Sauron by Jerry VanderSteltTheOneRing.net is honored that among the over 30 artists contributing work to ‘An Unexpected Art Show’, Jerry VanderStelt will be attending  in person! Celebrating The HobbitThe Lord of the Rings and J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth, ‘An Unexpected Art Show’ will feature inspired art pieces — from paintings, drawings, and illustrations to prints — from a variety of artists.

Jerry VanderStelt is an acclaimed artist who has done various licensed print work for The Lord of the Rings and other properties like Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and Star Trek. Jerry has also been teasing us for weeks now, finally revealing his incredible licensed print for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (pending approval.) We will be auctioning off three limited edition lithographs from his The Lord of the Rings trilogy series. Jerry will also be on hand to sell his limited edition prints, giclées as well as canvas edition prints.

Join us for ‘An Unexpected Art Show’ in Los Angeles, California on Friday, February 22, from 7 PM to 1 AM. All ages are welcome to attend. A limited number of tickets are available for $15 online and $20 at the door. ‘An Unexpected Art Show’ will be held at Lot 613, a blank-canvas special events space in the Historic Arts District of Downtown Los Angeles, located at 613 Imperial Street. It’s all part of our Oscar Celebration weekend culminating with ‘The One Expected Party‘!

Purchase art show tickets today! —  Party tickets are also still available!

For readers of The Hobbit, which became an almost overnight classic following its 1937 debut, the new movie may elicit some puzzlement. Seemingly extraneous flourishes clog up what many remember as a simple fairy tale, and random characters appear at every twist and turn throughout Middle Earth.

Yet those fans who went on to immerse themselves in J.R.R. Tolkien’s wider lore will find inspiration. For the most part, director Peter Jackson does not exercise an extra heaping of artistic license. Rather, Jackson—reportedly something of a nerd himself—borrows from the larger Tolkien literature to create a rich Hobbit tableau.

“Jackson knows the lore pretty well and wanted to bring that larger material in there wherever he could,” said Michael Drout, an English professor at Wheaton College who founded the academic journal Tolkien Studies and edited the J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia. It’s this so-called textuality—or texts behind texts behind other texts—that lends Tolkien’s work the air of reality, he said, and which Jackson seeks to capture in his films.

Jackson isn’t free to tap into any detail he wants from Tolkien’s wider works, however. “He had a very difficult task in that the movie rights extend only to The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings,” said John Rateliff, an independent Tolkien scholar and author of The History of the Hobbit. “He’s well aware that there’s a great deal more material set in that world, but contractually not allowed to use that material in the movies.”

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Wherever you are in the world, come online and watch our Live Video channel for a special Tolkien birthday edition of TORn After Dark: join the Los Angeles smial of the Tolkien Forever group holding our Tolkien Birthday Toast event at the famous Cat & Fiddle Pub (where they shot scenes from Casablanca).  You’ll be a welcome dinner guest as we have classic Brit food and spirits and debate the new Hobbit film! Fans will be arriving a little after 7:00pm Pacific Time and we will go live during dinner at 7:30 via our live streaming video account (hosted by Stickam). Be part of the fun and frolic with Barliman’s Chatters here on our Live Event Page! See you there as we toast……. “To the Professor!” at 9:00pm.

Radagasts Bunny SledProbably one of the most controversial inclusions to The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey was Radagast the Browns bunny sled.  Fans are pretty divided over whether they  love its fantastical portrayal or absolutely hate it.  One of our Message Board members, swordwhale, who’s a Recreational Musher, shares her views on Radagast’s Rhosgobel Rabbits Sled.

Radagast’s Racing Rhosgobel Rabbits:

A Recreational Musher Looks at the Realities of Bunny Sledding

A TORn Library Feature by Teanne Byerts aka swordwhale
Recreational Musher and Member of TORns Message Boards
Continue reading “Radagast’s Racing Rhosgobel Rabbits: A Recreational Musher Looks at the Realities of Bunny Sledding”

If you have a Tolkien/Middle-earth inspired poem you’d like to share, then send it to poetry@theonering.net. One poem per person may be submitted each month. Please make sure to proofread your work before sending it in. TheOneRing.net is not responsible for poems posting with spelling or grammatical errors.

Hogwarts Orlando Universal Unconfirmed rumours are circulating that Universal is talking with Tolkien Estate about creating a Middle-earth theme park. The rumours emerged on New Year’s day on the Orlando United forum where a user reported claims that Universal Studios asked Warner Bros. to raise the topic with Tolkien Estate. At this point, it is unclear whether the user has insider knowledge, or is simply reporting what others have said.

From the source post:

“…here is how I heard that it played out. Universal asked Warner Bros. to approach the Tolkien family since the Tolkien’s trust WB with the success of the LOTR series. WB described how Universal was willing to work with JK Rowling and how the 2 of them (WB and JK) held Universal’s feet to the fire to uphold Rowling’s vision of the IP. And I believe that the Tolkien’s may have actually talked to JK Rowling. This was before Universal said a word to the Tolkien’s. So after WB stoked the fire, Universal entered the picture with an impressive plan.

As of now there is a lot of hammering out to go, but Universal has gotten a lot farther than Disney ever did.”

Tolkien aficionados would recall, of course, that the professor had a notoriously low estimation of the creative works of Walt Disney. Letter #13 in Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien makes his position clear:

“It might be advisable […] to let the Americans do what seems good to them — as long as it was possible […] to veto anything from or influenced by the Disney studios (for all whose works I have a heartfelt loathing).”

That’s not to say that Universal would fare any better with Tolkien Estate in any quest to create a Middle-earth theme park. The Estate is well-known to be wary of merchandising, and is currently engaged in a legal stoush with Warner Bros. and Saul Zaentz, alleging that the companies are merchandising beyond what was contractually agreed upon in the 1969 rights deal.

Micechat, a site that specialises in theme park news, claims Universal “is very close to acquiring the rights to develop and produce attractions based on the successful Lord of the Rings franchise of films”. So we might see whether there’s anything to this rumour quite soon.