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New Hobbit trailer available online. YES!!!

The culture war might be likened to fighting a war against a coalition of powers. Imagine WWI-style trench warfare on a long front. In the center of the enemy lines are the forces of moral relativism. These forces oppose the idea that there is a universal moral law. On one flank are the forces of the sexual revolution, including gays, feminists, adulterers, the promiscuous, and the pro-abortion folks. On the other flank are the cultural relativists, and multiculturalists. This camp opposes the ideas of truth, beauty, and intrinsic quality. It seeks to suppress the literary, philosophical, and artistic heritage of...

Every year now for a number of years my wife and I watch the entire six disc extended version of the Lord of the Rings during the gloomy Northwest winter around the Thanksgiving-to New-Years time. It helps us through the winter gloom, but since Obama's election it also helps us maintain hope and courage. I grew up on Tolkien before he was well known, and it probably shaped me in ways I can scarcely appreciate. My wife on the other hand, from the Third World, had no inkling of Tolkien until this movie cycle came out. We are both very...

Read by Phil Dragash and edited, and mixed, sound-effected, and designed, and painted as well. Forgive the many mistakes and glitches. I'm the only one working on this after all!

PETER Jackson's troubled Hobbit project has become embroiled in a race row after a would-be extra was told she was too dark to play one of the pint-sized Tolkien creatures, reports said. Briton Naz Humphreys, who has Pakistani heritage, attended a casting session in the New Zealand city of Hamilton last week, queueing for three hours only to be told her skin tone was not suitable, the Waikato Times reported. "It's 2010 and I still can't believe I'm being discriminated against because I have brown skin," Humphreys told the newspaper. "The casting manager basically said they weren't having anybody who...

Many of us Ringers know the comparisons of The Lord of the Rings to Harry Potter are many. Well, Film.com has compiled a few for your reading pleasure. Enjoy! Fantasy stories generally lift from the same mythological source bank. Actually, if you want to get super scholarly and esoteric about it, every story (especially the more sword-and-sorcery themed variety) is the same basic “hero’s journey” archetype detailed by Joseph Campbell. But fantasy stories — King Arthur, Lord of the Rings, The Chronicles of Narnia, Willow, Peter Pan, Conan the Barbarian — build their world out of the same objects. You...

This is a surprising turn of events for The Hobbit. When a small coalition of actors’ unions in New Zealand and Australia pushed actors’ guilds across the world to boycott work on the films, citing an unfair residuals arrangement, Peter Jackson responded by threatening to move the production to Eastern Europe. But that would never happen, right? The organizations wouldn’t push away a huge chunk of work like the two Hobbit films by holding firm to a set of demands for which the production and backers at Warner Bros. have sought appropriate solutions — that would be crazy. And yet...

100,000 characters. Nine companions. Three masterworks. One Man to do it all. Following his recent sell-out run at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Canadian actor Charles Ross returns with his show One Man Lord Of The Rings for a full UK tour (plus a show in Dublin) in September.

Magpie writes: Doug Adams is letting us peek inside his upcoming book on the LOTR film music. Check out musicoflotr.com.

LORD of the Rings director Peter Jackson has been knighted for services to film. Sir Peter was made a Knight Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit after the New Zealand government announced in its New Year Honors today. Since starting out in film with cult classics the likes of Bad Taste and Meet the Feebles, Jackson's popular work has included the Lord of The Rings trilogy, a King Kong remake and most recently, a film adaptation of the best-selling Alice Sebold novel The Lovely Bones.

...In a host of end-of-year honors, Academy Award-winning filmmaker Peter Jackson and Star Trek actor Patrick Stewart were both feted with knighthood by Britain's Queen Elizabeth II...

The Canadian Press VANCOUVER — SNIPPET: "Khaled Nawaya, a flight instructor, was arrested by Canada Border Services agents when they found $800,000 in gold coins and other currency in his car and pockets on Oct. 6, as he crossed into Surrey, B.C., near Vancouver." SNIPPET: "He'd been living in the U.S. since he was 17 and had gained approval for permanent residency in Canada. Besides the gold, Canadian agents found a ring bearing the insignia of Hezbollah, which has been listed as a terrorist organization by the Canadian government since 2002. They also seized 9/11 conspiracy theory-themed DVDs and a...

"There is evil there that does not sleep. The great eye is ever watchful. It is a barren wasteland, riddled with fire, ash, and dust. The very air you breathe is a poisonous fume." - Boromir, Lord of the Rings "I am angry. I am sick in my soul. The West refuses to engage this enemy that has declared all out war on our civilization. The media, the UN, the political elites bow to Islam. They refuse to speak its name. They refuse to stop immigration. They are afraid." -- Pamela Geller, Atlas Shrugs If you think you have been...

‘… But you, John Sidney, Lord of the Mark of Republican, are declared by your noble devices, and still more by the fair countenance of the House of McCain. O worthy son of John the Thrice-renowned Admiral! Why have you not come before, and as a friend? Much have I desired to see you, mightiest Senator of western lands, and especially in these latter years, to save you from the unwise and evil counsels that beset you! Is it yet too late? Despite the injuries that have been done to me, in which the men of Bush, alas! have has...

Homosexual Lord of the Rings Star McKellen Blasts Catholic Bishop for Remarks on "Gay Lobby" By Hilary White LONDON, August 11, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Two prominent British homosexual actors have lashed out at a Catholic bishop for warning Catholic parents against the advance of the homosexualist movement. Sir Ian McKellen and Simon Callow denounced as "arrogant" and "unchristian" the efforts of Bishop Joseph Devine to warn a group of parents against the secularising aims of the homosexual movement. McKellan, the actor who has used his fame, derived in part from his role as Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings...

I have a question on a particular passage in Lord of the Rings and I need to find it. Can someone help?

Ian McKellen will again take up the robes of Gandalf the Wizard in the cinematic adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's fantasy classic "The Hobbit" a British film magazine reported Wednesday. But McKellen's publicist warned that final arrangements were yet to be made. "Of course he wants to do it, but nothing's been agreed or signed," Clair Dobbs said.

LOS ANGELES - The estate of "Lord of the Rings" creator J.R.R. Tolkien is suing the film studio that released the trilogy based on his books, claiming the company hasn't paid it a penny from the estimated $6 billion the films have grossed worldwide. The suit, filed Monday, claims New Line was required to pay 7.5 percent of gross receipts to Tolkien's estate and other plaintiffs, who contend they only received an upfront payment of $62,500 for the three movies before production began. The writer's estate, a British charity dubbed The Tolkien Trust, and original "Lord of the Rings" publisher...

VIDEO: Lord of the Rings Film Star Ian McKellen Admits to Ripping Out Hotel Bible Sections Against Homosexuality By John-Henry Westen AUKLAND, NZ, August 30, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - British Actor Ian McKellen who has used the mega-stardom he achieved playing Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings films to promote homosexuality, has admitted to ripping out pages of hotel bibles that refer to homosexuality. In an August 10 interview on New Zealand's TV1 Close Up program McKellen was confronted by the interviewer questioning the truth of the rumour "He's the one, that when he stays in hotels rips the part...

An unfinished book by J.R.R. Tolkien that was completed by his son will be published April 17 in Canada, New Zealand, the U.S. and the U.K. Christopher Tolkien, son of the man who wrote the Lord of the Rings trilogy, has completed The Children of Hurin, a book his father started in 1918 and later abandoned. J.R.R. Tolkien, shown in a 1967 photo, left notes and an outline for The Children of Hurin, a novel finished by his son and to be published in April. (Associated Press) Publisher HarperCollins is not releasing details of the book, but describes it as...