From the NZ Listener, thanks to Silmarien
Category: New Zealand
They’re not saying anything that hasn’t been said before, but this article is an encouraging sign that the British mainstream media are finally taking a more straightforward approach to reporting on the ‘Rings’ project. Last year we seemed to get a lot of articles from Britain that were ill-informed or had an apologetic tone, as though they felt ashamed to been seen concerning themselves with such childish fanboy stuff as Tolkien. Lately that’s not been the case.
Thanks to Funky Monkey for the link
A high-powered delegation from Te Papa, including museum chief executive Dame Cheryl Sotheran, returned from Los Angeles yesterday after discussions with New Line Films to establish a Lord of the Rings exhibition. [More]
You may not have seen a story about LOTR filming on Mt Ruapehu run on the front cover of the June issue of CounterAction magazine. This publication is distributed to 20,000 retail business managers throughout New Zealand, and is on sale nationally. It features a photo of Peter Jackson on the mountain, and gives some interesting background information about the impact of the filming on businesses in the Mt Ruapehu area,
This story is now online at the CounterAction website. Point your web browser at counteraction.co.nz [More]
All obvious jokes aside, Entertainment Weekly has listed the Pacific Rim the ‘IT’ spot, for movie making that is. Citing ‘The Beach’, ‘M:I2’, ‘Moulin Rouge’, and our ‘LOTR’ as being filmed in and around the Rim (why they left out Star Wars is beyond me). Check it out in the latest issue of Entertainment Weekly (with good old Canadian boy Hayden ‘Anakin Skywalker’ Christensen on the cover), or click here.
Tehanu here from the Grey Havens,
Sorry, this one is a bit ‘in-house’ for New Zealanders…or people who have been here!
I consulted with Rutherford the calculating cat, (the one who is learning to type,) and he drew a Venn diagram to show the intersection of the sets of people who surf the Net, are interested in Lord of the Rings, are interested in photography, live in or have been to NZ, and have been hiking in Fiordland or the Southern Alps. Rutherford reckons it is a pretty tiny subset, but it does exist.
So if you’re out there and you have photos of parts of New Zealand that look like you’ve always imagined Middle Earth to look, why not send them to us and have your work posted up for a bit of web fame? We’d love to be able to put up some big pictures of the area round Queenstown, Wanaka, all that lovely Central Otago stuff. Y’know, the borders of Rohan? Also for those of you that have been down to Milford and Te Anau, how about some pics of that dark mysterious forest they have down there? And Rivendell, can anyone imagine where that might be?
If anyone has a photo of Moria Gate, north of Karamea (it really exists! I’ve seen it on maps!) we’d love to see that too, just out of curiosity. Those mapmakers were Tolkien fiends too, it seems.
We’ll put your name on your pics to give you the credit for them it you want, of course.