There’s two great documentaries making the rounds of New Zealand during the film festival season – the Figwit documentary, about the elf extra catapaulted to unexpected fame via the internet, and the first part of Costa Botes’s very complete Making Of LOTR, which promises to be “a fuller and more playful appreciation of activity behind the scenes than you might have seen on the more formal guided tours provided by the DVD extras.” [More]
Day: July 7, 2004
MAKING OF LOTR & FIGWIT Films: 2004 New Zealand International Film Festival
Festival Dates: Auckland: July 9 – 25 Wellington: July 16 – August 1
Wellington filmmaker Costa Botes, a long-time associate of Peter Jackson and his conspirator on “Forgotten Silver, assembled a small team in July 1999, three months before cameras rolled on principal photography for LOTR, to shoot and compile a behind-the-scenes video record. By the time the production of the trilogy finally ended late in 2003, they had over 800 hours of footage. In the first of the three documentary features to be cut from this material, there’s a much fuller and more playful appreciation of activity behind the scenes than you might have seen on the more formal guided tours provided by the excellent DVD extras.
FRODO IS GREAT….WHO IS THAT?
The future, when everyone would be famous for 15 minutes is far behind us: now all it takes is three seconds, which is how long Wellington actor and musician Bret McKenzie appeared as an extra in “The Fellowship of the Ring.” A glimpse of his elvish pout during the Council of Elrond scene enflamed the imaginations of Israeli woman, Iris Hadad, and English woman, Sherry de Andres. They met on internet message boards (where else?), coined the name ‘Figwit’, an acronym of ‘Frodo is Great…Who is That!!?’, and created the website www.figwitlives.net. Peter Jackson and the LOTR producers have taken a suitably indulgent view of the elf-hijack and this amusing magazine-style documentary culminates in the spectacle of McKenzie undergoing Figwit make-up once again for his one-line part in “The Return of the King.”
Film info: www.nzff.co.nz Venue details, dates and session times are available in the festival brochure and on-line.
Tickets: All ticketing for the festivals is managed by Ticketek Ticketek.co.nz AKL: ph: 09 307 5000 / WGTN: 04 384 3840
* please note for GROUP BOOKINGS of 30+ there is a discounted rate of $10.50 per tx (standard price $13.50)
Narnia News from Narniaweb: James Cosmo [Braveheart] has been cast as Father Christmas. [More]
From IMDB: Pregnant actress Liv Tyler reportedly passed out on Saturday while dining in a Massachusetts restaurant. The Lord Of The Rings beauty, her husband Royston Langdon, actor Mark Wahlberg and his partner Rhea Durham were socializing in The Pearl eaterie on the Massachusetts island of Nantucket, when Tyler fainted. Newspaper the Boston Herald reports the five-months-pregnant actress refused first aid and said she would go the island’s Nantucket Cottage Hospital herself. Tyler and her husband of one year are expecting their baby in the new year.
TORN wishes Liv a speedy recovery and good health!
Elijah Wood attended the Karlovy Vary Film Festival in Prague last weekend. www.iffkv.cz has some images of the event, take a look! [More]
HARTFORD, Conn. – Tickets to the Sunday, September 19, 3 pm performance of the triumphant “Lord of the Rings Symphony” featuring Oscar(r)-winning composer and conductor Howard Shore and the Hartford Symphony Orchestra, are on sale now. [More]