Mel is gone.
It has been weeks now and this isn’t news. I have felt the loss personally and thought about the loss for so many.
Melissa Theresa Petrey Kern, 42, is gone. In her real traditional obituary, it says she was of Lawrenceville, Georgia. Respectfully, I disagree, or I want to state on the record, that while that may be true, it isn’t the whole truth.
More of the truth would say that Melissa Theresa Petrey Kern, 42, a notable figure in the Tolkien Community, died March 8, 2015, after a long battle with ALS. She lived among us, the fan community, and was our neighbor and shared her life with us and is missed by us, as she is missed in Lawrenceville. You could write about more places she lived and is missed too.
I remember, fortunately a few conversations we shared that didn’t seem especially significant at the time, but feel pretty lucky now. We talked about an artist that visited Georgia. We talked about the Tolkien Community in Atlanta. We even talked about specific people she wanted good things for. We talked about fandom, that included her own early love for the books of J.R.R. Tolkien. We shared some moments and I value them, as part of the beautiful experience of our community and they are just a tiny sample of many such moments she shared with many people.
More memorable than the things she said were the people she influenced. The Georgia costuming community, I think it is fair to say, wouldn’t have been so organized or so unified if not for Mel. The Arms of Middle-earth might not have existed at all without Mel, but I don’t pretend to know the reality of that claim. We can safely and accurately say, she was at the heart of the community.
There is a photo, I am sure dozens of people have it, where a significant number of Tolkien costumers were all gathered together in an impressive array of characters from “The Lord of the Rings.” It was during Dragon Con in Atlanta, before the convention had matured to quite the level it has now. Groups of costumers were less frequent and large numbers of themed costumes were rare. There, in that spot, was organized and gathered an outstanding display of fans, living their passions and forming a genuine fellowship. It was a very fine cosplay effort but it was a transcendent community effort. Continue reading “Tolkien community loses Melissa Petrey Kern”
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One of my favourite Dwarves has finally gotten his barrel rider statue.
Bofur the Dwarf, who was such a great character during the films, joins Bilbo, Oin, and Bombur as the fourth barrel rider.
This fantastic little piece is sculpted by Gary Hunt who you will get to know better through several reviews that are coming up.
Bofur comes in with a price tag of only $65 and is in-stock shipping from the New Zealand warehouse.
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In the USA, from March 24th, the last in Peter Jackson’s Middle-earth movies will be available for you to take home. (It’s been available in digital version in many countries since March 3rd; but from Tuesday you can get your hands on a ‘hard’ copy.)
Many fans, of course, like to wait for the Extended Edition release before purchasing a copy; but speaking personally, my collection isn’t complete unless I have the theatrical cut as well. I was thrilled to get my hands on a review copy of the Blu-ray Combo pack, which includes copies of the movie on Blu-ray, on DVD and a Digital HD copy – as well as various extras. Continue reading “The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies DVD/Blu-ray review – RELEASE DATE MARCH 24”
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Round 1 is in the history books, as Middle-earth March Madness continues to capture the attention of Tolkien fans worldwide! In our first round, we had over 190,000 total votes cast, with the most contentious match-ups recieving nearly 10,000 votes! Voting for Round 2 starts now! (Vote below).
Round 1 didn’t have many close match-ups, but there were definitely a few surprises.
The most contraversial seems to be (11) Thranduil taking down (6) Thorin Oakenshield in The Hobbit division. As the 2014 Middle-earth March Madness champion, Thranduil seems to have a dedicated and loyal following that should help him through his next match-up with (3) Beorn. (Or will fan backlash against those Thranduites push Beorn through?!)
In The Lord of the RIngs division, (8) Arwen was able to take down The Dark Lord himself, (9) Sauron. Will she make it past (1) Galadriel to possible match-up against (4) Aragorn?!
In The Others division, (2) Father Christmas was knocked off by (15) Legolas of Gondolin, obviously taking advantage of the name recognition of another famous Elf.
There are a lot of intriguing match-ups in round 2, which I’m sure some TORn staffer will highlight in an article this week. Maybe you want to highlight your favorite match-ups in this round? Submit an article to spymaster@theonering.net with your display name and a small bio, and we’ll see if we can post it!
Voting in this round will remain open until March 26th at 10pm ET. Vote Now and tell your friends! [Round 2 Download] [Round 1 Results] [Round 1 Download]
Continue reading “Middle-earth March Madness – Round 2! Vote Now!”
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Blake Robinson is an Australian composer of music for film, TV and games. He writes:
Armies, Dragons and Rings was created by request, specifically for the final theatrical trailer music for The Hobbit 3. It heavily features [Howard Shore’s] “The Ring” theme in a new context. Continue reading “Listen to Armies, Dragons and Rings, a piece created for The Battle of the Five Armies marketing campaign”
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The 2015 edition of Middle-earth Madness officially starts today! We’ve split our field of 64 characters and objects into four divisions: The Silmarillion,The Hobbit,The Lord of the Rings and The Others.
This is a brand new format for the competition this year – implemented to encourage interesting match-ups, intriquging final four and ultimately education on the breadth of works from our favorite author, J.R.R. Tolkien.
A note on how the bracket combatants were determined. TheOneRing.net created a document containing all combatants, sub divided into divisions. We asked staff to cast sixteen votes per division, with the votes having a weight of 1-4. Each staffer cast four 4 votes, four 3 votes, four 2 votes and four 1 votes in each division. We then totalled all the votes from each division to determine their rank, and ultimately placed those into our bracket for seeding.
As you can imagine, our staff is diverse and the results were very interesting! What was very exciting when creating the bracket was the realization that we have some amazing and story related match-ups in this first round.
Voting in Round 1 will remain open until March 21st at 10pm ET. At that point, we’ll calculate the winners and post the next round on March 22nd. Follow after the break for a complete bracket image (download it), and to vote on all of our Round 1 match-ups! [Round 1 Bracket]
Continue reading “Middle-earth March Madness – Round 1 Bracket – Vote Now!”
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