IMG_6960New items are landing from our friends at Weta Workshop for Pre-Order.

We have the return of the 1:4 helm line that fans have been begging to have back. The new line leads off with the helm of Skully the Orc, who you may recall from The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. This piece looked absolutely fantastic at Comic-Con, with the skull looking like the real bones from some poor soul. Skully’s helm can be had for $79 and is due to ship in quarter one of next year. Continue reading “Collecting The Precious – Weta Workhop’s Skully Helm and 1:30 Scale Figure Pre-Orders”

dragoncon logoIt’s that time of year again, when about half a million people converge on downtown Atlanta for the geekfest that is DragonCon. And TheOneRing.net will of course be there! We can’t wait to see all our friends and to enjoy Middle-earth fun together.

Some of the things which will be happening:

TheOneRing will have a ‘fan table’, as ever, where staffers deej and greendragon will be hard at work! We’ll be in our usual location in the Hyatt hotel, opposite the entrance to the Art Show. Come by and check out the new buttons and two new tshirt designs we’ll be unveiling this year!

Continue reading “DragonCon is almost upon us! Sept 2-5, Atlanta GA”

Not to sound as alarmist as Fredegar Bolger rousing the Hobbit-folk in the wee hours of a peaceful Shire morning, but perhaps the time has come for fans of Howard Shore’s scores to sit up and reconcile themselves to a very dismaying possibility – that the unheard music of Middle-earth might well in fact never be heard.

DougHobbitBTS
It’s Earl, your soundtrack-obsessed TORn-staffer, and the reason I’m venturing to make this statement is because of the recently announced Limited Collector’s Edition of the movies, which makes it almost excruciatingly clear that the Warner Bros studio is so very, very far removed from knowing what fans really, truly want, and are willing to pay for.

Continue reading “Awake! Fear! Fire! Foes! or What Does the Limited Collector’s Edition Portend for the Unheard Music of Middle-earth?”

image Greetings — Quickbeam here.

The forthcoming “Ultimate Collector’s Edition” 6-film Blu-ray set of both LOTR and HOBBIT has caused much consternation among Ringers, eliciting strong reactions across the board.  Several of our Staff have published their excellent viewpoints (my op-ed is here) and our community feels energized like it was 15 years ago. Continue reading “EXCLUSIVE: Peter Jackson not “involved in this release””

Middle-earth 6-film collector's edition No-one likes being taken for a sucker. And, frankly, the recent announcement of the Middle-earth blockbuster ka-pow edition (or whatever jargon-hype wording Warner Bros Home Entertainment is lobbing onto it) certainly has that feel.

It’s the same content repackaged into a bookcase that you or I might have thrown together in high-school woodworking. Yes the bookcase looks quite nice. And there’s a nice little booklet. Yes, all your discs come in nice faux-leather slipcases. Yes, it’s all in a big, glossy box created by professional designers (even if they’re using the same visual assets we’ve seen elventy-billion times).

But, ultimately, it’s still the same content.

And for eight hundred US dollars. Count them. Continue reading “Squeezing the Middle-earth cash-cow”