12-02-01 Latest News

LA LOTR Event: Storyopolis Bookstore
Calisuri @ 10:03 pm EST

Quickbeam and I had a chance to attend the Storyoplis/Sean Astin event in Los Angeles yesterday.

The event began with a presentation of the 15 minutes of behind the scene footage from the JVC LOTR DVD. Heard of it before? Yep, it is the same DVD available with the purchase of the JVC "Lord of the Rings" DVD Player. The crowd of approximately 100 or so raving Tolkien fans loved it.

Claire Cooper then introduced the star of the show, Sean Astin. (Sam Gamgee in the film, if you have been hiding under a rock for the last few years) Sean answered fan questions for a good 45 minutes and then signed posters and books. The highlight of Sean's talk was something that seemed to surprise even him! Claire brought out a clothing rack of his Lord of the Rings costumes as well as his sword used for the films. Both the full sized and scale model versions of his outfit and weaponry were there for fans to see. (Some even got to try them on! See the gallery below)

Claire than introduced Jude Fisher, the author of "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring Visual Companion." She spoke a bit about her experience writing the book and how excited she was with the final product from Peter Jackson and company. Jude also sat down with fans to sign copies of the book.

After both Jude and Sean had finished speaking, and while fans were lining up to get autographs, the folks at New Line allowed fans to touch and feel the props. And boy they did that! Some got to try on the costumes while others just marvelled at the craft and quality of props like Boromir's Horn!!!

We'd like to thank New Line and Storyopolis for this great event, and hopefully they can do more events like this across the country for fans everywhere.

We met a lot of great people at the event and we'd like to mention them real quickly now. You will see many of them in the pictures below.

•Derek LeLash (the one that informed us of the event!)
•David Baxter (pictured below, he is the VERY tall gentleman getting something signed by Sean Astin)
•William ( Pictured below, Will inspired a group of people to read Tolkien, and in the process created one of the best group of fans in the area. The next five fans listed here are just a few of the people he has influenced. )
•Ivan (Pictured below, he's the one with the Radiohead ticket signed by Elijah Wood)
•Diana (Pictured below, she tried on the hobbit outfit )
•Dennise (Pictured below tried to skewer Ivan with Sam's sword and also readily admits to having the Lord of the Rings cliff notes!)
•David (Pictured below, he was lucky enough to wear the hobbit outfit AND wield Boromir's Horn!)

If we missed your name, we apologize! Especially those of you who won prizes in the raffle.

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