It will be an important and historical day in Tolkien history when the new book, “The Children of Hurin” goes on sale. It will be even more significant for a few hundred people who manage to snag a copy signed by Christopher Tolkien and illustrator Alan Lee! At the Manhattan’s Barnes & Noble (555 Fitfh Ave., between 45th & 46th streets) fans will start lining up at 8 a.m. to get one of the rarest of rare, highly coveted copies. TheOneRing.net will be on hand to distribute edible breakfast stuff to keep fans alive until the book goes on sale at noon. Better yet, the first 500 fans in line will get a great (and we mean great) prize from Sideshow Collectibles!
Our friends at Sideshow Collectibles have a surprise (except that we just let it slip) for the first 500 people attending. This is no promotional trinket, but is worth virtually what an unsigned book costs. (What the signed books might sell for on Ebay is anybody’s guess.) In addition Sideshow has provided 10 or so bigger prize items for a lucky few and Turbine Inc., producers of the ready-to-launch online Tolkien game “The Lord of the Rings Online” have another dozen grand prizes. (Something do to with the game perhaps?!) So, in the course of waiting for the almost unthinkably cool copy of “Children of Hurin” signed by J.R.R. Tolkien’s son and literary heir, Christopher Tolkien, TheOneRing.net, courtesy of Houghton-Mifflin, Sideshow Collectibles and Turbine Inc. will distribute many thousands of dollars worth of prizes!
Barnes & Noble will have a security agent on hand and all people participating in the 8 a.m. line are expected to behave in an orderly and polite fashion. Our goal is to make an event out of the greatest Tolkien literary event in 30 years! (Not to disrupt business.)
Those TORnados planning to attend (part of the greater Tolkien public sure to attend) please go to Barnes & Noble line party and sign up. This will help us know how much breakfast stuff to plan for! Rumour has it that the publisher may rally local media and we definitely want to show the world that the Tolkien era is far from over and the heady days of Hollywood blockbusters was just another stage in many decades of Tolkien fandom. See you there!
UTAH – April 28, 2007 – 10 A.M. to Midnight at the University of Utah campus. Tolkien fans rejoice. Dust off your ring, reveal those elf ears and revel in Middle-earth. “Into the West”, Lord of the Rings Fellowship of Utah invites you to participate in a full day of fun and frivolity. Activities include treasure hunt for the One Ring, Middle-earth dance, gaming, art room, workshops, vendors, crafts, lectures by Professor Michael Collings on “Names and Naming,” Professor Stephen Fullmer on “Women in Middle-earth,” and keynote address by Professor Paul Hyde on the “Tapestry of Middle-earth.” Prices start at $20.00 with add-on’s for Middle-earth dinner and T-shirts. Proceeds of this exciting event will benefit Nutcracker for Kids, part of the Community Share program. This program allows disadvantaged children the opportunity to attend cultural events. For more information and to register, go to www.IntoTheWest.org
J. R. R. Tolkien Story Is Set by American Composer
The world premiere of Part Two of LEITHIAN, an opera by by Adam Klein, will be presented Saturday, April 14, 2007 at 3 PM and Sunday, April 15, 2007 at 7 PM, at the music hall of St. Michael’s Church, 225 West 99th Street, New York City.
The cast will include soprano Tami Swartz, Metropolitan Opera tenor Adam Klein, jazz legend Valery Ponomarev, Metropolitan Opera basses Steven Fredericks and Nathan Bahny, NYGASP mezzo-soprano Dianna Dollman, baritone C. David Morrow, bass Walter Du Melle, tenor Stefan Paolini, and soprano Anita Lyons. Elizabeth Hastings will play piano and conduct a small instrumental ensemble. This will be a concert performance.
For those familiar with the recent Tolkien films but not the books, LEITHIAN, or Release from Bondage, takes place in the First Age of Middle-earth, when Sauron was but a captain of an even greater evil being, Morgoth the Black Enemy. (The stories of THE HOBBIT and THE LORD OF THE RINGS occur in the Third Age.) It is the heroic tale of how Beren and Lúthien – ancestors of Aragorn, Arwen and Elrond – achieved what the entire Elvish army could not: rescue one of the three Silmarils (luminous jewels made by the great Elf-smith Fëanor) from Morgoth’s Crown. It is also the story of the first union between Elf and Man (the last being Arwen and Aragorn).
ASCAP member Adam Klein, who studied composition with John Lessard and Donald Erb, has been a singer since age 4 and a composer since age seven. He began LEITHIAN in 1982 after reading that Tolkien had hoped his stories would be set to music. Completed in 1992, this epic opera (four and one half hours of music plus intermissions) is faithful to its source: the story was not altered and no characters were omitted or conflated. The libretto blends texts by Tolkien and the composer, the former’s being too incomplete to draw from exclusively. The concerts on April 14 and 15 will present the second half of the piece, though like THE LORD OF THE RINGS it was written as one continuous drama. The first half was premiered last July at Liederkranz Hall. Klein is son of Juilliard piano grad and former New York Times music critic Howard Klein, and American realist painter Patricia Windrow.
