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A nearly three-week wait for premiere tickets in unusually cold weather is about to end for Norway's most fanatic Lord of the Rings fans. On Monday their quest will be over, and the currently 144 strong crowd of hobbits, orcs, elves and other assorted creatures can return to warmer homes. The wait has not been easy as October has been freezing, and the faithful do not always get electricity to power the utilities scattered around their makeshift camp on the doorstep of the Colosseum Cinema. "Yet again we behave in exemplary fashion and still the fire department denies us...

Bollywood composer for Rings showThe West End version of Tolkien epic Lord of the Rings will have a score written by a top Bollywood composer.AR Rahman, who also wrote the music for Andrew Lloyd Webber's hit Bombay Dreams,has been commissioned to produce a raft of original songs.Rahman is a star in his native India and has sold more than 100 million albums, composing the soundtracks to more than 50 Bollywood films.The £8m musical is due to open in the spring of 2005.'Brilliant melodies'Producer Kevin Wallace said: "We are recreating Middle Earth and we needed the music that goes with it...

On a recent Tuesday, the composer Howard Shore left his hotel in London and climbed into a black Mercedes for the forty-five-minute drive to Watford, an unromantic suburb northwest of the city. There, in the Watford Colosseum, a municipal dance hall opposite a tanning salon, a sweetshop, and a pharmacy, Shore was working on the score for “The Return of the King,” the last movie in the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, a project that has occupied him for the past three years and will soon be completed. “I knew the acoustics of this Watford room,” Shore explained. “It’s been...

<p>Early last evening I got to see about 20 minutes from “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King,” Peter Jackson’s third and final installment in his epic rendering of the Tolkien books.</p> <p>As we could have predicted, the scenes a few of us had the pleasure of screening were top notch — indicating that Jackson and the folks at New Line Cinema will go boldly into this year’s Oscar race with every intention of winning.</p>

THE FULL ROTK TRAILER IS HERE! 9/26/03, 3:42 pm EST - Xoanon Yes, TheOneRing.net brings you the FULL ROTK trailer for you to feast your eyes on. Taken from a TV source obviously in Asia, this trailer has subtitles and text on the bottom. But you can still enjoy the BEAUTY of it! ROTK BABY! !!!HUMUNGO SPOILERS!!! [More] UPDATE: We've now converted this to a significantly smaller 14MB Quicktime file. If you are experiencing difficulty connecting to the above link, please be patient and try back a bit later. It is worth the wait, we promise! Thanks.

Any Lord of the Rings fans have kids (10 and 12yrs) party ideas, especially for games, centered around Tolkien themes? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

Link to LOTR vs Left Behind article. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/978305/posts?page=1

The 'Ring' and the remnants of the West By Spengler The most important cultural event of the past decade is the ongoing release of the film version of J R R Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. No better guide exists to the mood and morals of the United States. The rapturous response among popular audiences to the first two installments of the trilogy should alert us that something important is at work. Richard Wagner's 19th-century tetralogy of music dramas, The Ring of the Nibelungs, gave resonance to National Socialism during the inter-war years of the last century. Tolkien does...

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Welcome to The Hobbit Hole! The Road Goes Ever On… First thread: New Zealander builds Hobbit holeSecond thread: The New Hobbit HoleThird thread: The Hobbit Hole III - Journey to the Cross-roads! (Congratulations, we filled it up!) The Road goes ever on and on Down from the door where it began. Now far ahead the Road has gone, And I must follow, if I can, Pursuing it with eager feet, Until it joins some larger way Where many paths and errands meet. And whither then? I cannot say.

In case you guys haven't heard, TheOneRing.net put up some footage from ROTK (I believe it was originally shown at ComicCon in San Diego, it is about 1:30 long), but New Line made them take it down. As I am posting this, the footage is available at empiremovies.com at the link above, just click on the trailer and you can watch it streaming or download it. This site will probably be forced to take it down also soon, so you should get it while you can. It is not perfectly lip-synched, but it is definately ROTK footage, not seen in...

A Tolkien Virgin: The Fellowship of the Ring - Book 1 - Chapter 12 and Overviewby Mark-Edmond The Journey Continues "'By Elbereth and Lúthien the Fair,' said Frodo with a last effort, lifting up his sword, 'you shall have neither the Ring nor me!'" Chapter 12 Flight to the FordI am exhausted! The constant pursuit and extremity of plot complications is tiring--not tiresome so that I don't want to keep reading (like The Silmarillion at times). Naturally, it's not as miserable as The Silmarillion which is okay by me. When our protagonists start getting killed off one by one, then...

