News of the publicity for LOTR is springing up all over the world. From Mike in South Africa:
I’ve been waiting for ages for the Teaser Posters for ‘The Lord of the Rings’ to arrive in South Africa since I know that the first film is being released here on the same day as in America (19th December). Well, on Friday the posters finally arrived in cinemas everywhere and when I say everywhere I mean everywhere. Every cinema I’ve been to in the past two days has a poster up in places where you just can’t miss them. I guess the cinemas here are counting on this film to be HUGE. Tomorrow I begin my quest to beg the cinemas for a poster for myself .
Let the hype begin in South Africa!
That’s it, I can now sleep better.
From Greece we heard Elias report:
“Well last Wednesday, a weekly Greek comic and sci-fi magazine called ”9”, had an article about the Lord Of The Rings movie trilogy. It stuck mostly to the hard facts and didn’t have anything new…Anyway it was nice and had some pretty cool pics (especially that of the Rohirrim).
Meanwhile Dunadan was told that the new trailer would be attached to ‘The Mummy Returns’ but when he went to see the movie, there was no LOTR trailer. He’s confirmed that the ‘Fellowship’ will open in Brazil in December and most probably on the 19th.
In Argentina, Landitus was able to tell us:
“I´m writing to tell you that the Fellowship of the Ring will be released on December 20, 2001 according to Warner Bros which is the distribution company. It is a Thursday, and all releases in Argentina happen this day.
Also, the first trailer is being shown in Argentina, before some films, depending in the different theatres.
Finally, Canal A (Channel A) will be showing in June a Cannes Special, that includes the LOTR Party. I´ve seen some of this and it is really new and unseen, with interviews to all the cast members and director, done by an Argentine journalist. It features Viggo (Aragorn) speaking PERFECT Spanish with a Buenos Aires accent (He lived there for 11 years). It is truly worth to see!!!”
And Havok brings an update from the UK:
“Hey, I was looking through the Cable Guide, and it states that on MTV:UK on this Friday (25th) at 1pm (a few days time) that there will be coverage on Cannes, it might be possable that they will show LotR footage….Just thought I would let British readers know…” Thanks, Havok!
A roundup of LOTR-at-Cannes news from Ringer Spy Jon, who must be a gun typist to get even this much down! ; )
“Hey guys,
Liquid News, a slot on cable news channel BBC News 24 in the UK hosted by Christopher Price featured a [brief] segment on Lord of the Rings at Cannes.
Price referred to the piece as “Gandalf goes Gaelic” though he sounded more like “Gandalf goes Garlic” which was no doubt his intention.
Price said “Bilbo Baggins, Gandalf and their smoking friends were out in force in Cannes this week,” and so beginneth the tale of “how LOTR stole the show”.
The reporter (sorry can’t remember her name, too overcome with catching images of that amazing set they had built) said the preview was “the talking point of the festival”.
Christopher Lee went on to say “I had this dream that one day it would be made, and of course I had a dream that I would be a part of it in some way… I am not a young man you know.”
(apologises for any paraphrasing that might go on, it wasn’t taped, and I had to type pretty quick).
Everyone appeared in the clip, as well as Lee, there was Sir Ian McKellen who paid particular tribute to the fans. He cited them as the reason there was so much global hype in the movies. That in itself just goes to show how studios should relax their views on unofficial web sites and recognise how great a “free” marketing tool they can be.
John Rhys-Davies was his usual buoyant, exuberant self. He felt that they had made the “movie of the season… of all time”, and commented that he felt in twenty years time people would look back at LOTR and consider it “one of their favourite films”.
Liv Tyler was briefly interviewed and asked to speak in true Elvish tongue, which she did, off-script and very well!
And Elijah Woods was very charismatic with the reporter and featured with PJ and the other hobbits in a brief clip of their [kinda] can-can routine.
And throughout it all they played key notes from “Bram Stoker’s Dracula”, which actually fitted quite well.
