Director Jonathan King’s new film Realiti, featuring Graham McTavish among the cast, will have its world premiere in Wellington on July 31st, with further screenings there and in Auckland in early August. Written by Chad Taylor, the film was made whilst McTavish was also busy with pickups for a certain trilogy; the director says:
“The Hobbit’s Graham McTavish plays a featured (non prosthetic – or kilt!) role in the film, and he’s really great in it: a different tone to his fantasy-related work, but a part that really suits his authority and charisma. Graham worked on the film at the same time as he was shooting The Hobbit here and it was a thrill for us how much attention he gave to our small film at the same time as he was involved in such a big one! I think it will be great for fans to see Graham in a different kind of role.”
Continue reading “Film ‘REALITi’ with Graham McTavish to screen at Auckland and Wellington film festivals”
A short film based on JRR Tolkien’s book The Hobbit that was made by 11 school children over their Easter holidays will debut at Saffron Screen in the UK this Sunday.
The film, called Children of the Hobbit, features eleven-year-old Richard Bellamy in the lead role of Drogo, a hobbit who teams up with his friend Etholph and an elf called Elensar in a quest to defeat the evil Orcs and return peace to Middle-earth. Continue reading “Short film Children of the Hobbit to premiere at Saffron Screen”
Beginning this Friday, The American Cinematheque is screening a mini-festival of dark coming-of-age stories — including Peter Jackson’s Heavenly Creatures.
Entertainment Weekly writer Anthony Breznican is curating the film fest, and Jackson’s 1994 tale of friendship gone bad screens at the Aero Theater in Santa Monica this Friday. Star Melanie Lynskey will join a guest.
Breznican says he chose the film because Jackson created an haunting tale of friendship that simultaneously saves and then destroys two young girls.
While this is a true story, it’s an extreme one — but we can all relate to those friends we had who brought out both our strong side and our bad side. The kind of friend your mother doesn’t like you hanging out with. Doesn’t that make you want to see that friend even more?
Heavenly Creatures is remarkable for how much ground it covers. It has dark humor, deep love, tragedy, resistance, defiance, and gritty realism — but it also ventures off into the realm of fantasy and imagination. This movie was made long before Jackson ventured into the world of J.R.R. Tolkien, but it illustrates the power that fantasy can provide when we are feeling weak or lost.
I remember being stunned by the clay kingdom of the Fourth World, where Kate Winslet and Melanie Lynskey’s characters make their escape. To me, storytelling and fantasy are such potent forces because in a life where we often feel helpless or unseen, our imaginations can help us rediscover what heroism and courage really mean. Sometimes those stories — be it Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, the Marvel universe, or Star Wars — help us find those qualities in ourselves.
Other times, there’s the danger that escapism might take us too far. We can become closed off and lose ourselves in other worlds, then find ourselves crushed by the disappointments of reality. That’s what happens in Heavenly Creatures, and it is mesmerizing, terrifying, and stunning to behold.
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Elijah Wood will be appearing at this year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival (EIFF) to debut his latest film, Set Fire to the Stars.
The premiere of the black-and-white Dylan Thomas quasi-biopic is on June 23, and it will also screen on the June 24. Wood will also appear at a “Present Hero Hangout” on the same day. Continue reading “Elijah Wood to appear at Edinburgh International Film Festival”
SALT LAKE CITY — At a press conference to announce its inclusion of Simon Pegg as a guest, FantasyCon said it has the largest contingent of Tolkien guests at a fan convention ever, including parts of the staff of TheOneRing.net.
Coming from the Lord of the Rings films:
Sean Astin
Billy Boyd
John Rhys-Davies.
Scheduled for visits from The Hobbit films are:
Adam Brown
John Callen
Peter Hambleton
Jed Brophy
William Kircher
Ken Stott
Graham McTavish
Sylvester McCoy
Other Tolkien-related content:
TheOneRing.net
Doug Adams
Artist Donato Giancola
Artist Justin Gerard
You can read the full article, including the announcement of Simon Pegg, right here.
In shocking news, Warner Bros. today announced that the release of The Hobbit: There And Back Again will be pushed back so the final film of Bilbo Baggins’ adventure can premiere at Comic-Con in July 2015. The new worldwide release date is July 29, 2015.
Premieres during Comic-Con International in San Diego are nothing new. “The 300” premiered in Petco Park a few years ago, heralded by bare-chested Spartans throughout the week-long convention. “Cowboys and Aliens” also held their premiere in San Diego during the convention, with DreamWorks booking an theater complex for the event.
This was an April Fool gag, and is not a true story. It is false, and all details have been invented. We hope that everyone enjoyed the joke.
Early details hint that Jackson and Warner Bros. are planning something on an even-larger scale: a massive week-long Middle-earth-themed carnival of events and activities that turn TABA’s debut into “the largest-ever world premiere of a film”. We’ve also noted that it sets Warner Bros. up for a strong one-two punch at the box office with the release of Pan just two weeks earlier.
Readers will, of course, recall that the date for The Hobbit: There And Back Again has, already been pushed back once from July to December 2014. I think we can all sincerely hope that this is the last shift in date for the film!
The official press release follows:
“The Hobbit: There and Back Again” to be released July 29, 2015 and will premiere at Comic-Con International
Continue reading “The Hobbit: There and Back Again release date pushed back to premiere at Comic-Con in July 2015”
Director Jonathan King’s new film Realiti, featuring Graham McTavish among the cast, will have its world premiere in Wellington on July 31st, with further screenings there and in Auckland in early August. Written by Chad Taylor, the film was made whilst McTavish was also busy with pickups for a certain trilogy; the director says:
