HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA — MONDAY, JULY 19, 2004 — Celebrated actor and activist Ian McKellen has provided a brand new interview for the upcoming feature documentary, RINGERS: LORD OF THE FANS. Sir Ian showed his remarkable depth of understanding of all things related to J.R.R. Tolkien and “The Lord of the Rings.” His powerful portrayal of the wizard Gandalf in Peter Jackson’s epic film trilogy earned him his second Oscar nomination (Best Supporting Actor, 2002) and made him a cinematic icon to adoring fans worldwide. Sir Ian’s interview for Ringers reveals both his remarkable erudition and gentle humor which readers of Tolkien have always associated with their beloved Gandalf.
For fifty years Ian McKellen has enjoyed a far-reaching theatrical career in England and abroad, where his most enduring Shakespearean roles were crafted in collaboration with legendary director Trevor Nunn for the Royal Shakespeare Company. A true master of theatrical disciplines, Sir Ian was lauded by critics worldwide for his role as Edgar in Strindberg’s Dance of Death, which went from Broadway, to London’s West End, and on to Sydney, Australia. Sir Ian has earned more than forty major international acting awards including a Tony Award for Amadeus, the Screen Actors Guild Award for The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of The Ring, a Cable ACE Award for And the Band Played On… and a Golden Globe Award for Rasputin. He received his first Academy Award nomination playing James Whale in Gods and Monsters; with a continuing wave of popular success with Apt Pupil, X-Men and X2: X-Men United. His newest feature, David Mackenzie’s Asylum, will debut October 29, 2004, in select U.S. cinemas.
About the documentary:
Very funny yet often moving, Ringers: Lord of the Fans shows the hidden power behind Tolkien’s books — and how after 50 years a single literary work continues to spark the minds and hearts of millions, across cultures and across time. Ringers explores the real foundations of Middle-earth; a community of true fans who share a common bond. Moving beyond “cult classic” and over several different generations, the film unearths academics, musicians, authors, filmmakers, and a plethora of pop junkies — the people gathered under the banner of ‘Ringer.’
RINGERS: LORD OF THE FANS spent 16 months shooting on three continents. Produced in association with the popular Tolkien fan-site TheOneRing.net, Ringers stands as the most comprehensive film document of the ongoing fandom of “The Lord of the Rings.”
Actor – Sir Ian McKellen, Actor – Dominic Monaghan, Actor – Andy Serkis, Actor – Sala Baker, Author/Filmmaker – Clive Barker, Writer/Director/Producer – Cameron Crowe, Actor – David Carradine, Author – Terry Pratchett, Author – Peter S. Beagle, Author – Terry Brooks, Musician – Lemmy Kilmister, Musician – Geddy Lee, Tolkien Scholar – Dr. Jane Chance, Chairperson of the Tolkien Society – Christine Crawshaw, Author – Colin Duriez, Filmmaker/Critic – Chris Gore, Writer/Publisher – Forrest J. Ackerman, Actor – Bill Mumy, Author/Broadcaster – Brian Sibley, Illustrator/Author – Colleen Doran, Illustrator/Author – Jill Thompson, Great-Grandson – Royd Tolkien, and hundreds of Tolkien fans!
Arwen writes: Between July 15 and July 17, 2004 Seattle residents and visitors alike were offered an amazing gift: the chance to attend not just one, but four concerts conducted by the Award-winning maestro himself, Howard Shore, and performed by the Seattle Symphony at Benaroya Hall. The fans were invited to celebrate the event in true hobbit, elf, or ranger fashion, by attending an Open House reception organized by Linda “Laurelinda” Teller, Founding Member of the Northwesternesse Fan Group on Saturday the 17th between the matinee and evening concerts. Linda had planned the event for almost a full year and worked out all of the details to make sure all of her guests had the best time not only at the concert but also during their visit to her city. She was the most patient and graceful host, and all attendees were very thankful for her hard work.
