Pieter Collier from the Tolkienlibrary.com writes: Exactly 50 years ago the artist Cor Blok created about 140 illustrations to accompany The Lord of the Rings, he visited Tolkien who liked his art and bought 3 pieces – the only artist who ever sold his art to Tolkien. In his letters Tolkien once said that if ever an illustrated The Lord of the Rings could be created it would have been Cor Blok who would receive the job. No such thing ever happened. However Cor Blok’s art was featured on the Dutch translation of The Lord of the Rings for 27 years, without even mentioning the name Cor Blok. Some five years ago I talked to Cor Blok and embarked on a mission to track down his art, since many were sold and lost. They were all over the world, no one knew how much there were and how they looked like. Continue reading “New Book: A Tolkien Tapestry: Pictures to accompany The Lord of the Rings”

Sylvester McCoy, Radagast the Brown in the two upcoming films based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, has been added as a guest to the annual celebration of popular culture known as DragonCon. Ralph Bakshi is also a guest and of course TheOneRing.net is also attending as it has for the last decade and we will make every effort to catch a chat with McCoy.
He is best known as the seventh Doctor Who but has worked extensively on the stage and in television. It is not yet known if he will appear as part of the Tolkien Track of programming (but he is more than welcome to take the stage during either of the two TORn panels on The Hobbit) but he will doubtless be asked a few Middle-earth questions even if he is involved with Doctor Who content.
Expect a lot more DragonCon content from TORn through the conclusion of the convention including the TORn road trip to DragonCon. Continue reading “Sylvester McCoy added as DragonCon guest”

From the Dominion Post:

The skeleton that remained of the set has been a very popular tourist attraction. We also know that it has since been rebuilt for The Hobbit – and that this time it won’t be removed once filming is completed. It’s been designed to last 50 years.

But what surprises me is that the public can visit the rebuilt set right now before the cameras roll.

Ian Brodie, author of the detailed and very handy Lord of the Rings Location Guidebook, is the media and communications manager for the Hobbiton movie set.

He told me that multiple tours continue to visit the set each day. “The only thing they [visitors] have to do is sign a non-disclosure agreement.

They can take as many photos as they want, they just can’t post them up online or do those sorts of things. Certainly they are seeing it at its best.”

[Read More]

Evangeline Lilly, taking on the role of an invented female Elf character in The Hobbit, has been spotted in Wellington, New Zealand as the second and much longer stint of filming is soon to begin.
Lilly, who has been occupied for six years with the television hit Lost, will play a character written into the scrip for the two films written by Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh,Phillipa Boyens and Guillermo del Toro.
Thanks to Ataahua for the heads up from the The Daily Mail.

Movies.com invites a TORn staffer to share his thoughts on “The Hobbit” every other Monday.

What makes two films based on The Hobbit one of, if not the most highly anticipated film of both 2012 and 2013 and potentially one of the biggest film smashes in history?

People simply love Middle-earth. Generations of people. Many, many millions of people.

Grandparents and parents have handed it off to children and the proliferation of genre culture has only increased the audience that looks at Middle-earth and its author J.R.R. Tolkien as one of the pillars on which so much else in popular culture, definitely including movies, is built. Read the rest right here.