The 2009 DragonCon schedule promises to be interesting and fun and features John Noble, a list of speakers and even TheOneRing.net. The event takes place annually, this year September 4-7, in a series of hotels in downtown Atlanta, Georgia. You can read details about the convention here and all the details of the Tolkien programming right here. TORn is scheduled to present an unauthorized look at everything we know so far about the production of ‘The Hobbit’ films and then present for discussion many of the things still open for speculation just as official pre-production begins.
How serious are things getting on pre-pre-production on “The Hobbit”? Unconfirmed word has reached us (thanks spies!) that Lawrence Makoare (the unforgettable Lurtz, among other roles) has been asked to meet with Guillermo del Toro regarding “The Hobbit.” Certainly the versatile actor, stuntman and good guy would be great to have around the set but on a purely speculative note, do we have our Goblin King?
Cliff ‘Quickbeam’ Broadway and his gang at slaveboyfilms.com were at Meltdown Comics recently and caught up with Guillermo del Toro to talk THE HOBBIT!!
TheOneRing.net catches up with Guillermo Del Toro at Meltdown Comics in Hollywood. We touch on all topics Hobbit - voice of Smaug, the movie split, and even TORn anniversary!
Get GDT’s new vampire novel from Meltdown Comics
Check out other great videos, DVDs and T-shirts from Slave Boy Films
DiveTwin points out on our message boards that a campaign has been launched to re-open a pub that was once a haunt of none other than J.R.R. Tolkien’s. The story reads: Pub lovers are backing a campaign to return a pub once popular with Lord of the Rings writer JRR Tolkien to its former glory. The Community Alert on Pubs group is hoping to re-open the Grade-II Listed Three Cups Hotel in Lyme Regis, West Dorset, which was where Tolkien is believed to have penned much of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.Read on
From thebookseller.com: J R R Tolkien will move into the digital age as HarperCollins begins selling his Lord of the Rings series as enhanced e-books.
As The Bookseller went to press, the publisher said it was planning to issue Tolkien’s entire back catalogue as e-books, beginning with the Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Hobbit and The Children of Húrin from today [20th April]. The e-books will include the maps and runes contained in the traditional print books and will be on sale at waterstones.com, harpercollinsebooks.co.uk and tolkien.co.uk. Waterstone’s will have a dedicated author page featuring the e-books from today.
David Roth-Ey, director of digital business development, said that the launch was the “most significant e-book initiative” the publisher has done so far. He said: “This is something that the fans so clearly wanted. Releasing Tolkien in e-books is something that has long been a goal of ours and we wanted to create high-quality legal versions of these books. It was a long -process—with the maps and runes, it’s slightly more complicated than [digitising] your average thriller.” HC turns Middle Earth digital
“The Hobbit,” has to be cast but that just leaves more time for fans to speculate, guess and suggest regarding the casting of the two-films planned by producer Peter Jackson and director Guillermo del Toro.
There are a few givens. According to the decision makers, as many of the main characters that appear in both Jackson’s LOTR trilogy and GDT’s Hobbit films will be cast using existing actors from those roles as possible. And while media outlets trying to create news about the film have asked any actor they can find if they will appear, the list of sure crossovers are relatively small.
Ian Holm, approaching 80 years old, has stated that he is too old to play Bilbo because of the physical demands of the role and the required relocation to New Zealand. So the search for the main character is on. Most readers will be familiar with characters like Gandalf that belong to actors such as Ian McKellen so they will not be rehashed here because there is no debate about who will fill the role.
Read inside to find lists of names with links to help fans become familiar with many of the offered suggestions. Read the rest of this entry »
From Entertainment Weekly: When the news came down yesterday that a heretofore unpublished book by J.R.R. Tolkien will be hitting bookstores in May, I was a little surprised that I, an avowed Tolkien dilettante, felt a genuine twinge of excitement. Although I have never read Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit, I did love me Peter Jackson’s LOTR moving pictures something fierce, and I’m quite twitterpated to see what director Guillermo Del Toro and exec producer Jackson have cooking for The Hobbit. Maybe this new Tolkien story — which the good professor reportedly wrote before spinning his tales of furry-footed Hobbits and ring-seeking dark lords — would prove just as richly filled with fodder for a sweeping fantasy epic that wins oodles of Oscars. EW.com
Last night I was watching ‘The Antiques Roadshow’, a long-running TV programme on the BBC in the UK. It involves members of the public bringing antiques and so on to show to experts, in order to get more information about them, and a valuation. Those of you in the UK can see the programme on the BBC’s iPlayer for the next five or six days, here.The interesting bit is about 35 minutes 45 seconds into the programme. For those of you who can’t view iPlayer, I’ll give you a rundown. A lady had brought in her copy of ‘The Hobbit’, a first edition from 1937. In about 1940-41, she had lent the book to a friend. She forgot who she’d lent it to, and her friend forgot who she’d borrowed if from, presumably not thinking to look inside the fly-leaf, where the owner’s name was written. Read the rest of this entry »
J.R.R. Tolkien scholar Douglas A. Anderson will present “Annotating The Hobbit & Other Adventures” at Bradley University’s Neumiller Chapel in Bradley Hall at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 17, in Peoria, Illinois. Anderson is the award-winning author and editor of The Annotated Hobbit, Tales Before Tolkien, Tales Before Narnia, Seekers of Dreams, and, with Verlyn Flieger, an expanded critical edition of Tolkien’s On Fairy-stories. He is also an editor of the academic journal Tolkien Studies.
Bradley adjunct and former Illinois Central College English professor Mike Foster will be the moderator of the free lecture. Foster has been the North American representative of the Tolkien Society since 1995. From 1974 until his retirement in 2005, he taught a literature course on Tolkien and another on fantasy literature at Illinois Central College. In 2006 and 2008, he taught an upper-division version of that class at Bradley University. The lecture is sponsored by the Cullom-Davis Library Speakers Committee in conjunction with The Friends of the Library Committee. Read More
Loading ...
The 2009 DragonCon schedule promises to be interesting and fun and features John Noble, a list of speakers and even TheOneRing.net. The event takes place annually, this year September 4-7, in a series of hotels in downtown Atlanta, Georgia. You can read details about the convention here and all the details of the Tolkien programming right here. TORn is scheduled to present an unauthorized look at everything we know so far about the production of ‘The Hobbit’ films and then present for discussion many of the things still open for speculation just as official pre-production begins. 
How serious are things getting on pre-pre-production on “The Hobbit”? Unconfirmed word has reached us (thanks spies!) that Lawrence Makoare (the unforgettable Lurtz, among other roles) has been asked to meet with Guillermo del Toro regarding “The Hobbit.” Certainly the versatile actor, stuntman and good guy would be great to have around the set but on a purely speculative note, do we have our Goblin King?