J. R. R. Tolkien, who began writing THE SILMARILLION in 1917, worked on it for the rest of life, never completing it. His first book, THE HOBBIT, was published in 1937. The three volumes of THE LORD OF THE RINGS were completed in 1955. It was left to Christopher Tolkien, after his father’s death in 1973, to complete THE SILMARILLION.
Tickets at the door will be $20 for adults, $10 for children 12 and under.
LOTR Shadowfax star “Blanco” will be at Equine Affaire Ohio from April 12-15, 2007. Please come see him where he will be on display from 8:30-5:00 each day featured in the Celebrity Horse Showcase in the Youth Pavilion. In addition, we’ll be bringing him out of the viewing stall once daily for an up-close and personal session once daily Thursday through Sunday at 2:00pm for a 30 minute talk about him and our training methods. We’ll have posters and T-shirts available for sale, as well as our just released video featuring footage of him and I at liberty AND riding bridleless on the beach in California which will detail our training methods. Please invite all the Ringers to come visit him and stop by and say hello to Tony or I who will be there with him all day, each day!
Any Ringers interested in a lock of Blanco’s hair, please ask me when you see us as we’ll be bringing a bunch of it that was clipped off to share with his most honored fans. And if you’re up to it, PLEASE come in LOTR costume so we won’t feel all alone!
Thanks and see you all in Ohio ~ Cynthia Royal, Owner/Handler of LOTR Shadowfax star Blanco. [equineaffaire.com]
Translated by Nimthiriel: SANTIAGO.- Viggo Mortensen´s biography and passport may say he’s American, but the years spent living in Argentina left a deep print on him.
Two examples: before starting this interview, he receives a gift box with “alfajores” (a type of argentinian biscuit filled with milk caramel) and a mug with the name of his favorite argentinean soccer team San Lorenzo de Almagro, which transforms itself into an improvised “mate” (a leaf that is made into tea, and is very popular in Argentina) that will accompany him during the long list of interviews he has to give.
There’s also his perfect Spanish. He doesn’t hesitate or stops to look for a certain word in order to express himself, something that helped him interpret Captain Diego Alatriste, the lead role in this production inspired by Arturo Perez Reverte’s books, the reason of his visit to Chile.
Mortensen says he doesn’t feel always inclined to do this type of characters, like Lord of the Rings’ Aragorn: epic, lonely, man of few words. “I don’t know, one thing is what you’re interested in playing, and another the things you get offered. Besides, I think Diego Alatriste apart from being a guy that uses a sword, is very different, they don’t have much in common”.
This actor combines his passion for drama with literature (he owns an editorial in the US) and painting, that’s why he already knew the works of Perez Reverte before they offered him the leading role. “But I had not read Captain Alatriste novels, so I read all five available at the time right away, and that’s when I realized that Agustin Diaz Yanes, the director, had done a great work in the adaptation”.
Now he has something that Alatriste’s fans will envy: “I have the honor of having my Alatriste novels signed by Reverte”.
Harsh Words
The artistic side of this actor is not the only field in which he stands out from the rest, he has spoken his opinion clearly when talking about Bush or the war or things that to him are unjust. Like the time he visited the mother of a soldier who died in Irak camping outside the American President’s ranch.
But he says the social or political elements that the adventures of the Spanish captain have did not influence his acceptance when taking the job: “I pay attention and sometimes I say things, it may be better just to shut up and do your work, but once in a while you see things that are obvious and don’t get published, or you hear lies from the people that govern, as do all governments, because it’s their way of survival. But that was not my motivation to do this movie”.
“I accepted the script because I liked it and thought it was a historical time not very well known outside the academic world or the Spanish speaking countries.”
In the press conference he gave yesterday, a few hours after arriving, he spoke of the amount of bad scripts and texts he’s offered, and that he has resigned.
“It’s always the same, and also purely subjective. I can read a script and find it quite good, but then you read it and don’t like it at all, it’s subjective. I think that people who work in movies, reading scripts and stories would tell you that the majority of what it’s being done today, even though it’s well intended, it’s not well written. There are very few good stories, and it’s always been that way”.”
“Writing a good movie script is art, not everyone can do it, because when it’s well done it seems easy, but in reality, it is not that way” he adds.
Mortensen’s Mob
His next projects he’s got them very clear: “I just finished working with David Cronenberg, in a movie that comes out in Autumn (Spring in the Northern hemisphere) (“Eastern Promises”), with Naomi Watts, about the London Russian mob. I will also work as a lead actor in a western movie directed by Ed Harris”.
He doesn’t reject the possibility of trying new styles and work in a comedy or a romantic story: “If there’s the opportunity, I choose according to what is offered, according to what I can find out there. If there’s any luck, you’ll see me working in one sometime”.
BOSTON – Reading a novel, with some rare exceptions, is a solitary experience. Reading “The Lord of the Rings” has been bringing fans together almost since the work was published by J.R.R. Tolkien in 1954 but the group experience was shared after the initial journey through Middle-earth.
“The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar” game hopes to bring Tolkien enthusiasts together in real time to experience an immersive version of Tolkien’s fictional world as a social experience. The spread of the internet has turned Tolkienite fandom from isolated groups or individuals that held dialog in fanzines publications or at conferences into one of chat rooms and message boards and instant messages.
