With the rapid growth in popularity of DVDs over the last three years and nearly becoming a standard medium, Tolkien fans were relishing the idea of a Fellowship of the Ring DVD even before the film was released. The attraction was not just the excellent quality picture that DVDs provide, but the range of extra features that have become an essential part of a complete DVD. Rumours of a Peter Jackson Director’s Cut, commentary from the cast, lost and deleted scenes and ‘making of..’ documentaries have all been mentioned when referring to this topic. This weekend, the Hall of Fire crew invite you to join us in discussing the FOTR DVD: The Wanted and Expected Features.
If there is one thing to be learned from the last three years, its that New Line Entertainment and Peter Jackson both acknowledge and value the fans of Lord of the Rings, and seem to be continously working in their best interests on this amazing project. Therefore, the expectation that New Line and PJ will deliver some extremely satisfying material on the Fellowship of the Ring DVD is very high, and many an article has been written on what *could* and *should* be on the DVD. Concrete information is only becoming available on what features will be added.
And what do you think should be on the DVD? PJ fans have cried out for a Director’s Cut of the film, and Peter himself has dropped hints on New Zealand TV that he is presently recording a commentary track on the film. What about the standard fare for DVDs, like Behind the Scenes documentaries? And what fan can go without the deleted scenes that didn’t make it into the final cut of FotR: how can the film be complete without the gift-giving at Lothlórien, or the extended sequences in Bree and the Midge Marshes? It’s for you to decide as we discuss the dream Fellowship of the Ring DVD this weekend.
Place: #thehalloffire on theonering.net server; come to theonering.net’s chat room Barliman’s and then type /join #thehalloffire .
Saturday Chat: 5:30 pm ET (17:30) [also 11:30 pm (23:30) CET and 7:30 am Sunday (07:30) AET]
Sunday Chat: 7:00 pm (19:00) CET [also 1:00 pm (13:00) ET and 4:00 am (04:00) Monday morning AET]
ET = Eastern Time, USA’s East Coast CET = Central European Time, Central Europe
As soon was Fellowship of the Ring was released into theaters around the world on December 19th 2001, movie fans and Tolkien fans alike compiled their lists of the mistakes Peter Jackson made in the filming of his three hour epic. However, these ‘mistakes’ have been hotly disputed as to whether they are really mistakes, to the extent that the New York Daily News even wrote an article on it. This weekend the Hall of Fire crew discuss the mistakes in The Fellowship of the Ring, and how they can be explained.
One of the most popular ‘mistakes’ that were discussed after December 19th was Gandalf’s staffs. Saruman took Gandalf’s staff during their battle in Isengard, and he was staff-less when Gwaihir swept down and rescued him from the top of Orthanc. Yet when Gandalf led the Fellowship into the mines of Moria, he had a staff with him once again which he used as a light in the darkness. However, this was soon shot down as it became clear that Gandalf used two clearly different staffs.
Similarly, fans believed that Gimli’s axe magically repaired itself when he used it later in the battle with the Cave Troll after he used it at the Council of Elrond in a failed attempt to break the One Ring. However, the eagle-eyed movie fans noticed that it he took the axe from one of his Dwarven colleagues, and did not use his own. These are just a couple of examples where the ‘mistakes’ in Fellowship of the Ring have been corrected by the fans. This weekend, we’re asking you to explain and correct some more of them.
On February 12th, millions of people all over the world turned on their television sets and with anticipation watched as this years nominations were announced for the 74th Academy Awawrds, the most important awards in the movie business. Not without its usual suprises and upsets, it was clear what would be the making the headlines for all the right reasons: thirteen nominations for Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring, Peter Jackson’s first installment of Tolkien’s epic trilogy brought to the silver screen.
Thirteen nominations is quite a feat in itself, but thirteen nominations for a fantasy film is quite incredible. And it was clear what it meant to both Peter Jackson and Sir Ian McKellen as they gave interviews to the media within the hour of the announcement: for Sir Ian it was a mixture of relief and delight, while for Peter Jackson it was not only pride for what he had achieved but happiness for all two thousand five hundred plus involved in the Trilogy.
