Nicholas writes: Every year I throw an Oscar Party, where I always try to outdo myself. This year I had an idea for my invitation. [More]
Month: February 2002
Ok, so we’ve posted pictures like these before, but this thing is so frikking cool I had to post these up as well!! Ringer Spy Ianman sends us these great pics, take a look!! [More]
Ianthe writes: The Higgins Armory is a small but magnificent museum devoted to arms and armor. It is in Worcester, Massachusetts and has one of the most spectacular collections of historical armaments in the U.S. Next week they debut a major exhibit entitled “Lords of the Rings: Two Millennia of Mail,” that will focus on the evolution of mail from the Roman period through the Middle Ages. [More]
The latest Bruce Spence (Mouth of Sauron) film ‘Queen of the Damned’ is released today, it as stars the late Aaliyah and ‘Aragorn-for-a-day’ Stuart Townsend. You can check out a review here. [More] [Showtimes]
I thought I would share with theonering.net my experience on the Red Carpet Movie Tour’s LOTR ultimate fantasy 12-day tour (http://www.redcarpet-tours.com). I’m on a small VIP tour of travel agents. I’ll send in updates as time and connectivity permit. This is the second installment. (Read the first installment here)
Feb 19th
We started out early on a beautiful sunny morning. We headed off to Matamata. Matamata is a fairly small town in NZ’s dairy country that also specializes in raising thoroughbred racehorses. Now they have another claim to fame, they are the closest town to the farm that became the shire. When you enter town, there is a sign that proclaims just that:
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We stopped and took pictures of the sign and the quaint main street around it. Then we piled back into our minivan, and headed for the actual farm. Red Carpet is one of the few tours that are allowed onto the farm where the filming took place. Unfortunately, do to some legal issues, we weren’t allowed to take any pictures, but it was a fantastic experience all the same. First off the farm is beautiful in and of itself. It is a sheep farm, and picturesque flocks graze on rolling hills. You have to drive quite a ways into the farm to see the spots where the filming was done. When you get to the spot that was Hobbiton, the landscape is quite recognizable, even without the buildings and bridges. You get to see the pond, and the party tree, and try and imagine a lot of hobbits near them instead of sheep. The party tree is a magnificent feat of nature — huge and old and beautiful. Seeing the spot where they filmed made me appreciate the work of Peter and his amazing team even more. Sure, the land is pretty, but it takes a team with vision and artistry to truly turn it into Middle Earth. On the way back to the main road, I snapped a quick shot of the countryside.
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We had lunch in Rotorua, and headed out for a non-LOTR event. We visited Hell’s Gate, which claims to be the Rotorua’s most active thermal reserve, complete with mud baths. I must say it was pretty cool, lots of steam, lots of sulphur, and even some boiling mud. The sulphur in the steam was so intense, it tarnished all of my silver rings. Pretty amazing demonstration of chemistry and geology at work!
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Some of our party tried the mud baths, and then we headed back to Rotorua for dinner and to sleep for the night.
Tomorrow — Huka Falls, Rangipo plains and Mt Ruapehu — Mordor!
If you can imagine more than 500 people standing outside in the nippy February air, in a very long queue that wound on forever; all of them being forced to wait for 6 or more hours with nothing but gruff security guards scowling at them and pesky T.V. cameras sniffing them up and down – and if you can imagine these people HAPPY…. just thrilled to endure all this for the chance to meet Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, and Sean Astin face-to-face, then you’ve got a good picture of the reality. This past Monday these joyful fans swarmed the Century City Shopping Center in Los Angeles, and they didn’t mind any gauntlet of evil they had to endure to get in. [More]