GLENORCHY, NEW ZEALAND โ€” Without question, Queenstown is a wonder. It is so beautiful that it is on the verge of being absurd. It is grand with lakes, mountains and forests and deserves every accolade it receives.

But it isnโ€™t Paradise โ€” or Glenorchy for that matter.

If Lake Wakatipu is shaped like a Harry Potter scar, Queenstown sits at the horizontal point just before the final descending line. If you climb in your car and drive across that horizontal bar and up to the top point of the lighting bolt, you will arrive at Glenorchy. (After a stunning drive on some roads that demand real courage.) Continue reading “A Tolkien reader’s Paradise”

With the pages falling off the calendar of time remaining in The Hobbit filming schedule, TheOneRing.net is heading to Queenstown (for starters) for more coverage.

Writer and photographer Larry D. Curtis (MrCere@TheOneRing.net) will be a one-man news production team for two weeks, starting November 30 when he touches down at the Queenstown airport. His journey will also take him to Wellington to mark the one year countdown before the world premiere of the first Hobbit film, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, in 2012 along with visits to friends of TORn (such as our own founder Tehanu) and can’t-miss public sites like the Weta Cave.

Curtis (known by the handle MrCere on the site) also plans to meet with as many fans as possible while in the area, including at un-official but hopefully frequent moot events, so if interested in attending or hosting, please contact him at the email above. The always all-volunteer and not-for-profit TheOneRing.net would also appreciate anybody who has great information or tips on inexpensive places to stay (no haystack ruled out!) or eat while in New Zealand. Continue reading “TORn headed to Queenstown, NZ for ‘Hobbit’ reporting”

Its been a week but TheOneRing.net had a nice chat that aired last Monday on Fictional Frotiers with Sohaib. Senior Staffer MrCere is a regular guest on the program which broadcasts in Philadelphia and then is available on the web. The radio broadcast featured a shorter version of the conversation because of the magic of the interwebs, the longer 30-minute conversation is available right here.

Stephen Colbert is an unabashed popular-culture geek and frequently drops his Middle-earth knowledge and displays various swords, rings and LOTR stuff on his show The Colbert Report. So when he had Elijah Wood on to chat about Happy Feet 2 he “unexpectedly” dropped into a conversation about the currently filming Hobbit movies and made it clear that he has visited the set and been privy to secrets and then “duels” with Wood. Is he steeped enough in Tolkien pop-culture to someday drop a TORn reference? We wish he would but in the meantime, enjoy the clip! Thanks to spy Esme, the first of many to drop that little gem to us at Spymaster@theonering.net.

Twitter shows a pretty steady stream of people just discovering Peter Jackson‘s Production Diary #4, originating from his own Facebook page, feeling like they have just found gold. And maybe they have with a good discussion of 3D, a tour of the cameras and rigs being used to achieve the effect and a good collection of bits of The Hobbit films. We also continue to get spy reports letting us know the video was posted. We definitely appreciate every single spy report that comes in and is the lifeblood of TheOneRing.net, but yes, we did know about the video. There are also plenty of websites still announcing the 11-minute bonanza as if it has just arrived. These clues lead us to suspect that not everybody in the world reads TheOneRing.net every day for Hobbit news (yes, we were shocked too) and not everybody has friended Peter Jackson on Facebook (it just seems like it). Anyhow, there it is above, production diary #4. While we are at it, numbers one, two and three are also available after the break. Enjoy and remember: checking TORn daily is recommended by four out of five dentists or something. Continue reading “Did you miss ‘Hobbit’ production diary #4? We didn’t”

Staffer Kristin Thompson has written from the road with a great giveaway item and a hot rumor. Expect this TORn exclusive to heat up the internet today but it seems the spy network has checked in. Kristin says:

“At MIPCOM, a television trade show held in Cannes on October 3 to 6, this great bag with an image of Bilbo was being given away. It’s trademarked by New Line Cinema and MGM. Rumor has it that a few minutes of footage from THE HOBBIT were also screened!” Continue reading “Exclusive: The first screening of ‘Hobbit’ footage?”