I work in the media biz and today I received a package from New Line Cinema. The contents included the LOTR:ROTK calender (which is one of the coolest things I have ever seen) and a note. It had some basic info and then included some release dates.
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
-Theatrical Cut DVD/Video: Late August 2003 -Extended Cut DVD/Video: November 2003
The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King
-Theatrical Release: Dec. 17, 2003 -Theatrical Cut DVD/Video: August 2004 -Extended Cut DVD/Video: November 2004
Lady Druadan writes: Bjork posted this on January 16th concerning the Gollum song played at the end of The Two Towers.
From the message board (4UM) at www.bjork.com:
“i was asked to write the song a month before thew birth of my daughter , when i turned it down because i was too pregnant they said fair enough and got another writer then approached me again said they had a song and lyric in my style , they understood i didn´t have time to write it but if i could sing it , i thought it was a little noughty but asked them to send me the notes and the lyrics since i was curious what is “my style” then had to tell them it was 3 days until my baby was due and i couldn´t focus on anything else they then said they were going to ask “björk-kinda singers” and told me they got 3 singers, they didn´t tell me the names but say A,B and C .
then after the birth they said they weren´t happy with the results and asked me please if i could save them , they could put the deadline back to october 30th (my baby was born on the 3rd) i told them my baby was priority and i was told they went back and chose one of the A or B or C . i then later found out it was emiliana. björk.”
Taking an unpredictable turn in the season’s wide-open race for feature honors, the Producers Guild of America has opted mostly for large-scale and high-grossing releases as nominees for its best picture award.
The PGA finalists for its Darryl F. Zanuck Producer of the Year kudos are Sony’s “Adaptation,” Miramax’s “Chicago” and “Gangs of New York,” IFC’s “My Big Fat Greek Wedding,” DreamWorks’ “Road to Perdition” and New Line’s “The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.”
In voting by the org’s 1,800 members, two of the pics tied for fifth, leading to the first time that six features have been nominated.
The PGA noms are a closely watched indicator of Oscar sentiment, since the org includes a significant number of voters who are also members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences. Three of the five PGA nominations in 2002 also received Oscar noms, and the PGA winner has gone on to win the best picture Oscar in nine of the PGA award’s 13 years.
Those double winners are “Driving Miss Daisy,” “Dances With Wolves,” “The Silence of the Lambs,” “Schindler’s List,” “Forrest Gump,” “The English Patient,” “Titanic,” “American Beauty” and “Gladiator.”
But the PGA opted last year for “Moulin Rouge” while “A Beautiful Mind” took home the Oscar. Other splits came when the PGA tapped “Saving Private Ryan,” “Apollo 13” and “The Crying Game,” while the Oscar went to, respectively, “Shakespeare in Love,” “Braveheart” and “Unforgiven.”
The 2003 nominees include a pair of pics, “Two Towers” and “Greek Wedding,” that have grossed well over $200 million each domestically, while “Road to Perdition” hit $104 million and “Gangs of New York” is nearing $60 million. “Chicago” has grossed more than $17 million in limited release with exceptional per-engagemement averages, portending strong BO in coming weeks.
By contrast, “Adaptation” has remained mostly below the public radar. In its first major expansion last weekend, “Adaptation” took in $2.6 million at 560 playdates to push its cume to $9.2 million.
“We’re very glad the PGA members did not let the lack of grosses affect their voting,” said “Adaptation” producers Ed Saxon and Vincent Landay. “There are so many great films out there this year, so this is really the little movie that could.”
Critical faves ignored
PGA voters snubbed a long list of critical favorites — mostly smaller-scale releases — including Paramount’s “The Hours,” New Line’s “About Schmidt,” Focus’ “Far From Heaven” and “The Pianist,” Miramax’s “The Quiet American,” Fox Searchlight’s “Antwone Fisher,” UA’s “Nicholas Nickleby,” DreamWorks’ “Catch Me if You Can,” Universal’s “About a Boy” and Fox’s “Minority Report.”
Thursday’s announcement at the Century Plaza represented the first time the PGA unveiled its noms in a live news conference. “Greek Wedding” producer Rita Wilson and “The West Wing” star Bradley Whitford emceed.
ATTENTION ALL LOTR TCG FANS, PLAYERS and COLLECTORS!
The official North American street release date for the Battle of Helm’s Deep LOTR TCG expansion is MARCH 5TH!
Starter Decks and Booster Packs will be released at the same time, unlike previous expansions (which released the two products at different intervals). The release date for Europe and other international locations is not confirmed yet. But it will probably be a week or two after the North American release.
