We’re pleased to have author and artist extraordinaire Colleen Doran on the show this weekend! Tune into TheOneRing.net Radio Show on BlogTalkRadio at 2pm Eastern for your chance to chat with Colleen and ask her questions about anything from her love of LOTR, to ‘A Distant Soil’, ‘Sandman’ and more! Be sure to check out our BlogTalkRadio page and set yourself a reminder for this Sunday at 2pm!

Celebriel writes: I’m not at all sure we should encourage this, but Entertainment Earth is introducing bobbleheads of Frodo, Gandalf, Legolas, Gollum and Sauron in April, to coincide with the Trilogy launch on Blu-Ray. More..

I suspect that few Tolkien fans out there realise that hidden within the Rings trilogy are references to Elvis, Edwin Starr and Johnny Cash. They are easy to miss but thanks to Charles Ross, the Canadian master of the one man movie genre their true place is restored within the epic which he manages to condense to an hour and ten minutes. We could have enjoyed this show five years ago had it not been for a legal wrangle with the movie makers which was only resolved last year just in time for the Edinburgh Festival where Ross was a sell out. More..

James Cameron’s “Avatar” has enjoyed huge commercial and critical success. It’s up for nine Academy Awards this Sunday, including best picture and best director. Even with all these nominations, there’s a glaring hole — none of its stars were nominated for acting Oscars. ABC’s John Berman chats with actor Andy Serkis

That snub from the Academy has renewed a long-running debate over what makes a performance award-worthy. If an actor works in a motion capture suit that records his movements, is it still his performance once an animation team has added all the digital effects? Directors, including Cameron and Steven Spielberg, liken the animation to digital makeup, but others in the industry aren’t so sure. More..

I normally do not post online petition links, but this one seems fairly straightforward, Jonathan sent this along: I saw that you had a story about the LOTR Conquest server shutdown (See ‘EA To Drop Online Support for LOTR:Conquest’ from Feb 17th). I play that game nonstop, we have spoken to EA and they said if we get 1000 signatures on a petition we could save the game. I was wondering if you could post another story with a link so true LOTR fans could help us out? Here’s the link. We have a semi big community if you want to check it out www.lotrconquest.proboards.com. The shutdown date is March 16th.