If you think you’re a master of Tolkien trivia, come meet Elrond. You’ll find him in channel #bag_end on the TORn IRC server and he knows more than 500 different Tolkien trivia questions. To get him to do his thing, all you need to do is type !ask. [More]
Day: August 15, 2005
It might be a scene out of a Cinemax movie: A proper English wife succumbs to her desires and makes mad love to the burly worker in the greenhouse. But in “Asylum,” opening Friday, the woman in question is a doctor’s wife and the worker is an inmate in a British psychiatric hospital for the criminally insane. For Marton Csokas, the film’s hulking six-foot-three-inch tall Edgar Stark, an artist who murdered his wife in a jealous rage, making love to such beautiful women as “Asylum” heroine Natasha Richardson’s Stella is a familiar day’s work. [More]
More than 70 delegates from around the world have gathered at Aston University for Tolkien 2005, according to The Guardian. The events include a lecture from Professor Tom Shippey, hobbit dances, evening performances, and more. Read about Tolkien in the Land of Heroes to find out more about the mythology in Tolkien’s works, and discover the biography of Tolkien with J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century. [More]
When devotees of ‘Lord of the Rings’ re-watch the fantasy movies, many do their level best to forget the story and convince themselves they are seeing them for the first time, according to the biggest ever study of its kind, sponsored by the ESRC. ‘Not knowing’ the plot or the ending means they can experience as much of the full emotions and tension as possible and their pleasure is increased, says Professor Martin Barker of the University of Wales, who led the research over 15 months and in 20 countries. He found that movies such as ‘Lord of the Rings III’, on which the project was focussed, are not just an escape, but for many of us a place to work out a bit what might be wrong with the world. And they are more important and enjoyable to those who work in jobs where they feel they have little control over their lives. [More]
Oscar winner Jon Voight has replaced Ian Holm in the CBS miniseries about Pope John Paul II. The four-hour miniseries, working under the straightforward title “Pope John Paul II,” has begun production in Krakow, Poland, and will later shoot in Vatican City. The film has also expanded its cast, adding Oscar and Emmy nominee James Cromwell. [More]
Karl Urban is in negotiations to star in “Pathfinder,” a Viking epic being made by Phoenix Pictures and helmer Marcus Nispel. 20th Century Fox is distributing. “Pathfinder” is a remake of the 1987 Norwegian film by helmer Nils Gaup to which Phoenix acquired the rights to in 2001. While the original followed Norway’s warlike clans around the year 1000 A.D., the new version, with a script by screenwriter Laeta Kalogridis (“Alexander”), is set in North America around the same time, when Vikings inadvertently discovered the continent 500 years before Columbus. [More]