News Archive

*Major* spoiler pictures–the official site just posted some images from the upcoming ROTK. Check them out–click on Exclusive New Images when you get there!

TTT has moved up on the alltime box office list, passing such films as Jurassic Park, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, and its very own predecessor: The Fellowship of the Ring. Forty-five down, three to go…

View the list.

Today is the last day MTV will have voting on their web page so let’s make sure that TTT sweeps all categories! Vote now.

Gollum has won a poll to for the Best Film Fantasy Creature. He was voted by thousands of film fans as the favourite film monster. He even beat Yoda from the Star Wars films and cute little ET!

This article from GameSpy talks about an upcoming Tolkien world based RPG.

At Ain’t It Cool News, there is information on an upcoming tour of New Zealand and Brussels that is being formed by the Italian Tolkien Society. To read about this push to promote Tolkien and New Zealand, just click here!

Contributed by: k

Ted Nasmith is one of the better-known Tolkien artists; his works are among my favourites. His landscapes and sceneries capture the essence of Middle Earth perfectly and the artwork used in the illustrated Silmarillion is absolutely amazing. Nasmith has been illustrating scenes from the Lord of the Rings and other Tolkien works for almost 30 years and intends to continue to do so for a while yet.

“It’s difficult to describe exactly what informs my interest in Tolkien, but suffice it to say quite simply that I have a powerful affinity with his writing, so full of vast, lost, misty expanses and its unique mixture of the familiar and strange.” – Ted Nasmith, Official web-site.

Place of Birth: Born in Goderich, Canada in 1956.

Education and Career: After graduating from high school, Nasmith was taken on by an architectural firm. He now works as a free lance architectural renderer as well as illustrating Tolkien’s books and other works.

Family: Ted Nasmith lives and works in Toronto, Canada. He has a wife and three children.

Calendars: Much of Nasmith’s better known work has been featured in calendars. His work was published in parts of the 1987 and 1988 calendars for Unwin Paperbacks and he has had full calendars for the years 1990, 1992 1996 and 2000. Ted Nasmith is also in the process of doing calendars for each book in the Tolkien trilogy, starting with the Fellowship of the Ring in 2002.

Books: Nasmith’s illustrations have been featured on many book covers of the Lord of the Rings. His art has also been published in Tolkien’s World, Realms of Tolkien and more recently, the illustrated Silmarillion. He has also drawn for a number of postcard books including, Tolkien’s Dragons and Monsters, Tolkien’s Middle-Earth, Tolkien’s Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings and Tolkien’s Glory.

Other illustrations: Ted Nasmith’s illustrations have been featured on a diverse collection of items including the Lord of the Rings collectable plates, Middle-Earth collectable card game, puzzles and The Hobbit board game. He was also asked to help Alan Lee and John Howe with the conceptual art for the Lord of the Rings film trilogy. He was unable to do this however, due to other family and work commitments.

Influences: Ted Nasmith talks about his influences on his official web-site:

“Several influences guide my sense of how best to portray Middle-earth and its peoples, creatures, and other aspects, both in general and as I conceive an individual setting or image. Besides the traditional romantic illustrators and painters of the 19th and 20th centuries, impressions from cinema, light effects observed and/or photographed, as well as pictorial reference materials in my files or from the public libraries tend to help me realise the ideas in my mind’s eye.”

Ted Nasmith on Tolkien: The following are extracts of interviews with Ted Nasmith, from his official site and from Harper Collins publishers, talking about a range of topics.

Discovering Tolkien: Nasmith discovered Tolkien in 1971 at the age of 14, when his sister gave him a copy of the books to read.
“Discovering Tolkien, had a very profound effect on me and helped lead to much that I now count most significant in life. It opened up in me a dormant love of lost and misty times, myth and legend. Not since childhood had I felt such a sense of ‘home’, unaware of the effects the intervening years had had in displacing it.”

His early work: Shortly after reading the books, Nasmith sent two of his illustrations to Tolkien, including The Long Expected Party: “He said he liked my painting of the Dwarves, Gandalf, and Bilbo at Bag End, but that my Bilbo looked a little too much like a child. (That was some early useful advice!)”
The 1988 calendar was another early work. Ted Nasmith was not particularly happy with the four paintings featured in it. “They were ill-considered watercolours, a naïve attempt to reflect The Hobbit as a children’s book.”

Favourite pieces? I guess that would include Rivendell, The Last Words of Boromir, Tom Bombadil and the River Daughter, Lady Galadriel, Éowyn and the Nazgûl, and a number of others where for me a particular objective was realised.

