And now the terrible Orcs invade Balin’s tomb. Let’s be clear about a few things here. The Orcs are fighting a war of self-defense against the invading Fellowship. They basically busted in on the Orcs’ place here…One would think that if the Orcs were as bad as the corrupt Man-Elf coalition says, they would be a lot better at fighting. Via a friend of mine in the department, it’s the lost Fellowship of the Ring commentary track by Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn. Touche.
Category: LotR
Prrreciousss…
News of The Two Towers (theatrical version) DVD (due August 26) breaks over at TORN.Net, with all kinds of enticing screen caps and sundry goodies. Apparently, the TTT-EE will show up Nov. 18, giving us a month of geek-out time before ROTK. Update: More information here, including Quicktime shorts of the (very nice) animated menus and the look of the EE packaging (It might look familiar.)
25% more Ents.
Still quiet on the ROTK front for the time being (other than [Spoiler] Eowyn’s big moment being reshot), but Peter Jackson has recently sounded off on the extended Two Towers due out in November. Apparently, it’ll contain 43 extra minutes (as opposed to 32 in the FOTR EE)…veddy nice.
It’s Not Easy Being Green.
Fresh from the Game Developer’s Conference, IGN Filmforce hosts a fascinating keynote by WETA Digital on their work for LOTR: TTT, with several Quicktime shorts on the evolution of Gollum, the Ents, and MASSIVE (and a few Toy Story-esque blooper reels). Definitely worth checking out, if you can spare the bandwidth.
Arboreal Poets, Schizophrenic Guides.
PJ talks briefly about the extended Two Towers cut, and sure enough it looks like we’re getting more Ents and more Smeagol. Not sure I really need to see Treebeard deliver bad poetry, but I’ll reserve judgment until I see the cut.
Fellowship of the Ringu.
For Sauron will have dominion over this Middle Kingdom, even unto the ending of the world.A Hong Kong newspaper imagines an all-Asian Rings trilogy.
Flights of Imagination.
The Science Fiction Book Club picks the 50 most significant science fiction/fantasy books of the last 50 years, although after the top ten they’re listed alphabetically (Via Lots of Co.) I’d say I’ve read about half of these, and the choices seem pretty legit. No surprise who‘s at the top of the list, but otherwise it seems like the fantasy side got short shrift. I guess the Narnia books (and for that matter Animal Farm and 1984) are over 50-years-old. Speaking of which, I can’t say I’m a very big C.S. Lewis fan (particularly as compared to Tolkien), but nonetheless – the Narnia film site is now live.
Smaug Awakens 12.19.06
The site’s getting killed at the moment, but at some point this fan-made teaser for Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit is definitely worth checking out. Brought a smile to my face. In loosely related news, the second Animatrix trailer is also up – not half as intriguing as the first installment, but worth a look if you’re at all into anime (which, frankly, I’m not).
Bad news and Good news.
Harry finds out directly from PJ what’s been holding up the rumored Return of the King trailer. Says M. Jackson, We’re not doing a ROTK trailer for the end of Two Towers like we did last year. The reason is that the TT extended DVD has been so complex this year, it would have taken too many resources away from trying to get that finished. The FOTR extended cut had 35 extra CG shots – the TT extended cut has over 150.” Ah well. The waiting is the hardest part, but at least it sounds like more Ents and more Gollum are in our future.
Happy Valentine’s Day.
Happy Valentine’s Day to you and yours. I passed out all my LOTR Valentines this morning (although I kinda wish I’d gone Cthulhu) and am now off to see Daredevil. In the meantime, enjoy these unfortunate Valentines cards and have a great day!