People keep wondering just what goes on at the LOTR Gaming Leagues that pop up around the country, and the world. Not to go into long descriptions about long hours rolling dice for the Lord of the Rings Miniature War Game, or frantic episodes of rage throwing Nazgul back and forth in the Lord of the Rings Trading Card game, I figured I’d just take you there!
Click the image bellow to see the rest of the pictures.
Look like fun? Play the LOTR Miniature War Game? Enjoy the LOTR Trading Card Game? Then perhaps you might want to concider joining a LOTR Gaming League near you!
Already joined a league? Got pictures? We’d love to see em! Send em in to flinch@theonering.net
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From: AC
A brief review of Viggo’s recent exhibit at the Robert Mann gallery in NYC appears in the recent issue of “The New Yorker” under Photography:
“After wading through this group of meditative images of dogs running or growling at each other and of children covered in home-drawn tattoos, one shouldn’t be faulted for jumping at the sight of a pointy-eared elf in a forest glen. Mortensen, a would-be Renaissance man who writes poems, makes paintings, takes photographs, and plays hunks in movies, is best known for his role of the stern Aragorn, a rare human in the recent film “Lord of the Rings.” In fact, his Middle Earthling photos, taken on location in New Zealand, are some of the most affecting in the show — a little bit creepy and nicely surprising.”
The photo in question is Chetwood Forest #3, 2000, and is actually of a Hobbit, not an elf (Dominic’s body double to be exact). At least the reviewer liked the photo I bought at the opening.
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Thanks to a heads up for Ringer Spy ‘A Fan’ we got news today that The Two Towers current cut of the film is 3 hours and 14 minutes. Here’s more juicy tidbits:
The current cut of THE TWO TOWERS has it at 3:14. The battle of Helm’s Deep is 50 minutes, give or take.
I can say this…there IS an Ent battle filmed. I’m not sure if it’s for the film or for some extended version down the road, but we do see the Ents march on Isengard.
Woo hoo! Ents marching on Isengard…I can’t wait! We have not yet confirmed the details of this story, but as soon as we get word, we’ll let you know.
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Brandon Gray
Boxofficemojo.com
The rentals stats for LOTR’s first week on home video are in: DVD Rentals and VHS Rentals.
People may have been so busy buying LOTR, that it didn’t break any rentals records. The epic fantasy minted $6.02 million in DVD rentals and $6.79 million in VHS rentals top both charts for the week ending August 11. By comparison, Harry Potter did $5.34 million on DVD and $7.41 million on VHS in its first week. So LOTR did top Potter in combined rentals, $12.81 million to $12.75 million.
Full rentals charts will be posted later today, including how many times LOTR was rented, not just the money.
Still no word on actual sales, but given the muted rentals numbers, they likely rivaled Harry Potter’s if not surpassed it. Potter’s first week came to 9.86 million in combined DVD and VHS sales, and it has gone on to sell nearly 7 million copies on DVD. Shrek is still the top DVD seller of all time at over 8 million.
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Last year, the American Library Association used The Lord of the Rings for their teen read week with the theme “Make Reading a Hobbit” and nice posters and bookmarks with both Frodo and Arwen holding books and actually reading. A short time later, a new set comes out to include Gandalf, who was holding an absolutely huge volume and encouraging those kids to pick up a book and read. But this summer it looks as though ALA has changed tactics with a new poster featuring the nine Ring Wraiths fleeing from the flood-waters called up by Arwen at the Ford. Wowsers! Are they trying to tell us that if we don’t read, the Ring Wraiths will get us? Maybe insinuating that the Ring Wraiths are all wet for not spending quality time at their local library? You decide– go to ALA then go to the fantasy/science fiction collection.
Actually, many local public libraries carry videos and DVDs now, right along with the print materials they’ve always carried. So this poster isn’t inappropriate but struck me as funny. It’s also intersting that Darth Vadar is the only other ‘evil’ charactor to earn a poster at ALA at this time.” Thanks to Asarina for that.
[Well, I can only wonder what would happen if we encouraged teenagers to think that reading was rebellious and bad….Tehanu]
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A report from Matt in Melbourne: “I thought I’d write to you about an event that just took place at the Treasury theatre here in Melbourne Australia as part of the Popcorn Taxi program.
“Andrew Lesnie (Oscar winning Lord of the Rings DP) was in attendance and shared stories of Oscar night, film making, his career and its humble beginnings, how technology affected the rings trilogy, the pros and cons of digital film grading and how the effect heavy Babe films prepared him for LOTR among many other topics. Andrew came across as a very funny, likeable and enthusiastic guy who has a genuine love for what he does, very inspiring. It was great to see his early work and refreshing to see that he wasn’t ashamed or too hung up to show us some of his very early unpolished material.
“He shared stories from his early career (including filming a Mad Max behind the scenes documentary) up to his current role in the LOTR trilogy. He and Peter hit it off immediately when meeting and the amazing attention to detail of the Weta artists was one of the deciding factors to him signing on board as DP. He also mentioned that he and Peter shared a common vision that character acting and storytelling, as well as a solid script be the basis of the film. (a certain un-named fantasy film franchise maker could learn much from this)
“The big news here I guess is that he has seen a work print of The Two Towers which he said runs at 2hrs 15 mins (I do not know if this was before or after this years pick-up shots, which he said mainly consisted of character development scenes previously reported)”
[However we have news from Jack which contradicts this: He said “While attending the San Diego Comic-Con, I had a few opportunities to chat with Richard Taylor. One of the first questions on my list to ask him was: “Are the next two movie going to be as long, or longer than FOTR?” He answered by saying (and I quote):
“Oh definately. THE TWO TOWERS running time is going to be around 3 hours and 20 minutes long.”]
Back to Matt’s report: “Andrew mentioned that the second film is very different than the first and that it is much bigger in scale and scope. He also seemed genuinely excited about it in a way that seemed like his honest opinion unlike the hype that seems to pour from Rick McCallum’s mouth whenever he seems to open it. The Two Towers will also be 100% digitally graded (fellowship was approx 70%) thus bypassing the quality losses associated with anamorphic optical stretch which he seemed to think was a more relevant issue in terms of quality loss than interneg/pos printing/duplication from the original film negatives.
“He was involved with the pick-up shots earlier in the year and expects to be involved in the pick-up shots next year for Return of the King. Also of interest was his involvement in the lighting of the 3d sets and elements, not typically a job of the average DP. During the night some Fellowship footage was screened courtesy of Village Roadshow which was an excellent, pristine quality print. I don’t remember it looking this good when seeing it even on opening day at the first screening here in Melbourne.
We were also privvy to a screening of the quite funny behind the scenes doco about the Sean Astin directorial debut ‘The Long and the Short of it’ which was shot on high definition, making use of many key LOTR cast/crew and facilities. This documentary further illustrated the bond and enthusiasm shared by the cast and crew of these films. All up Andrew was a great pleasure to hear speak, like I said earlier, he was an incredibly likeable, down to earth ‘no bullshit’ kinda guy. It was easy to understand why he and Peter got along so well. If you live in Melbourne, dig LOTR and the work of Andrew, I cannot imagine a better night out. With so much talk of the pros associated with digital grading I would have liked to hear Andrew’s opinion on digital image aquisition via 24p high def but I guess there is only so much you can fit in an evening. The night was put together by Popcorn Taxi and was MC’d by Melbourne’s own Head Film Geek Paul Harris”
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