Why is your inbox full of offers for pills? Our correspondent finds the answer in The Hobbit. Bilbo Baggins tried to sell me some Viagra last week. It was a surprise: J. R. R.Tolkien never recorded hobbits’ pharmaceutical pleasures as extending any further than a pouch of tobacco, but there he was in my e-mail inbox alongside an offer for “CIjALIS, AMBjIEN, VALjIUM, VjIAGRA”. “When they had dried in the sun, which was now strong and warm, they were refreshed, if still sore and a little hungry,” one Mokosh Bauder wrote to inform me. “Soon they crossed the ford (carrying the hobbit), and then began to march through.” [More]
Day: August 3, 2006
Thanks to Flinch for the link! It’s impossible to divorce Middle-earth II from its controls, and the developer’s success in allowing players to select their forces, move them around the battlefields, manipulate the camera, and successfully manage the game’s structures in order to build an army is a crucial victory. The controls are complex enough to allow players to select individual units, all units on the game screen, and entire armies, but simple enough that novice players won’t need to memorize the combinations of trigger pulls and button presses in order to successfully wield their armies. [More]
DES MOINES, Iowa — The widow of a photographer killed in a helicopter crash while filming “The Final Season” is suing actor Sean Astin, the movie’s producers and the pilot, among others. Kathryn Schlotzhauer alleges that the June 30 crash in eastern Iowa could have been avoided if producers and others involved in the film had scouted the area and noted the power lines that brought the helicopter down. [More]
Academy Award® winner Joe Letteri and Weta Digital have signed on to create visual effects, creatures and digital environments for James Cameron’s much-anticipated and innovative new motion picture, Avatar. “Weta has proven themselves a leader in visionary effects, especially in the area of performance capture based character animation, which is a big part of my new film,” says writer/director James Cameron. Cameron continues “Along with their world-class capability comes a genuine passion to blaze new trails and to entertain a global audience with groundbreaking techniques. I’m really looking forward to the collaboration with Joe and his team.” Academy Award® winning producer Jon Landau adds “Weta has an incredible depth of creative talent that has continually proven their ability to create technological innovations that allow filmmakers to tell stories which could not otherwise be told. They have the unique ability to seamlessly integrate these technologies into the movie in ways that the audience never questions the reality of the cinematic presentation. We look forward to pushing Joe and his team even further down the road of photorealistic visual effects.” [More]
WESTWOOD, MA – AUGUST 3, 2006 – Turbine, Inc. announced today that the highly-anticipated The Lord of the Rings Online™: Shadows of Angmar™ has entered the alpha phase of development. The first and only massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) based on the literary works of J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings Online™ will allow players to explore Middle-earth™, the most famous fantasy world of all time. The company also announced that over 125,000 fans have already signed up for the Beta Program. [More]