Decipher has CHANGED the configuration of the Starter Decks – for the better (in my humble opinion). They will no longer contain the three ‘random’ rares – which at many times did not coincide with the starter deck’s “pre-built” strategy. Starter decks will now contain three ‘fixed’ rares that are ALTERNATE IMAGE versions of rares in the booster packs. These rares will now work with the deck design and greatly enhance the deck they are in. This also means that the set size is six cards larger! These six AI fixed rares are cards (5 R 123 through 5 R 128).
NOTE: For those of you who are unfamiliar with the LOTR TCG coding system as seen above, here’s what it means: The number 5 means that the card is of the ‘fifth’ set of released cards (Fellowship of the Ring: Set 1, Mines of Moria: Set 2 and so on. The R signifies rarity; in this case RARE (as opposed to C for Common and U for Uncommon). The last number is the order of the card as it appears in the set.
Most notably, Decipher is going to LOWER the cost of these new starter decks. Starting with Battle of Helm’s Deep, starter decks will now have a MSRP of $9.99 USD. That is ONE DOLLAR LESS than previous starter decks! There is no information as of yet on if they are going to lower the price of booster packs.
All starter decks will still have two premium cards in them as well and will feature LEGOLAS and EOWYN as your choices of two different Starter Deck types.
And remember, The Battle of Helm’s Deep PRE-RELEASE TOURNAMENT will be held at a participating retail store near you on the weekend of February 22-23. Please visit here for details on when and where this event will take place and how you can pre-register for your chance to get your hands on this newest expansion two weeks before the Official Release!
This pre-release event will be the ONLY chance you will have to collect the ALTERNATE IMAGE Trading Card of THEODEN, King of the Golden Hall, which you can view here
“The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring” had a epic night at the DVD Premiere Awards, taking home five trophies Tuesday, including the award for overall new extra features (new release).
Other winners at the Wiltern event included Disney’s “The Hunchback of Notre Dame II” (animated DVD premiere movie); “Disney’s Beauty and the Beast” (overall new extra features, library title); and First Look’s “A Gentleman’s Game” (live-action DVD premiere movie).
Gary Sinise was on hand to accept the actor award for “A Gentleman’s Game,” which was also recognized for best cinematography. The latter award went to first-time d.p. Conrad W. Hall, son of the late Oscar-winning cinematographer Conrad L. Hall.
“Rings” producer Mark Ordesky accepted many of the awards for that title in person, with director Peter Jackson thanking the DVD Premieres Academy via videotape from New Zealand for a special DVD Premiere Director Focus Award.
Harvey and Bob Weinstein accepted a special DVD Premiere Producer Award presented by Kevin Smith. Vivica A. Fox presented the second annual DVD Premiere Pioneer Award to Quentin Tarantino. And Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen accepted the special DVD Premiere Franchise Performers Award from newly installed Warner Home Video president Jim Cardwell.
Warner’s groundbreaking DVD of “The Matrix” became the second title installed in the DVD Premiere Academy of Artistic Achievement.
Jackson’s Special Extended Edition of “Fellowship of the Ring,” released by New Line Home Entertainment, also won for New Enhanced or Reconstructed Movie Scenes, Original Retrospective Documentary (New Release) and Audio Commentary (New Release).
The movie was also named the Best Special Edition of the Year (new release) for the first AOL Movies DVD Premiere Award determined by consumers in an online poll during December and early January. The AOL Movies DVD Premiere Award for Best Special Edition of the Year (Classic Movie) went to the “Back to the Future” trilogy from Universal Studios Home Video.
There were two ties at the awards, with Cynthia Stevenson (“Air Bud: Seventh Inning Fetch”) and Lindy Booth (“Skulls 2”) tying for supporting actress, and John Woo (“Hostage”) and Mark Bollinger (“Save My Last Dance”) tying for Internet Video.
Other celebrity presenters and/or winners on hand at the third annual awards program hosted by Ben Stein included Maria Conchita Alonso, Lindy Booth, Bruce Boxleitner, Gary Busey, Coolio, Dean Cain, David Carradine, Nicole Eggert, John Landis, Nick Mancuso, Pras, Eric Roberts, Robbie Robertson, John Savage, Bo Svenson, Leah Thompson, Ike Turner, Caitlin Wachs, Henry Winkler and the Hanson Brothers, the latter of whom were named best supporting actor for their reprisal of goon hockey players in Universal’s “Slap Shot 2: Breaking the Ice.”
Buena Vista Home Entertainment was the top studio with seven wins, including one for the menu design of the DVD for “Monster’s, Inc.”
The DVD producing company of Kurtti-Pellerin dominated with two personal wins for Michael Pellerin and Jeff Kurtti as the winners of the top two overall extra features awards (“Lord of the Rings” and “Beauty and the Beast,” respectively).
