Vanessa “Saffron” Price, Online Community Representative for The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar writes: Take a brief sneak peek into our next content update and learn more about a new feature called Session Play! We’re egg-static to present this sneak peek to you and we hope you enjoy it! [More]
Month: July 2007
Anonymous writes: Here are some reviews from the British press which I don’t think you have yet, First off from the New Statesman, some of the Sunday papers put their reviews on the web, other didn’t. This is from the Independent and the Guardian, and finally here is a roundup from The Times.
Greetings from the Weta Team
Hi everyone
We’ll it’s been a busy couple of weeks since we caught up with you last, so we thought we’d try a new format – basically telling you more with less words … or short and sweet as they say! Hope you enjoy …
Wellington gallery TheNewDowse will open their Becoming Kong exhibition last weekend, and to celebrate are hosting heaps of cool Kong workshops with Weta crew!
Good news for UK based collectors. We’ve made select Weta Collectibles pieces that were previously unavailable now ready for purchase in our UK warehouse.
We’ve sold out of Weta Publishing’s first publication, The World Of Kong: A Natural History of Skull Island from our three warehouses! If you want one, you will have to check out our other distributors.
Weta Collectibles secret reveal
Weta Collectibles has just revealed a sneaky teaser of what’s to come next … Could they be on the brink of revealing something big? Why yes they are! Can you guess?
The show exclusive piece for 2007 that will be available at this years San Diego Comic Con is a miniature version of the Weta Originals ManMelter from the Rayguns range, titled, the ‘Manmelter 3600ZX sub-atomic disintegrator pistol – Miniature Version’.
In July, Jane and the Dragon concept artists Frank Victoria and Rebekah Tisch will be blitzing the Weta Forums to answer all those question’s you’re dying to know on how the characters from the series came about.
New Zealand and Australian special offer
We’ve given Londoner’s the chance to get their mitts on an exclusive King Kong Weta Collectibles; American’s the offer to purchase a show exclusive and now we’re running a special competition for our local antipodeans!
Pre-ordering opens for second Raygun
You can now pre-order the second of the Weta Original Rayguns, the F.M.O.M. Wave Disrupter Gun! The gun has many articulated parts and as such should only be operated by adults or very clever children.
We’ve revealed exclusive concept art from the crew that came up with the Hellgate: London Weta Collectibles, and the designers that worked on early King Kong ideas and Jane and The Dragon concept sketches – check it out!
Weta Bug reveals the sculptures created for the Body Art Awards, and Senior Prosthetics Supervisor Gino Acevedo gives us his thoughts on the competition.
Jane and the Dragon on the big screen
Jane and the Dragon will be showing on the big screen at Wellington kids museum, Capital E in the school holidays, 9-14 July.
Weta’s special dyslexia project
Earlier this year, we were invited to contribute to a very special project, to raise awareness for the New Zealand Dyslexia Foundation, and in May the sculpture was launched to the world …
Weta Bug interviews Superman Returns Visual Effects Supervisor Mark Stetson and asks him – how did the crew pull off the VFX?
Weta Bug discovers a very cool kids project the design team are working on, called ‘Champ the Chopper’.
Designer Brad Goff loved working with Christian Gossett on The Red Star series, and for WetaHolics, reveals never seen before pix!
Weta Co-Director Richard Taylor was raised in Te Hihi, Franklin, a small town of NZ, and donated a special King Kong sculpture to the special town this month…
Lonely Dog exhibition opens in NZ
Weta Bug schmoozes with the Lonely Dog lovers and reports on the official opening party of the Auckland art exhibition…
The Weta team will be out in force at the San Diego Comic Con in July. And as Comic Con nears, there will be plenty to talk about for you collectors out there… We’ll be revealing more as Comic Con nears, so be sure to book mark www.wetaholics.com for your Weta News, as it happens.
That’s it from the team here at Weta for now.
If you’ve got a friend who you think might enjoy these newsletters, why not forward this along and encourage them to sign up by emailing info@wetanz.co.nz
The Team @ Weta
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Take an early look on our ‘DVD Tuesday’ feature…every Monday! There are not too man DVDs out tomorrow, seems everyone takes the July 4th holiday off these days! Take a look at some TV goodies like; ‘Degrassi Season 5’ & ‘Filmation’s Ghostbusters – The Animated Series, Vol. 2’. The Blu ray gurus get ‘Blood Diamond’ & more while the HD DVD crowd get ‘Flatliners’, ‘The Patriot’, ‘The Untouchables’ & more!. Check out the whole list here! [More]
A fan’s review of the London Lord of the Rings musical
You can’t squeeze a book the size of the Lord of the Rings into a 3 hour musical and satisfy either the hard core fans or those new to the story. But, I think they did a great job regardless. The pace is breath taking, but the core of the story comes through. The music suited the mood well enough and the staging and the solutions to bring much loved characters to life worked brilliantly. The hobbits came on stage while the audience was still coming in, and performed a little skit about catching fireflies, which was very endearing, and morphed into a song which without further fuss opened the musical.
