The Coming Soon website has a quote from Ian McKellen that may or may not give away some major spoilers concerning Saruman’s role in The Return of the King. Warning: Spoilers! Highlight text below to read:
“Someone then said they enjoyed the fight scene with Saruman in the first film, and asked if we would see something similar in the third film, Return of the King. Sir Ian replied in the negative, saying that originally Saruman was to have died at the end of the second film but that this would now be the introduction to the third film. ‘He falls from a great height and comes to a sticky end’, he revealed, before going on to say ‘Peter Jackson is a huge horror film fan. That’s why he cast Christopher Lee – who better to play Saruman than the biggest horror villain? Knowing that and Peter’s great love for horror movies, it’s inconceivable that Dracula wouldn’t play some part in Saruman’s death’.”
Hmmm…confirmation of the Spikey Wheel after all? We’re keeping our grains of salt handy.
Thanks to Daevon for the link! [More]
Demosthenes here. I just wanted to point out that this originally came from Ringer Spy Irascian’s An Audience with Ian McKellen report that we posted up a couple of days ago. Well worth a read, if you missed it originally.
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The goodies just keep rolling in at the Noble Collection. A recent check of their site revealed a host of new items including a gorgeous replica of Gandalf’s Two Towers cloak pin, the Elvish ring Narya, a 14-karat gold version of Eowyn’s flower pendant, and a full-sized replica of Gandalf the Grey’s staff! If these pricey goodies are beyond your pocketbook, they also offer Glamdring, Sting, and Narsil letter openers for under $30 each. Thanks to TORN staffer maegwen! [More]
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May 9th is the official pre-order date for The Two Towers theatrical DVD, with orders actually shipping around Aug 26th.This coming Friday, we will be posting a complete list of online vendors who are pre-selling the DVD and VHS. Stay Tuned!
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Another report from Collectormania, everyone seems to have been there except for me. This one is from a person who got to spend two days sitting next to John Rhys-Davies! I can imagine worse ways of spending time…
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Shelagh sends along this little snippet from an interview with Ian McKellen (Gandalf). During the interview, McKellen was asked about Michael Gambon playing Dumbledore, and if he has any advice for the Irishman. “I do not think that I could give advice to Sir Mike on anything; he will be very good. I hear that he took a very long time to negotiate his fee for playing Dumbledore so he must know what he is doing….”. [More]
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Another report from Collectormania, everyone seems to have been there except for me. This one is from a person who got to spend two days sitting next to John Rhys-Davies! I can imagine worse ways of spending time…
One of my dearest friends, Judith, lives in Milton Keynes and I was visiting her this weekend. As part of that visit we went to see Collectormania 3, where we arranged to meet up with other friends who wished to go to this event. To cut a long and boring story very short, I ended up being introduced to one of the organisers and my services were solicited for the following day, Sunday.
At 8.30am on Sunday morning I duly attended to be allocated my duties. I anticipated being on the end of an autograph queue handing out tickets or running errands. Imagine my surprise, delight and pleasure when I was asked to be John Rhys-Davies’ assistant for the day!
There I was sandwiched between JRD and Bruce Hopkins (Gamling).
John arrived at 10.00am and without any preamble started to sign. That man is amazing. He refused to take a break (not even for the bathroom) and although I managed to acquire three or four coffees throughout the day, he didn’t drink most of them because he was too busy. He objected when “staff” members tried to sneak things in for signing, insisting that the fans had been queuing for ages and should come first, although he happily signed for “staff” and helpers after the public had left. He had time for everyone and complied to all requests for photographs etc. If someone asked for a photo but their camera wasn’t ready (either still in it’s case or not wound-on etc), then he would saunter up the queue and entertain the crowd before meandering back to have his picture taken.
At the end of the day when the centre had closed and everyone had departed, John was asked by one of the staff if there was anything he needed before he had to go to the Two Towers presentation and Indiana Jones presentation. Can you believe he took my hand, looked into my eyes and asked if I would be his assistant the following day (Monday)! How could a girl refuse?
So on Monday, instead of heading home and missing all the holiday weekend traffic, I spent a second day sitting next to one of the most popular men at the event.
I note that JRD’s birthday has been and gone and no mention has been made on your website. For your information it was John’s birthday yesterday (5th May) and he was 59.
Okay here I really need to cut in for a brief second. Contrary to popular belief we did post about John’s birthday [here]. Over the past few days we have been swamped with emails telling us we forgot, but in all honestly: how could we? John Rhys-Davies is like 7 feet tall so we are a little bit afraid of the consequences.. Anyway, please people: check the frontpage first before emailing us about things we forgot. -leo
You may like to know that when presented with a picture of Gimli sitting on an Orc smoking a pipe (the picture that appears in The Two Towers companion), John said that this scene is in the extended edition DVD.
Also, I took the opportunity to ask John about the scene in the chapter “Flotsam & Jetsam” (in Return of the King) when the three hunters finally catch up with Merry & Pippin who are eating, drinking & smoking. Sadly, John says they didn’t film anything like that!
Ali the Brun
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