At the very end as the reporter was summarising she was attacked by orc’s – forget Tehran or Beirut, a true test of a reporters bravery has to be in the midst of that vile breed.
Thanks to Androg, we know more about what Liv Tyler SAID in Elvish, and he asks some interesting questions about it. He pointed us towards an amazing website run by people who know Elvish well enough to translate and speak it. Here’s Androg:
“As reported on the 26th of April, Liv Tyler spoke one of her Elvish lines in an interview with Conan O’Brien (see here )
Not surprisingly, this sentence was translated and analysed by some of the Sindarin experts; the analysis can be found at galadhorn’s website
The line was said by Liv to mean “Now my lord, winter has not yet come. Would you before your time leave your people?”
I immediately recognised this as being based on the line, “Would you then, lord, before your time leave your people that live by your word?”, from ‘The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen’ in Appendix A to LotR.
The curious thing is that this is what Arwen says to Aragorn just before his death — could this mean that Aragorn’s death will be shown in the movie also?”
I wonder what sort of ending that would make – where that would fit into the Grey Havens and the people who leave, and Sam’s return home which is the final end. It would be hard to make the trilogy end with an exhaustive bio of the eventual fate of every character. That’s WHY Tolkien left that stuff in the appendices. It doesn’t work, in story terms.
It could be worked into the story in other ways – for instance having that conversation as a precognitive dream could work because it’d give us a chance to see how fearful Arwen must be about mortality. It’d give us a chance to know her a bit better if we saw the inward struggle she had between her love for Aragorn and her fear of death. Well, that’s my 2c worth. – Tehanu
This came in via a secret source…is it for real? This person’s reply was ‘Wait and you’ll see everything that I’m describing.’ Read on:
The next preview trailer – No it does not have the Balrog in it. It is very very good – much better than the 1st one. I do not know when it is going to be shown – very soon (within a week) I would guess.
There is a lot in the thing – some things just one frame. But I had not noticed (or forgot) there is a very brief scene where the orcs are coming down the pillars (looks OK to me), A scene where Galadriel and Frodo are facing each other, you see a nice close up of the ring (with fire runes visible), there is some sort of “fire-bird” swooping down on the shire (I guess it’s in the shire – there are hobbits), – I do not remember it either from LOTR, at first I thought it was just some magical fireburst, but after looking at again it is definately a pterydactyl-looking bird swooping down on a hobbit. It is transparent – like made of fire – very brief shot. [Gandalf’s fireworks? -Tehanu] There’s shots of the party oaring canoes of some sort. As I’ve said the important thing (to me anyway) it’s a very nicely done trailer and I hope it generates a lot of buzz in the general public. I can’t wait to see it on the big screen!
It opens with a beautiful aerial shot of some forest region with a river running through it. Then we see Gandalf (looking very afraid and haggard !?) asking if the ring is safe — to Frodo. Then we hear some narration about the ring and see Mt Doom in the distance (not too realistic). There are multiple fight scenes (very cool), we hear more dialog (all very good), There is some breathtaking scenery. One very cool scene we hear Gollum say “My precious” and make… well a “gollum”. This comes right after Frodo says “There’s something down there” Very well done I might add – very creepy voice.
Near the end, Aragorn asks Frodo if he is afraid and he replies yes then Strider says “Not nearly afraid enough” – Very well done — Very very good trailer – should get a lot of people excited.
There is more of course, I don’t have photographic memory or anything. Some things I have not seen on some of the pictures so far – Ringwraiths shown in negative, a female being chased by a number of cloaked riders (aerial view), There is some footage of the council with Boromir saying “The Ring is a gift from the enemy – let us use it against him,” then Aragorn saying “No one can wield the Ring” All in all I was very excited to see this!! You will not be disappointed. The only thing I noticed is that Gandalf looked a bit crazy, not like the calm wizard I imagined.