Having spent most of Saturday taking in the sights of lovely Seattle, I arrived at Benaroya Hall around 6pm, and was greeted by Linda. The event was taking place on the first floor balcony overlooking the main lobby. Costumes had been encouraged, and gentle lads and ladies dressed in their best hobbit, elf or ranger outfits (as well as more conventional 21st century clothing) were hanging out and socializing while munching on savory cold cuts and veggies, and washing it all down with beer, wine, and even soft drinks J Many of the attendees had elected to attend both the 2pm and 8pm performances, and everyone was very enthusiastic about the matinee, which seemed a very good sign for the evening concert. Around 7:50pm everyone made their way into the concert hall and took their seats.
Howard Shore was greeted like a rock star by thundering applause and cheers, and the concert soon started. As much as I enjoyed and admired John Mauceri’s performance of the FOTR score two years ago at the Hollywood Bowl, I must say that is quite an entirely different experience to watch and hear the composer himself conduct his work. It was extremely powerful and I was soon overwhelmed by emotion. The concert was divided in 2 parts – the first part being most of the score from FOTR EE, with the second part (after a brief intermission) covering selections from TTT and ROTK. Throughout the performance, drawings and sketches by Alan Lee were projected on a giant screen above the orchestra. The selection of artwork was subtle enough not to overpower the live performance, it was more like a subtitle, a parenthesis to the music. In addition to being awed by Mr Shore’s maestria, we also greatly admired the soloists, in particular young boy soprano David Farris, and most of all the delightful Sissel, whose pure, beautiful voice brought a lot of Ringers (including myself!) to tears. She delivered wonderful renditions of both Gollum’s Song and Into The West, quite a feat considering how different both songs are. When the very last notes of Into The West died down, with Howard’s right hand raised above his head, almost frozen in time, there was an amazing silence in the entire hall, as if the entire audience were holding their breath, so enraptured we all were in the moment. Howard lowered his hand slowly, turned towards us and the entire hall erupted in overwhelming applause and cheers, giving both the maestro and the orchestra three lasting standing ovations.
After the concert, Linda and her group of Ringers headed to the Artists’ Entrance to wait for Mr Shore and give him a few gifts as a souvenir of the event. One of them was Bilbo’s Red Book, into which the fans in attendance had written a personalized message for Howard; and another was a framed picture of Howard on his arrival to TORN’s One Party two years ago, waving his first Oscar in the air, climbing the stairs of the Hollywood Athletic Club. After a relatively short wait, Mr Shore came out under yet more applause and cheers, a large smile on his face, and proceeded to sign autographs and pose for pictures, to the delight and gratitude of all the fans assembled.
Truly, a spectacular night in a long series of memorable fan-organized events. If Mr Shore conducts the LOTR Symphony in your town, do not miss it. Congratulations to the Seattle Symphony who gave us such a wonderful performance on the night of Saturday July 17th. And many thanks to Linda “Laurelinda” for organizing the event and taking such good care of us all. A few pictures of the event will be coming soon.
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Red Giant
I took my girlfriend to see the LOTR symphony Sat July 17 in Benaroya Hall in Seattle. Keep in mind that I had also been on the Red Carpet Tour last Nov-Dec in the Gondor group that went to the world premier of ROTK and also experienced Howard Shore’s debut concert in six movements. It was of course an awesome collection and everyone loved it, and the final standing ovation for something like 8 minutes was the expected and well-deserved ending to the performance.
A few differences and yes some nits I want to point out, since otherwise what can I say other than the perfect concert. I was entertaining myself to collect these little gems since I know all the music by heart so well, so here goes:
GENERAL
There are many times throughout the symphony where Howard would slow down the pieces to – and I am not exaggerating – half the tempo we are accustomed to hearing them at. Two examples: the Beacons as the music swells to show the pairings light across the various peaks was painfully slowed down, the “Behold the dwarf city of Dwarow-delf” grand entrance into the chamber was very slow, and the one that was most jarring was the extremely slow pace of the whole “Forth Eorlingas” ride out of Helm’s Deep and Gandalf’s charge. I know a lot of my pace expectations were from familiarity with the scenes and such, but then again who’s wasn’t? It just made me antsy to “push” the music somehow, will it along to match my images I was seeing. And I now it was Howard’s doing since they were just following his lead, but I wonder why that was done that way; to space out the music to make it last longer, cover last-minute or planned cuts to other songs (see below)? No idea.
FOTR
The man playing the pan pipes and Hobbiton-evoking sounds was excellent, did a great job throughout all the movements when called upon.
