WIZKIDS TAKES OVER MIDDLE EARTH WITH NEW “THE LORD OF THE RINGS” GAME RELEASES

(January 18, 2011-Hillside NJ) – Wizkids announced today the addition of “The Lord of the Rings” property to their 2011 HeroClix release schedule through a licensing agreement logowith Warner Bros. Consumer Products. The first products of the new “The Lord of the Rings” line will be a HeroClix miniatures game followed by a HeroClix strategic board game, both of which will release in the back half of 2011.

“The Lord of the Rings” HeroClix miniatures game will be sold in two different packages: a campaign style box set and the traditional booster format. The all-in-one campaign style box set will include everything a player needs, including NEW epic level rules and maps. The booster format includes the figures, similar to other previous HeroClix releases. With whichever format chosen, all of the twenty or more figures will be compatible with other HeroClix miniatures games. More..

J.W. Braun is back with another book review, this time he’s reviewing Sean Astin’s autobiography ‘There and Back Again: An Actor’s Tale’. Be sure to bookmark TORN’s updated YouTube channel lovingly called ‘TORN TV‘.

“The Music of the Lord of the Rings Films,” by Doug Adams, Carpetier, $59.95

It speaks to the longevity of the “Lord of the Rings,” films that ten years later, movie tie-in books are still being released. It speaks to the power of Howard Shore’s soundtrack and author Doug Adams presentation that “The Music of the Lord of the Rings Films,” is the best of LOTR movie-related book and worth the wait.

In fact, if you are still hanging on to some of your post-Christmas or other holiday gift money, this comprehensive account of Shore’s scores are your answer on how to spend. This volume is a must-own for fans of Peter Jackson’s trio of films adapting the works of J.R.R. Tolkien and film score fans.

Tolkien deserves more than a passing mention here because it is clear from Adams’ work that the written word played an important part in Shore’s process. Far beyond scoring a movie, the composer delved into Middle-earth’s history and cultures, creatures and characters in order to best service the film. The book helps elucidate the fact that Shore’s 10-plus hours of music were done with Tolkien in mind as much as Jackson and that Shore’s work stands alone as a musical interpretation of a work of fiction as well as one aspect of the films. Continue reading “Review: ‘Music of LOTR films’ best of tie-in books”

Continuing the new The Lord of the Rings statue line-up, Sideshow Collectibles placed the Legolas Statue on sale last Thursday. Unfortunately the exclusive edition sold out in a few hours, but the regular edition is still available for pre-order. In what looks to be one of the best sculpts of Orlando Bloom, this statue features Legolas as he’s about to pull an arrow from his quiver. For a complete gallery and ordering details, jump on over to SideshowCollectibles.com. Legolas is the third ‘new’ LOTR statue in the series, joining Gandalf the Grey (Exclusive Version is Available for Pre-Order) and Aragorn as Strider.

Our sources are telling us that the always reliable (and great) film-on-disc website www.digitalbits.com is correct its Lord of The Rings Blu-ray news. Bill Hunt released the info in his column today. We had not heard a final decision had been reached but Hunt knows his stuff and can be trusted. This is both good and bad.

The good: Expect the extended-edition version of all three LOTR films in 2011. Warner will attempt to do these in (obviously) extremely high quality transfers that will fix minor items here and there and still likely put one movie on two discs rather than cram data to one disc and let quality suffer. Continue reading “LOTR Extended Blu-ray coming in 2011”

John Di Bartolo writes: Hail friends! Just released the first episode of “The Minstrel, the Painter, & the Scholar” with Ted Nasmith & Dr. Corey Olsen. If you would like to post a link, or even re-release/distribute this mp3 through your own sites please feel free to do so. Glad to be able to share this with you all – and feel free to forward this to any friends or fellow podcasters! Cheers! Stay tuned for episodes 2 and 3 with John, Ted & Corey.