BONN — HobbitCon 2, in Bonn, Germany is just hours away from starting with a hotel packed full of special guests, lecturers, and fans from around the world.
The Maritim Hotel in Bonn hosts the entire event, which takes over the whole property for the weekend. A full slate of lectures and presentations are scheduled starting just a few hours from now. All of the 13 dwarves from The Hobbit movies are present save Richard Armitage, who is at WonderCon, James Nesbitt who was scheduled but had to cancel and Aiden Turner. That means Adam Brown, Jed Brophy, John Callen, Ken Stott, Mark Hadlow, Peter Hambleton, Stephen Hunter, Dean O’Gorman, Graham McTavish and William Kircher are all involved. (That means three trolls are here as well!) The gentlemen were present and were rumored to have been observed hanging around the hotel last night talking together and to each other. Reportedly, 26 countries are represented at the event.
The first HobbitConRichard Taylor and Royd Tolkien were also in the house as was Mark Atkin — Thorin Oakenshiled in scale size. TheOneRing.net has three panels scheduled for the weekend, including one tomorrow evening, speculating on the third film in Peter Jackson’s adaptation. With the entire event scheduled in one place, it gives the whole affair a remarkable, intimate feeling that is a little challenging to explain. Its one of those things where you have to be there.
In fact, European fans can still make that happen, buying tickets by walking up to the hotel. Details can be found RIGHT HERE. TORn would love to see you in person around the hotel and at the first panel at 5 p.m.!
TORn staffer greendragon says: Continuing my ‘Inside the Middle-earth Actor’s Studio’ series of interviews, I recently had the great pleasure of a phone conversation with Peter Hambleton, who plays Gloin in The Hobbit movies. What a charming, erudite, intelligent and modest chap he is! He has nothing but praise for his fellow cast members, and for director Peter Jackson; I’d wonder if he was perhaps being too generous in his kind words, were it not for the fact that ALL the cast talk about each other, and their experiences on set, in such glowing terms. It’s really no surprise that all the cast talk about having a great time making The Hobbit movies; they’re all such nice people!
Hambleton and I talked for an hour, and covered topics such as what he’s working on now, how he prepares for a role, what he thinks of Middle-earth fandom, and just why Peter Jackson is a brilliant director of actors. He also gives a little hint of something we might see in the third Hobbit movie, and spills the beans about another movie he’d love to do with PJ…
A little bird came knocking today, and whispered some intriguing — and slightly baffling — news into our ears. Ringer Spy The Knocking Thrush, who is a reliable source, dropped us a line to let us know that New Line have registered a new title: The Hobbit: Into the Fire. But for what?
A quick reminder of the history of The Hobbit movie titles may be in order!
Convention season is upon us, and the first big shindig on the TheOneRing.net Calendar is Wondercon in Anaheim. Tickets are still available if you find yourself in So Cal this weekend, so head on over to the Wondercon site and register to attend. There is a full schedule of panels, screenings, an artist alley to visit, the exhibitors hall for all your geeky shopping needs, and plenty of cosplay going on. We will be reporting on the Warner Bros. panel on Saturday morning, so follow our tweets for live reporting from the con, and a post later that afternoon for any and all Hobbit details. TheOneRing.net will have it’s first big panel of the year on Saturday afternoon at 5:30pm in Room 300DE.
For the collectors out there, don’t miss some of the wonderful exclusives that will be at Wondercon throughout the weekend. You can find the list at Wondercon Exclusives where you will see TORn’s own Wondercon Dragon shirt and Badali Jewelry’s Gold plated Dwarven battle axe. TORn’s booth is #1504 and Badali is just two booths away at booth #1404. And there are some wonderful exclusives offered by a number of other vendors as well, so happy shopping.
Sauron created the One Ring in secrecy, so little is known of how he created it. Gandalf was able to do research in the libraries of Gondor to determine the nature and look of the One Ring, but not much more on it’s forging. Luckily, our good friends at Badali Jewelry are much more forthcoming in how they make this very special item. Below is a video of just what goes into making the One Ring, minus the Malice of Sauron being added to it.
Now that you have seen the process, we asked the artisans at Badali what kind of timeline it takes, and here is the response from Janelle Powell:
From start to finish it takes us about a week to make each item, but that is because we are doing each step in batches to maximize our work time. The actual time spent on each One Ring of Power is approximately 3-4 hours of hands on work time (meaning its in the hands of a jeweler and actively being worked on). This does not include time for the investment to set up (approximately 1 hour), time in the burn out ovens (an overnight process), cool down time (15-20 minutes), time in the pickle (varies), time in the ultra sonic cleaner, and time in the tumblers (anywhere from 1hr to overnight). If the item in question is one of our Gollum Gold 24k Gold Plated One Rings these are sent out of house to be plated which takes about a week and a half. Once they come back from the plater we inspect each ring to make sure that the plating was done properly, string them on a chain and pack them in their draw string pouches. If there is any enamel or paint work to be done on the ring, this adds anywhere from 10 minutes – 2 hours of time as well. All and all, it’s a lengthy back breaking process, but the results are well worth it and ensure that we produce the highest quality items for our customers.
Badali Jewelry will be at Wondercon this coming weekend, and can be found at booth #1404, just a few spaces over from TORn’s booth at #1504. Make sure to stop by and say hello, check out their amazing work, and enter their drawing for some free jewelry. You can also visit them on the web right here.
With the Home Video release of The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (which becomes available this week in Australia, Brazil and parts of Europe), Richard Armitage has been busy giving interviews, as we’ve been posting over the past week or so. He found time to sit down again with staffer greendragon, and they chatted about finding Thorin’s voice one last time, what he’s working on now, and what it was like to fill (literally!) those mighty dwarven boots… Here’s what he had to say:
BONN — HobbitCon 2, in Bonn, Germany is just hours away from starting with a hotel packed full of special guests, lecturers, and fans from around the world.
