Tim Masters interviews Chris Bouchard, writer-director of the forty-minute "not-for-profit" fan film The Hunt for Gollum. Made on HD video by a 160-member volunteer crew for £3,000, and set between the action of The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the film, which exists in legal limbo, is intended as a love letter to the Peter Jackson films; it not only approximates their visual style as best it can, but stars a Viggo Mortensen look-alike named Adrian Webster as Aragorn. The film, which recently premiered at the Sci-Fi London film festival, can now be viewed online here.

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Joel and Ethan Coen have two or three original projects in the pipeline (Burn After Reading, A Serious Man and Hail Caesar), but apparently the mainstream success of No Country for Old Men (okay, the Coens have never really lacked mainstream recognition, but with its literary pedigree, No Country is certainly the most prestige-y thing they've ever done) has spurred them towards more adaptations. Scott Rudin has just hired them to adapt Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union. (Rudin also has an adaptation of Chabon's Adventures of Kavalier and Clay in the works, written by Chabon himself.) As someone who liked No Country well-enough but missed the Coens' usual irreverance in the midst of all that apocalyptic atmosphere, I'm sort of sad to see them moving towards adaptations. Their original voice is one of the best things they have. Thoughts, readers?

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