Good addition – they added in the violin bit that swells as the Fellowship leaves Rivendell shown only in the EE. From the point where Gandalf says “The Fellowship awaits the ringbearer” until they walk through to the “left” side (ha ha) and out, that was a surprise and good choice as it is probably the single best additional EE scene score-wise in FOTR. It was the most (if not only) notable piece from an EE-only scene I recall.
The boy doing the high-pitched humming was great, but he did have one quick hiccup and recovered perfectly thereafter: in the bit as the Fellowship exits Moria having just lost Gandalf, the second verse of humming which features that initial high-note to lead it off (highest single note in the entire riff), he cracked a little as he clearly strained to hit it, but to his credit hit it he did and from then on it was perfect.
The woman doing the “lament for Gandalf” from Lothlorien looked to be middle-eastern or possibly Indian herself, which I thought fit the style of the music since it also has that quality. Her voice was not quite ethereal and high-pitched and light enough for it as it was in the movie or in NZ’s version of it, but it was still very well done.
Ending of FOTR, as they played the music that saw the Three Hunters leave to “hunt some orc” and Frodo and Sam walk up onto the mountain ridge to gaze out over the Emyn Muil and to Mordor – they forgot to play the light background drumbeat that permeates that piece, which IMO adds a lot to its concluding qualities to the epic first movie in the trilogy. The drummers were there for other pieces needing them like the arrival of Rohan in ROTK and other such battle pieces, but were MIA here for some reason. I kept looking at the drummers who held their sticks expectantly during that whole piece but they never used them.
TTT
Missing music – they only played the very beginning from TT up until the camera starts approaching going inside the mountains for the tumultuous Gandalf vs. Balrog fall. THEY DID NOT PLAY IT!! I could not believe they cut this in favor of some other things (such as the Treebeard buuuuu-dum! Buuuu-dum! weird music). The chanting choral effect alone should qualify this piece to be played, as it was played in New Zealand. I did not like this omission, and in fact the program stated the first song in the second Act was “Foundations of Stone”. Someone needs to remind them that that *is* that portion of the music, not the 45-second French horn introduction to the movie (the mountain fly-over which is great as well).
The first violin playing the Rohan theme (and some others, but this is where I noticed it) seemed to be ad-libbing a little. He added some little transitions that I know are not part of the music as Howard wrote it or at least conducted it in the movie and CD versions. He also was drowned out too often when he was supposed to carry the main tune of a piece. They need better mixing/amplification control or something.
I can’t figure out why a concert would spend time playing that Treebeard hollow-wooden and tuba sounding slow piece, it dragged and on-screen it showed a picture of Treebeard (more of a concept sketch, just like one that appears in the ROTK credits) and simply zoomed in on it in a quirky way and panned around it like 10 times – the same sketch while the song played; I would gladly have traded that time out for any of the other noted missing pieces. It also didn’t sound very good, as it is a very hard piece to play live and with a smaller and unfamiliar orchestra than the larger London or NZ ones. Oh, btw the Seattle Symphony was missing a good 20-30 people, possibly due to needing the space for the chorals (some 200 people).
ROTK
Also missing: ROTK’s Minas Tirith!! How can they leave out that?! When Gandalf and Pippin approach and climb the walls of MT that is a monumental piece, but MIA in the concert (again, in NZ they played it). They cut in after the climactic crescendo at the top with the White Tree (they came in with the softer bit after Pippin says “it’s the tree”, with no sign of the main theme played). They did play the Beacons at least shortly thereafter.
I was hoping for a Billy Boyd-ian solo but was not surprised they did not include that, although I had hoped it would be done by a guest artist.
Speaking of chorals, great job overall as others have pointed out. But the men were definitely not loud enough when they needed to pound out dwarven chants, and the entire chorus should have been much louder (and the voices were entirely drowned out when it should have been vice versa) during the entrance of the Nazgul to Pellinor as they fly down (you know, the awesome screaming moment in the film just after Gothmog spits on the rock that almost landed on him).
