TheHutt writes: During their TotalHD press conference at CES, Warner announced that New Line was working on the Lord of the Rings trilogy for both HD DVD and Blu-ray. While they did confirm that the titles were in the works, no details were given. A source close to the matter gave us a few details of the upcoming release, these include:
- Main feature will be a single DL disc on both HD DVD and Blu-ray. (no word if it will be a TotalHD disc (TotalDVD is a double-sided combination of HD-DVD and Blu-Ray)
- The movies will be the Theatrical Versions of each film.
- Both discs will be encoded using VC1
- These will be the first titles to use Dolby TrueHD 7.1 Audio
- Due to bandwidth constraints, as of now there will be no IME (“In Movie Experience”) like features.
Susan writes: Yesterday, Elijah Wood and Sandra Oh announced the SAG Nominations. Elijah has been nominated as part of the ensemble cast for “Bobby.” Cate Blanchett has been nominated as supporting actress for “Notes on a Scandal.”
Sean writes: I just thought that readers of The One Ring may be interested to know that Christopher Lee, who portrayed Sauruman, will be doing a special signing on Saturday 20th January at the Radisson Edwardian Hotel, Heathrow, London. It will run from 12noon until 5pm. [
New York, Jan 17: Actor Viggo Mortensen is looking so convincing in his new role as a Russian gangster, that when he dropped in for a bowl of soup at a Russian-owned counter, he had people actually believing that he was a real-life bad guy. Mortensen is teaming up with director David Cronenberg once again to star as a cold-blooded gangster in new crime drama “Easter Promises”, a role that required Oscar-winning make-up artist Stephan apply authentic Russian-mafia tattoos on the star. A source revealed that the ‘Lord of the Rings’ star got a taste of the kind of fear the mafia generated when he popped in at a Russian-owned soup counter near the movie’s London set. [
Sir Ian McKellen is to be a guest speaker at the launch of LGBT History Month in London next month, it was announced last night. “Sir Ian is already a major figure in LGBT history and we’re honoured that he can join us at the launch of History Month,” said Paul Patrick, co-chair of Schools Out. LGBT History Month, which runs through February, was launched three years ago by Schools Out. And this year’s launch will form part of the group’s annual conference. [