The American Cinematheque will be screening their annual LOTR Extended Edition Trilogy marathon on Saturday, September 12 at the Aero Theater, 1328 Montana ave. in Santa Monica. In addition to the films, this will also be a tribute to Christopher Lee and Andrew Lesnie with discussions between the films with executive producer Mark Ordesky, and more guests to be announced. For details on how to get tickets and directions, please go to American Cinematheque website.
As usual, TheOneRing.net will be at the theater all day long, but in lieu of trivia contests on stage between films, we will host a few ‘pop trivia questions’ in the concession lines. After all, what else are you going to do while standing in line when you could be having fun winning stuff. All this because there will be special guest appearances on stage during the intermissions. The Cinematheque is bringing in a Food truck for the intermissions, so there should be a little bit of variety for food options, yum.
For those of you who reside in LA and have attended some of these Cinematheque trilogy screenings before, you know there is nothing more entertaining than getting to see these films on the big screen again, and with a bunch of fellow fans. Hopefully a few of you are on their mailing list or are members of the American Cinematheque. After all, with the LOTR trilogy being an annual event, chances are you will want to attend every year, and in between Trilogy screenings, they offer some other pretty cool programming all year long. Between foreign language films, indie films, classics and some really avant garde films, many of which they also bring in cast or crew members, it feels like a year round film festival. And membership will get your discounted tickets, most of which will be $7 per show (and $10 for this trilogy), free ‘members only’ sneak preview screenings, and priority ticket purchase and entry for certain screenings. For more details, just head to their membership page.
Here’s a nice story from stuff.co.nz: Sir Peter Jackson has come to the rescue of a historic Wellington church. Jackson and wife Fran Walsh have bought St Christopher’s Church in the suburb of Seatoun for $1.06 million in a move that saves the earthquake-prone church and neighbouring hall from potential demolition. The couple made their latest purchase to ensure the buildings would not be lost from the peninsula, trust chairman Richard Stubbs said. According to Stubbs, the community would have faced a huge fundraising effort were it not for Jackson and Walsh stepping in.
“They’ve rescued it. They’ve totally relieved us of that obligation, and that means we can get on and run the facilities … their involvement here is absolutely pivotal. They’ve done this for the people of the peninsula, and indeed for Wellington.”
Read the rest of the article on the stuff.co.nz website here.
Today, is the last of the three week run of Weta Workshop post Comic-Con extravaganza collectibles.We end this run with a very cool rider piece capturing Dain Ironfoot himself on that really awesome War Boar. Dain, who hopefully we get to see a bit more of in the extended edition because what we did get to see of him in the theatrical release was pretty cool, is presented in incredible detail. One of the other things I really liked about Dain, besides the incredible detail and likeness, was the metallic paint used on the armor. Fans can order Dain right now for a solid price of $449 with a pretty low edition size of just 800 pieces worldwide. You can expect Dain to arrive into your collection during the first quarter of 2016.
This week marks the second of the three week Weta post Comic-Con Extravaganza. Fans of Middle-earth now have the chance to add the Uruk-hai Swordsman who was part of Saruman’s army attack on Helm’s Deep to their collections. The Uruks were some of the coolest creatures we’ve seen in any movie, and this statue does such a fantastic job capturing all that amazing work by our friends at Weta. You can snag the Uruk-hai Swordsman for $299, he comes with an edition size of 1500 pieces world-wide.
A group, that displays one man with 500+ Facebook friends, has started a GoFundMe page to build a 1 to 1 scale replica “of Peter Jackson’s depiction of Minas Tirith, as seen in his Lord of the Rings films.”
For American readers, if my pounds to dollars calculator is working right, that is about $2.8 billion, an ambitious amount to raise on IndieGoGo, or really any crowd funding site, or really, by any method. Still, the project would be a dream to visit and would create an economy all its own and would provide years of good media material as the world watched its progress.
“We aim to create both residential and commercial properties, allowing for sustainable growth and a high quality of life,” Jonathan Wilson says on his intro page. He also breaks down the cost, a little bit, to say, “The vast majority of this expense will cover building costs – £15m for land, £188m for labour and £1.4bn for material.”
BOFTA EE Canadian cover – courtesy of digitalbits.com
Bill Hunt over at Digital Bits.com came out with two updates on The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies yesterday afternoon. The first, which you can read here, is that the street date for the DVD release looks to be Tuesday, November 17th, according to Amazon.ca which, according to Bill, almost always coincides with with Warner Bros. release date. The second update is that the official running time appears to be 164 minutes, which means the EE will be around 20 minutes longer than the theatrical version, not 30 minutes as intimated by Peter Jackson in various news outlets last December.
The shorter running time has been rumored for the last week or so, with the reaction from our Hobbit forum users mostly reflecting disappointment regarding the ‘lost’ 10 minutes. Of course, there are also the ‘glass half full’ fans that are hoping that quality will beat out quantity in this case. Let us know what your reaction is in the comments, on the forum, or in Barliman’s chatroom. In the mean time, Bill believes an official announcement from Warner Bros should be forthcoming in the next few days.
The American Cinematheque will be screening their annual LOTR Extended Edition Trilogy marathon on Saturday, September 12 at the Aero Theater, 1328 Montana ave. in Santa Monica. In addition to the films, this will also be a tribute to Christopher Lee and Andrew Lesnie with discussions between the films with executive producer Mark Ordesky, and more guests to be announced. For details on how to get tickets and directions, please go to American Cinematheque website.
For those of you who reside in LA and have attended some of these Cinematheque trilogy screenings before, you know there is nothing more entertaining than getting to see these films on the big screen again, and with a bunch of fellow fans. Hopefully a few of you are on their mailing list or are members of the American Cinematheque. After all, with the LOTR trilogy being an annual event, chances are you will want to attend every year, and in between Trilogy screenings, they offer some other pretty cool programming all year long. Between foreign language films, indie films, classics and some really avant garde films, many of which they also bring in cast or crew members, it feels like a year round film festival. And membership will get your discounted tickets, most of which will be $7 per show (and $10 for this trilogy), free ‘members only’ sneak preview screenings, and priority ticket purchase and entry for certain screenings. For more details, just head to their membership page.
