Another interesting thought-piece that I stumbled on in my Middle-earth wanderings across the internet. In this article, Tolkien scholar Michael Martinez tackles the eternally vexing question of textual fidelity and why he feels that the divergences between novel and film are beneficial. (more…)
As part of TheOneRing.net’s recent Light the Beacons fundraiser, Heather (AKA: IStoleTheOneRing from the Barliman’s Chat) won a guest spot with the Happy Hobbit team.
What started off as a friendly chat quickly devolved into an exposé… and an attack of a clone! (more…)
Posted in Barlimans, Fans, Hobbit Movie, Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, Tolkien
Welcome to this months “Getting to know you” Q&A, this month we’re talking to one of TORns Four Founders, Xoanon.
UPDATE: Photo of Manu Bennett at the TORn “Hobbit” preview panel.
Gandalf & Saruman at SLCC 2013
SALT LAKE CITY — Once scheduled for a smaller venue in the suburbs, the first ever Salt Lake Comic Con filled Utah’s capital city’s largest convention venue and had it bursting at the seams Saturday. For a time the hundreds waiting outside were not allowed to enter except at a 1-out-1-in rate. Word on the dealer’s floor said it was because the fire marshal closed the space but that rumor was never confirmed.
Reports in the media called the event “record setting” for a first-year convention, and that is possibly true, but such stats aren’t readily available. In any case, it was a massive event with celebrities that included William Kircher (Bifur) and Manu Bennett (Azog) and other pop-culture icons like William Shatner and Adam West.
Azog at Weta booth, Salt Lake Comic Con 2013
TheOneRing.net was part of the fun as well, with staffer (and this writer) Larry D. Curtis (MrCere) attending with the show in his (my) hometown. the SLComic Con invited TORn to present a panel about Smaug and serve on other panels as well, with topics including Fantasy Films, all things Tolkien, Geek Culture and film school.
Bennett and Kircher were kind enough to drop by TheOneRing panel that also included author and TORn friend Paul Genesse. He helped moderate the panel and showed incredible enthusiasm for the material.
TheOneRing also managed a booth on the at time very crowded floor supported by incredible friends at Badali Jewelry and Weta Workshop making its first U.S. appearance outside of the San Diego Comic Con. TORn helped back in a small way to staff the Weta booth and send those with questions about where to purchase The One Ring to Badali’s very nearby booth. Artist David Powell was also kind enough to sign posters of his art for fans.
The Salt Palace Convention Center can be expanded and the SLCC will return next year. TheOneRing.net hopes to be part of the show. Thanks to Dan McBride and Blonde Ninja for their support of the TORn booth. Thanks also to the many financial supports at the event and to Salt Lake Comic Con for letting us be a part of the show. If you attended and would like TORn to return, you can use the contact info here to let them know.
If anybody has images of Bennett and Kircher attending the TORn panel, please send them in! We were busy having a panel and didn’t get any photos.
In this piece on his blog Midgardsmal, linguist David Salo writes about how he derived various Orkish dialects used in the Lord of the Rings films from his own extrapolations of Black Speech, and
about his thoughts on the approach Sauron might have taken in putting together Black Speech itself.
This is an illustrated tale of the untried university graduate who brought new life to JRR Tolkien’s previous creations. Here lies a tale about a young rookie who was plucked from the wilderness to deliver an almighty task despite lacking in heavyweight stature.
Art student Jemima Catlin, an avid JRR Tolkien obsessive, was just 23 when her work fell into the lap of literary giants Harper Collins – and little did she know that she would go on to illustrate none other than her beloved epic, The Hobbit. (more…)
Posted in Christopher Tolkien, Hobbit Book, J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, Tolkien, Tolkien Estate
Nothing official has been announced yet, but indications out of the Capital City are that things are progressing towards something Lord of the Rings fans have long desired, a museum dedicated to Middle-earth. For a more dynamic experience for visitors, it makes more sense for it to be a more general Film museum focused on all the films coming from Wingnut and WETA. That would allow for visitors to see new exhibits over time, but with a heavy focus on Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. Te Papa had a very popular Lord of the Rings exhibit in 2002 and again in 2006, which turned out to be its most popular exhibit, so the market is there. Locations being looked at are somewhere along the waterfront. This would gives fans year round a second place to connect with their LOTR fandom alongside the WETA Cave, and something for them to see long after the final film is released. One of the biggest hurdles when this idea was first conceived was the licensing rights, but indications seem to imply that is less of an impediment right now.
For more details, read the article here.
Posted in Events, Exhibits, Fans, Hobbit Movie, Lord of the Rings, LotR Movies, Meet Ups, MGM, New Line Cinema, Peter Jackson, Studios, The Hobbit, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, The Hobbit: There and Back Again, Tolkien, Warner Bros., WETA Cave
Yours truly has been ever-so-slowly getting through the newest Tolkien book The Fall of Arthur for the last month-and-a-half with a hope of at some point stringing together a few poor words on the subject.
I’ve also been reading other what others have had to say in the media. This piece, by Tolkien scholar John Garth, is a good place to start if you’re interested.
Early in The Fall of Arthur, long awaited by fans of J.R.R. Tolkien and now edited for publication by his son Christopher, an army rides to Mirkwood where they see in a storm above it, Ringwraith-like:
wan horsemen wild in windy clouds
grey and monstrous grimly riding
shadow-helmed to war, shapes disastrous.
