Tamara writes: We are gathering on the weekend of September 22nd, to celebrate the Birthday of Bilbo and Frodo Baggins and we invite any interested Ringers to attend.

On Sunday, September 23rd, we will meet at 2PM at the Boston Common, across from the AMC Movie theater for a potluck, trivia, readings, discussion and lots of fun. Please RSVP here and join our Yahoo discussion group, onewhitetree, for more details on this and future events. We look forward to seeing all of you and renewing our fellowship!

RSVP for the Boston Baggins Birthday Celebration

WIRED Q&A with Serkis Celebriel forwards a new Wired Magazine interview with fan favorite Andy Serkis, discussing his work in the PlayStation 3 title Heavenly Sword and upcoming films Freezing Time, about Victorian photographer Eadweard Muybridge, and Inkheart, about an antiquarian bookbinder who, when he reads aloud, can bring characters from books into the real world.

WIRED Q&A with Andy Serkis

Silmarillion Anniversary Writing Contest Dawn writes: The Silmarillion Writers’ Guild is hosting a writing contest in honor of the thirty-year anniversary of the publication of The Silmarillion. We will be awarding banners to the Silmarillion-based stories, drabbles, poems, and essays that earn the highest word count in reviews, as well as to the reviewer who writes the most words of reviews for contest entries.

Silmarillion Anniversary Writing Contest

A mermaid's tale Double amputee Nadya Vessey is about to become New Zealand’s first mermaid. The keen Auckland swimmer will soon be fitted with a mermaid-style tail made by special effects company Weta Workshop, the creative minds made internationally famous for their work on Lord of the Rings and King Kong.

A mermaid’s tale

Entertainment Weekly Talks To Viggo Roheryn sends along scans from the latest Entertainment Weekly, featuring Viggo Mortensen in their Spotlight department, mostly related to “Eastern Promises.” Also be sure to take a look at EW’s coverage of the Toronto International Film Fest, they have a few Viggo interviews. Lastly, take a look at this link for a bit of LOTR goofiness with Viggo on ‘The Colbert Report’.

Viggo’s EW Scans

A FEW WORDS, A FEW PICTURES (Or Determining How Many Words a Picture is Really Worth at Current Market Value)
By John Howe

I’ve often considered that artists should be subject to restraining orders, forbidding them to approach any closer than 100 yards to writing about their ownwork. Alas, I am a convicted and incurable recidivist, and like most of my earnest colleagues, am already serving a life sentence, so a few words won’t hurt.

Those of you who’ve had the pleasure (or the misfortune) of meeting me will likely know I feel very strongly about this whole business of making pictures. (Deep inside me is a thoroughly repressed professor, chained up and living on bread and water.)

So, when offered the opportunity to do a book where I could actually say what I think, I was not going to keep my mouth shut or my typing fingers idle. I spent this spring chained up and living on bread and water, fingers madly dancing their two-step over my keyboard typing words in a frenzy of ardent application (I am an out-of-touch-typist at best), handed it all over to the editor and… well, nothing. That’s publishing. The six months separating the frenzy of creation and revision from actual publication are often disconcerting. Now that interview time is coming around, I’ve forgotten most of what I wrote. [More]