In conjunction with our friends at Fantasy Records, TheOneRing.net is proud to present the exclusive debut of the score of the classic 1978 animated Lord of the Rings movie, directed by Ralph Bakshi and scored by Leonard Rosenman. This very special release is on vinyl and is accompanied by an amazing set of collector’s items from the beloved film. The exclusive (and very clever) video below shows everything that is included.
The set is available for purchase for $69.98 USD on Amazon here. Also, Fantasy Films has graciously donated copies to TheOneRing.net to give away to two lucky readers! The contest can be entered at the link at the bottom of the page and is available to people world-wide! The contest will run through September 19th with winners to be announced on September 20th.
Read the official press release below, and be sure to enter to win and/or order your own beautiful collector’s set today!
Fantasy Records presents the classic score to the 1978 animated feature J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, from Academy Award-winning composer Leonard Rosenman (East of Eden, Rebel Without a Cause, Barry Lyndon). This highly collectable, vinyl box set will be a must-have for fans of the landmark film and audiophiles alike. Inside the box, there is a wealth of ephemera, including reproductions of rare items from the original Tolkien Fanclub!
Contents include:
-Two 180-gram vinyl LPs, housed in a reproduction of the original gatefold jacket
-24” x 36” theatrical poster, featuring Gandalf
-12” x 8.5” map of Middle-earth
-Lobby card, reproduced from the original theatrical release
-Sticker
-Replica Production cel, suitable for framing
-16-page illustrated booklet, featuring behind-the-scenes photos, a new Leonard Rosenman appreciation by Jon Burlingame, the nation’s leading writer on the subject of music for films and television, plus liner notes by Tolkien Enterprises’ Laurie Battle. Also in the booklet is a backstage look at the making of the film by music historian and reissue producer Bill Belmont.
Yet more opportunities to win with TheOneRing.net! This time, it’s our good friends at Harper Collins who are giving away TEN copies of the newly published The Story of Kullervo– Tolkien’s first piece of prose fiction.
According to Harper Collins’ official press release, The Story of Kullervois ‘a previously unknown work of fantasy by J.R.R. Tolkien, which tells the powerful story of a doomed young man who is sold into slavery and who swears revenge on the magician who killed his father. This is its first appearance in book form; 2015 is the centenary of its creation.’
This beautiful new publication is illustrated on the cover with one of Tolkien’s own paintings. The press release goes on to say:
‘Kullervo son of Kalervo is perhaps the darkest and most tragic of all J.R.R Tolkien’s characters. ‘Hapless Kullervo,’ as Tolkien called him, is a luckless orphan boy with supernatural powers and a tragic destiny.
Brought up in the homestead of the dark magician Untamo, who killed his father, kidnapped his mother, and who tries three times to kill him when still a boy, Kullervo is alone save for the love of his twin sister, Wanona, and guarded by the magical powers of the black dog, Musti. When Kullervo is sold into slavery he swears revenge on the magician, but he will learn that even at the point of vengeance there is no escape from the cruellest of fates.
Tolkien himself said that The Story of Kullervo was ‘the germ of my attempt to write legends of my own’, and was ‘a major matter in the legends of the First Age’. Tolkien’s Kullervo is the clear ancestor of Túrin Turambar, tragic incestuous hero of The Silmarillion. In addition to it being a powerful story in its own right, The Story of Kullervo – published here for the first time with the author’s drafts, notes and lecture-essays on its source-work, The Kalevala – is a foundation stone in the structure of Tolkien’s invented world.’
We have ten copies of this book to give away to ten lucky readers – and the competition is open worldwide! To enter, all you need to do is complete the form below, including answering the following simple question:
How many years is it since Tolkien first created The Story of Kullervo?
Simply write the answer in the ‘special note’ box. Please also NOTE YOUR SHIPPING ADDRESS in the ‘special note’ box. Complete the rest of the form and hit ‘enter now’! The competition is open until Thursday 10th September. Good luck!
