Forbes writer Geoff Loftus writes about ‘4 Leadership Lessons from Aragorn‘, saying leadership lessons can be gleaned from Aragorn’s actions throughout The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

For example, he compares Aragorn’s unwavering focus on the need to destroy The One Ring to Apple‘s never wavering focus on delivering a high-quality, well-designed customer experience with every product.

Read the full article at Forbes.com [Read More]

Balancing mega-blockbusters and character-driven independent films, Hugo Weaving musters the high style necessary for a elven lord, an evil computer program, and a malevolent transformer, all while retaining the subtlety to fuel more small-scale films. His latest, Last Ride, (which although completed three years ago has only recently debuted in selected USA cinemas) is one of the latter. In it, Weaving plays an abusive ex-convict who takes his estranged son along as they flee through the Australian outback.

Here, he speaks to AV Club about some of the roles he’s played over the years.

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In this One News report Richard Taylor, Pietro Marson and Rod Sheeny (Weta Workshop Animatronics) talk about how Weta Workshop is using 3D printers to make weapons and props for The Hobbit and the Lord of The Rings trilogy.

Animatronics engineer, Rod Sheehy, says that the printing technology is an advantage because it keeps costs down with the items made in-house, saving a lot of time and Taylor says that they’ve used the tech to make helmets, sword hilts and axes. Thanks to Ringer Marc for the heads-up!

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly the film director of the Batman trilogy Christopher Nolan, reveals how The Lord of the Rings trilogy helped him to wrap up the epic series with ‘The Dark Knight Rises’.  He stated how difficult film trilogies tend to be, saying:

“There are very few very great third films, I think in some cases dissatisfaction with third films comes from the sheer exhaustion of the people making it”. He then went on to tell how Peter Jackson’s work on The Lord of the Rings acted as inspiration for his own crew “I will cop to this: ‘The Lord of the Rings’ trilogy was in the back of our minds the entire time we were making these.”

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After receiving multiple requests, we are finally making our Comic-Con 2012 ‘OBEY’ shirts available for online purchase. The popularity of this shirt was a surprise to us all! After selling out last Thursday, we begged our shirt producer to rush another 100+ shirts to arrive at Comic-Con by Saturday afternoon. Those sold out just as quickly by Sunday and ultimately left a lot of con-goers empty-handed. So we are happy to offer them to our entire online audience for a limited time. The shirt comes in three colors: Black, Blue and Red. We are also now offering Women’s V-Neck options. Shirts are $20US with flat rate shipping of $5 US and $15 International. In case you were wondering, proceeds from our shirt sales go directly to site expenses and our events. TheOneRing.net is not for profit with a 100% volunteer staff. We regularly donate any excess monies to international literacy charities. Please help support TheOneRing.net and our efforts by snagging yourself a cool shirt! (And yes, our other shirts should be online shortly!) [Place your Order]

 

Jared Connon is the supervising location manager for The Hobbit, and worked on The Lord Of The Rings.

The eagle-eyed film locations expert has worked in the film industry since he was 19, knows New Zealand like the back of his hand and is considered one of the best in the business. Connon has seen more remote parts of New Zealand than most fellow kiwis. He’s also very dedicated to the Māori ethos of kaitiakitanga — treading lightly on the land, treating it with respect and leaving it unspoiled for future generations.

In this feature, Connon speaks about location scouting, the logistical challenge of organising filming permissions and what makes a good location scout.

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