Where the Magic Hsppens

摘要

In the middle of an empty lot in a movie studio in Miramar, New Zealand (it's a suburb of Wellington), a bunch of people are standing on a rock. Some of the people are famous-Martin Freeman, for example, who at the moment is doing a little dance to keep warm between takes. It's June, but New Zealand is opposite-land, so it's winter here. These are most of the principal cast of The Hobbit: The Desolation ofSmaug, the second movie in Peter Jackson's Hobbit trilogy, to be released Dec. 13. Freeman plays the hero, Bilbo Baggins; the other actors play a band of dwarfs out to reclaim their homeland. Everyone is dressed in full Middle-earth regalia. I'm hanging around watching them work.