It seems that Mr Limpet has made a good spot and found the image of an upcoming Toy Biz action figure on the web. Action-Figure.com has posted up an unapproved prototype of the Orc Overseer figure due out in September, which we have already seen recreated in the WETA Sideshow models. !SPOILERS! [More]

NEW YORK (Variety) – The end of 2001 will be no holiday for the film biz. Studio slates are stuffed with an array of expensive, high-stakes titles featuring the very stars absent from marquees this summer. [More]

Thanks to Storm for the tip!

Roseann sends along word on where you can order your LOTR goodies for back to school, at a discount! [More]

I’m not to sure about this story, but it seems cool enough to post, so there it is, perhaps some Microsoft employees want to open their Outlook(tm) and drop me of an email saying ‘yay’ or ‘nay’ on this story? Read on:

From: ohgirl

My brother just called. He had a conversation with a friend of his whose brother works for Microsoft. This friend’s brother says that Microsoft employees have a company-wide special access internet where they can download mp3s and movies and other things not available to the general public. You have to have a special Microsoft password to access these.

He claims that Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring was available on this service for about six hours recently, in the past couple of days.

When my brother told me this, I said it had to be something else, because I don’t think the movie is actually done yet, with final editing and cgi effects and all that. Maybe it was just the trailer, or a collection of all the trailers, or maybe even the new trailer which is coming out next month. Or maybe it was something put together by the documentary crew that was on set during the filmmaking. Or maybe it was the 26 minutes shown at Cannes, or the footage shown at the San Diego Con?

My brother called his friend back to get more information, and his friend insisted it was the movie, but added that his brother hadn’t been able to watch it because he couldn’t get to it (too much traffic?). He also said it was only on for about six hours.

So, I was wondering if anybody out there who works for Microsoft can tell me just exactly what it was that was available to Bill Gates’ employees only for a few hours the other day.

Hmmmmmmmm……

The cool folks at ICQ have a special LOTR ‘skin’ you can get for ICQ, it’s actually quite nice, I’m using it myself as you can see. To get the new LOTR ‘skin’ follow the link. [More]