Author JW Braun has sent along his latest vlog book review. This, along with several other video blogs from other artists, web personalities and others will makeup a new ‘TORN TV’ feature we are working on, more on that soon. In the meantime check our JW’s book review of ‘Peter Jackson: A Film-Maker’s Journey’ by Brian Sibley

Order the book today on Amazon.com. Be sure to check out TheOneRing.net’s NEW YouTube Channel here!

TheOneRing.net staffer and regular contributor  Treebeard was lucky enough to have the chance to chat with Graham McTavish (Dwalin) about his role in The Hobbit.

Treebeard (T.B.) I am here with Graham McTavish, interviewing him for TheOneRing.net about his upcoming role as a Dwalin in The Hobbit. Hi Graham!

Graham McTavish (G.M.) Hello.

T.B. Did you have any interest in the works of Tolkien before you auditioned for The Hobbit?

G.M. Yes. I’d read “The Lord of the Rings” probably when I was about eighteen, all three straight through, and  like most teenagers that encountered the books for the first time, it allowed me to disappear into a whole different world that I always looked forward to going back to while I was reading it. I hadn’t read “The Hobbit,” but I did, very quickly, when I was asked! [laughs] It’s very interesting for me the difference between the two books, I suppose, being that “The Hobbit” seems to me a much more straightforward, linear adventure story. I’ve be interested to find out, when I’ve told people that I’m doing this, a lot of them prefer “The Hobbit”, in some ways. And, also it seems to be amongst every man I’ve met, the first book they ever read. Continue reading “TORN Exclusive: Graham ‘Dwalin’ McTavish Interview”

ComingSoon.net has snagged an exclusive with actor Ron Perlman in which he states he’s not in The Hobbit.

“I’m not doing [it],” Perlman said, adding with a laugh, “I think maybe that’s a scoop for you.”

With not much else to go by, fans of Ron Perlman probably needn’t despair, as just because he isn’t in it yet doesn’t mean he won’t be down the line. Some might recall former Hobbit director Guillermo del Toro mentioning he had a role in mind for Perlman, but with Peter Jackson taking over the directorial reins of the two films, only time will tell whether GDT’s choice will still hold.

Until then, all we can do is speculate. There’s a healthy discussion concerning GDT’s and PJ’s casting choices going on over at our message boards right now. Feel free to join in.

A casting agent for Wellington producer Sir Peter Jackson’s planned film adaptations of The Hobbit has been dismissed after placing newspaper advertisements seeking extras with “light skin tones”. A spokesman for Wingnut Films, Sir Peter’s production company, told Agence France-Presse the unnamed agent was not directed by the company to make such restrictions. “No such instructions were given,” the spokesman said. “The crew member in question took it upon themselves to do that and it’s not something we instructed or condoned”. More..

From engadget.com: We’re still slightly bummed that Peter Jackson never made Halo, but this should patch things up a tad — the Lord of the Rings director will film The Hobbit in 3D entirely on thirty hand-machined RED EPIC cameras, starting early next year. That’s the news straight from RED founder Jim Jannard, but that’s not all, as a limited number of pre-production EPIC packages will be available to early adopters as well. $58,000 buys your deep-pocketed budding director a machined EPIC-M body, titanium PL mount, Bomb EVF and 5-inch touchscreen LCD, a REDmote, a four-pack of batteries, a charger and a solid state storage module with a four-pack of 128GB SSDs. Jannard expects to hand-assemble that first batch of 5K imagers in December or January, start the real assembly lines a month after that, and hopefully have widespread availability by NAB in April, though he’s not making any promises there. That’s how RED rolls. More..

Xoanon here, this is not the Peter’s first foray into Red cameras, Peter used one a few years back to shoot some plane footage at an air show. Meanwhile his post production house ‘Park Road Post’ has experience withe the Red series of cameras.

Here’s a juicy bit of news regarding an interesting role PJ and Co. are supposedly casting for The Hobbit. British actor Shane Briant spoke at the Bram Stoker Horror Film Festival Whitby Hammer Convention and Exhibition on Sunday October 17th, 2010, and his revelation of his audition for the highly-anticipated Hobbit films drew a very audible “Ooooh!” of surprise from a rather rapt audience.

Here’s what the Shane had to say (you can watch the video here):

[…] I’m hoping to be in The Hobbit. Wouldn’t that be nice. I auditioned for that. It’s supposed to be the ridiculous Mayor of… something or the other… the Shire. And he took himself very seriously. So I got all dressed up, with a silly bow-tie, [here Shane stands up to demonstrate a hunched man with a mild pout] and I thought I gave a very good audition. I still haven’t heard back. I’m thinking it’s because the film’s been put back and Jackson’s now back on board as the director. So I’d love to do that. That’s real fantasy life. So we’ll see.

The good man seems to be a wee bit unsure of which Mayoral role he auditioned for. If he indeed means the Mayor of Shire, Tolkien fans will know without a doubt that he really means the Mayor of Michel Delving, though on the other hand it could very well be the Mayor of Lake Town.

Join in the speculation and discussion over at our message boards. Many thanks to message board member Otaku-sempai for pointing us to this video.