In the US, tournament frenzy hits every March with the onset of the NCAA’s Men’s Basketball March Madness tournament. We thought this year would be a good opportunity for the entire Tolkien community to participate in a special tournament of our own. So without further delay we are announcing the Middle-earth Madness Tournament! The goal is to settle, once and for all, which character is favored most by Tolkien fans worldwide. To start off the process, the staff at TheOneRing.net compiled a list of 46 finalists. We need to weed this list down to 32 total contestants. To do that, we are going to ask you to vote for up to three characters in the poll below. Voting will be open until Feb 29th at Noon ET. We will then compile the results and create our tournament bracket with seeding based on total votes. It should be noted, much like the men’s basketball tournament in, our Middle-earth Madness selection committee does reserve the right to adjust results a bit in the spirit of competition. (and like the men’s basketball committee, some of the decisions are sure to be controversial!!) So without further delay, let the voting begin!
Time for another artist interview! This is one of my favorite sculptors creating items that I personally collect. The sculptor is none other than the massively talented Tim Miller of T.K. Miller Sculpting. This talent is one who folks most likely have an item or two within their The Lord of the Rings collections and for sure if they collect items from the MARVEL Universe. I wanted to take the time for you all to get to know a little more about this great talent, especially since he truly knows how to bring Middle-Earth to life.
As I said, you probably have items from sculpted by Mr. Miller within your collection of The Lord of the Rings. Tim has been responsible for bringing to life characters such as Gandalf the Grey, Frodo Baggins, Samwise Gamgee, and my personal favorite, dwarf Gimli, son of Gloin. These items range from Sideshow Collectibles 1:6th action figure line to the new statue line. The latest item from Mr. Miller is the Gimli, son of Gloin statue which we just reviewed recently and is a great example of Mr. Miller’s skill.
Exciting things are happening for Lord of the Rings fans in Boston! The Coolidge Corner Theatre‘s annual ‘Coolidge Award’ is being given to Viggo Mortensen. This means that Aragorn himself will be in town on Monday 5th March to accept his award! The Coolidge Corner Theatre will be showing several of Mortensen’s movies in the run up to March 5th, as well as hosting an all day LotR trilogy marathon screening on Sunday 4th March. On Monday 5th there will be a lunchtime movie screening with a Q&A with Mortensen, followed later by an ‘Evening with Viggo Mortensen’ event.
TORn will of course be present and will bring you a report of all these exciting happenings. One of the more elusive cast members, any chance to see Aragorn in the flesh, and to hear Viggo Mortensen answer the questions of his fans, is a treat indeed. Full details can be found at Coolidge Corner’s website. The movies and dates are as follows:
Tues 28 Feb, 7pm – A History of Violence Wed 29 Feb, 7pm – A Walk on the Moon Thurs 1 Mar, 7pm – The Road Sun 4 Mar, starting at 11am – LotR trilogy screening
Mon 5 Mar, starting at 12noon – a day of events with Viggo Mortensen
Do you use Facebook? Have you been looking for a really really cool Tolkien themed image to use as your timeline cover photo? Well…we are too! Since TheOneRing.net is in a unique position to reach out to thousands of creative Tolkien fans from all over the world, we thought it might be a novel idea to use that opportunity and create a comprehensive Tolkien themed Facebook cover photo gallery. After we have compiled all of the photos, we’ll publish them as a photo album on our Facebook page, which currently has over 50,000 fans! It is a great opportunity to get your name and talents out in front of the entire community. If you are interested in creating a cover photo, details will be posted below on this article. If there are any businesses out there that want to offer up a prize for the most popular photo, just contact us! UPDATE – Wow, what a great response so far! We’ve already got a gallery going on Facebook using your submissions. [Cover Photo Gallery]
TORn Message Board Member DanielLB has discovered a blogger (DarkJackal) who has a very high resolution of Bilbo reading his contract from the Dwarves. DarkJackal’s effort to decipher the words on that contract is truly amazing, and she invites others to help fill in the missing pieces. Have a look at this treasure and join in on the discussion!
Exciting things are happening for Lord of the Rings fans in Boston! 
