The Lord of the Rings Motion Picture Trilogy – The Exhibition has sold more advance tickets than the hugely successful Bond and Star Trek exhibitions put together.
The unprecedented demand means that while some tickets will be available at the door when the Science Museum exhibition opens on 16 September, advanced booking is now strongly advised to avoid disappointment.
The eagerly awaited family exhibition arrives before the final instalment of the film trilogy and will be the only chance for European fans to explore for themselves the fantastic world created for The Lord of the Rings films. It closes on 11 January 2004.
Hundreds of artefacts from the movies including models, armoury and animatronics will feature alongside interactive computer and mechanical demonstrations of the cutting-edge technology used to bring the story to life.
The fascinating exhibition will transport visitors into the world of Middle-earth, allowing them to become Hobbit-sized, see prosthetics and props including Hobbit feet and the contact lenses used to give the Orcs their unique look, giant models including Hobbiton Mill and Treebeard, and a dazzling array of armour and costumes from the films.
The exhibition culminates with a face-to-face encounter with the central icon from the films – the One Ring itself.
Tickets can be pre-booked on 0870 870 4868 between 8.30am and 6pm (booking fee applies) or at www.sciencemuseum.org.uk
No cameras, mobile phones or bags of any kind or are permitted inside this exhibition. We recommend that visitors leave these items at home. Although photography is not allowed, visitors can buy a souvenir photo of themselves transformed to the size of a Hobbit in the interactive scaling area.
Ticket Prices:
Monday – Friday: Adults £9.95, Children/Concessions £6.95
Saturday – Sunday: Adults £11.95, Children/Concessions £8.95
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Ringer Fan Meliara writes about a Duracell commmercial in the USA that plugs the Two Towers theatrical DVD and video release on August 26 …
Last night on TV while I was watching “Mission to Mars” on ABC, I saw a commercial featuring the release of the Two Towers on DVD. It was also an ad for Duracell batteries. It goes as follows:
A little boy is playing with some action figures which are standing upright up against a white sheet in his room, which is dark, he’s shining a flashlight at them. (I immediately took a second glance when I recognised one of the figures as Gandalf the White) While the boy is playing the narrator of the ad was talking about Duracell batteries, can’t remember exactly what he was saying.
Suddenly there were clips from the Two Towers, can’t remember exactly which ones except: Gandalf the White (after Aragorn’s line “It cannot be”), some of Frodo and some of Legolas and much more.
Then they switched to some ‘making of’ footage!! Showing cameramen filming part of the Two Towers and the voiceover saying: “For the crew of Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers they only trusted one battery to use in filming the epic”. (that’s not the exact wording but it’s fairly close).
And then they showed some nice battery footage and then said “Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers is avaliable on DVD and video August 26”.
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Irascian writes: This year’s Edinburgh Festival, a celebration of the arts in all its wild and wacky forms, had several performances of interest to Ringers. “Figwit”’s Folk Parody Band – “Flight of the Conchorde” has already received publicity on TORn, as has the main attraction for most Ringers – the debut performances of “San Diego”, a new play by David Greig starring Billy Boyd as the playwright himself. One other festival treat that hasn’t received much publicity is “The Lord of the Rings – the Fellowship of the Celebrity” a wacky parody, most accurately described as “’The Lord of the Rings’ meets ‘Pop Idol’”!
Fellowship of the Celebrity is well worth the trip, and tickets are a bargain at £5/head. What the cast lack in professionalism (the event is held in a very small hall and rather reminiscent of amateur dramatics or good school plays) they more than make up for in enthusiasm and sheer drive. While the odd joke or parody misfires the scenes are so quickfire that you don’t have time to regret them. The plot is based around the story of Fred Buggins the half-wit and his “imaginary friend” Sam and their mission to destroy the One Ring created by the Dark Lord Pete Waterman to contain all his “cheesy pop songs” and “unnaturally extend the shelf life of Jason Donovan records”. The background to the creation of The One Ring – a hilarious pastiche of the opening Galadrial speech of the first movie – is delivered over a soundtrack that switches between Howard Shore’s movie score and Stock-Aitken and Waterman hits by Rick Astley and Sonia at appropriate times. We are quickly introduced to Gandalf explaining to Fred that “for copyright reasons I cannot be called Gandalf and must henceforth be known as the Member of Parliament for Hartlepool North” before asking Fred to save the world from mindless pop cover versions from people with no talent. The only way to save us all, it seems, is to travel from York Shire to Londor and cast The One Ring into “the Millenium Doom”. What follows is an hour of frantic costume changes, surprise appearances from Dominic Monaghan’s Merry and Billy Boyd’s Pippin (as head cut-outs on the end of long sticks), a handbag-thieving Scouser, lots of Monty-Python-styled cross-dressing and a bizarre Raiders of the Lost Ark homage. The whole thing contains more than a few belly laughs. Good fun!
