In last nights newsletter the folks from Weta announced the 1:4 helm line is going to be making a return. This line originally covered many of the awesome designs we saw during the course of The Lord of the Rings Trilogy. The first new helm will pre-order later this month! At this time we’re teased with this photo and can only guess what awesomeness Weta has in store for us. Stay tuned and as soon as we get more information we will let you know.
Category: Merchandise
Last Summer, as a lead up to the release of The Lord of the Rings Trilogy: Extended Edition on BluRay, TheOneRing.net was invited to participate in the official BluRay release party. TORn was responsible for facilitating the Costume Contest, with the grand prize being a Free Trip to New Zealand, hosted by WETA. As was reported then, numerous people competed in some truly wonderful costumes, but alas, only one could win, and that was The Balrog Showgirl herself, Nicole Roberts. As hosts, WETA has been documenting her visit with photos and a story, so check it out on their news page.
News crossed our screens, courtesy of Veldrin, that an international online War of the Ring tournament is currently accepting sign-ups. Sponsored by Ares Games, this is an annual event meant to bring novice and experienced players together and offers prizes for people in each category. The following is some of what they had to say:
“War of the Ring has a dedicated online community and every year they get together to run the largest War of the Ring tournament in the world! It brings together both veterans and novices alike, awarding victory plaques for the overall winner of the double elimination event, as well as the best performing novice player.” For full details, just click right here.
Not quite in time for St Patrick’s Day, but shortly thereafter, fans will at last be able to read an Irish language version of The Hobbit. The book has been translated into Gaelic by Nicholas Williams, and will be published by Evertype on March 25th. More details here. Thanks to ringerspy Riccardo for the news. Middle Earth go Bragh!
Hitting our inbox today was word that some Hobbit toys are available for preorder. This will happen – a lot – over the next few months but this provides some concrete details about what we can expect in stores in the holiday season while we lead up to the first of the two films based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit in December. Unfortunately, no visuals, but thanks to ringerspies Iain and Stormcrow for the heads up. The listing provides some very broad clues, none of them surprises. Most interesting is the “Beast Pack Series”. The items are likely sold to outlets in packs to be sold individually at retail but that is speculation. It looks like these will be available in October.
The product list is as follows:
The Hobbit 3.75″ Beast Pack Series 01 – Case of 4 – $87.99
The Hobbit 3.75″ Collector Pack – $29.99
The Hobbit 3.75″ Figure Series 01 – Case of 6 – $59.99
The Hobbit 3.75″ Figure Two-Pack Series 01 – Case of 4 – $67.99
The Hobbit 3.75″ Goblin Battle Set – $44.99
The Hobbit 6″ Deluxe Collector Figure 01 – $21.99
The Hobbit 6″ Figure Series 01 – Case of 6 – $99.99
The Hobbit Deluxe Sting Sword – $21.99
The Hobbit Dwarven Battle Axe – $14.99
The Hobbit Role Play Sting Sword – $10.99
You can see the listing right here. This is starting to get fun!
Back in 2001, I wrote Glossopoeia for Fun and Profit (also reprinted in The People’s Guide to J.R.R. Tolkien), for our Green Books department, in which I discussed three examples of invented languages: Esperanto, Elvish, and Klingon. For those who found that necessarily brief article of interest, University of Indiana linguistics professor Michael Adams has now edited a new book, From Elvish to Klingon: Exploring Invented Languages (Oxford University Press, 2011), comprising eight essays (including his a general introductory essay by Adams) about linguistic invention, though not precisely the “invented languages” suggested by the book’s title, as we will see. Each essay is accompanied by an appendix by Adams that extends or clarifies some aspect of the essay.
Adams’s introductory chapter deals with the spectrum of linguistic invention, and considers the motivations for such inventions. He considers whether invented languages are an attempt to re-create “the language of Adam”, i.e., a perfected language as spoken by Adam before the fall (it appears that Adams takes the Biblical texts quite literally here), and considers slang and poetry as examples of human linguistic creativity; Adams is the author of Slang: The People’s Poetry(Oxford Press, 2009).
Continue reading “Michael Adams — From Elvish to Klingon: Exploring Invented Languages”