Turbine Entertainment is doing everything in its power to create a social network inside its game to foster the same social opportunities for those who share a love for Middle-earth have been creating for decades. Like any game, especially ones with an ‘adventuring’ backbone, conflict (fighting) is a key motivator and way to improve a character. But most readers of Tolkien’s books aren’t skipping right to the Pelennor fields section and Middle-earth isn’t one big battle ground.
So inside the 50 million square meters of Middle-earth available to be explored, (with likely expansions on the horizon) the game is arranged to make things social. When TheOneRing.net visited Turbine CEO Jeff Anderson said the game is stocked with “social innovation.” According to designers and Anderson, a solitary player will find plenty to do and there is not a need to join even the smallest official social unit called, naturally, a fellowship. But there is little doubt that such connections will create an enriched in-game experience.
Fellowships Players (such as users of TheOneRing.net) who find each other in the game can hook into fellowships with up to six players. (Why not nine? Don’t worry, we asked and Turbine explained that in this instance game play was more important than using a symbolic ‘fellowship’ number from the game that would create quests for nine and might be too difficult for smaller groups.) Fellowships (not to be confused with the Fellowship) have the ability for real time voice communication and will enjoy accomplishing “feats” as a group that require co-operation. Get your plug-in headphones ready. The idea here is to feel like family.
Advanced gamers (higher levels) will have the chance to go on raids as part of the game quests, often against groups or creatures that just couldn’t be defeated one-to-one. Raids can use up to 24 players but unlike some games there is no player vs. player feature.
Kinships The biggest groups in the game are “kinships” which are loosely affiliated groups that can be of unlimited – yes absolutely unlimited – size. With many servers providing the game experience players will need to play on the same servers in order to be in, for example, the TORn kinship. Let it be known now, far and wide, that TheOneRing.net will form a kinship on the “Meneldor” server. Kinships serve to provide a ‘friendly face’ to new players so they can be comfortable in Middle-earth and makes forming kinships for adventures much easier. Groups bond as they not only adventure together but enjoy many of the same experiences that message boards and chat rooms provide. Players can find an inn, such as The Prancing Pony, and sit down for a pint with kinship members and enjoy a fireside chat or a bit of pipeweed as well as a bit of music which will be explained in a paragraph or three.
In-game communication While in the virtual Middle-earth, several communication functions will be available. Those with headphones can talk as if over the phone. So yes, if your long distance bill is giant and your Mother enjoys a MMO game from time-to-time, why not visit her Hobbity self in the Shire as a gruff but heart-of-gold dwarf? It might add legitimacy to her claim that you are never going to get married, but the nagging might be more palatable coming from a Proudfoot.
The easiest form of communication is just typing to a character that you share game space with but you will also have in-game instant messaging. So, even if Uncle Frogrow (Steve from work) is off in the Barrow Downs you can remind him 30-minute lunch is getting stretched a bit and he better get back to work. The “ignore” feature is always a click away so if there are trouble makers on the server you can pretend they aren’t even there.
Commerce In Middle-earth players have skills and those skills often aren’t enough to provide everything one might wish for. A miner for example, often can’t turn his buckskin into a vest while a tailor can’t grow a vegetable and needs to buy fortifying food from a cook. As a result there are action houses and trading banks that encourage friendly interaction.
And now for something completely different All the previously mentioned functions aren’t new to multiplayer online games; in fact they are mostly standard. But Turbine decided early on in development that it wanted to keep players ‘home’ to do many of the things gamers already do away from gaming servers. As a result Middle-earth has some very modern features available to players. Instead of leaving to a community database elsewhere, players can create blogs and web pages for characters full of tips and tricks and guides to Middle-earth. It also allows a “Google Earth” map feature where players contribute information to key map points that for others to use in questing. Later when house and guildhouse building become a feature in later expansions (powerfully suspected after my visit to Turbine) the map feature will make it easy to find such places as (hypothetically) “Xoanon’s News Service” building or “TORn’s Rock Scrawling Message Board Kinship.” A wiki-like feature will also serve players and once again, all of it will be available in-game. And yea, that will keep the company’s page impressions even more robust.
Wight boys can wrap One of the fun and innovative projects in LOTRO is the player’s ability to compose and play music in the game. The keyboard can be converted into a music keyboard and ta-da! A few versions of recorded songs have been appearing on YouTube. Such as LOTRO Dust In The Wind .
If that doesn’t make the minstrel class cool, I just don’t know what does. The class (selected at the beginning of the game) is useful in groups to rally the troops and increase morale while causing the enemy to lose heart. How much better can role playing get then to actually play tunes in the heat of battle. This next clip has nothing to do with that but it does have great footage of the game and an all-time classic song. The closest thing to a Hobbit movie we have right now.
In conclusion So yes, you can play LOTRO alone, no problem. But perhaps the greatest attraction for me is to try to use the social aspects of the game. Tolkien, for many has always been about community. There are many MMO games on the market and by their very nature they share strong similarities but here “Lord of the Rings Online: Shadow of Angmar” really stands out.
