Thursday, February 21, 2002
Are You Experienced? - Xoanon @ 10:49 PST
Ringer Spy Di sends along her 'PJ Experience' at Brentano's bookstore last week.

I showed up at Brentano's at 5am. I was the 4th person there. So began the waiting............and waiting............and more waiting. Thankfully, I was in line with some really cool fans. We had lots of good LOTR conversation, and became friends in our 5am to 2pm waiting time.

At around 11 we were given numbers to get into the discussion. I was 4, so of course I was seated up front. I was literally 2 feet away from Sean Austin, and sitting directly next to Phillippa Boyens. Before the discussion started and while the lucky 50 people were milling in, someone said "Look, Sean!" I looked, and sure enough there he was. I walked over with my LOTR edition Variety magazine that came out that day. He was really nice, and genuinely interested in the magazine as he had not seen it before, or even knew about it. (it has a beautiful picture of Sam and Frodo hugging on it) I thanked him for being a perfect Sam, and he thanked me for saying that and touched my hand. I had a huge grin on my face from there on out.

Di is the one with her back turned to the camera

The discussion started, (I know others have reported what was said, no need to reiterate, I feel) and it was hilarious, enlightening, and at times tearful. One fan comment that made me misty eyed was something to the effect of "Peter, thank you for bringing magic back into the movies" Fran and Phillippa had tears in thier eyes, and so did I. Amazing atmosphere in the room after that, you could literally "feel the love". Cheesy, yes, but true.

Afterwards I got my Variety signed by all of them, including producer Mark Ordesky, who happened to be there and who wasn't even signing with them. (He was seriously touched that I even wanted his autograph, but Dawn,the nice girl in front of me pointed out to me, and told him she knew how much he had to do with the movie being made the way it was. So true. Super nice guy, too.)

When I got to Peter, I was shy. I asked him if I could shake his hand, and I did, and then I said thank you. He said you're welcome. He also had not seen the issue of Variety that I had. He studied it, and then asked Fran about it. He seemed to know nothing about it. She said "Oh, yes, I pulled that shot." I told her it was beautiful, she thanked me, and Peter agreed. He went to sign the magazine with a black sharpie, then stopped. Everyone else's autographs had been in a gold pen, that Dawn behind me owned. "It really should be gold, shouldn't it?", he asked me. "Oh, it's okay, black is fine.", I said. "No, where's the gold one?" he asked. He waited a minute and she handed it to him. "Ahh, here we go." he said as he signed it. Then he handed it to Fran Walsh, sitting next to him and said "ere you go Fran, you need the gold for this one." Thoughts going through my brain at the time: PETER JACKSON CARES ABOUT WHETHER HIS SIGNATURE MATCHES THE OTHER ONES ON MY MAGAZINE!!!!!!!!! EEEEEEEH!!!!!!!!! AAAAAAAAUUUUUGH!! THIS IS PETER JACKSON!!!!!!!!!!!

It meant quite a lot to me to be able to thank him, and I will always remember that moment. Sigh.............it was great. Now I have to go frame shopping!

Wednesday, February 20, 2002
Another Report From Brentano's - Xoanon @ 12:58 PST
From: Monica

Thanks to the notice on TORN (and a press release from Business Wire), I found out about the signing and jumped at the chance to go. I got there at 8:45am, and while it was a very long wait, the pay-off was absolutely worth it.

Part of the fun was hanging out with the other people in line. It's amazing how quickly you can make buddies with other Tolkien readers! And being there early ensured that I was able to squeeze into the Q&A. Peter Jackson, Sean Astin, Philippa Boyens and Fran Walsh were very casual and chatty, with no pretensions and all seemed genuinely tickled by our various questions. While there were many great moments during the entire day, I thought I'd share this one thing that really touched me.

I'd brought my old, worn-out copy of FOTR - the one I've had since I was a nine-year-old little girl and first fell in love with elves and hobbits. Each of the four VIPs took one look at that book and commented on how much it must've meant to me. Seeing my childhood dream brought to life on the screen was an experience I'll never forget, and I was so incredibly glad that I got to thank Peter Jackson (& Co.) face to face for his version of Middle Earth, which I loved visiting just as much as Tolkien's. (Don't think I'll ever get over PJ taking the book, grinning and saying, "Well, this is a well-loved copy, isn't it?" in that wonderful NZ lilt!)

I'm a happy camper. *g* Thanks so much for the heads-up!

I have enclosed a small scan of the book with autographs. There is a closeup of the autographs that I have not attached because I don't want to bog down your email - please let me know if you'd like the closeup scan or not. Thanks once again!

Tuesday, February 19, 2002
Brentano's Discussion and Signing Report With Pics! - Xoanon @ 13:01 PST
From: Valerie

Okay, thought I had better rush over here and report to you about the events at the bookstore today.

First off, Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh, Phillipa Boyens, and Sean Astin were all present. We got there at about 10am even though the discussion didn't start until

2. It actually looked like we weren't going to be able to get into the discussion because they were only allowing 50 people in. Luckily, they had some extra tickets so I was able to get inside (My friend Melanie opted to stay outside to ensure we could get into the signing too).