Only four other films have shared the (un)lucky number thirteen in the Academy’s history: Gone With The Wind, From Here to Eternity, Mary Poppins, and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Only two more, All About Eve and Titanic have gone one better with a record-breaking fourteen. Yet unlike the last few years, this Oscar race is a neck-and-neck race to the finish,, where A Beautiful Mind, Moulin Rouge and The Fellowship of the Ring are heading into April with a room full of awards and accolades between them. The only thing that is certain about the 74th awards is that nothing is certain.
This weekend, the Hall of Fire crew want to get your reaction on the week’s events and how The Fellowship of the Ring will fare when it comes to Oscar night. Peter Jackson commented on the level of believability and credibility Sir Ian McKellen gave to the role of Gandalf…will it be enough to give him the Best Supporting nod? And what about PJ himself, will his debut at the Oscars be greeted with success? And what about Moulin Rouge and A Beautiful Mind, will Fellowship of the Ring be able to see off their claim to the golden statue? It’s all for discussion this weekend as Oscar fever begins to kick in!
Upcoming Discussions: Feb 23 & 24: The Misconcepted ‘Errors’ in FotR
Place: #thehalloffire on theonering.net server; come to theonering.net’s chat room Barliman’s and then type /join #thehalloffire .
Saturday Chat: 5:30 pm ET (17:30) [also 11:30 pm (23:30) CET and 7:30 am Sunday (07:30) AET]
Sunday Chat: 7:00 pm (19:00) CET [also 1:00 pm (13:00) ET and 4:00 am (04:00) Monday morning AET]
ET = Eastern Time, USA’s East Coast CET = Central European Time, Central Europe
As a child actor, Elijah Wood was always expected to achieve big things in his acting career, impressing in films such as Forever Young, The War, and North. But of all the roles he would play to date, none would compare with the role of Frodo Baggins, the main protagonist in the ‘greatest book of the 20th Century’. When Wood heard that Peter Jackson would be making a movie on the Lord of the Rings trilogy, he immeaditelly sent in an audition tape in which he was dressed in midievil attire and recited lines from his own copy of Lord of the Rings.
Two years later, and Elijah Wood had finished arguably one of the most gruelling film shoots in history with an 18-month shoot in picturesque New Zealand. Peter Jackson, by picking Elijah Wood (an actor whose previous movies he hadn’t seen before) amongst thousands of other actors, had made the Hobbit actor a star at the age of twenty. A star who for months had the worry of how critics would find his performance as Frodo Baggins hanging over his head like a dark cloud. But on December 19th, fans and critics alike saw just why Elijah Wood was destined for big things only a few years ago.
But now the honeymoon period is over as the Fellowship of the Ring, arguably the easiest of the three performances in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, has been and gone and the real hardship on the road to Mordor begins next December in The Two Towers. How does one portray such a gradual deteriation as the one Frodo Baggins experiences in the Lord of the Rings? That was the question both Elijah and Peter Jackson had to ask themselves after so accurately portraying the innocence and spirit of Frodo Baggins in the Fellowship of the Ring.
So how do you think Elijah Wood will cope with the challange in front of him? One person recently described Frodo ‘deteriorating before your very eyes’ when referring to the upcoming The Two Towers trailer. Does this bode well for the future? And how would you go about portraying such a difficult change, especially when jumping from one movie to the next in a hectic 18-month schedule? We’ll be discussing all this and more this weekend at the Hall of Fire!
Upcoming Discussions: Feb 16 & 17: The Misconcepted ‘Errors’ in FotR Feb 23 & 24: The Needed and Wanted on the FotR DVD
Place: #thehalloffire on theonering.net server; come to theonering.net’s chat room Barliman’s and then type /join #thehalloffire .
Saturday Chat: 5:30 pm ET (17:30) [also 11:30 pm (23:30) CET and 7:30 am Sunday (07:30) AET]
Sunday Chat: 7:00 pm (19:00) CET [also 1:00 pm (13:00) ET and 4:00 am (04:00) Monday morning AET]
ET = Eastern Time, USA’s East Coast CET = Central European Time, Central Europe
For some, the Lord of the Rings is a novel about adventure, for others it’s a novel about the way people change and develop in character when faced with adversity and for others its simply a book about the struggle between good and evil. And for some it is about the romance between Aragorn and Arwen, a mortal and immortal who shared love in both life and death. This weekend, the Hall of Fire is discussing the extended role of the romance between Aragorn and Arwen in Peter Jackson’s Fellowship of the Ring.
