Calling all Tolkien Fans in Brisbane Queensland, the coming month is full of Middle-earth goodies presented for you…
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Calling all Tolkien Fans in Brisbane Queensland, the coming month is full of Middle-earth goodies presented for you by the Brisbane Tolkien Fellowship. So if you’re a Brisbane local, or you’re planning on visiting Brisbane this month, come along and join in the fun!
Continue reading “Brisbane Tolkien Fellowship celebrates Hobbits and all things Middle-earth”
We had a fantastic time at last weekend’s Wizard World San Jose. Thanks so much to everyone who made the effort to come out and join us!
Our panel, Happy Hobbit: The World Ahead, was a delight on Friday afternoon. In keeping with our theme, there was lots of laughter and learning. It’s always very rewarding to meet people who watch our show and fellow Tolkien-fans in general. In addition to geeky fun, several creatives also turned out, curious to hear about my experience with writing as K.M. Rice and to see Fili’s love of capturing the moment with Alexandra Rice Photography. We can only hope that Tolkien would’ve been proud to see just how much creativity and inspiration people have found in his Middle-earth, leading them to their own unique forms of self-expression. Like Bilbo, many of us artists just need a little nudge out the door onto our own roads! You can watch our panel in it’s entirety here:
The short film that we debuted, Wildling, which we made together as a sister team over the summer, can be watched here (in a bit better quality than what you can see in this panel footage!).
Following the panel, we had time to sweep through the showroom floor before heading over to the Hilton’s Affinity restaurant for some hobbity and dwarven hijinks that made our panel look like a calm and composed event. TORn staffter Garfeimao and her sister, Carynn Hobbit, were in attendance, along with several friends, some old and some we’d only met that day! The following afternoon was none other than Billy Boyd’s (Pippin in LOTR and lead vocals in the band beecake) hilarious Q & A panel.
As always with our show, our goal is to make episodes that help you feel like you were at these events, even if you were only present in spirit, so feel free to prop up your feet and enjoy Wizard World San Jose by watching the video below!
This Saturday, the American Cinematheque will be screening the extended editions of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, and offer a tribute to the legendary Christopher Lee and the brilliant Andrew Lesnie. There will be video greetings from Andy Serkis and Cate Blanchett, and live discussions between the films with Mark Ordesky after FOTR and William Kircher after TTT. Cliff “Quickbeam” Broadway will be hosting the Q&A, and there will be some T-shirt sales and some Trivia contests to give away prizes. The screenings will begin at 1pm at the Aero Theater , 1328 Montana Ave., Santa Monica. Doors open at 12noon, so come early, play games, meet new friends and have fun. You can get your tickets at the American Cinematheque website.
The Tolkien Society’s annual Oxonmoot event is due to take place at St Antony’s College, Oxford this weekend with record attendance. Continue reading “Tolkien Society’s Oxonmoot event this weekend”
DragonCon is in full swing down here in Atlanta – and TheOneRing.net is in the thick of it! Staffers deej and greendragon are hard at work running our fan table – come by and say hello! We’re in the Hyatt opposite the entrance to the art show. We have new buttons for sale, with some fabulous artwork by our own staffer Mithril. We also have shirts, lanyards and hoodies for sale, and prizes to be won!
Staffer MrCere, meanwhile, is very busy running the convention’s Tolkien Track. Their track room can be found in the Marriott, rooms L401-403 – lots of great panels to be heard in there. TORn will be giving a panel today (Saturday) at 2.30pm, in Hilton Grand Ballroom East, looking forward to what we might see in the soon to be released Extended Edition, and to what else is in the works for Tolkien fans; then tomorrow at the same time, 2.30pm, in Marriott L401-403, we’ll be looking back over the amazing journey we’ve all been on, through Peter Jackson’s movies and the fanbase which has grown up around them.
Last night the track hosted the annual ‘Evening at Bree’, organized by greendragon. Our good friends Emerald Rose raised the roof and got everyone up and dancing. The lovely Stephen Hunter was a fabulous MC of the costume contest, which as ever was full of incredible entries – thanks to our judges, who had the very difficult task of picking winners! And cast members Dean O’Gorman, Peter Hambleton and Sylvester McCoy came by to say hello to the fans. At the start of the evening we took a moment to remember artist Jeff Murray and fellow fan Melissa Kern, who sailed into the West this year; it was wonderful to feel the love in the room and to know that this is a community which cares about and for one another.
And finally – tonight staffer deej is living up to her name and DJing the ‘Middle-earth goes 90s’ dance party, 10pm in Marriott A601-602. Can’t wait to see the amazing 90s costumes folks will have dreamed up – Ringers are such creative folks!
It’s all happening! Looking forward to seeing some of you over the weekend; and we’ll have pictures to share afterwards, for those of you who can’t be here.
Yet more opportunities to win with TheOneRing.net! This time, it’s our good friends at Harper Collins who are giving away TEN copies of the newly published The Story of Kullervo – Tolkien’s first piece of prose fiction.
According to Harper Collins’ official press release, The Story of Kullervo is ‘a previously unknown work of fantasy by J.R.R. Tolkien, which tells the powerful story of a doomed young man who is sold into slavery and who swears revenge on the magician who killed his father. This is its first appearance in book form; 2015 is the centenary of its creation.’
This beautiful new publication is illustrated on the cover with one of Tolkien’s own paintings. The press release goes on to say:
‘Kullervo son of Kalervo is perhaps the darkest and most tragic of all J.R.R Tolkien’s characters. ‘Hapless Kullervo,’ as Tolkien called him, is a luckless orphan boy with supernatural powers and a tragic destiny.
Brought up in the homestead of the dark magician Untamo, who killed his father, kidnapped his mother, and who tries three times to kill him when still a boy, Kullervo is alone save for the love of his twin sister, Wanona, and guarded by the magical powers of the black dog, Musti. When Kullervo is sold into slavery he swears revenge on the magician, but he will learn that even at the point of vengeance there is no escape from the cruellest of fates.
Tolkien himself said that The Story of Kullervo was ‘the germ of my attempt to write legends of my own’, and was ‘a major matter in the legends of the First Age’. Tolkien’s Kullervo is the clear ancestor of Túrin Turambar, tragic incestuous hero of The Silmarillion. In addition to it being a powerful story in its own right, The Story of Kullervo – published here for the first time with the author’s drafts, notes and lecture-essays on its source-work, The Kalevala – is a foundation stone in the structure of Tolkien’s invented world.’
We have ten copies of this book to give away to ten lucky readers – and the competition is open worldwide! To enter, all you need to do is complete the form below, including answering the following simple question:
Simply write the answer in the ‘special note’ box. Please also NOTE YOUR SHIPPING ADDRESS in the ‘special note’ box. Complete the rest of the form and hit ‘enter now’! The competition is open until Thursday 10th September. Good luck!