Spoilers ahead!
The toughest characters to portray well were fantastic. Gollum was a writhing, menacing, wretched little creature. The dark riders were a marvel, scary and imposing. They were created by an actor on stilts, with the body and head of the horse supported by a pole that the actor manipulated, which was at square angles to the stilts. The ents you can’t really do on stage, but the solution to put the actors on stilts resulted in dignified beings with booming voices. Shelob was truly terrifying and the audience’s reaction was a pleasure to behold. The effect was created by several actors in dark outfits who worked the legs and the body – in much the same was as the Treebeard puppet was made to move in Peter Jackson’s movie. With the dark stage, all you initially saw were the long legs, advancing on poor Frodo.
Which brings me to the parts that didn’t work so well. With little time to develop character or portray favorite scenes from the book, many characters were pale shadows of themselves, or wholly missing. For me the main disappointments were Aragorn and Gimli. Aragorn was too theatrical, with too little heart. However, his scene with dying Boromir was very moving, and the scene in front of the gates of Mordor where he gives a passionate speech to his fellow men in arms was thrilling. Gimli was cast based on his short stature and the actor’s voice had too high a pitch – but John Rhys Davis is a tough act to follow. Gandalf, Sam, the other hobbits and Galadriel all moved me well enough.
For a musical there wasn’t actually that much music, beyond the music that set the mood in the background – no doubt the result of cutting 40 minutes of the length. Even then, I slightly resented the moments when characters burst out into song, unless it was appropriate to the story (e.g. singing at the Prancing Pony). Musicals aren’t really my thing, though, so others may feel wholly different on this. Also, the three different types of music didn’t always interact harmoniously. Varttina’s music was mostly used for ominous parts and the evil characters. The hobbit-y music and elvish music were very different from each other and from Varttina’s, which in itself was fine, but the transition from one to the other was sometimes jarring.
So what was in and what was out? Highlight to read on!
Tom Bombadil was out, which is no surprise. Rohan and the characters of the Golden Hall, along with the battle of Helm’s Deep and the love story between Eowyn and Faramir were completely cut. However, Boromir looked more like Eomer, complete with long, blond hair, and Denethor’s failing health and subsequent resurrection by Gandalf reflected more Theoden than the Denethor of the books. Wormtongue and Theodred weren’t included either. Pippin and Merry’s journeys are very much pruned: Pippin doesn’t look into the Palantir (in fact Palantirs are not even mentioned), neither pledges alliegence their chosen kings, and their role in the destruction of Orthanc is hardly mentioned. Scouring of the Shire was gone, although the Shire had been badly spoiled by Saruman’s passing by and Sam got to use his gift from Galadriel. And, Saruman lives! There’s a confrontation between Gandalf and Saruman earlier, after which Saruman is allowed to leave. Later, on the hobbit’s return to the Shire, there are two lines about Saruman having passed that way and being of no further harm to anyone.
Passing mention is made of the evolution of Gimli and Legolas’s relationship from antagonism to friendship. Faramir is a minor side character (blink and you’ll miss him), which means that the meeting of Frodo, Sam and Faramir never takes place. Celeborn I either missed completely or wasn’t there. Also, Gimli’s love of Galadriel gets a short nod. Frodo is stabbed in the Prancing Pony, not Weathertop.
We do have the long awaited party, Gandalf and Saruman scene in Orthanc where Saruman’s treachery is revealed, and a few times where Bilbo and Frodo disappear when they put on the ring (the first time, when Bilbo uses the ring at his party was so well done, that I don’t know to this day how they did it!). Moria and Balrog’s battle with Gandalf were well done, except that the face of the Balrog creature looks silly.
Arwen and Aragorn’s story is fairly well developed, which is why the fact that Arwen wasn’t part of Aragorn’s coronation was so shocking. They do share a moment and a kiss earlier on, and also during the end when the actors come to bow to the audience.
All in all, I was delighted with the musical, cuts and all. If you do have a chance to see it, I can highly recommend it!
sahara writes: Billy Boyd will be appearing at the NEC in Birmingham at the memorabilia show on the 7 and 8 of July 2007.