Well, not really. Auckland’s newspaper ‘The Herald’ had the usual stuff about LOTR and Cannes, but finished with this quote from Peter Jackson:
“..Since New Zealand is a small country, the Government was keen to help in whatever way.
The Prime Minister actually came to visit us early on and she said ‘What can we do to help?’ And we said ‘Have you got any spare soldier?’ and she immediately contacted the Minister of Defence who made a battalion of soldiers available.
“It was kind of fun with the soldiers – we got to train them in the use of swords and shields and spears, and with the defence cutbacks we have in New Zealand, it will be useful training for them.”
(Didn’t “Braveheart” use real soldiers for its army? Maybe we can still do military excercises with Scotland. – T )
You get a few more details of the atmosphere at the Chateau, and a nice pic of Gandalf in the mountains – not one I’ve seen, but then it’s getting hard to tell what’s new and what isn’t. [More]
Kryel sends along another great pic of the cast at Cannes. [More]
From: Leo our good buddy at lotr.nl
leo just called me to report from the party in Cannes:
There are Elves, Hobbits, Orcs, Men from Gondor and Rohirrim walking around at the party.
Outside of the castle they built the entire set of Bag End (real life size), the tents which they used at bilbo’s farewell party, and there was a pool in which Galadriels boat was floating.
Inside the castle there was some sort of exposition where you could see the phial of galadriel, some swords (including Narsil) and pictures of the cast.
This is an interesting report, apart from a few neekerbreekerisms – confusing Sauron and Saruman for instance. It does answer the concern about whether the film’s G13 rating will make the violence bloodless and cartoonish. [More[
Thanks to Phillip for this.
