November 6th Film Book Release Party! - Calisuri @ 13:54 PST
If you still haven't signed up to participate in the November 6th Film Book Release party, don't miss out! Over 500 people are participating already and you have a chance to wint the $80 Alan Lee illustrated Lord of the Rings! [Participate!]

We just got a note from Clay Harper, Tolkien projects director for Houghton Mifflin and we wanted to pass it along.

Everyone on the Tolkien team at Houghton Mifflin appreciates the talent and skill displayed by all the people involved with TORn. You provide an invaluable forum for fans of The Lord of the Ringsand the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, and help us all to appreciate them even more.

We're daily lurkers too, so we know that one question on everyone's mind is likely to be: will these books deliver things I've never seen, tales I've never heard? As one of only a handful of people in America who have seen them, I can tell you, fan to fan, that the books which debut on November 6th are spectacular, an eye-popping treasure trove for fans of the film trilogy. The fold-out Helm's Deep battle plan in The Two Towers Visual Companionexplains the sequence of events in such a wonderful way. It is almost three feet wide -- it just floored me when I first saw it, and it still does. That book also has a large number of images not seen by any of you so far: a full page shot of Treebeard, Gollum, and many large format shots that show the epic scale of Peter Jackson's Middle-earth. It shows the incredible attention to detail his actors and crew have put into everything from sets to costumes to makeup.

The processes by which their craft and talent is applied are showcased marvelously in The Making of The Lord of the Rings -- nearly 200 pages of fantastic behind-the-scenes material with exclusive imagery and interviews throughout. Many of us recall the murky spy photos someone would shoot from across the valley TORn posted several years go -- now imagine hundreds of behind-the-scenes shots where you can actually see what's going on, imagine being invited to the Weta Workshop and having all your questions answered. Brian Sibley's exhaustive text provides a full-immersion experience for fans who want to know how they brought this world to life and what it was like to be there -- there's just so much in this book, and best of all much of it is told in the voices of the crew. They are clearly people who love this novel as much as we do, and who have the skills to do things the rest of us only dream about. So.. show of hands? Who's in?

Me! heh. To sign up, or start your own party for the November 6th release, jump on over to our Line Party section! [More]