Thanks to ringer Krusten for alerting us to the fact that the Snow & Ice Scuplture Festival in Bruges, Belgium, will feature ice sculptures inspired by The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit and the Harry Potter books. Imagine a life-size sculpture of Smaug, the Balrog, Gandalf or “he who must not be named!” If you’re lucky enough to be in the vicinity of Bruges between November 23, 2012 and January 6, 2013, be sure to pay the festival a visit. Read more…

As part of our World Wide Celebration of Hobbit week we, and the folks at Weta Workshop, teamed up to give away one of their amazing Sunrise Upon Edoras Art Print (I just received mine and it is AWESOME). After nearly 500 entries we’re pleased to announce the winner…Congrats to S. Jones of Seattle, Washington. Weta will be sending this masterpiece directly to your door. Please don’t forget to support our contest sponsor Weta Workshop! [Weta Workshop]

Jerry Vanderstelt is known by many fans of The Lord of the Rings for creating beautiful works of art capturing some of the coolest moments in the trilogy. Soonl, fans around the world will  get a chance to start capturing his amazing art work for the trilogy of films for The Hobbit. That’s right! Jerry will be creating art for the trilogy starting with The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey this December. If you want to see more on Jerry’s work and get to know more about him you can check out his official site and his official Facebook page.

Jerry also has a statement he wanted to pass on to fans of Middle-Earth:

“Hello fellow Middle Earth fans, Jerry VanderStelt here. As some of you know, I am a Licensed artist with New Line Cinema and Warner Brothers studios in the creation of the Lord of the Rings art reproductions. Now, I have expanded my fine art program to include The Hobbit!

My first Hobbit art piece is a montage that encapsulates key moments, characters and locations seen in the first film. After that, I plan to continue exploring new pieces that focus on either beautiful landscape scenery, character-centric pieces, or specific characters or groups of characters in various environments.

I hope to have my first Hobbit piece out of the gate by the Dec.14 in time for the film’s release. Soon, I’ll be announcing the pricing and sizing as well as the different edition options I plan to offer here in this thread. Feel free to ask any questions that may come up as we go along!”

As we reported earlier this week it appears that figures from The Bridge Direct for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey are starting to land in stores before their official October 1st release date. We showed you pictures of the Legolas and Tauriel figures which are part of wave 1. Today, rumors are starting to surface around the internet that Warner Bros. may be having these two figures pulled from this wave. Why? It would be a sign that these two characters will not be making an appearance in the first Hobbit film. If there’s any truth to the rumor, you may want to grab these two figures if you see them because their value on the secondary market could jump quiet high because they’ll be in the packaging for the first movie.

As we wrap up our “World Hobbit Day” festivities, we at TORn are pleased to bring you one final piece of our celebratory specials via an exclusive interview with Aivale Cole (nee Mabel Faletolu).

For fans of Howard Shore and the music of The Lord of the Rings films, Aivale (credited as Mabel Faletolu on the soundtrack of The Fellowship of the Ring) perhaps needs no introduction. For the rest, you probably recall that most heartrending of voices that engulfs the broken Fellowship as they emerge from the darkness of Moria and grieve over Gandalf’s fall into Khazad-dûm.

That piece was sung by none other than Aivale, a vocalist hailing from Wellington, New Zealand. Back in 2001, she recorded the solo piece with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra.

Join us in this exclusive interview as we catch up with Aivale who, after more than a decade, takes us back to that “crazy but exciting” time when she worked with Howard Shore and Peter Jackson, and also shares a rather amusing anecdote involving Ian McKellen.

Continue reading “TORn “World Hobbit Day” Exclusive: Interview With Aivale Cole (nee Mabel Faletolu)”

Welcome to our collection of TORn’s hottest topics for the past week. If you’ve fallen behind on what’s happening on the Message Boards, here’s a great way to catch the highlights. Or if you’re new to TORn and want to enjoy some great conversations, just follow the links to some of our most popular discussions. Watch this space as every weekend we will spotlight the most popular buzz on TORn’s Message Boards. Everyone is welcome, so come on in and join in the fun!

This week on LOTR Movie board we’re discussing Aragorn’s American Accent.  Did you notice it appearing and disappearing during his first scenes of FOTR?  Or were you too caught up in the magic of it all, join us here and share your views.

On Hobbit Movie board fans are discussing the news that Peter Jackson has commenced the final edit for The Unexpected Journey. The excitement is building 🙂

Over in Off Topic, Ufthak shared this video from youtube, “Wizard Gandalf Style”, what more can I say? 😀

We’ll share more topics next week and hope you can join in on the conversation!  Don’t forget, TheOneRing.net’s message boards have over 8,200 registered Tolkien fans, just like yourself.  Let your voice be heard!