Favourite parts of the books? I think there are too many to list, really. I have been especially interested, to depict some of the somewhat overlooked scenes with the Ents, such as the Sacking of Isengard. The Tower of the Moon was an interesting challenge, as was my first panoramic painting of Ithilien, and the night scene in the Dead Marshes.

What is it about Tolkien that inspires so many people? I think it is mostly to do with how fully he engages the reader’s imagination. His own love of his story and its incredible verisimilitude, as set in the world he imagined, seems to powerfully inspire further creativity in his readers’ minds as well, whether they be artists, musicians, writers, craftspeople, scholars or whatever.

Thoughts on other Tolkien artists: I prefer to focus on how Tolkien illustrating in general has created a kind of community of artists, who are each guided by their love of Tolkien and their sense of how they wish to express themselves in relation to the author’s descriptions of characters and other features of Middle-earth. The fans are very interested in the idea of faithful interpretations, but at the same time there’s a wide tolerance for a diverse range of styles and interpretations. The whole idea of illustrating Middle-earth has generated much discussion and different ‘schools of thought’, consistent with a powerful personal reaction to Tolkien among his readers.

The film: I expect I will react on different levels. Partly it will be just as a fan of the medium; Tolkien¹s books are well suited to a film interpretation – if you can rise to the immense challenge. I will also be looking at the many set details, and approaches to each scene, the characters and whether I agree with their portrayals, the ways the director has adapted the story to film (all those controversial changes being so hotly debated), and much else. How and whether it comes to influence my future artwork remains to be seen…!

On illustrating Tolkien: When I interpret Tolkien, I feel genuinely at home with it and I derive great satisfaction from exploring all potential aspects of Middle-earth. With each new illustration I feel a little bit more of it is captured: characters, locales, atmosphere and drama. Also, it is always interesting to discover the ways that a picture can add new layers of meaning to a scene when the various elements of composition come together, and how unconscious associations find their way into the work.

The future: As well as just having completed the illustrated Silmarillion, Nasmith is working on the 2002, 2003 and 2004 calendars, each focusing on a different book in the trilogy.

“There doesn’t seem to be any limit to the possibilities and as far as I can tell, I will be exploring them for some time to come.”

Researched and edited by k

Contributed by: Furry-footed_Nerf_Herder

Suildad. I’m Furry-footed_Nerf_Herder and I’m the Movies Administrator here at the Council of Elrond. Recently, I have been working hard on the scripts for the first two movie installments of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy – The Fellowship of the Rings and The Two Towers – as well as writing up biographies for the cast members involved. Additionally, I read and approve the movie reviews submitted by our own council members.

The scripts have been a long and tedious task, but they were worth every minute that was spent on them. The Fellowship of the Ring script was written out by ~Witch_Queen_of_Angmar~ and includes all actions and scenes. We also have The Two Towers script up. It was done by myself along with a little help from some council members. Currently in the works is the script for the Extended FoTR DVD and the dialogue-only versions of each movie. Also, you can be sure that we will have the TTT Extended DVD script and the script for Return of the King up as soon as they are available.

The Cast List contains information about each cast member, including comments from each actor about their character, links to interviews with the actor, and their other projects and previous films. Also in the works are personal biographies for each actor and also a space for the crew of the film. In these biographies, you can learn about the actor’s childhood, life-turning events, and other interesting you may not have heard elsewhere. They are not all completed as of yet, but they are in the works and should be up within the next few months.

The reviews section of the site contains movie reviews and critiques submitted by CoE members. Most are about the movies made by Peter Jackson, but there is a very long in-depth review on Brian Sibley’s radio adaptation of Lord of the Rings, which was written by sepdet. There are also reviews that deal with specific aspects of the movies – such as the elves, hobbits, and just the overall way that the movie is put together. Many of our members spent a lot of time writing these up and each is a quality piece of work. Along with reading other member’s reviews, you can write one as well and submit it. It must be in-depth and well written in order to be added to the site, however, as we want to host the best articles possible. I look forward to seeing your work!

The Movie section of the site has much to offer and though there is still room to grow, it should keep you busy for a little while. Have fun!

“Hey folks, Harry here with the latest contest to win some sort of glorious prize that can be yours… if you’re willing to go through what it takes to get the prize you so dearly desire.” Go to Ain’t it cool news to find out how to enter the contest and win the stone troll statue.

“EA is showing off the upcoming videogame of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King … the demo playing at the E3 booth features an intro comprised of all new footage from the third and final film in The Lord of the Rings trilogy. We were unfortunately not allowed to film the footage, but what was shown is now burned onto our retinas.”

What did the folks over at IGN see, you wonder? Click here to find out!