It’s here! After months of waiting, Ringers finally have the ROTK DVD in our hot little hands. At last, the whole trilogy can be watched all at once!
What is your reaction to ROTK after all this time? Still the “greatest movie ever!” or “a total disaster” or have your feelings mellowed over time? Does ROTK deserve to be one of the most Oscar winning films of all time? And how about those special features? Is it worth buying the theatrical release as well as the extended edition? What things to do you notice when watching all three movies together? Join us in The Hall of Fire as we explore these and other issues surrounding the release of “The Return of the King” on DVD.
upcoming topics:
June 5-6, 2004: The Hobbit – Chapter 9
June 12-13, 2004: : Galadriel/Nerwen Artanis: The Lady of the Golden Wood and Ring-bearer
Times:
Saturday Chat:
5:30pm ET (17:30)
[also 10:30pm (22:30) GMT and 7:30am (07:30) Sunday AET]
Sunday Chat:
7:00 pm (19:00) CET
[also 1pm ET (13:00) and 3am (03:00) Monday morning AET]
ET = Eastern Time, USA’s East Coast
CET = Central European Time, Central Europe
AET = Australian East Coast
Do you have a possible topic for Hall of Fire? Drop us a line at
halloffire@theonering.net
Ringer Spy Silivren-Gul writes: I had the privilege today to go to see Howard Shore conduct LOTR music at the Royal Festival Hall today with the London Philharmonic Orchestra.
It was nothing short of spectacular! The music was performed in six movements, two for each film. The set up was as follows:
* * *
Fellowship Of The Ring
Movement 1:
The Prophecy-Concerning Hobbits – The Shadow Of The Past – A Short Cut To Mushrooms – The Old Forest – A Knife In The Dark
Movement 2:
Many Meetings – The Ring Goes South – A Journey In The Dark – The Bridge of Khazad-Dum – Lothlorien (which was incorrectly spelt in the program as Lothloriem!) – Gandalf’s Lament – Farewell To Lorien – The Great River – The Breaking Of The Fellowship (Including In Dreams but not May It Be 🙁 )
20 minute interval
The Two Towers
Movement 3:
Foundations Of Stone – The Taming Of Smeagol – The Riders Of Rohan – The Black Gate Is Closed – Evenstar – The White Rider – Treebeard – The Forbidden Pool
Movement 4:
The Hornburg – Forth Eorlingas – Isengard Unleashed – Gollum’s Song
The Return Of The King
Movement 5:
Hope And Memory – The White Tree – The Steward Of Gondor (No vocals 🙁 ) – Cirith Ungol – Anduril
Movement 6:
The End Of All Things – The Return Of The King – The Grey Havens – Into The West
Standing Ovation ( 🙂 )
Throughout the performance, artwork by John Howe and Alan Lee was shown on a screen above the orchestra, and not clips from the films. It made an excellent mix, putting together film music and book artwork, and proved very popular.
The Choirs present were “London Voices” (soloists : Susan Flannery and Lawrence Wallington) and the “London Oratory School (Schola Cantorum)” (soloist: Benedict Delmaestro). Also present, doing most of the solo vocals was an exquisitely talented Scandinavian woman by the name of “Sissel” (www.sissel.net) who did an amazing job singing many solo parts.
* * *
All this, combined with the energetic conducting from the amazing Howard Shore made up a very memorable concert, and for those who could not go, tickets are still on sale for the 22nd September (Royal Albert Hall) when there will be a similar performance, in honour of Frodo and Bilbo’s birthday! (www.royalalberthall.com) I am certainly going again, and I recommend it to you all!
Humble Sauron writes: I noticed yesturday you guys posted the 2 cards from Deipher new set “Reflections” and said that none of the pictures are from ROTK(on the cards) and there done by Weta Workshop. That is wrong information, not to put the guy down or anything. Actually this is what Decipher and Weta are doing together.
The pictures on the Reflections cards belong to Decipher they were not made by Weta, but are actually scenes and snapshopts provided by the people with all the rights to LOTR. So some of the pictures are nothing you saw in the movie. Now the cards that are done by Weta, they have a bug in the bottom right hand corner to signify Wetas involvement in making that card. There will be more of these cards in later sets starting with “Shadows” which comes out sometime in November.
The characters you also see in the weta cards are mostly Weta’s own employees!!! Good stuff and also the people dessed up as Ragdast and Glorfindel are the orignal actors that would be playing that character.
Abner writes: Here’s the best shot of the Manuia boat I took today, the others had the light against them and then the crew came outside and I didn’t want to get hassled… 🙂 They seemed to be fireproofing the inside of the boat earlier today, at least that’s what one of the vans had written on the side of it. You can clearly see the scaffolding around the front of the boat, and the cannopy wrapped around it. This alteration has been there about a week or so, and you can tell from the shabby look of the hessia cover that we’ve had some good hard winds here this week (110 kph!).
I’ll be heading over to the Miramar suburb tomorrow, but I probably won’t take any amazing photos. Weta Studios are pretty boring – apart from one lone Orc figure in the window (far away and in the dark, not really photographable) there’s nothing to see, all the windows are boarded up. There might be something happening outside the Stone Street Studios though (where the Mumak Harnass is stored outside). There’s been a lot of activity there in the last few weeks, but nothing I’ve been able to recognise so far. I’ll see what I can come up with.
Faye-Elf writes: I don’t know if anyone else has reported this but I saw Elijah Wood filming on location in London yesterday afternoon (25-April).
While coming home from work at 4.30pm I accidentally stumbled upon a film crew making that movie about the football hooligans that he is doing at the moment. They were filming a fight scene outside the main entrance of Fenchurch Street train station.
Elijah was getting beaten up by another man and he had blood all down his face and looked pretty rough. Unfortunately there were lots of police and film crew around so we didn’t get the chance to talk to him, but thought this might be of interest.
sevenstar_3 writes: Hello! I saw another ringer post that they had the chance to see Andy Serkis in his next project 13 going on 30.
I have been lucky enough to go to two movie screenings this past month featuring LOTR cast members, Troy, with Orlando Bloom and Sean Bean and The Chronicles of Riddick, with Karl Urban. I have posted some reviews and comments on both films over on imdb.com, but I just wanted to let the fans know that even though they are not key players in the movie trailers, Sean Bean in Troy and Karl Urban in Riddick have considerably more screen time then I would have guessed from the previews……… and of course with the rise of Orlando Bloom, he has been heavily marketed in Troy, but Sean Bean has just as much screen time. So while the movies that I saw were not complete (special effects, soundtracks, etc) It was nice to have the opportunity to see some of the “follow-up” films from the cast.
