From soundtrack.net: Last year, we were treated with a monumental soundtrack release – The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring – The Complete Recordings. This four-disc box set included nearly every note of music from the Oscar-winning film score by Howard Shore, and now – nearly one year later – we are finally able to look at the next release in the series: The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers – The Complete Recordings.
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, the middle film in the trilogy, has the narrowest scope of the three, given the journey of the ring in Fellowship of the Ring and the epic battles of Return of the King. Focusing on two elements – the Ring’s journey toward Mordor and the battle for Rohan – The Two Towers also has a very focused score, tonally and thematically. A large number of minor themes and motifs permeate the score and the trilogy, but the major theme featured in this film is for Rohan. One of my favorite cues from this film is the opening cue, here heard in “Glamdring”, which tells the story of Galdalf’s battle with the Balrog. It sets a dark, grim tone that is a far cry from the bouncy Shire theme that opened The Fellowship of the Ring. Building into an epic cue with a pulsing male choir that ends the cue solo, it sets up the darker elements of the film perfectly. [More]
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Top movie maker Peter Jackson is just about to launch the first book to explore behind the scenes of his films and his life. Rebecca Quilliam chats to one of Hollywood’s most influential men, who warns film-making is not for the faint hearted. Peter Jackson was six-years-old when he watched a Batman movie and first heard the words “special effects”. He says it was a moment he will never forget. The words are now synonymous with the man who started his career in Wellington’s Pukerua Bay filming splatter movies with his friends and grew to direct top-grossing box office hits such as Lord of the Rings and King Kong. [
England’s Andy Serkis is best known for playing the creepy or the colossal – he was Gollum, the whiny, covetous blue guy in the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy; he was also the tall, dark and not-so-handsome leading ape in Peter Jackson’s “King Kong.” With a lengthy resume in British theater, Serkis has had notable screen roles playing bona fide humans – the choreographer in Mike Leigh’s “Topsy Turvy,” for instance – and is currently appearing in the movie “The Prestige.” He is maintaining his creature franchise, however: Serkis will be voicing Spike the Rat in the upcoming animated feature “Flushed Away.” John Anderson caught up with him in Los Angeles. [