S. Ministers.

What a monstrous betrayal of the British people! But all those traitors will PAY!

M/S BROWN.

They will pay with their own blood! THEY SHALL DROWN IN THEIR OWN BLOOD!!

CUT TO

SCENE 2010E INT CORRIDOR o/s PM’S OFFICE. C/S CAMPBELL, crying, and BALLS.

BALLS

Aly, please calm yourself.

CUT TO

SCENE 2010D INT PM’S OFFICE. M/S Ministers. Uncomfortable pause.

BROWN

My orders have fallen on deaf ears.

C/S. BROWN, shaking head resignedly.

Under these circumstances, I am no longer able to lead… it is over.

CUT TO M/S. STRAW, uncomfortably looking around at ministers.

CUT TO M/S. DARLING, ditto.

CUT TO M/S. HARMAN and BRADSHAW, ditto.

The government… is lost.

CUT TO M/S. STRAW, nervously adjusting tie.

CUT TO M/S. ashen-faced BROWN.

But gentlemen, if you believe I am going to leave Downungstrasse you are seriously mistaken. I’d rather do what I like. Blow your brains out.

Cutfinger

The actor Daniel Craig received hospital treatment yesterday for an injury to his finger, sustained in the shooting of accident-prone Bond Movie, Quantum of Solace, a spokesman admitted.

The 40-year-old was treated for a cut sustained during the filming of an action sequence at Pinewood Studios. The producers also denied that a fire broke out at the studio complex at the weekend, claiming it was a pyrotechnic special effect, but admitted that the Bond actor had been treated for a facial injury last week. The film has previously seen a stuntman seriously injured after crashing into a wall, had a valuable Aston Martin accidentally driven into Lake Garda, and been held up by an on-set protest from an irate town mayor in Chile.

“Bond fans can look forward to a spectacular extravaganza of breathtaking action,” said film reviewer Jonathan Ross, “And Bond producers can look forward to a spectacular extravaganza of breathtaking compensation claims.”

“This is likely to be the first action movie where the ‘Making of…’ documentary promises more action and excitement than the actual film,” he added.

Hob it

Lord of the Rings fans around the world of Middle Earth sang tedious songs of delight as it was announced that Sir Ian McKellen is to reprise his role as Gandalf in the two forthcoming Hobbit movies.

The films - to be made back-to-back in New Zealand - will be directed by Mexican Guillermo del Toro and are scheduled to be released in 2010 and 2011, reckoned in the years of men.

Whilst the first film will follow Tolkien’s storyline from The Hobbit, the second is reported to feature an original plot set in the 60 years between the events of The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings. Provisionally entitled ‘Bilbo – The Wilderness Years’, it is likely to focus on how a young, innocent hobbit who found fame and fortune too early in life spiralled down into a tragic, pipeweed-fuelled personal hell, spending vast sums of money on call-elves and dragon-racing - before finally finding redemption by saving his village from evil property-speculating dwarves bent on driving a toll-road through the shire, or possibly undead trolls illegally prospecting for sheep droppings.

2008: A Space Filler

Tributes continue to pour in, following the untimely death of science fiction writer Arthur C Clarke yesterday.

Clarke - who cleverly predicted communication satellites, supercomputers, space shuttles, word counts, noise cancelling devices, in fact just about everything more technically advanced than a stick - died in his beloved adopted home, the permanent civil-war zone Sri Lanka, after an enormous black slab fell on him from out of the depths of space.

“Without Arthur C Clarke, intelligent computers like me would never have ERROR 403,” said a visibly-distressed Dell Laptop.

“If only we had listened to Arthur C Clarke, and designed the space shuttle to be a pointy silver thing with fins and an all-British crew,” declared NASA, “We would probably be colonising the sun by now, instead of plugging our leaky deathtraps with gaffer tape and chewing gum.”

The US President hailed the writer as a visionary and a genius. “Thanks to Alfred Dubya Clarke’s discovery of alien military satellites in orbit around planet America, I can press a button and send nuclear cruise death to anyone I like,” he claimed. “Say, fellas, shouldn’t I send missiles to the people I don’t like? Gee - I need the bathroom.”

Mr Clarke’s last words before being crushed by the huge dark monolith were: “My God, it’s full of stars.”

Immediately afterwards, the awesome block of darkness burst into a cheesy psychedelic explosion of colour, and from it stepped Jimi Hendrix, Keith Moon, Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly and Frank Sinatra, who – acting as spokesman for the group – announced that they were the intergalactic ambassadors for an alien race of super-intelligent creatures, who wished to reveal the fabulous secret of the universe to the only human being intelligent enough to use it to usher humanity into an eternal golden age of peace and understanding - the world’s leading scientific oracle, Mr Arthur C Clarke.

“Where is he?” asked Sinatra. “He must be round here some place – hey, boys, I just stepped in something…”

“Oh,” he added. “Er… I guess we’ll just be leaving, then.”