When it comes to award ceremonies, Rick Findlater is usually back at a hotel making stars look their best.
But the Australian hair and make-up artist will now be at the centre of the action after being nominated for both British and American academy awards for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.

“I’m just going to suck it up and enjoy the whole thing,” Findlater says from the home he is renovating on four hectares at Georgica, near Lismore in northern NSW. Continue reading “Unexpected nomination puts make-up artist in Oscar’s sights”

Richard TaylorRichard Taylor and John Rhys-Davies are both connected to the film project “Glastonbury: Isle of Light,” which is in development. Taylor is in place as part of the team that handles design, production and marketing that also includes Star Wars casting director Robin Gurland.

Rhys-Davies recently was in the region and talked about the film and its importance to the region and the help it might lend tourism. You can view that video right here. A full press release about the film can be found here.

The Goblin King from "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey"
The Goblin King from “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey”
Joe Letteri has helmed Weta Digital to work on three films with visual effects Oscar nominations in this year’s Academy Awards. Its work on “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey,” is the only film that had all the work done in one place while his team contributed to “The Avengers,” and “Prometheus.” The work done on just Gollum or just The Goblin King would be a great visual effects achievement in any film but it also included Azog and an incredible array of elements.

Letteri talked to The Hero Complex recently and the information is good but perhaps a retread for TORn readers. However, the piece also has three making of videos that are outstanding. The three characters mentioned above each get his own showcase and it highlights the talents of Andy Serkis, Martin Freeman and the digital and design team among others. Anyway, the story is right here and of course the visual effects team must be considered strong favorites on Oscar night. And for 2013 they get to tackle a dragon.

The visual effects nominees are certainly invited to our big-event party that looks to be simply amazing.

Gwaith-i-PhethdainThe Gwaith-i-Phethdain, or the Fellowship of the Word-smiths, is a part of the Polish website Elendilion.pl, run by our friend and Tolkien geek Richard “Galadhorn” Derdzinski.  Since the early days of the internet when information was hard to come by and to share, he has led the effort in analyzing the languages in the Lord of the Rings films from 2001 through 2004, and beginning last year, he’s once again embarked on analyzing the languages in The Hobbit films.

To quote Richard:

The way to find the texts in the languages of Middle-earth was difficult. First of course was the careful and watchful hearing in the cinemas. Richard traveled far from Poland to Ireland to watch the movie 2 weeks before the Polish premiere. The first results were published thanks to the work of Miriam “Niranare” Simon of the German forum Mellyn Lammath and Cerebrum of the Hungarian website Parf-en-Ereglas. Then the international community of the Tolkien linguists with Helge K. Fauskanger (of Norse Ardalambion) and Andrew Higgins (of Elfling list) helped to find the detailed explanation of David Salo’s conlang forms.

The dialogues, together with lyrics and inscriptions, in the languages of Tolkien were created for the movies by David Salo, an American linguist. Richard’s analysis is a work in progress, continually updated based on suggestions from fans contributed via comments to his blog-style posts, and the results of his work on The Hobbit thus far can be found as follows:

The analyses of the dialogues, lyrics and inscriptions in the Lord of the Rings films can be found at Elvish.org.

Elendilion.pl is also famous for the investigation of the oldest ancestry of the Tolkien family. This family name emerges for the first time in the mediaeval sources of the German Order in Prussia, in small village in today’s Poland, Tołkiny, cf. http://www.elendilion.pl/2010/02/02/tokiny-in-warmia-a-nest-of-the-tolkien-family-ii/

oscarsGreetings all — as the Golden Globes have upset the table of this year’s Awards season (away from LINCOLN and in favor of ARGO), we have much shared excitement for upcoming HOBBIT: AUJ nominees Peter King (pictured here with WETA’s Richard Taylor), Dan Hennah, Joe Letteri, among others! TheOneRing.net is planning a big to-do here in Hollywood on the night of February 24th, THE ONE EXPECTED PARTY, in the tradition of our grand Oscar Parties of years past. Today on our *live* webcast TORn TUESDAY, your genial host Cliff “Quickbeam” Broadway will discuss the rarified air of Hollywood’s awards season and how THE HOBBIT is performing worldwide as fans eat it up. Our webcast begins in a few minutes at 5:00PM Pacific Time, watch and join our innovative chat here on our Live Event page or here at Stickam (where you can turn on your camera or login with your smartphone)! Everyone join the mischief — we have a party to plan!

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey Special Edition Soundtrack Over on Tracksounds.com, Doug Adams (author of Music of Lord of the Rings) discusses Howard Shore’s score for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. Stream the Episode 54 of The Soundcast directly from the site, or download the podcast and listen later. In the episode, Adams discusses the effect of the format on film experience, how the score caused people some headscratching, and why this whole thing is just a huge “game of themes.” It does take the panel a fair chunk of time to actually get down to talking about the OST. If like me, you find that frustrating, you might want to skip the first 10 minutes or so.

Episode Highlights

00:00 Blunt the Opening and Doug Adams Intro
05:46 What we were expecting from this film
9:58 General reactions and comparing to Lord of the Rings
11:45 Reacting to the film and it’s music (spoilers)
31:21 Headscratching: Reacting to the score
49:56 A Game of Themes?
78:50 Wrapping it up

[The Soundcast]