But this isn’t Middle-earth: it is Europe on the brink of the Dark Ages, and the army is led by Arthur and Gawain. Mirkwood is simply the old name for Germany’s eastern forests, which Tolkien borrowed for the children’s story he was writing in the same period in the early 1930s, The Hobbit.
Tolkien was a writer of endless stories. And as with most of them, The Fall of Arthur is literally endless: unfinished. It’s been lying among his vast legacy of papers, almost unknown but for a paragraph in Humphrey Carpenter’s 1976 biography and a single reference in Tolkien’s published letters. Publication follows that of the more difficult The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún in 2009, which Christopher Tolkien probably elected to publish first because it was complete. Like Sigurd and Gudrún, The Fall of Arthur is in alliterative verse, a mode last fashionable in the 14th century.
Posted in Books Publications, Christopher Tolkien, Collectibles, Green Books, J.R.R. Tolkien, Other Tolkien books, Tolkien
In this piece over on io9, Gibbelins discusses why Tolkien knew exactly what he was doing when he was using the Eagles of Manwë. It’s a bit sweary at times, so if you’re put off by strong language this is probably not the article for you. Good, thoughtful writing though. (more…)
Cryptozoic Entertainment and TheOneRing.net bring you LIVE streaming coverage from DragonCon! For the first time, catch 2 roving cameras walking about day and night covering the coolest Tolkien, Whovian, and gaming panels DragonCon has to offer. Learn to play the new Two Towers Deck Building Game from Cryptozoic, live from the gaming tables, then chat with Dwalin, Bifur and Azog themselves at a panel. Between panels, we’ll be walking around all day showcasing DragonCon vendors like Badali Jewelry, then bringing you epic cosplay for #TORnAfterDark. [Cryptozoic]
Just look at some of these numbers.
33,467. News articles, spy reports and features published on the TORn front page since 2007 alone.
22,300. Spy photos, movie screencaps and fan images in the old TORN scrapbook, and the new one.
616,739. Posts from 9,981 TORnsibs on the “new” TORn gossamer forums since 2007.
700. Megabytes of plain text people have written in our Barliman’s chat since 1999. That’s several million lines of type from thousands of visitors.
These numbers are constantly growing. And it’s all from the passion and enthusiasm of the TORn community.
Your community is an enormous patchwork of brilliant, clever and Tolkien-literate people from all around the world who are passionate about Tolkien and love the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit movies.
And they love sharing that passion with each other — through stories, anecdotes, events, videos, music and fan art.
We don’t simply mean TORn staff. The community is you, the message board posters from the USA, Canada or France. It’s you, the chatroom regulars from Finland, the Netherlands or New Zealand. It’s you, the folks from Australia, Singapore and Brazil who participate in Hall of Fire and watch TORn Tuesday each week.
If you’ve ever sent in an article, submitted a photo or report, posted on our messageboards, visited our chat, or commented on our twitter, facebook or g+, you’re the reason TheOneRing.net is among the largest and most-respected pillars of the Tolkien community on the web.
Keeping all this afloat, though, takes as much money as it does love and passion.
For new servers. For software upgrades and social media integration apps. For web hosting bills.
If you’d like to make a Pledge to help TORn cover bills to help your community continue to grow, we’d be grateful and appreciative.
Just use the links below.
If you can’t, that’s ok! Keep on contributing to your community whichever way you can — through your thoughts, comments and recommending TheOneRing.net to your friends!
General Pledge Pledge anywhere from $5 to $20!
Bronze Pledge Pledge $25. All Bronze Pledges are listed for one year on TheOneRing.net’s ‘The Tale of Honour’ web page.
Silver Pledge Pledge $50. All Silver Pledges are listed for one year on TheOneRing.net’s ‘The Tale of Honour’ web page and receive a TORn supporter t-shirt!
Gold Pledge Pledge $75. All Gold Pledges are listed for one year on TheOneRing.net’s ‘The Tale of Honour’ web page and receive a TORn supporter t-shirt and a commemorative pin!
Platinum Pledge Pledge $150. All Platinum Pledges are listed for one year on TheOneRing.net’s ‘The Tale of Honour’ web page and receive a TORn supporter t-shirt and a commemorative pin + MORE COOL STUFF!
Mithril Pledge Pledge $400. All Platinum Pledges are listed for one year on TheOneRing.net’s ‘The Tale of Honour’ web page and receive a TORn supporter t-shirt and a commemorative pin + SUPER COOL STUFF!
Posted in Barliman News, Barlimans, DragonCon, Events, Fans, Headlines, Hobbit Book, Hobbit Movie, Lord of the Rings, LotR Movies, Meet Ups, Miscellaneous, Original TORn, The Hobbit, TheOneRing.net Announcements, Tolkien
As you know, over the next couple of weeks or so TORn is conducting a pledge drive to raise funds and keep our servers running. But, as you might know, we also have some very exciting auctions going on over at ebay.
We have some fabulous, exclusive pieces up for grabs – including some things which, usually, money can’t buy! Here’s just three that might tickle your fancy:
Posted in Books, Collectibles, Collectibles, Creations, Fans, Headlines, Hobbit Movie, J.R.R. Tolkien, Lord of the Rings, Merchandise, Other Merchandise, The Hobbit, TheOneRing.net Announcements, TheOneRing.net Community, Tolkien