The guy in the back right doing Viggo’s chanting at the coronation was way too low (couldn’t’ even hear him although it was clear he was straining to be heard better) and he also had too much of that professional “let me use my vibrato to impress you” for that bit – it is a straight chant, as Viggo himself performed it in NZ at the premiere. I got the distinct impression this fellow didn’t even practice or listen to how Viggo did it, but maybe it is just his style (although I would argue this symphony is larger than anyone’s “style” and they should mold themselves to it, not it to them).
They showed sketches of the Grey Havens from many angles during the Grey Havens and Into The West songs. That was a great move. Back in NZ they only had some arch sketches and maybe 1-2 others, here they had many of the entire Havens area including the surrounding hills and peaks that you can’t even see in the movie.
I wanted to point out these small flaws as they really stood out to me, since I have seen the films an average of 20+ times each. But regardless of any nit-picking, this concert was excellent for anyone of any age. I was very glad to be able to see it again and share it with my girlfriend who absolutely adored it too.
Mother of two, movie star and pistol-packing housewife, Cate Blanchett can do it all, writes Richard Jinman.
Cate Blanchett is a busy woman. She’s juggling two children under three, rehearsals for a lead role in a play and an impertinent journalist who’s asked to see her breast pump. The device in question emerges when I ask what’s in her enormous red shoulder bag. Nappies?
“No. No nappies,” she says. Blanchett’s older son Dashiell John, two, has outgrown them and baby Roman Robert is at home with his father, the writer Andrew Upton. “There’s a breast pump and the … oh, you don’t want to know.”
I do, actually, so Blanchett, 35, gives me a tour of her maternal tool kit. Her other piece of luggage is an esky. It contains the breast milk she’s been expressing during breaks from rehearsals for the Sydney Theatre Company’s production of Hedda Gabler. When I admit that I’ve never seen a breast pump, she gets it out for a bit of show-and-tell.
“They look a bit like a … ‘ello?” Blanchett has clamped the business-end of it to her ear. She’s right, it does resemble an old-fashioned telephone. We’re both laughing now and for an instant I can see what Geoffrey Rush meant when he described her as a “toothy clown”. But Cate the slapstick comedian doesn’t stick around for long, leaving Cate the best-actor-of-her-generation and mother-of-two to clean up the mess.
“Oh, I’ll have to sterilise that,” she says, slipping the pump back into her bag. “What were we talking about?”
Unfortunately, the topic had been the Russian novelist Ivan Turgenev – or for Blanchett it was, as she’s not only heard of him but has actually read him. It was a conversation about Turgenev that drew her to Upton.
The way she tells it, they were both in Adelaide working on different films. Mutual friends and interests had pulled them into each other’s orbit, but they didn’t really click. At first, she considered him “arrogant”; he thought her “aloof”.
“We tolerated each other and kind of thought, ‘you’re not so bad’,” she says. “Then one night he was talking to me about Turgenev. He’s a very passionate man and … I don’t know.”
Her words trail off, but the look in her eyes fills in all the blanks. I make a mental note to read as much Ivan Turgenev as possible, or to at least learn how to spell his name.
Blanchett and Upton married in the Blue Mountains in June 1997, just before she flew to England to film Elizabeth. “We married really quickly,” she says. “I think it [works] when you meet someone who has the same spirit as you, who is prepared to take that risk. Because it is a risk.”
Upton, 38, remembers their courtship differently. He and Blanchett did have a “eureka moment”, he says, but for him it occurred when she told him “a great joke, that made me see her differently”.
Blanchett’s protuberant cheekbones flush with colour at the memory.
“Oh, I won’t be able to tell it now! It’s been too built-up.” Finally, she relents. The joke involves an actor who keeps putting the emphasis on the wrong word. “Give it to me,” he says repeatedly. The film’s director is going crazy and threatens to throw himself off a bridge. “Wait, you’ve got your watch on,” says the actor.
“Hah!” I say. I’ve completely missed the punchline, but how do you ask Cate Blanchett to repeat a joke?
“You had to be there,” she says. Besides, she’s becoming rather suspicious of all these questions about her private life. “Is this [article] going to be about Hedda Gabler or my relationship with Andrew?”
Oh right, the play.
Hedda Gabler is the hottest ticket in town. Henrik Ibsen’s bored pistol-packing housewife has been a magnet for great actresses since the playwright created her in 1890 – Ingrid Bergman, Glenda Jackson and Judy Davis have all had a go – and everyone wants to see what Blanchett will bring to the role. Particularly since it’s Upton’s adaptation of Hedda Gabler she’s starring in.
