Tolkien ReadingYou may not be aware, but TheOneRing.net’s forum community has a wonderful free resource available to every fan who has ever wanted to discuss specific parts of Tolkien’s great works – The Reading Room. The Reading Room is intended to be a forum for critical analysis and on-topic discussion of Tolkien’s literary works. Reading Room features include ongoing discussions of Tolkien-related books and topics, where volunteers lead ‘formal’ discussions, as well as posts of general interest you can make at any time! You can also join in on scheduled readings to make the discussions even more productive. Learn more about our Reading Room by visiting the forums! [Reading Room]

Phil Dragash Design 01A few weeks back we asked Ringers to submit designs to skin TheOneRing.net. Since then we’ve had received a lot of wonderful artwork from all parts of the world. We plan on featuring one design every few weeks, so if you submitted something, please be patient! Our first skin comes from Phil Dragash. Among the many designs Phil submitted, this ‘Aragorn’ skin based on stills from The Lord of the Rings films, really stood out. (We’ll be seeing more of Phil’s skins in the coming weeks as there are many great ones) If you like this theme, please click on the ‘discuss’ link below to leave your feedback. If you are interested in submitting your own design for TORn, please check out our original request by clicking on the following link. Thanks! [Submitting Designs]

LOTR Theatre ProductionRinger Karl sends us a heads up about the upcoming release of a soundtrack from ‘The Lord of the Rings’ theatre production. The original score, with music composed by A.R. Rahman, Värttinä and Christopher Nightingale, and lyrics by Shaun McKenna and Matthew Warchus, is recorded from the The Lord of the Rings theatre production now on stage in London. The album will begin shipping on February 5th 2008. [Amazon.com] [Stage Companion] [Amazon.co.uk] [Stage Companion (UK)] [Official Page]

Witch-King CakeTORn board member, Maria_Campos, has posted some amazing pictures of a cake in the shape of The Witch-king! Yes, we said a cake! You have to see the pics to truly experience it. “I used black paste food coloring from Wilton to get the black color of the cloak, also silver food color and brass luster dust and more black paste food coloring for the mask, the metallic food coloring are edilble and can be found at any cake decorating supply store…” Read the full story of the Witch-King cake at our forums! [Description] [More Photos]

Aragorn TurnaroundAlong with the pre-order of the Ringwraith Legendary Scale Bust, Sideshow also posted a few other LOTR updates with their newsletter launch last night. In their production blog, Sideshow posted of a few official reference shots of the Witch-King in Twilight Form – something we had not seen before. It is pretty cool to see this digitally manipulated character, which appeared so blurred on the screen, in crystal clear photography. The images were posted to show how they finished the sculpt for Sideshow’s Witch-king Legendary Scale Bust. The second update is a 360° view of the Aragorn Premium Format Figure with one of the best Viggo likenesses we have ever seen. To see this file, you need to click on the icon below the feature image at Sideshow’s website. Now if only I could save up enough to get all this stuff! [Witch-King Imagery] [Aragorn PF]

A great piece of Tolkien history was posted on YouTube recently that you just can’t pass up. The Tolkien Library has published J.R.R. Tolkien’s 1971 Interview with Dennis Gerrolt of the BBC on YouTube, as well as the complete transcript at their website. Besides the wonderful content of the interview, there may be many in our audience who have never heard the professor’s voice before!