Today, Weta Workshop put up their most detailed environment yet. The Barad-Dur: Fortress of Sauron has gone up for order and after seeing this at Comic-Con just last month this is something fans will want to make sure to figure out how to get into their collection. Barad-Dur took the team at Weta over 1,500 hours to complete and when you get a chance to see this you will be able to see why.
This environment is a perfect rendering of what was on screen and will take you right to the moment we first saw Barad-Dur on screen. Barad-Dur comes in with a price tag of $699.99 and an edition size of only 1,000 pieces world wide which are sure to sell quickly.
You do have time to save though as this environment will not be shipping until December this year or next January.
[Pre-order your Barad-Dur]
Posted in:
Share:
For most Olympians, wearing the colors of there country is enough, but for others an ink gun provides the opportunity to express themselves in a more permanent way.
It seems that Karine Sergerie, a member of the Canadian taekwondo team heading to the 2012 London Olympics is a Lord of the Rings fan, sporting a quote from Gandalf in The Fellowship Of The Ring as tattoo on her forearm from that reads “All we have to do is decide what to do with the time given to us.” now that’s a good mantra to go by!
Thanks to ringer spy Pearl Sandybanks for the spot. [look!] for full size.
Posted in:
Share:
This Saturday (August 4) at 10.30am, Billy Boyd will narrate the story behind the first ever stage production of of J.R.R.Tolkien’s The Hobbit on BBC Radio 4.
The very first stage production, written by Humphrey Carpenter with music composed by Paul Drayton, was performed at New College School in Oxford in 1967.
Some of the choristers in that first production are now eminent in the musical world: choral conductor Simon Halsey, Opera North’s Martin Pickard and artist’s agent Stephen Lumsden. Composer Howard Goodall watched his older brother Ashley perform. They talk about their memories and of Tolkien’s presence in the audience on the last night.
Thanks to Ringer Andrew for the heads-up.
Update: Ringer HuanCry adds that Radio 4 is also broadcasting a documentary Tolkien in Love the day before.
[Billy Boyd and the Hobbit] | [Tolkien in Love]
Posted in:
Share:
After a successful run in Washington DC last
year Andrew Upton, Cate Blanchett and Richard Roxburgh have brought the Sydney Theater Company’s production of the famous Chekhov play Uncle Vanya to New York City. And it’s wowing audiences in the Big Apple.
Opening as a part of the Lincoln Centre Festival at the weekend, critics have praised the “uniformly brilliant cast” that includes Cate Blanchett and Hugo Weaving.
Cate Blanchett and Richard Roxburgh are still slightly terrified by the play ‘It’s excruciating,’ says Blanchett. ‘What I find the most difficult thing to exist within is what Tamas [Ascher, the Hungarian director] describes in Chekhov as the “stupid silences” where everyone just falls into a silence that is utterly stupid, and their stupidity is revealed to them, and they are staring into a void.’ The production continues at the New York City Centre until Saturday.
[More]
Posted in:
Share:
[Part 1 in a series from The Frodo Franchise Author Kristin Thompson]
Me and My Book
I’m a film historian by trade. I got my Ph.D. in film studies in 1977 and have written several textbooks and academic books on various topics in the field. In 2007, my book The Frodo Franchise: The Lord of the Rings and Modern Hollywood, by Kristin Thompson, came out from the University of California press. As we all wait for the release of the first part of The Hobbit, I thought some of you might be interested in some of my experiences while researching the book. I had a lot of access to the filmmakers for interviews and was given facilities tours during the last part of the post-production on The Return of the King.
I first conceived the book in 2002, when it became obvious to me that Peter Jackson’s film (I call the three parts one film, as he does) was going to be very, very important historically for a wide variety of reasons. The technology (the techniques developed to animate Gollum, the selective digital color grading) would be revolutionary. The internet campaign was pioneering, as was the filmmaking team’s approach to cooperating with the video-game designers. It was a big franchise film—and a fantasy at that—and yet it won the respect of critics and Academy-Award voters as no such film ever had. (The Fellowship of the Ring had won “only” four Oscars, but I knew even then that The Return of the King would be awarded lots.) Somebody should write a book about it, I thought. But probably nobody would, not the way it should be done, with interviews with the people involved. Not while the film was still in production. I concluded that it was up to me. Was it possible, though, to get the kind of access I would need? I set out to find out.
In January of 2003, through a mutual friend, I was put in touch with producer Barrie Osborne. Fortunately, he was interested in having such a book written. Without him, my project would have been dead in the water. Continue reading “Researching THE FRODO FRANCHISE: Part 1, Off to Wellington without a Handkerchief”
Posted in:
Share:
Tom Cardy from stuff.co.nz writes:
Today at age of 50,Peter Jackson has just wrapped up principal shooting on the two-part The Hobbit in Wellington, he has done what was considered the impossible.
How things have changed for Wellington, after the release of The Lord Of The Rings, the subsequent release of King Kong and The Lovely Bones has not only made him the best known New Zealander in the world – it had a direct impact on the city he lives in.
[Read More]
Posted in:
Share:
Today, Weta Workshop put up their most detailed environment yet. The Barad-Dur: Fortress of Sauron has gone up for order and after seeing this at Comic-Con just last month this is something fans will want to make sure to figure out how to get into their collection. Barad-Dur took the team at Weta over 1,500 hours to complete and when you get a chance to see this you will be able to see why. 