Meet your dwarves and elves

Meet Bilbo.
That's Martin Freeman, and as long as we've been speculating whether we would or wouldn't be actually returning to The Shire, this is the dude whose name has refused to leave Bilbo alone. We all knew it was likely, now it's confirmed. Congrats to him on scoring the best character to ever have a name that sounds like a self-pleasuring device.

Beyond that, now that things are actually advancing on the project, Peter Jackson has let fly a slew of names associated with characters whose names mean something to people one rung up from me on the nerd ladder. In addition to Sir Ian McKellon and Andy Serkis presumably returning as Gandalf and Gollum, although surprisingly NOT confirmed in Jackson's press release, the following dudes are going to be real famous.

Richard Armitage will be playing Thorin Oakenshield, who has an iron shield and thus invents irony.

Aidan Turner and Rob Kazinsky will play Kili and Fili, who despite their names are not twins appearing in Playboy.
Your other dwarves are Graham McTavish as Dwalin, John Callen as Oin, Stephen Hunter as Bombur, Mark Hadlow as Dori, and Peter Hambleton as Gloin. I would post these dudes pictures, but they aren't really famous enough to have one. One of them is a Power Ranger. No lie.

This is mostly just exciting because it proves this is happening, really truly happening. We're going to get a double dose of The Hobbit.

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