It was Robyn Nevin, the STC’s artistic director, who gave him the job. She directed Upton’s first play – Hanging Man, which opened at the Wharf in 2002 to mixed reviews – and was “bowled over” by his adaptations of Don Juan and Cyrano De Bergerac.
Whispers that Blanchett’s star power got Upton the gig are unfounded. Blanchett had already signed on to play Hedda when Nevin asked Upton to adapt the play.
Upton started work on his version in May last year. According to his wife, he was “secretive”, locking himself in the library of their new home in Kemp Town, an exclusive pocket of white Georgian houses in Brighton, England.
Upton says he’s always wanted to write something for his wife. “I genuinely believe she can do anything,” he says with obvious pride. “What’s great about this [Hedda] is the range, which suits her vast capabilities. She really has to turn on a dime in a lot of scenes. On a technical level, it’s perfect for her.”
I ask Upton if he’s seen Ma Femme Est Une Actrice (My Wife is an Actress), Yvan Attal’s 2001 film about a man driven crazy by all the attention paid to his famous wife. It’s a loaded question and he sidesteps it neatly.
“No I haven’t,” he says. “Perhaps I should.”
OK, let’s be a little more direct. What’s it like to be married to Cate Blanchett?
A long pause. “It’s very rewarding and it makes me very proud,” he says, “because it’s a medium and a form that I believe in greatly. I think some people abuse it.”
It’s an odd answer, which makes Upton sound like he’s married to the cinema. There again, given his wife’s elevated status among filmmakers, perhaps, in a way, he is.
At close quarters, Blanchett is just as fascinating as the chameleon-like creature who appears on the big screen. Movie critics love to call her “luminous”, but stripped of make-up, her pale blonde hair pulled back from barely there eyebrows and her elongated “actor’s” face, she seems almost drained of colour. She’s “tired, but not depleted”, she says, and still fighting a cold she picked up on the flight from London a month ago.
Taller and thinner than you expect, Blanchett is dressed-down for rehearsals in sand-coloured combat pants and a beige sweater. She twists her antique necklace like a rosary when she’s thinking and a huge diamond lights up herring finger. Her elegantly fitted jacket is by the French designer Martine Sitbon, but the blue splodge on her sleeve is probably by Dashiell or Roman.
Her long, elegant fingers carve invisible diagrams in the air; blue eyes fix you intently for a response.
She calls Hedda “mythological, an infuriating idealist”.
“I think there are very few people who are trying to be themselves in the fullest sense of the word ‘true’.”
Look, I’m no expert, I say. But isn’t Hedda a one-woman wrecking ball? This, after all, is a woman who tries to get an alcoholic back on the grog, tosses a priceless manuscript into a fire and loans pistols to suicidal men.
Blanchett is more sympathetic. “In order to live, one does destroy, kill, maim and discard,” she says. “They’re not particularly attractive human traits but they’re definitely true.”
It’s been 11 years since Blanchett first appeared at the STC. In 1993, not long out of drama school, she starred in David Mamet’s Oleanna, as a fanatical university student who accuses her tutor of sexual harassment. The play provoked furious arguments in the theatre’s bar each night and she’s still immensely proud of its impact.
“It hit an audience at just the right time,” she says. “It ignited, which is really exciting. You felt it was important and the arguments that went on afterwards were important arguments.”
Why return to the stage now? After all, she’s had Hollywood on a string since her performance in Elizabeth made her an international star. Renowned directors such as Martin Scorsese and Jim Jarmusch now call her personally and ask if she’ll appear in their films.
It was Scorsese who cast her as Katharine Hepburn in The Aviator, his movie biography of the reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes. Her appearance in Jarmusch’s Coffee and Cigarettes, a collection of oddball black-and-white shorts featuring actors and musicians including Bill Murray, the White Stripes and Tom Waits, was also the result of a personal invitation. Assisted by technology, Blanchett plays both characters in her Coffee and Cigarettes segment. One is a svelte, successful actress (who looks a lot like Cate Blanchett), the other is her gawky, trailer-trash cousin. Both women suck on cigarettes like it’s going out of fashion, but it’s just an act. Another example of non-smoker Blanchett’s ability to get the details right.