The discussion was great, but as you can expect Peter did most of the talking. Sean was next, and Phillipa and Fran pretty much only talked when they were addressed directly (which only happened a couple times). Still it was a good discussion. Can't recount everything, but here are the highlights. Peter is currently working on half a dozen things to do with the movie. He's editing Fellowship right now for the dvd, and there will be 30 minutes of extra footage. Some of the scenes are going to be surprises as they aren't from the books, they were written specifically for the film. Peter said much of this is going to be scenes of Aragorn, setting up his character a lot more. Specifically one scene he mentioned was between Aragorn and Boromir, should be an interesting one. Also the scene of the Fellowship receiving their gifts from Galadriel will be added. There will also be more of the rivalry between the dwarves and the elves shown, that should definelty be interesting since we didn't really get enough of that in the film.

He's also currently cutting the preview for TTT which should be released in about 5 - 6 weeks according to him (damn, was hoping for it much sooner). It's going to be 3 1/2 minutes long, and from what Peter says it'll come just after the last scene of the movie, and before the credits roll.

The reforging of Narsil will be shown at the beginning of ROTK.

He thought about showing the scene as the book states where in Bree Aragorn pulls out the broken sword, but couldn't figure out how to do it without making people who had never read the books laugh. Peter's got a point there, if you saw someone like that pull out a broken sword in a movie and you didn't understand, you'd probably laugh too.

Of course Peter's also working on TTT right now. Sounds like he's working mostly on the Gollum scenes at the moment, and they're doing a lot of shots with miniatures. He said they've written some new scenes for Sean and Elijah so both will go down in New Zealand in June (to which Sean replied "woohoo!").

Besides that there were the usual questions about the experience of working on the movie. The group seemed pretty happy to be doing this, and the crowd of course was great.

As for the signing, it went pretty well. Originally they told us we'd be able to get four items signed, but so many people showed up that the limit was immediately reduced to one. I choose to have a Variety ad for the movie signed so that I could get it framed later, and the group seemed impressed by it having never actually seen the ad themselves (not surprising, most of them never check these things out). Peter seemed genuinely pleased when I told him that Heavenly Creatures is one of my favorite movies, and Sean had a short chat with my friend, Melanie, regarding his recent appearance on The Late Late Show.

Met some great people during the lineup, and had an all around great time. John Voight even made an appearance (something he does often, I've seen him at a lot of these kind of events lately), and signed an ad in my Variety mag and took some pics with people around us. Definetly can't wait for the next LOTR related event, glad there seem to be so many around here.

I'm also attaching some pictures I took at the event which you are of course free to post on the site.

Sunday, February 17, 2002
Live In Sydney? Wanna Meet Jim Rygiel? - Xoanon @ 22:37 PST
endorwitch writes: Hi - just found a pamphlet about this at work today.

The Australian Effects & Animation Festival 2002

FEBRUARY 26 - 28 2002, SYDNEY CONVENTION CENTRE, DARLING HARBOUR day 1 speaker : 10.00am FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING Jim Rygiel, VFX Supervisor, Weta Digital

Helping to create the mythical world of Middle Earth for Peter Jackson's ambitions three movie adaptation of the Lord of The Rings, Weta Digital has been able to contribute crucial digital elements within the 'cornucopia' of VFX techniques utilised within this film: forced perspective, digital matte painting, CGI, digital compositing, crowd generation, digital and miniature sets. Jim Rygiel will take us through the creation of such exciting creatures as the Balrog, a mythical creature of Fire generated via CGI techniques, and the Cave Troll.

(bookings can be made on website - http://www.dmw.com.au/)

Saturday, February 16, 2002
Seattle Thanks TORN - Xoanon @ 15:48 PST
Aragorn sent us this very nice thank you email, along with a few new pics from line party in Seattle, the host city for this years BARLIBASH. Take a look and read Aragorn's email.

Me and my friends were excited to find out that we had been on theonering.net! We printed out our pictures from your website of the Seattle Party. We are thankful for the wooden pipes and that nifty leaf pin given from your Galadriel to ours. We greatly appreciate your gifts. Please thank Galadriel if you see her at all. From our whole group of 15 thank you for making the premiere an awesome day!

Tuesday, February 12, 2002
Dominican Robbed Of LOTR? - Xoanon @ 21:28 PST
ShadowPhone writes: Sad news for the Dominican Republic. Apparently will never get to see FOTR in our theaters. It was supposed to be shown in Jan 31st, then they moved the date to Feb 7th and now we don’t have date. Theater owners couldn’t sign a deal with New Line or wouldn’t meet their demands. We have the posters, trailers, line party and everything, except the movie. PLEASE NEW LINE HELP US!!!

Sunday, February 10, 2002
Nazgul At Trentham Raceway - Xoanon @ 18:51 PST

Lucas & Dezzy sent us these great pics of some of the dark riders at the Trentham Raceway in Wellington a few weeks ago.