The goal: Keep Fellowship of the Ring at the top of the box office. How can we do it? Go see Fellowship of the Ring this week. Save your ticket stub. Win great prizes! It is that easy. [More]

TheOneRing.net is trying to keep Fellowship of the Ring at the top of the box office this week. The concept is easy: Go see Fellowship of the Ring. (I know I know, life is rough…but if we ‘have’ to..heh) Save your ticket stub. Get to a scanner and send the ticket stub to me, at calisuri@theonering.net.

The Prizes
We have some great prizes to help encourage you to get out there. Not that the film isn’t enough incentive…but just in case, we have amazing prizes from Sideshow/Weta Collectibles and a little something which is only available at the official Lord of the Rings shop.

72x48 Bus Shelter Poster!
First Place
Pillars of Argonath
72 x 48 Inch
Bus Shelter Poster!!!
Lurtz Bust from Sideshow/Weta
Second Place
Sideshow/Weta
Series 2 Lurtz Bust
Numenorean Infantryman Bust from Sideshow/Weta
Third Place
Sideshow/Weta
Series 2 Numenorean Infantryman Bust

The Rules
So what is the deal? How does this work? Listen up, and I’ll give you the low down.

• If you have seen LOTR during the week of Jan 15th – Jan 20th 2002, you are eligible to enter.
• Eventhough we are trying to rig…err…help the US Box Office of FOTR, you can still enter if you are outside of the United States.
• You must save your ticket stub from the viewing.
• You must scan your ticket so that it is clear and legible. If there is any blurriness, for example, your entry will sadly be rejected.
• Once you have the scan, email the file, your name, and postal address to me, Calisuri, at calisuri@theonering.net. Please keep the file as a .jpg, .gif, .bmp, .tif or .psd. Other formats are going to be pretty tough to convert.

That’s it. It is really that easy folks. The goal is to make Fellowship of the Ring one of the most successful movies ever, and to beat the competition this weekend at the box office.

As always, read the fine print in our contests section.

Asarina reported that Enya will be performing “May it Be” from the Lord of the Rings Soundtrack – The Fellowship of the Ring on the Tonight Show (NBC) 1/17 (this Thursday.)

She will also be performing live on Larry King (CNN) next Tuesday, the 22nd.

The Sydney Morning Herald’s ‘Heckler’ has a bit of sour grapes about LOTR’s success? [More]

Craig sent this in from ‘The Heckler’ in the Sydney Morning Herald. I’d file this under the ‘We’re so jealous we could choke’ heading. After all, Sydney’s a city whose recent contribution to cinema is the fact that it’s hosting that cracker Aussie production, ‘Attack of the Clones,’ and the last time the actual city was used as a set was in the nightamarish dystopia of ‘Dark City.’

“Lord of the Rungs: so that’s a fulm about modern times, eh? Middle-Earth is New Zealand, writes Martin Graham.

THE HECKLER: What is it with the Kiwis and The Lord of the Rings? The way they’re carrying on you’d thing they’d split the atom. [In joke, folks. Rutherford, the guy who split the atom, is a Kiwi. -Tehanu] Look, Mum, moving pictures on a big wall! It’s the talkies! I don’t want to bag New Zealand and the massive packet of Smith’s (chips)
on their collective shoulders. But it’s not like they just invented Vegemite (spread) or did anything useful. The Lord of the Rings is a film. Quite a long film. A couple of hours of it are very watchable. But, come on, there is no reason for New Zealanders to portray Rings as though it’s the biggest single contribution to Western society since the Enlightenment.

The most pathetic part is that they can’t even boast about having really made the movie as such. Peter Jackson may be the fush and chups front man, but the film’s as Yankee as baseball. The sheep-shaggers have trouble funding a proper football team; international blockbuster movies are way out of their league. What we are left with is the pathetic sight of our Kiwi cousins boasting about how great the scenery looks. The Government is even pumping what remains of its budget into an advertising campaign to tell the world about the national role as an extra. It’s sad really. And desperate. Imagine Bikini Atoll advertising itself as a nuclear superpower and you can see what I mean. Is it really something to boast about that Tolkien’s Middle-Earth could be so easily created in the Shaky Isles? A tale of simple people living a simple life without modern technology? We’re talking about New Zealand here – how hard can it be? Mocking up the Middle Ages must have been a piece of cake in a country yet to discover crop rotation. I would have thought that the biggest problem faced by the producers was making Wellington look modern enough to pass for anything after AD1300. You have to remember New Zealand is the only country in the world where you could film Xena without building any sets.

The more you think about it the more you realise that making The Lord of the Rings in New Zealand would have presented no great challenge. Filming conditions are ideal. No air force to accidentally get into shot. No smog from industry to get in the way. The biggest continuity issue would be the slightly more modern breed of merino in the background.

Let’s get this straight. The story in the Rings revolves around a race of short, slightly furry creatures who are none too bright but relatively loyal in a tight spot. If this doesn’t scream the middle bit of ANZAC, I can’t imagine what would. Kiwis would do anything for real currency, so finding the extras would have been easy. Apart from having to explain what “action” means. “Hey, guys, imagine Christchurch, but with, like, pubs and stuff.” Getting the extras to dress like serfs would hardly have been difficult. Just tell them there was a wedding on and ask them to dress it up a bit. And what’s all this nonsense about the incredible attention to detail? I don’t think it would have been that hard to faithfully replicate Tolkien’s Goblin language. For your average Kiwi, Goblin comes easy. It’s English they have trouble with. Need a crowd of Orcs? Stumpy blokes as thick as two short planks who are ready to rip your head off at any moment. The All Blacks wouldn’t even have to wear make-up.

As I understand it, the movie goes for three hours and the entire plot involves one gold ring. Which they want to destroy. Only in the New Zealand economy would this be considered a worthwhile allocation of labour. Middle-Earth your Kiwis can do. It’s more recent times they struggle with. Let’s see them try a film about a contemporary multicultural society with an economy capable of producing elaborately transformed manufactures. Now, there’s a challenge.”

The folks at comingsoon.net have written in to tell us that the trailer for the new Sean Bean (Boromir) film ‘Tom and Thomas’ is now online. Take a look! [More]