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.
George R.R. Martin, writer with a series of #1 bestellers, a hit HBO show and a measure of celebrity few writers ever achieve, has given a pretty substantial signal about the how the tone of his series “A Song of Ice and Fire,” will end and he credits J.R.R. Tolkien. Martin has long praised Tolkien and credited him with influencing him and most every other fantasy writer.
“I’ve said before that the tone of the ending that I’m going for is bittersweet. I mean, it’s no secret that Tolkien has been a huge influence on me, and I love the way he ended Lord of the Rings. It ends with victory, but it’s a bittersweet victory.”
Martin also talked about the golden age of television and mentioned some great shows that not everybody is watching, but he wasn’t done with praising Tolkien.
“Frodo is never whole again,” he said.
Martin is of course known for writing giant volumes and killing favorite characters. The joke goes that Martin isn’t on Twitter because he already killed 140 characters and the fear is that by the end of the final book, Martin may write something of an apocalypse, which is why his Tolkien comparisons are so welcome for fans.
But he also praised a portion of Tolkien’s writings that filmmaker Peter Jackson left out of his movies, save for a brief glimpse as part of another scene. Martin loves the Scouring of the Shire chapter.
“And the scouring of the Shire—brilliant piece of work, which I didn’t understand when I was 13 years old: “Why is this here? The story’s over?” But every time I read it I understand the brilliance of that segment more and more. All I can say is that’s the kind of tone I will be aiming for.”
Martin is writing the sixth book in his series, “The Winds of Winter.”
Available for pre-order now is allegedly one of Tolkien’s darkest stories, which (if any of you are familiar with my books) has me all kinds of excited.
Here’s the official press release we have received:
THE STORY OF KULLERVO
The world first publication of a previously unknown work of fantasy by J.R.R. Tolkien, which tells the powerful story of a doomed young man who is sold into slavery and who swears revenge on the magician who killed his father.
• The Story of Kullervo is the first piece of prose fiction that J.R.R. Tolkien wrote
• This is its first appearance in book form
• 2015 is the centenary of its creation
• Illustrated on the cover by one of Tolkien’s own paintings
Kullervo son of Kalervo is perhaps the darkest and most tragic of all J.R.R. Tolkien’s characters. ‘Hapless Kullervo’, as Tolkien called him, is a luckless orphan boy with supernatural powers and a tragic destiny.
Brought up in the homestead of the dark magician Untamo, who killed his father, kidnapped his mother, and who tries three times to kill him when still a boy, Kullervo is alone save for the love of his twin sister, Wanona, and guarded by the magical powers of the black dog, Musti. When Kullervo is sold into slavery he swears revenge on the magician, but he will learn that even at the point of vengeance there is no escape from the cruellest of fates.
Tolkien himself said that The Story of Kullervo was ‘the germ of my attempt to write legends of my own’, and was ‘a major matter in the legends of the First Age’. Tolkien’s Kullervo is the clear ancestor of Túrin Turambar, tragic incestuous hero of The Silmarillion. In addition to it being a powerful story in its own right, The Story of Kullervo – published here for the first time with the author’s drafts, notes and lecture-essays on its source-work, The Kalevala – is a foundation stone in the structure of Tolkien’s invented world.
The book will be released in the UK on the 27th of August 2015 and is scheduled for release in April 2016 in the US.
While I doubt the rights will be released any time soon, this sounds like an edge-of your seat read that would make a fantastic film. With stories like this kicking around in his desk drawers (or wherever the Professor kept them!), one has to wonder what would be his chosen medium if alive and publishing today. Would he be like J.K. Rowling and write not only novels, but for the stage, and the screen as he expanded his magical world? Or do you think he would’ve just stuck to books? Before you go into a lecture about Jackson’s films “ruining everything,” remember that Tolkien willingly sold the rights to The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, knowing full well their stories would be told on the big screen with all kinds of changes to match the cinematic storytelling medium.
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.”