Hollywood star Orlando Bloom has been seen out and about in Wellington, joining a growing number of Hobbit actors arriving in the city as production resumes after a three-month hiatus.
Wellingtonians Miranda Webster, Aggie Galloway, Kayla Carruthers, Sam Walton and Hannah Robson met Bloom yesterday when they saw him shopping in the central city.
Ms Carruthers, 19, said she and her friends were on Vivian St when they saw Bloom go into a photography store.
“We weren’t sure at first if it was him or not, so we waited around casually outside the stop, and then when he came out we saw it was definitely him.” [Read more]
On this episode of Hobbit in 5, we tell you about the upcoming live chat with TORn staffer Quickbeam, Stephen Fry and Luke Evans tweet on their way to NZ, announce the launch date for The Lord of the Rings: War in the North, and Peter Jackson offers Andy Serkis some advice! We also discuss Thror in this week’s character study.
Last month we asked you, our audience, to nominate titles for a top-100 list of the best science fiction and fantasy ever written. The response was overwhelming — almost 5,000 of you posted to the NPR site alone, and many thousands more offered suggestions on Facebook. We’ve tabulated those suggestions and, with the help of an expert panel, narrowed the list to a manageable field of a few hundred titles. Scrolling through the list of great science fiction and fantasy reads below will feel like a journey back in time for some of us, a voyage of discovery for others. But novice or veteran, everyone loves a contest. So, let the voting begin! More..
Fans of The Lord of the Rings films already know that Andy Serkis can act his face off and act without ever showing his face. He first proved it with his landmark performance of Gollum in The Two Towers. Film making and acting without a net, portions of the film hinged on Serkis’ performance of a creature and Weta Digital’s ability to put the emotion on screen digitally. It worked. Beyond all expectations, it soared.
When the screenwriters threw in some character twists of the twisted character for Return of the King (for good or for ill, but don’t blame the actor) Serkis did it again. And of course his return as the same character to The Hobbit is as essential a tie between the films as any character. He went from Middle-earth to Monster Island with King Kong and even got to die a horrible death in his own skin on screen.
Weta went on to create Pandora and its blue skinned inhabitants with James Cameron in Avatar then teamed up again on Tintin with Serkis playing a human in the hilarious Captain Haddock.
Veteran actor Stephen Fry has arrived in Wellington to begin filming his part in The Hobbit.
Fry, a prolific tweeter, touched down in the capital a few hours ago, telling his Twitter followers it was “brightish but not freezing”.
After announcing he was going for “a little explore”, he posted a photo of Max Patte’s Solace in the Wind sculpture on the waterfront, prompting Wellington fans to head to the water. [Read More]
With the break in filming (that including filming in the U.K. with Christopher Lee) players in the two-part Hobbit movie are heading back to New Zealand. Word is that Peter Jackson is there now after his surprise stop at Comic-Con and we learned today from his own Twitter (@stephenfry) that Stephen Fry as the Master of Laketown is headed there at well. He tweeted:
Flying from Cape Town to Jo’burg to Sydney to NZ tomorrow. Will be Tuesday by the time I land in Wellington. Hobbitry beckons.
Luke Evans (Bard the Bowman) told us at the Con that he hasn’t stepped a foot on set yet but is scheduled for training and costume fitting soon. We do know the production is busy with decorating sets and getting costumes and extras ready for the ramp up of another 200 days of filming.