One other scene comes to mind – Gandalf (I think) narrating about theRring says, “Sauron could bring a second darkness on the land if found,” and “his whole mind is bent on finding it” or something like that. Very exciting stuff. BTW the sound was incredible!
As reported yesterday, the BBC program Film 2001 last night was recapping the Cannes Film Festival, and included in that recap was a segment on Lord Of The Rings. The show begins with the presenter, Johnathan Ross working through the schedule from the show, and after talking about the main item on tonight’s show, Moulin Rouge, Ross moves onto the next item on the agenda:
“…….and Lord Of The Rings is premiered on the Riviera…well kind of.”
The screen changes to show Liv Tyler standing in front of the castle where the party was held, dressed in black. She begins to speak elvish! I think it sounds somewhat similar what she said on the Conan O’ Brien show a few weeks ago. See for yourself! Check out the attached recording I made of Tyler speaking Elvish. The reporter asks her what does it mean, to which she grins and says, “I’m not telling.” 15 minutes later, after a run through of Moulin Rouge and the Mummy Returns, and we finally come to Lord Of The Rings. During the paragraph below, we were shown several pieces of the trailer shown in cinemas a while ago put together. Then, once we moved onto the topic of interviews, it showed footage of several stars being interview in casual clothes, including Sean Bean, John Rhys-Davis and Viggo Mortensen, Sir Ian McKellen and Liv Tyler.
“Tolkien blockbuster to-be Lord Of The Rings debuted in Cannes this week, with distributors New Line allowing a select band of journo’s a sneek peek at a mere 20 minutes of footage. On the back of that the chosen few were then granted interviews with the films stars although the results have been embargoed until the film’s release in….December.”
The footage then changes to show images from the Lord Of The Rings party that was held in the castle, showing the reconstructed Hobbit-Hole with genuine Hobbits, and Sir Ian McKellen wearing a rather fetching Hawaiin shirt under a jacket.
The film set builders were then brought in to re-create Middle-Earth for the lavish party later that night, which, joy of joys, we ARE allowed to show you. Sir Ian McKellen breaks down the marketing hype – ‘I think it’s important that, uh, it should be talked about, because we’re desperate to have as many people as possible see it.’ “
And that was pretty much it. Nothing new, except some more Elvish from our lovely Lady Arwen.
Just wanted you to know that CET Swedish Channel 1 aired a whole bunch of stuff from Cannes.
It started with PJ talking about that they would make the movies 100 million $ cheaper if they did it on New Zealand instead of Hollywood.
The producer said it was a bargain. Then PJ told us how it all started. Apperantly he called the USA in 1995 and asked who had the rights to LOTR. Then it just kept rolling. John-Rhys Davies said that they filmed 10 hours of film uncut.
Then PJ said that a lot of people had tried to make LotR in one film and it didn´t work. That was the special thing about this production that they could make it into 3 movies.
PJ also said that because they filmed in 15 months people started behave as their character. Especially Viggo, one day in a resturant PJ had talked to Viggo as if he was Aragorn and Viggo had just responded and they had a conversation without even knowing it.
Another day when they trained on a fighting scene, the stunt coordinator broke a bit of Viggo’s tooth. Viggo picked it up and asked if they could superglue it and keep going.
In the interview with Elijah Wood he said that it was very difficult to film the first day and be completly innocent and the third film another day and be totaly gone, and the second film and be somewhere in the middle.
The screen changes to show 
The producer said it was a bargain. Then PJ told us how it all started. Apperantly he called the USA in 1995 and asked who had the rights to LOTR. Then it just kept rolling. John-Rhys Davies said that they filmed 10 hours of film uncut.
PJ also said that because they filmed in 15 months people started behave as their character. Especially Viggo, one day in a resturant PJ had talked to Viggo as if he was Aragorn and Viggo had just responded and they had a conversation without even knowing it. 
In the interview with Elijah Wood he said that it was very difficult to film the first day and be completly innocent and the third film another day and be totaly gone, and the second film and be somewhere in the middle.