The DVD Premiere Awards (formerly the Video Premiere Awards), are presented by DVD Premieres magazine, a sister publication of Variety. The awards honor movies that debut on DVD or the Internet and are voted on by members of the DVD Premiere Awards Academy.
By Matt Wolf Associated Press Wednesday, January 15, 2003; Page C09
LONDON — On a recent autumn day at London’s Abbey Road studios, director Peter Jackson was conferring with Howard Shore, his composer on “The Lord of the Rings.”
Playing silently overhead was footage from “The Two Towers,” the second part of the huge cinematic triptych that began with the Christmas 2001 release of “The Fellowship of the Ring.” The scene was of Hobbit heroes Frodo (Elijah Wood) and Sam (Sean Astin) nearing a waterfall in their journey toward the Black Gates of Mordor.
Shore, putting the finishing touches on some musical passages with the 96-piece London Philharmonic Orchestra, wanted to make sure his music would hold its own against the roar of the fall.
“You should never worry about competing against water,” Jackson assured him. “We’ll just pull the water down.”
As before, it is Shore’s job to strike the right balance — as in J.R.R. Tolkien’s books — between gracefulness and grandeur. He won an Academy Award last spring for “Fellowship.”
The Canadian composer, who wrote the music for another long-awaited epic that also opened last month, Martin Scorsese’s “Gangs of New York,” reflected in a later interview on one of the heftiest assignments any film composer has taken on.
“Tolkien spent 12 years writing the books, [so] to spend three years on the music doesn’t seem that long,” said Shore, 56. In any case, “I look at the three ‘Lord of the Rings’ films as one, and ‘The Two Towers’ was Act 2.”
Late this year will see the project’s culmination, “The Return of the King.”
Shore was speaking by telephone on a December weekend in Los Angeles, where the Los Angeles County Museum was holding a retrospective of his film music.
“The Lord of the Rings” score could have been bombastic. But Shore says narrative, not musical heroics, came first.
“You’re composing not in relation to the spectacle” — of which “The Two Towers” has plenty — “but in relation to the drama on the screen. Keeping that in mind allows you to write in a more intimate and human way,” from the Norwegian fiddles of the Viking-like culture of Rohan to the wooden instruments associated with the ancient Treebeard.
Then there’s the sinister, scampering Gollum, who comes with his own sound — a hammered dulcimer theme from the first movie that, says Shore, “has been mutilated a little bit,” as Gollum has.
In the waterfall scene, Jackson suggested, “The delicate feel is nicer.”
“The music doesn’t have to impress the audience. It shouldn’t be overly dramatic — more of a question mark,” the director said.
Even in the climactic battle scene at Helm’s Deep, says Mark Ordesky, an executive producer, Shore’s music is there to make a point.
“The theme is how the battle is fought,” says Ordesky, “and how will you conduct yourself, and I think Howard’s music reflects that, as well.”
The very title “The Lord of the Rings” in musical terms conjures up Wagner’s 19th-century “Ring” cycle, a four-opera sequence — itself rooted in mythology — that makes up one mammoth and imposing whole. Shore acknowledges the influence.
“Of course you had to look into Wagner’s great and amazing work and into the opera form. In writing a 10-hour piece, the only thing you could look to is opera.”
To that end, the score of “The Two Towers” boasts not only a full symphony orchestra but also 100 singers, including a 30-strong children’s choir and 10 soloists.
By contrast, says Shore, “Gangs of New York” required a “real mosaic of American sound” to animate Scorsese’s operatic portrait of New York blood lust in the 1860s.
Much of Shore’s music for “Gangs” derives from an extant composition, “Brooklyn Heights,” that was expanded and re-recorded for the film.
Says Shore, “I would have loved to have been able to have worked with Martin directly” — the two collaborated on Scorsese’s 1985 “After Hours” — “but because of ‘Two Towers,’ there just wasn’t time.”
Although Shore has been living “The Lord of the Rings” of late, his work also has traveled beyond the land of Legolas and Gimli. Last year, his music punctuated the fears of Manhattanite Jodie Foster in the David Fincher thriller “Panic Room,” and in David Cronenberg’s 2002 film “Spider,” Shore’s Alban Berg-like musical jags echo the disturbed mind of the hero, played by Ralph Fiennes.
With one more Tolkien movie to go, is Shore worried he might go into withdrawal once the endeavor is complete?
He laughs. “The trilogy is a sort of legacy, I guess, and I don’t feel I want it to end. We have all worked to make something much bigger than any of us; that’s the blessed part of it.”