Peter Jackson's special-effects company Weta Digital is reaching deep into its chest of high-tech sword and sorcery to complete the final instalment of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Return of the King. It has just taken delivery of 588 IBM blade servers, each with two 2.8 gigahertz Intel Xeon processors, in a deal which on list prices would be approaching $5 million. "IBM were particularly aggressive on their pricing. "We are very pleased with the relationship we have with them," said Weta Digital chief technical officer Scott Houston. Houston said the seven racks of blade servers, when added...

A Tolkien Virgin: The Fellowship of the Ring - Book 1 - Chapter 11by Mark-EdmondThe Journey Continues "At that moment Frodo threw himself forward on the ground, and he heard himself crying aloud: O Elbereth! Gilthoniel! At the same time he struck at the feet of his enemy..." Chapter 11 A Knife in the Darkmmm...good chapter...First of all, it's nice to know that Fatty Bolger has survived his inevitable run-in with the Black Riders at Crickhallow.The chapter slows down in the middle, but an image I particularly liked was the "lightning that leaps up from the hilltops" that Frodo...

A Tolkien Virgin: The Fellowship of the Ring - Book 1 - Chapter 10by Mark-EdmondThe Journey Continues "But I am the real Strider, fortunately," he said, looking down at them with his face softened by a sudden smile. "I am Aragorn son of Arathorn; and if by life or death I can save you, I will." Chapter 10 StriderOn with it! The story really grabs me and I don't want to stop now! sigh...but if I must:So I got to thinking about the differences between The Silmarillion and The Hobbit and now The Fellowship of the Ring. I can't...

A Tolkien Virgin: The Fellowship of the Ring - Book 1 - Chapter 9by Mark-Edmond The Journey Continues Frodo's disappearing act at the Prancing Pony. Chapter 9 At the Sign of the Prancing PonyThe theme for this chapter is frustration and irritation. Not at Tolkien! In fact, I'd say what I'm feeling is exactly what Tolkien intended.Danger, we know, is close. From the start of the chapter some dark figure slipped over the gate behind them.But Frodo and the others forget their danger too easily. Before long our hobbits are acting carelessly. And, even Frodo gets carried away and doesn't...

A Tolkien Virgin: The Fellowship of the Ring - Book 1 - Chapters 7 & 8by Mark-EdmondThe Journey Continues "Before long, washed and refreshed, the hobbits were seated at the table, two on each side, while at either end sat Goldberry and the Master. It was a long and merry meal..." Chapter 7 In the house of Tom BombadilWow! Wow! WOW! Tom Bombadil!? I'm at a loss for words... so now I'm wracking my brain from my Silmarillion read last year trying to figure out if he's a maiar or ainur that I'm familiar with.He has to be at...

Mother-less Heroes As this is the first article I’ve written for topic, I suppose I should begin by introducing myself. (No, that is not my photo. That’s himself - Tolkien as a young myth-smith.)If there is any decency in this world, details of my checkered past shall forever be hidden – locked up tighter than Feanor’s jewels. Those interested in my own ‘water-color’ version of pertinent personal ‘better-side’ factoids can link on over to my profile later. Otherwise, the only thing I have to say is that I first entered the Shire when I was eighteen and have never truly...

A Tolkien Virgin: The Fellowship of the Ring - Book 1 - Chapter 6by Mark-Edmond The Journey Continues "You let them out again, Old Man Willow!" he said. "What be you a-thinking of? You should not be waking. Eat earth! Dig deep! Drink water! Go to sleep! Bombadil is talking!" Chapter 6 The Old ForestAh hah! So the light and thunder of Frodo's dream was Merry waking him up. But it still leaves the tower, huh?I wonder if Tolkien had a bad experience in a forest of some kind when he was a kid. First Mirkwood, in the Hobbit, and...

Butterbeer & HobbitsMeriadoc Brandybuck and Peregrin Took: Tolkien's oft Overlooked Heroes by Jacqueline O. Moleski  Frodo Baggins and his servant Samwise Gamgee have been the focus of many articles, essays and even books. However, as awesome as those two Hobbits are; there are two other Hobbits in the tale of The Lord of the Rings who have often been overlooked by fans and critics alike. Peter Jackson, however, has realized and visualized these two important characters perfectly. The focus of this essay is the characters of Merry and Pippin and how these two young Hobbits emerge as heroes in their...