Eyes on Stalks picked up that..... Tehanu @ 14:23 EST
Gambolling around Mordor didn't stop me from finding out some snippets of news. The DoC staff at one of the huts I stayed at said that some LOTR filming had already taken place over by the Tukino skifield (no no, don't imagine the Riders of Rohan on snowboards please, it's midsummer here! Though people I talked to who'd been on the summit of Ruapehu above Tukino got snowed on briefly the day before) and DoC had denied them permission to bring in horses, helicopters etc. so they had to do without, presumably. I suspect that although the area I was hiking through was as Mordor-like as you could possibly want, there's no way that DoC would let a film crew anywhere near it unless they were prepared to get there the way we did, on foot. My miraculous periscope-like vision also detected some other unrelated factoids: It looks like Rosie's role in the films will be a little larger than in the books, perhaps so that there is more sense of her and Sam's relationship before he leaves the Shire.