If you couldn’t catch Sir Ian McKellen on stage as King Lear, then tune in this week when the PBS program, Great Performances, features the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production. After airing March 25th on TV, (check the site for show times in your area), the play, originally staged in Stratford-upon-Avon in the spring of 2007, will be available online.
Category: Hobbit Movie
Ian McKellen has been thought of as one of the world’s great actors for more than half his life. But in the last decade, he has also transformed himself from a strict stage thespian – highly rated, seen by very few – into a big screen star.
He combines high art and mass appeal once more next year when filming beings on The Hobbit, a fourth movie adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s books, in which he will again appear as the great wizard Gandalf.
McKellen claims no great strategy for combining critical and commercial success. “How am I expected to make sense of a career which has basically been about me enjoying myself and hoping people would come to see me too?”
For the rest of the article click on the link. Time
From gamesindustry.biz: A staff member at UK studio Traveller’s Tales has seemingly confirmed that the developer is currently working on two new Lego games, long-rumoured to be in production. According to the staff member’s CV, Lego Harry Potter and Lego Indiana Jones 2: The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull are both in development at the Warner Bros owned studio. While EA has the rights to publish one more game based on the Harry Potter movies, Warner Bros is the parent of the Potter franchise and has already put Traveller’s Tales to work on other brands including Batman.
The staff member also states that they had worked on a demo to pitch to Peter Jackson for a game based on the forthcoming Hobbit movies, due in 2012.
Traveller’s Tales is known to be working on one other Lego title – Lego Battles – due for release on the DS this year, and had considerable success with the Lego Star Wars franchise.
Sean Astin told SCI FI Wire that he’d be thrilled to reprise his Lord of the Rings film trilogy role as Sam Gamgee in the upcoming big-screen adaptations of The Hobbit. However, because the Rings’ beloved quartet of Hobbits don’t actually appear in The Hobbit, Astin doubts that he’ll be asked to appear in the films. Astin’s comments run counter to those of his Rings co-star Dominic Monaghan, who told MTV News in January that he believes that he, Astin, Billy Boyd and Elijah Wood will play some role in the two Hobbit features. The films will be produced by Rings mastermind Peter Jackson and directed by Guillermo del Toro. SCI FI Wire spoke to Astin today, while he was promoting ION Television’s upcoming miniseries The Color of Magic. Following are edited excerpts from that exclusive interview, in which he also talked about the 10th anniversary of filming The Lord of the Rings and his other upcoming genre projects. Astin up for Hobbit if Hobbit up for him
The folks from Crescent Moon Publishing send along word of two Tolkien books available on Amazon.com. Take a look at Tolkien’s Heroic Quest (Paperback) and J.R.R. Tolkien: The Books, The Films, The Whole Cultural Phenomenon, Including a Scene By Scene Analysis of the 2001-2003 Lord of the Rings Films (Paperback). Continue reading “New Tolkien Books from Crescent Moon Publishing”
From contactmusic.com: LORD OF THE RINGS star ANDY SERKIS is to hit the studio with late punk icon IAN DURY’s backing band THE BLOCKHEADS to re-record the HIT ME WITH YOUR RHYTHM STICK hitmaker’s beloved tunes. The Blockheads have given Serkis their blessing to play their frontman, who died in 2000, in an upcoming biopic and will rehearse classic tracks with the actor, who once confessed that Dury’s Reasons To Be Cheerful, Part 3 was among his favourite tunes of all time. Blockheads star Mick Gallagher says, “Andy Serkis’ll do a great job… We’re recording 12 songs for the film; it’ll be live and really retro and straight ahead.”