Last night in Century City, CA, not all that far from the Twentieth Century Fox lot, home of THE X-FILES, DARK ANGEL, the STAR WARS films and more, the 28th Annual Saturn Awards were handed out at the St. Regis hotel, honoring the best and most shining achievements in genre entertainment for the year gone past. [More]

Colleen writes: There’s a brief blurb about Elijah Wood (Frodo) and ‘Try Seventeen’ in the July issue of Premiere magazine. [More]

From: Colleen There’s a brief blurb about Elijah Wood and Try Seventeen in the July issue of Premiere magazine, page 36.

There is a picture of EJW in a tux, probably taken at the AFI awards last January.

And for My Next Act…

“This is not a teen movie,” Elijah Wood says of this latest project, Try Seventeen. “People hear ‘coming-of-age’ and ‘Mandy Moore’ [his costar], and it’s like a bell goes off.” Wood plays a 17-year-old freshman who never actually attends a class at his “massive state university”, loosely based on Kansas but filmed in Vancouver. Instead, he rents an off-campus apartment and goof off with other tenants (including A Walk to Remember’s Moore). The romantic comedy, which he likens to the character-centric Ghost World, marks Wood’s second acting excursion since shooting the Lord of the Rings trilogy, which lasted an epic 16 months. The first, Edward Burn’s mafia tale Ash Wednesday, “was just what I needed coming back from New Zealand. The whole story takes place in Hell’s Kitchen over 24 hours. I only worked eight days.”
-Brooke Hauser

Also here’s EOnline’s poll for sexiest bachelors, and Elijah makes the grade! Check it out! [More]

We’ve found a venue for this weekend’s inaugural lembas cookoff and LOTR potluck picnic – Stern Grove! Sounds interesting and there’s no way I’m missing this! [More]

The Lembas Cookoff/Potluck Picnic will be this Saturday, June 15th, in San Francsico’s lovely Stern Grove from 11:00am – 4:00pm. Soon there will be a link to a website with directions, exact meadow, and food/drink sign up sheet. PLEASE email me and let me know how many people will be attending. It will help in the planning.

Lembas Cook-off (or Bake-off): you don’t have to participate, of course, but do try! Use your imagination. Is Lembas a cookie, a doughnut, a wafer, or flatbread? Is it sweet or spicey? You may want to make enough “wafers” or “cookies” or “cake squares” to feed at least 25: everyone attending has a hand in the judging, and should get a taste. And, if you’d kindly write out your recipe and its rationale (“I chose habanara chilis as the main ingrediant in my Lembas to bank the fires of Mordor” for instance), and leave them with your hosts when you arrive, that would be great: I’d like to ask TORn to announce the winning recipes on the website, possibly with pictures.

Prizes for the Lembas Cook-off include an orc medallion from Sideshow Weta, “The Official LOTR Movie Guide” book, and other sweet stuff.

The picnic itself should be a pretty laid back, but VERY interesting affair…shorts and tank tops are quite alright, although a number of us will be somewhat dressed up in costumes (I’m wearing a hobbit skirt and vest thang, but will definitley NOT have hairy feet…well, no more hairy than usual). There MAY be small prizes for those in Middle Earth attire.

As the Cloondara Shire is helping to organize, you should be treated to a swordfight demonstration andpossibly live LOTR music. If you are a Bard or Musician, please bring your music and stories.

If you know of someone who would like to show off their Decipher LOTR game card talent and initiate gaming newbees, let me know.

To contact the organisers, email TORn Ringer “Yarrow” at platypus94121@yahoo.com.

This picnic is planned in association with the Cloondara Shire Chapter of the Society for Creative Anachronism and fans from Imladris.net and TheOneRing.net websites.

Quickbeam previews the exciting Tolkien-related video games recently shown at E3 in Los Angeles. [More]