“If you do it [smoking] you have to do it properly,” she says. “The worst thing is to see someone smoking and not doing it properly.”
It’s been widely reported that Blanchett is also set to reprise her role as Queen Elizabeth in Shekhar Kapur’s Golden Age. But when I mention the film she flatly denies she’s committed to it.
“What’s Shekhar been saying?” she laughs. “Oh, he’s always making 100 films. Nothing’s a given for me with two children, Hedda Gabler and a film [she’ll begin shooting the thriller Little Fish in Sydney when the Hedda season closes] coming up. I can’t think beyond the weekend.”
Filmmaking, Blanchett admits, can seem like a piecemeal activity compared with theatre, where characters evolve during the run. But she loves both mediums and won’t stop making films.
She accepts, however, that her growing family will force changes to what’s become a nomadic lifestyle.
“I’ve known people whose children are tutored on set and all that sort of stuff,” she says. “But there’s a feeling that actors are wrapped in cotton wool. Their children can be treated like they’re different or special and I don’t think that’s a good feeling for a child to have constantly.”
She seems uneasy about celebrity, particularly those moments when she’s recognised and suddenly the way people treat her changes instantly. It’s the shift from being a nobody to a somebody that disturbs her. “All of a sudden it’s, ‘Oh my God, of course you can open that door!’ It’s so disappointing. You think ‘You know, I don’t want to go through that door actually’.”
Yeah, but being a nobody isn’t so great either, I say. What about the advantages of celebrity? The freebies, the good tables at booked-out restaurants, the effortless queue-jumping? “Well,” she says, suddenly brightening. “The Wiggles were sold out and we got two tickets. Many parents will be outraged to hear that.”
And all of a sudden Blanchett sounds like any other besotted mother recalling her first-born’s adventures at a first Wiggles gig. Her only regret: she was rehearsing Hedda when Dashiell was shaking his booty with Greg, Murray, Jeff and Anthony at Bankstown RSL.
“It was so sweet,” she coos. “I called Dash today and said, ‘How was it?’ He said: ‘I saw Anthony! He’s got funny hair, Mummy.’ “
Hedda Gabler opens on Thursday and runs until September 26. Standing room tickets available.
Cunning Vixen writes: Yesterday, at the Auckland International Film Festival, I got to see Costa Botes’ documentary, “The Making of the Fellowship of the Ring,” of footage never before released from behind the scenes of the LOTR filming. This documentary has been released for the NZ-based film festival only, and New Line Cinema asked that it have the caveat of being a “Work in Progress.” Costa Botes, the filmmaker, was there to have a discussion with the audience after the film was shown.
Costa Botes is a longtime associate of Peter Jackson. He received permission to do his own documentary project around the Lord of the Rings moviemaking, with some caveat involving New Line Cinema permission to distribute the results. Costa Botes, working on his own without New Line input, used a different documentary editing style than that usually seen for the LOTR filmmaking material. Instead of packaging snippets like jewels on a CD, or smoothing them together with voiceovers and shots of luscious New Zealand countryside, he went for a raw approach, letting the material speak for itself, without voiceover or apology. The results were fascinating for an LOTR fan.
This documentary showed the gritty, hardworking, industrial side of the LOTR filming. Living in NZ, it really brought it home to see LOTR work going on in the distinctive New Zealand warehouses and cheap cinderblock offices, hearing the whine of machinery in the background. There was a lot of hilarious footage of extras being trained by the set swordmaster. All these people, in a New Zealand rugby club gym and wearing sweatpants, armed with Middle-Earth style weapons and practicing their orcish growls…Not all of the industrial footage was charming. It was a bit strange to see the Bag End set with wires and ventilation channels running through it, and the scene where the set of Galadriel’s glade was “taken down” was shocking.
Another shocking thing was how, even when the costumed cast were mingling with the crew, they still came across as otherworldly. This was especially true of the battle scenes – there were glimpses of the Elvish charge at the Last Alliance, and of the orc/human scrimmage at Amon Hen, that were, even with film crew visibly mingled in, still stunning. “It’s the biggest low-budget movie ever,” one of the film staff said.