“Flight of the Conchords” comprise the talented duo of Jermaine Clement and Bret McKenzie (aka Figwit from the Council of Elrond scene) with their show “High on Folk” consisting of a late-night hour of songs and “banter” from New Zealand’s “fourth most popular folk parody band”. The songs and the between song chat are at times surreal, and designed to raise wry smiles than out-loud belly laughs, with their rather dry humour flying over the heads of one or two of the more sober members of the audience. But for me the performances were never less than riveting, always clever, and the duo can clearly not only sing good harmonies but write a good tune when they have to, too. As a result the show can be enjoyed on several levels and is well worth a trip. The show is performed in “The Cave” – all dank stone walls and minimalist lighting which help create real atmosphere – and starts at 10.45 each night. Attendees are advised to have a couple of beers before attending for maximum enjoyment. As an added bonus the upstairs bar stays open until well past 1am and the extremely affable McKenzie usually meets and greets the audience both as they arrive and also in the bar afterwards. He’s far brighter and more talented than that all-too fleeting appearance as Figwit would have you believe.
And so finally on to “the big one” – “San Diego” which is being performed in the prestigious, architecturally impressive Royal Lyceum Theatre. Anybody doubting how proud Scotland is of its “Boyd done good” need only walk the main streets of Edinburgh. Magazine covers and press articles are everywhere! The actor’s first stage appearance for many months is attracting a lot of Scottish press attention, and, truth be told, is the reason many Ringers chose to attend the festival this year. That being said, despite internet fan boards being hit with wild rumours that other cast members would be in attendance (Bloom had been expected to attend the festival screening of his “Ned Kelly”” film but didn’t show) the audience comprised mainly the more sedate theatre crowd one expects from good theatre. Ringers of the “slightly hysterical” variety one is used to seeing at most of Boyd’s personal appearances, appeared to be absent. “San Diego”’s writer and co-director David Greig is clearly a leading light on Edinburgh’s arts scene, and two national reviews on the opening day saw critics giving the play a good thumbs up. Alas, for this theatre-goer, and the majority of those around him – Ringers or not -the play ultimately proved to be a “near miss” – a little too “abstract” (some would say pretentious!) to be anything other than a curiosity. Boyd is, thankfully, brilliant, as are the rest of the cast who deliver faultless performances. The staging is imaginative and daring and works hard to keep the audience interest up with clever use of a rather bare layout enhanced with multimedia effects and projections, a plasma screen showing slowly animated pictures of Boyd looking down on key sequences in the play, and tens of passenger suitcases. The audience enter the theatre to find a British Airways hostess on stage amonst the mathematically arranged suitcases, with a fixed fake smile on her face, held for the 30 minutes it takes for the audience to file in with only a brief interruption to top up the drinks on the tray she’s holding. An intriguing introduction! The sound construction and editing is also superb – background sounds of ticking clocks, phones ringing and aircraft noise join together in a jarring way to give the “disturbing” surreal setting the writer/co-director obviously wanted. Are we inside Greig’s head? Are we sharing his dreams or his memories or what? But ultimately “the script’s the thing” and sadly, it fails to really come to any kind of sensible cohesive whole – jumping around from one sequence to another for no obvious reason and too often making no real sense (the program notes imply this was deliberate!). Plays that make you think can be invigorating, but unfortunately this one comes across as more like lazy writing masquerading as experimental art. The play has some great lines that raise smiles and occasionally a belly laugh, but the best jokes (the assumption that any woman living in San Diego has to be called Amy, and David the Patient’s continual dead-pan wind-ups that invariably end with the line ‘Only joking!’) are repeated ad nauseum, then explained in such painful detail, that one finds oneself wondering if this writer was deliberately making the joke wear so thin it’s painful as some sort of deliberate “arty” statement or just plain miscalculation as to the tolerance levels of the average audience. The overall impression given is that this is material that seems to be spread very thin.
San Diego only played for three days, and Boyd fans who made the trip to this year’s festival to catch his performance will be glad they did so – the actor proves he can do more than play himself/cheeky hobbit-like character, with a serious part that involves having to credibly deliver some difficult, long lines full of air traffic controller technical jargon and which he delivers faultlessly. His opening scenes, onboard a flight but with his performance mostly hidden by a screen and actually projected live to the audience over a hanging plasma screen stage left, are particularly impressive. It’s just unfortunate that this promising beginning isn’t maintained throughout the rest of the piece.
The Edinburgh Festival runs through to the end of August.
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Ringer Greeny sent in this tidbit about an screening of Two Towers and Fellowship of the Ring in Denmark in late August at the Frilandsmusset near Copenhagen.
The translation of the article follows:
Are you a fan of Frodo Baggins, the wizard Gandalf or the little weird creature Gollum? Have you seen the films and would you like to see them again? Or have you missed out on it so far? Then this is something you wanna go to.
For four days the open area museum will be only about Tolkien. And the two films will be shown.
The doors will open at 5pm where you will be able to join several live lotr activities all around the area. At 7pm writers, producers and salesmen will show off books, special effects equipment and all kinds of merchandise. There will also be a buffet where mead and beer will be served. At 9pm the film will begin.
August 23: FOTR
August 24: TTT
August 25: Both films
August 26: Both films
Location: kongevejen 100, 2800 lyngby
On the outsksirts of Copenhagen
You can visit the museum site
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