Gross-out films: love them or hate them? That is what’s being put to vote over at FilmFour.com. Why does that interest us you ask? Because Peter Jackson’s Bad Taste is being heralded as one of the reasons why you should love them. And well, who are we to argue? [More]

By Kim Griggs Wired.com

WELLINGTON, New Zealand — If you don’t receive an invitation to the premiere, then the place to be for die-hard Lord of the Rings fans on Dec. 19 will be in a movie theater in New Zealand. [More]

LOTR producer and all around nice guy Barrie Osbourne has left New Zealand, if only for a little while. Osbourne is flying to Carleton College in Northfield Minnesota to receive a ‘Distinguished Allumni Award’. The ceremony will take place tomorrow, congrats Barrie!

By Tom Shippey

I first met J.R.R. Tolkien shortly before he died, in the autumn of 1972. I had just been appointed to a job teaching Anglo-Saxon at Oxford, and the then senior professor, Tolkien’s successor Norman Davis, took me to dinner with him at Merton College. [More]

Check out the latest Japanese NEWSWEEK for an article titled “A Glimpse of the Ring,” written by Naomi Saeki. [More]

By: Liz Smith

‘IT IS better to appear in hell than in the newspapers,” goes the Spanish proverb. Oh, I don’t know about that. Well, there will be plenty in the newspapers, because it’s not the Russians who are coming, it’s the Arizonian! Ready to hustle and drum up votes for the darling quasi-Republican NYC mayoral candidate Michael Bloomberg is the maverick Sen. John McCain. It will happen soon. [More]