News Archive

A new mystery picture has been added this week. Head on over and take your guess!

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Along with the Fell Beasts, Gollum, and Cave Troll, a further Weta prop will soon be installed in Wellington – An 8 metre high model of Barad-Dur is to be installed inside Te Papa. Read the full story at XtraMSN

and Newsweek believes that RotK is a contender! The senior editor of that publication is using descriptive terms like “passionate” and “spectacular” after seeing it. That review and more, including some *spoilers*, over at Stuff.

Contributed by: LadyCeleborn

In the world of diehard Tolkinites, the mere mention of Trilogy Tuesday invokes feelings of great anticipation and hand wringing glee. In what is sure to become part of Tolkien fandom history, New Line will present the extended editions of the Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers on the eve of the debut of The Return of the King. This one time, one night only event will happen on December 16th in select theaters.

Never in cinematic history has a movie studio willingly gone out of its way for fans, yet New Line Cinema has done exactly that. This special event wasn’t even promoted! The only promotional tools New Line used were sending out group emails and broadcasting it over the Internet as news. In fact, the Lord of the Rings Official Site didn’t publicize the locations of the participating theaters until a week before the tickets went on sale. Once the news was revealed on the official site it was picked up by fans and became media frenzy. Website after website began to report on this “once in a lifetime” fandom event.

On October 8th, thousands of tickets went on sale in almost one hundred theaters across the United States. If you blinked you were simply out of luck. There was no time to sit and ponder if this would be something you wanted to attend. Only New Line knows for sure how many tickets actually sold. Estimates found that at least between 25,000 and 60,000 tickets were sold. Many tickets were sold online before theater box offices even opened. The online sites sold out within hours of making them available to the general public. Popular online sites were shut down because of the overload of people trying to purchase them. Some theaters had fans camped out up to 48 hours in order to be first in line. If Trilogy Tuesday tickets for a local theater were sold out, fans looked to venues further away. Some would end up having to drive for hours, but for this special event the trip would become their own quest for the One Ring.

New Line went out of its way to bring fans something special. Prints of these movies were made just for this occasion. Trilogy Tuesday would be the first time that the extended editions would be shown on the big screen. It was meant to give back a little of what fans had given the studio. Did they have any clue that this event would become so huge? It’s doubtful. Hundreds of people were turned away disappointed – unable to get tickets. Rings-related websites received complaints from angry fans asking why New Line didn’t make more theaters or more tickets available. Had New Line added more theaters, then perhaps the event would not have been viewed as such a “once in a lifetime” experience. There is no telling what New Line will bring us in the future. Perhaps once Return of the King has run its course, the studio will consider running all the extended editions together in another trilogy event – this time making it available for a longer period of time and to more people. Only time will tell.

Contributed by: LadyRanger

On November 18th, millions of Lord of the Rings fans ran to their local store (or waited by the mailbox) for the Extended Edition of Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. For some, the original three hours of Hobbits, Orcs, Ents and Men is long enough, but others never seem to grow tired of it. The special edition, which contains no less than 4 DVDs filled with new movie scenes, documentaries and production photos, is a perfect solution for these fans.

But what do these 4 DVDs have to offer us? And can they actually enhance the already fantastic second part of Tolkien’s trilogy?

“I think that the extra minutes added to the film will make other happenings seem a whole lot clearer. I finished reading the books before I even saw the original version of The Two Towers, but when I saw the movie, I was a still a bit confused on some things.”

Most of the extra scenes contain background information on the characters and additional explanations on little things left unclear in the theatrical version. A perfect example of the latter is the scene in which Aragorn tames the late Theodred’s unruly horse, Brego, by whispering soothing words in Elvish. “The scene in which Aragorn tamed Brego is a very good addition, as it explains why Brego returns for him after he is (supposedly) killed by the Warg-riders. That was always one of these things that made me think ‘how on Earth did that horse get there?’.”

All around the internet there were spoilers to be found, from blurry pictures to complete transcripts. On top of that, many fans have already read the books, so they basically knew what to expect. But aren’t there any surprises left? Of course, Peter Jackson makes sure there are always surprises.

“I was shocked at Eowyn’s little confession of love to Aragorn. That completely floored me! I thought, ‘how brazen can you get?’ considering that is not in the book at all. It seemed a bit overboard on the love tension between Eowyn and Aragorn.”

The character who benefited the most from the extra scenes, however, would probably be the Steward’s youngest son, Faramir. We see a scene in which Denethor, the Steward of Gondor, completely turns Faramir down, bluntly telling him he is not good for anything. Boromir initially refuses to go to Rivendell to participate in the Council of Elrond, but when Faramir volunteers to go in his place, Denethor refuses to send his youngest. “After seeing Boromir chosen over Faramir, it made sense why Faramir would want the Ring. That may not happen in the book, but at least it was explained to us why in the world Faramir runs off with Frodo and Sam to Osgiliath.”

“I think the enhancements to TTT were better than those to FotR, if that is possible.”
“I think it’s a very wise decision to extend these movies.”
“The extra scenes just make it all more complete.”
“You can tell that a lot of hard work and love went into these movies.”

Thanks go to Charis, Malifur14, and the other members of the Realm of Ulmo for contributing their thoughts.

CNN has an article on the philosophy of movies such as “The Lord of the Rings” and “The Matrix” and how many college professors are using these pop culture references as teaching aids.

Newsweek shows Peter Jackson all the blunders they found on FotR and TTT, and Jackson responds to every blunder that is mentioned.

Pringles is running a contest where you can win a RotK P2 Game and many other great prizes. All you have to do is buy a specially marked package of Pringles chips, rub a special place on the box so that a code appears, go to this website and enter the code to see if you’ve won. You can also enjoy some chips while you’re at it! 🙂

Read all about it–exciting news! Stuff will present live coverage, via web stream, from the red carpet on Courtenay Place from 1pm on Monday, December 1st. The parade into the Embassy! Interviews! PJ’s speech!

That equals November 30th in the states, 5pm PST. Here is a link to a world time zone map, to help ensure you don’t miss the fun! (NZ +12)

A new Mystery Picture has been added to the Games section! Head on over, take a guess, and find out the answer to last week’s puzzle!

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