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April 02, 2004 - May 26, 2004

5-26-04

486 Ringers and a Devil Duck
maegwen @ 6:15 pm EST
TORn Staffer Asfaloth writes:


Dom signs an autograph.

When we arrived at the new Best Buy in West Hollywood last night the line was already down the block. Nothing new for ‘Rings events. Ringers seem to almost enjoy lining up! But the promised autograph session with Dominic Monaghan was just too good an event to pass up. The folks at Best Buy told me that they handed out 486 numbered wristbands. People started to line up at 1pm for the 10:30pm signing. Ringers traveled from as far as Germany, Florida, Las Vegas and Orange County to meet Dom in person. At midnight they were to re-open the doors of the store and sell DVDs of the theatrical version of “The Return of the King.”

The atmosphere was festive. We saw a lot of familiar faces. It was a little sad because we’ve befriended so many people through the course of covering LOTR events for TORn and “Ringers.” And we knew that this would be one of the last events for a while at least.

Dominic seemed genuinely pleased and touched by the outpouring of support from the very well behaved and orderly crowd. Dom signed anything and everything that was presented to him. The folks at New Line gave everyone a nice glossy picture of Dom in Rohan armor. Best Buy was giving away goodie bags with a free LOTR t-shirt, ROTK poster and two pins. There was lots of picture taking and hugs all around. The generous Ringers showered Dom with little gifts such as: a hand knitted scarf, a painting of Merry in Rohan armor, a stuffed monkey, homemade buttons (badges for the UK crowd), and Merry and Pippin Mickey Mouse ears. (Dom promised to give the other set to Billy). Dom spoke on the phone to someone’s friend who couldn’t make it, and signed someone else’s birthday card. And yes, someone gave him a black rubber ducky with little devil horns and sharp pointy teeth.

By midnight the line wasn’t even halfway finished. By 1:00 am there were still over a hundred people outside waiting. And shortly after 1:15 am the New Line representative declared the signing “closed” and hustled Dom out of the building. There were a lot of disappointed fans, but it was terribly late. Best Buy remained open to sell some of their 4,000 copies of the ROTK DVD.


Hall of Fire Chats this Weekend: ROTK DVD
maegwen @ 5:04 pm EST
It's here! After months of waiting, Ringers finally have the ROTK DVD in our hot little hands. At last, the whole trilogy can be watched all at once!

What is your reaction to ROTK after all this time? Still the "greatest movie ever!" or "a total disaster" or have your feelings mellowed over time? Does ROTK deserve to be one of the most Oscar winning films of all time? And how about those special features? Is it worth buying the theatrical release as well as the extended edition? What things to do you notice when watching all three movies together? Join us in The Hall of Fire as we explore these and other issues surrounding the release of "The Return of the King" on DVD.

upcoming topics:

June 5-6, 2004: The Hobbit - Chapter 9
June 12-13, 2004: : Galadriel/Nerwen Artanis: The Lady of the Golden Wood and Ring-bearer

Times:
Saturday Chat:
5:30pm ET (17:30)
[also 10:30pm (22:30) GMT and 7:30am (07:30) Sunday AET]

Sunday Chat:
7:00 pm (19:00) CET
[also 1pm ET (13:00) and 3am (03:00) Monday morning AET]

ET = Eastern Time, USA's East Coast
CET = Central European Time, Central Europe
AET = Australian East Coast

Do you have a possible topic for Hall of Fire? Drop us a line at
halloffire@theonering.net

5-23-04

UK Howard Shore Set List
maegwen @ 5:08 pm EST
Ringer Spy Silivren-Gul writes: I had the privilege today to go to see Howard Shore conduct LOTR music at the Royal Festival Hall today with the London Philharmonic Orchestra.
It was nothing short of spectacular! The music was performed in six movements, two for each film. The set up was as follows:

* * *


Fellowship Of The Ring

Movement 1:
The Prophecy-Concerning Hobbits - The Shadow Of The Past - A Short Cut To Mushrooms - The Old Forest - A Knife In The Dark

Movement 2:
Many Meetings - The Ring Goes South - A Journey In The Dark - The Bridge of Khazad-Dum - Lothlorien (which was incorrectly spelt in the program as Lothloriem!) - Gandalf's Lament - Farewell To Lorien - The Great River - The Breaking Of The Fellowship (Including In Dreams but not May It Be :( )

20 minute interval

The Two Towers

Movement 3:
Foundations Of Stone - The Taming Of Smeagol - The Riders Of Rohan - The Black Gate Is Closed - Evenstar - The White Rider - Treebeard - The Forbidden Pool

Movement 4:
The Hornburg - Forth Eorlingas - Isengard Unleashed - Gollum's Song

The Return Of The King

Movement 5:
Hope And Memory - The White Tree - The Steward Of Gondor (No vocals :( ) - Cirith Ungol - Anduril

Movement 6:
The End Of All Things - The Return Of The King - The Grey Havens - Into The West

Standing Ovation ( :) )

Throughout the performance, artwork by John Howe and Alan Lee was shown on a screen above the orchestra, and not clips from the films. It made an excellent mix, putting together film music and book artwork, and proved very popular.

