The School of Education at UWIC has the pleasure to present Tom Shippey Professor Emeritus of English,
St. Louis University who will be delivering an Open Lecture entitled: Writing into the Gap: Tolkien’s The Legend of Sigurd & Gudrún

Tom Shippey has published extensively on medieval literature, and has recently been working on ‘medievalism’ and romantic nationalism, focusing on the work of Jacob Grimm. He established Tolkien scholarship by his acclaimed monograph The Road to Middle-earth, now supplemented by J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century. As the foremost Tolkien scholar, he contributed in the documentaries associated with Peter Jackson’s adaptation of The Lord of the Rings.

Wednesday 23 March 2011,
7 pm Lecture Theatre 4
Cyncoed Campus Cardiff
Admission is free but numbers are limited, to book your place please email: cseenterprise@uwic.ac.uk

From the folks at WETA: At Weta Collectibles, we of course follow the developments after the devastating earthquake in New Zealand’s second largest city Christchurch with a lump in our throats.

As a way to contribute and support where we can, we are auctioning three unique items on our eBay page and donating all proceeds to the New Zealand Red Cross Earthquake Appeal:

1. A Bag End Collector’s Edition miniature environment, signed by Peter Jackson
2. A Prancing Pony miniature environment, signed by Richard Taylor
3. A custom Dr Grordbort’s Raygun, signed by Greg Broadmore

Please join in the bidding in confidence that the proceeds will be well spent. Every last cent from these auctions will go straight to the New Zealand Red Cross Earthquake appeal. Find out about other ways to contribute to this appeal by going to their website: www.redcross.org.nz

Check out the auctions on eBay and get bidding!

Bernie writes: Yesterday I attended the Sydney Armageddon Expo for 2011, in which John Rhys-Davies attended. At 11.30, he conducted a panel where he mentioned ‘The Hobbit’.

He said that he would love to return because he had such a brilliant time with ‘The Lord of the Rings’, but would be unable to, due to the toll that his prosthetic. Nothing new. To quote him, “I was asked to return as one of the 13 dwarves, and I thought, why would I want to be one of 13 when I could be one of one?” Continue reading “John Rhys-Davies Talks The Hobbit”

You may have noticed in last night’s Oscar broadcast that the actor who will play Beorn in the upcoming ‘The Hobbit’ films, was the lead actor in ‘In a Better World,’ the film which one The Best Foreign Language Award. In the film, Mikael Persbrandt (who plays Anton) is a doctor who commutes between his home in an idyllic town in Denmark, and his work in a Sudanese refugee camp. Congrats to Mikael and the entire team involved with the film!

Morgan Loomis sends along this amazing panoramic shot of a recent Elf Casting call in Wellington. Click to view in super big mega version!

Markus writes: I know that a lot of people are extremely interested to hear from the extra casting in Wellington today. Well, I was there. But as we all had to sign a non-disclosure agreement I have to keep it vague and can only tell the obvious, visible from the outside and some heart-warming stories. There was some press-folks around and I noticed that they managed to find people telling them what happened, so I guess it will be in the news soon. It’s really not that exciting, though.

I was amongst the first people to get in and met some very friendly staff from 6 Foot 7. Everything was very organized and it didn’t take long. The biggest challenge for some people to get in was already at the entrance: Are you really tall enough? A quick check showed that 1m does not have to be the same everywhere. Even the impressive high heels of some of the girls had to be taken off and everyone became equal when trying to pass the minimum height line. Despite of that some people managed to sneak in, I don’t know what happened to them. Continue reading “Wellington Extra Casting Call Report”