The hobbit actor cuteness just did not stop. Billy, Elijah, Dom, and Sean, all in costume, clowning around with their also-costumed size doubles, or singing in barbershop quartet style. Sean lent a serious note as an on-set accident involving one of his hobbit-made-up feet was shown. Their funniest bit was a series of sly asides that took the piss out of the The-Cast-Were-Really-Friends mythos promoted by New Line. It was obvious both that they were really friends and that they were making fun of the fact that everybody knew it.
There was a great section where we got to see Viggo Mortenson sneaking off to the side of one set to cast a few trout flies, and a long section showing Liv Tyler filming the flight to the ford scene. Poor Liv, it turns out, endured being smacked in the face with branches repeatedly to get that one good branch-in-face shot. Then there’s the priceless sight of all the Nazgul standing around under bright blue and green umbrellas as it starts to rain. (At the Q&A, someone asked if any of the actors didn’t like being filmed backstage – a pointed question considering the near-absence of Sean Bean and Orlando Bloom in this documentary. Mr. Botes said no.)
At the end, Mr. Botes took our questions. I asked if this work-in-progress was going to keep its raw, speaking-for-itself feel in the final version. Mr. Botes replied that this was, according to him, the final version, and that the work–in-progress had been what New Line demanded to have the film released at this film festival. Later questions revealed that Mr. Botes has two more documentaries in the same style and that he is flummoxed by New Line’s not allowing him to release all of them as a DVD set. This is understandable considering that the documentaries are 5 years of Mr. Botes’ work.
Perhaps New Line Cinema is intimidated by the bulldozers and the sight of the hobbit actors making very casual jokes, and thinking that it would ruin the impact of the films. Well, the films are out; their mythos is established; and all the other LOTR fans out there will really enjoy Mr. Botes’ documentaries. His different approach made for an enjoyable documentary, both serious and showing the humor of the LOTR filming teams.
From: AICN: Remember us reporting on the George Miller animated film HAPPY FEET? The one with the penguin voiced by Elijah Wood? No? Then you should concentrate more. Because Miller wanted to make the film a photorealistic and rather mind-blowing thing, and if his plans pan out, we may be in for something awesome. *If* they pan out. This is what Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Max had to say:
“Animal Logic [the SFX house commissioned to bring the project to life] has never done this kind of film before. The company’s basically expanded by a factor of ten to do it. It’s spent the last 18 months building digital models, sets, pipelines etc. An enormous technical effort. All of this to bring George’s vision of completely photo-real CG penguins to life. But in all this activity, all this work, there’s been one thing that everyone’s overlooked… photo-realistic penguins CAN’T ACT!!!
Yes, after all these millions of dollars spent, Animal Logic have discovered that penguins are completely inexpressive creatures. What about all the wonderful character animation that the artists are creating, I hear you ask? Well, dear reader, the entire production is MOTION-CAPTURED! There is no character animation. So what’s only now been discovered is that the entire cast of the film are as emotive as garbage cans.
The blamestorming has begun, with Animal Logic desperately trying to keep a lid on what is fast becoming a spiralling disaster. Even the studio has no idea how much of a mess this has become.” Max goes on to give away the ending, so I’ll cut him off there. But this could be a big disaster… HAPPY’S GATE, perhaps? We’ll let you know.
Deni writes: Well it seems that the Dominion Post agrees with my assessment that Miramar is becoming one huge film studio. The front page of their weekend business section was all about the various Peter Jackson Projects in the area, which along with Stone Street and Park Road Post include the refurbishment of an old cinema and a rumoured King Kong boat in the harbour. See their official Dominion Post site for the full article.
They also report that filming is to begin in a couple of months rather than next month as earlier thought. From the state of the new Stone Street soundstage I think they may be right. Although work is progressing rapidly it’s only about half finished externally, so I don’t see them having it finished in 2 weeks. The blue screen is up though and very very blue it is, you can see it for miles.
Also PJ related was an article in the Wellingtonian about a local filmaker who has filmed a short animated film about trying to get PJ to give her a job. Apparently after much letter writing and telephone calls she decided to use her struggles for inspiration.
Well I’m off to enjoy the Wellington film festival. Anyone in the area, I definitely recommend going to see as much as you can while it’s on.
