We are about to enter the time of superlatives. Although JK Rowling’s publisher is understandably cagey about what we should expect today, when Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is released, we know we are on course once more to experience a record-breaking publishing phenomenon. The book will have an initial print run of more than 10m in the United States – the biggest first printing of any book, ever. [More]
Month: July 2005
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Without the latest advances in chemistry, the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy would never have been so realistic, says a scientist using his tools in the film trade. Chemist Norman Cates estimates he made thousands of elves’ ears, wizards’ noses and hobbits’ feet for all three Rings movies. It was the job made in heaven for the former Aucklander, who first started doing make-up and making prosthetics when he joined a science fiction club at age 16. “I taught myself from books I got out of the library.” [More]
Scots actor Billy Boyd has told how he almost died when a surfing holiday turned into a nightmare. The Glasgow-born Lord Of The Rings star nearly drowned when he was hit by a giant wave during a break in South Africa. The 36-year-old said: “At one point I was trapped on the sea bed, being held down by a wave and I thought: ‘Is it going to end like this?'” [More]
From comingsoon.net: First off, the presentation started with a Q&A with Peter Jackson who was filming a DVD bonus feature for some unknown film (it apparently wasn’t King Kong). He indicated that he had hours and hours of behind the scenes footage from his older films like Meet the Feebles and Bad Taste. He indicated he wanted to do something with it in the next year, but he had to arrange time to do it. He also stated that he and New Line would like to do a “Super Uber Lord of the Rings” DVD box set. It’s not official, but they all want to do it. Jackson wants to do it showing the making of the film from a different perspective. [More]
In November 1998, Amazon.com Video & DVD opened, with an inventory of more than 60,000 VHS cassettes and 2,000 DVDs. A lot has changed in the past seven years. DVD has a store of its own, and hundreds of DVD titles are added to our catalog every single week. Our customers have certainly kept up the pace, writing over 10,000 reviews of our top five DVD titles alone. Their passion for film is especially evident in the science fiction and fantasy genre–almost half of Amazon’s 25 all-time top-selling DVDs are out of this world. [More]