The Choirs present were "London Voices" (soloists : Susan Flannery and Lawrence Wallington) and the "London Oratory School (Schola Cantorum)" (soloist: Benedict Delmaestro). Also present, doing most of the solo vocals was an exquisitely talented Scandinavian woman by the name of "Sissel" (www.sissel.net) who did an amazing job singing many solo parts.

* * *


All this, combined with the energetic conducting from the amazing Howard Shore made up a very memorable concert, and for those who could not go, tickets are still on sale for the 22nd September (Royal Albert Hall) when there will be a similar performance, in honour of Frodo and Bilbo's birthday! (www.royalalberthall.com) I am certainly going again, and I recommend it to you all!

5-17-04

Decipher/WETA Cards Insight
Xoanon @ 7:48 pm EST
Humble Sauron writes: I noticed yesturday you guys posted the 2 cards from Deipher new set "Reflections" and said that none of the pictures are from ROTK(on the cards) and there done by Weta Workshop. That is wrong information, not to put the guy down or anything. Actually this is what Decipher and Weta are doing together.

The pictures on the Reflections cards belong to Decipher they were not made by Weta, but are actually scenes and snapshopts provided by the people with all the rights to LOTR. So some of the pictures are nothing you saw in the movie. Now the cards that are done by Weta, they have a bug in the bottom right hand corner to signify Wetas involvement in making that card. There will be more of these cards in later sets starting with "Shadows" which comes out sometime in November.

The characters you also see in the weta cards are mostly Weta's own employees!!! Good stuff and also the people dessed up as Ragdast and Glorfindel are the orignal actors that would be playing that character.

5-07-04

Kong Barge 'Manuia' Work Continues
Xoanon @ 12:11 pm EST
Kong Barge 'Manuia' Work Continues

Abner writes: Here's the best shot of the Manuia boat I took today, the others had the light against them and then the crew came outside and I didn't want to get hassled... :) They seemed to be fireproofing the inside of the boat earlier today, at least that's what one of the vans had written on the side of it. You can clearly see the scaffolding around the front of the boat, and the cannopy wrapped around it. This alteration has been there about a week or so, and you can tell from the shabby look of the hessia cover that we've had some good hard winds here this week (110 kph!).

I'll be heading over to the Miramar suburb tomorrow, but I probably won't take any amazing photos. Weta Studios are pretty boring - apart from one lone Orc figure in the window (far away and in the dark, not really photographable) there's nothing to see, all the windows are boarded up. There might be something happening outside the Stone Street Studios though (where the Mumak Harnass is stored outside). There's been a lot of activity there in the last few weeks, but nothing I've been able to recognise so far. I'll see what I can come up with.

4-26-04

'The Yank' Set Report
Xoanon @ 6:49 pm EST
Faye-Elf writes: I don't know if anyone else has reported this but I saw Elijah Wood filming on location in London yesterday afternoon (25-April).

While coming home from work at 4.30pm I accidentally stumbled upon a film crew making that movie about the football hooligans that he is doing at the moment. They were filming a fight scene outside the main entrance of Fenchurch Street train station.

Elijah was getting beaten up by another man and he had blood all down his face and looked pretty rough. Unfortunately there were lots of police and film crew around so we didn't get the chance to talk to him, but thought this might be of interest.

4-16-04

'Troy' & 'Riddick' Screening Reviews
Xoanon @ 12:09 pm EST
sevenstar_3 writes: Hello! I saw another ringer post that they had the chance to see Andy Serkis in his next project 13 going on 30.

I have been lucky enough to go to two movie screenings this past month featuring LOTR cast members, Troy, with Orlando Bloom and Sean Bean and The Chronicles of Riddick, with Karl Urban. I have posted some reviews and comments on both films over on imdb.com, but I just wanted to let the fans know that even though they are not key players in the movie trailers, Sean Bean in Troy and Karl Urban in Riddick have considerably more screen time then I would have guessed from the previews......... and of course with the rise of Orlando Bloom, he has been heavily marketed in Troy, but Sean Bean has just as much screen time. So while the movies that I saw were not complete (special effects, soundtracks, etc) It was nice to have the opportunity to see some of the "follow-up" films from the cast.

4-02-04

Indian ROTK in Disarray
Tehanu @ 4:25 am EST
Different cities in India are seeing different versions of ROTK, it seems. Rulinian wrote again to say that the situation in Chennai had not improved: "At least for us fans out here in Chennai I can say that nothing has ended yet. And since we have no word or idea when the VCD/DVD releases, I guess we continue the Wait."
Ashlee wrote in the same vein: " I think the cutting of the film was done only in Chennai, and it happened even in the first film: they cut out most of the Council and the parts with Aragorn and Arwen. ROTK was also released late in Chennai, on 5th March, while it was out on 30th Jan in the rest of the country. "

Kolya could confirm that in Delhi they were seeing the film with no cuts, and Mukund wrote to say that also in Bombay people were getting the full 3hours and 20 mins.

So it's not an ideal situation - some cities are getting the complete version, and others not. We're not sure how widespread the short' version of the film is.


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