The romance between Aragorn and Arwen, the adversity and sacrifices faced by both lovers only comes to fruition in the Appendices of the Lord of the Rings, and is not as prominent in the tale of the War of the Ring itself. However, the beauty and sadness of the tale has often had Tolkien fans wishing it was more prominently interwoven into the War of the Ring. As Peter Jackson does not have the luxury of movie-goers reading the Appendices beforehand, he has done exactly that: made their romance more prominent than in the book on the silver screen.
Yet in doing so, PJ has had to tinker with the story in places to put the romance up their on the silver screen: if the romance is to be expanded, then the role of Arwen must be similarly expanded also. Also, he has had to use the information found in the Appendices and adapt them to the tale, sometimes having things take place in a different time frame to which they were originally written. In doing so, he has received praise from Tolkien fans with a big heart and hardcore fans who cry outrage for Arwen’s expansion.
So what do you think? Are you happy with what PJ has done in Fellowship of the Ring to portray the love of a mortal and immortal? Or could he have done it differently? Did the story merit inclusion into the film itself, and was the price of tinkering with Arwen’s character so greatly worth it? We want you to ask and answer these questions this weekend as we talk about the great love story of J.R.R Tolkien’s epic.
Upcoming Discussions: Feb 09 & 10: Elijah Wood as Frodo Baggins Feb 16 & 17: The Misconcepted ‘Errors’ in FotR Feb 23 & 24: The Needed and Wanted on the FotR DVD
Place: #thehalloffire on theonering.net server; come to theonering.net’s chat room Barliman’s and then type /join #thehalloffire .
Saturday Chat: 5:30 pm ET (17:30) [also 11:30 pm (23:30) CET and 7:30 am Sunday (07:30) AET]
Sunday Chat: 7:00 pm (19:00) CET [also 1:00 pm (13:00) ET and 4:00 am (04:00) Monday morning AET]
ET = Eastern Time, USA’s East Coast CET = Central European Time, Central Europe
For the majority of Lord of the Rings fans, December 19th was the payoff for a wait that spanned almost three years. However in the back of most people’s there was an underlying doubt, not over the quality of the film itself but how the average movie-going, non-Tolkien fan would take to the Fellowship of the Ring, a motion picture that tried to cram 1,500 pages of information into three hours. Judging by the success of the film both critically and in the box office, it seems that somehow, by some sort of magic, Peter Jackson managed to pull it off. Or did he?
This weekend, the Hall of Fire crew are discussing the Friendliness Of FotR To Non-Fans. For Peter Jackson, one of the biggest challanges was to on the one hand satisfy the hardcore fans on one hand while not alienating casual movie fans on the other. How could he achieve this? Well, it started with cutting down the subject-matter by making some changes to the storyline, most infamous of which was the axing of Tom Bombadil completely from the movie. Also many scenes were edited out to keep the film down to three hours, most noticeable of which was the sequence within Lothlórien. In doing this, PJ walked the fine line between criticism and praise in an attempt to give the film a balance.
And the question is, did he achive that balance? Despite these changes, did Peter succeed in making the Fellowship of the Ring more comprehensible to the common man? Or were his attempts badly judged, diminishing the power of the story itself? Is it possible to bring such a book like Lord of the Rings to the silver screen without some of its contents going over non-fans heads? And if so, how would you have gone about the job differently? All these questions and more will be asked this weeked as we focus on the directorial process involved in bringing the Lord of the Rings to life.
Place: #thehalloffire on theonering.net server; come to theonering.net’s chat room Barliman’s and then type /join #thehalloffire .
Saturday Chat: 5:30 pm ET (17:30) [also 11:30 pm (23:30) CET and 7:30 am Sunday (07:30) AET]
Sunday Chat: 7:00 pm (19:00) CET [also 1:00 pm (13:00) ET and 4:00 am (04:00) Monday morning AET]
ET = Eastern Time, USA’s East Coast CET = Central European Time, Central Europe AET = Australian Eastern Time, Australia’s East Coast
