TheOneRing.net and dragonworld.tv present The KNIGHT QUEST Contest! Win 2 tickets to participate as an audience member in the first episode of our new medieval-combat based reality TV series! The Tournament will consist of our Masters of Horse, Lance, Bow, Sword and Shield entertaining you with a demonstration of the chivalric martial arts, and you will also get to meet the Cast of our reality series on the very first day they begin their Quest to become a Knight. [CLICK HERE TO ENTER]

All three of Peter Jackson's hugely successful, Oscar-winning films will be available to see in their original theatrical 35mm with this fantastic all-nighter on 15 September. Tickets Ł25, Ł18 concs. [More]

TORN Staffer Arwen writes: A fan emailed me to let me know that The Charlie Rose Show has put on YouTube about 3,200 interviews Charlie Rose did, including 2 with Peter Jackson (about an hour long each). To view the videos, go to youtube and search under "charlie rose-peter jackson". [YouTube]

Pipkin Sweetgrass writes: Could you please run a reminder that the 2nd anniversary of Hurricane Katrina is upon us and the gulf coast is still a mess, but the Billy Boyd's Loons Charities cookbook Recipes for Disaster is still available and all profits are still given to the Red Cross for victims of natural disaster...? [More]

G'day from New Zealand, Weta supporters!

A big shout to all the Weta supporters who came and said hey at the San Diego Comic Con last month. It was a blast and we can't wait for next years' event! Check out our Image Gallery for Weta Bug's pix of the event – plenty to see! [More]

Howard Shore's official site has an intriguing image in the news section. It states 'ROTK Complete Recordings Coming Fall 2007'. Anyone with more news about this should drop us a line!

With kind permission John Howe has allowed us to re-print his newsletter entries as they are released. Take a look at the latest edition!

WRAPPING UP (Or How All Good Things Come to an End): I confess to being a creature of habit. Good and bad, of course, but nevertheless...Closing weekend this weekend in Saint-Ursanne. The banners and statues will remain in place until the end of September, but the rest will be packed away. Also, given that Alan Lee will be there on the Sunday, a certain amount of congestion is definitely going to occur. I think he will remember his first visit to Switzerland as being... very busy. [More] [john-howe.com]

'The Frodo Franchise' autuor Kristin Thompson writes: I've recently started a blog for my book, The Frodo Franchise. On it I’ll continue my series of comments about progress on the Hobbit film (including a new entry called “New Line, MGM, and the Hobbit Film”). I’ll also be posting about upcoming events relating to TFF (including two interviews coming next week on New Zealand radio programs) and updating some of the subjects I discuss in the book. [More]

We are now happy to present you with the complete details about TheOneRing.net and Red Carpet Tours exciting cruise of MIddle-earth. Click on the following link to learn how you can join in the fun! [Cruise Details]

WESTWOOD, MA -- August 29, 2007 -- Turbine, Inc. has launched the official 7-day free trial of The Lord of the Rings Online™: Shadows of Angmar™ (LOTRO). Beginning today, fans in North America, Australia and New Zealand can play the best online game for free by visiting trial.lotro.com. [More] [trial.lotro.com]

Vanessa "Saffron" Price, Online Community Representative for The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar, writes: Meet the bandits and brigands of Eriador! We all know their lawless and anti-social ways, read more about them in this week’s update! [More]

Director Peter Jackson has announced that two young local girls will star in his up-coming feature film The Lovely Bones. The movie is due to start shooting later this year, when the two Kiwi unknowns will be rubbing shoulders with an impressive list of Hollywood's elite already cast for Jackson's next big movie. The Lovely Bones is the story of a young girl who is murdered, then watches her family grieve from heaven. [More]

Multiple Oscar-winner Weta Workshop will be key to Tourism New Zealand's new campaign to promote the country to overseas tourists. Animated images of Maui hauling the North Island from the sea have been devised by Richard Taylor's creative artists to re-launch the 100% New Zealand campaign. [More]

Stage and screen star Ian McKellen will speak at the Guthrie Theater on Oct. 8 as part of the theater's Global Voices program. McKellen, who will appear at the Guthrie with he Royal Shakespeare Company's productions of "King Lear" and "The Seagull" in October, has appeared in the Broadway productions of "Amadeus" and "Dance of Death" as well as the films "God and Monsters, "Lord of the Rings" and "X-Men." He also has won Tony, Olivier, Screen Actors Guild. [More]

Today is also Billy Boyd's birthday! Billy Boyd (born August 28, 1968) was born in Glasgow, Scotland. As we all know, Billy is best known for his performance as Pippin Took in The Lord of the Rings films.

TheOneRing.net and Red Carpet Tours is celebrating the 5th anniversary of the release of The Return of the King with a cruise to where it all began. Be among the first to join us on Celebrity's Millenium as she sails for 14 nights from Auckland, New Zealand to Sydney, Australia, leaving on November 23, 2008. Red Carpet Tours has customized a Pre-Cruise tour for us and come up with several day-long excursions to LOTR filming locations reachable from the ship. We want to know if you are interested in this cruise, so please click on the following link for more details. [Details]

If you haven't checked out the HBO show 'Flight of the Conchords,' you really should. And on that topic, check out Figwit playing Frodo in a recent episode:

Penny writes: Billy Boyd's band Beecake is going to have yet another gig! Beecake will be appearing at "The London Gathering" on Sunday 9th September.Tickets are available from Ticketmaster via The London Gathering website: www.thelondongathering.com.

The folks at WETA send along their latest updates on all things geeky from the Kiwi hotspot in Wellington. [More]

Menelwalasse writes: I'm not sure if this is of any interest to you but....I have recieved an email from Raewyn James from Red Carpet Tours.

"We went to Waitarere on the way to Wellington and the whole forest of trees had been cut down !!! We were shocked ! No sign of a track where the elves were leaving Lothlorien any more, or where Arwen saw the vision of her son. Gone ! Lost. Wiped out ! The June Tour was the last to see it !!" - Raewyn

My friend and I were in the June '07 Fellowship for Red Carpet Tours and it was beautiful there. I'm sad to hear it is gone now.

TORN Staffer Ostadan writes: Fantasy Flight Games, who pretty much own all the licenses for Tolkien-themed boardgames in the U.S., have announced a new game to be released in late 2008, "Middle-Earth Quest". The press release doesn't give a hint as to what _kind_ of boardgame it will be, nor who the designer is, but indicates that players will be represented by individual character types, during the years prior to the main action of Lord of the Rings. [More]

Lee writes: In this week's New Yorker magazine there is a very long article on Ian McKellen. There's only a mention of his role as Gandalf; they aren't really interested in that. But for his fans, or those interested in the theatre or acting, this article seems like a must-read. It has a lot of information and analysis I haven't seen in other pieces on him. Their web site has a picture of the issue, and its table of contents, but to read the article you need to buy the magazine. [More]

Proving his acting repertoire is not restricted to the highbrow, Sir Ian McKellen is planning to make a brief appearance in popular Kiwi soap Shortland Street. McKellen has been playing the title role of King Lear in Auckland with the Royal Shakespeare Company as part of a five-nation tour but is hoping to swap his crown for hospital scrubs on the "Shortie" set on Monday, The New Zealand Herald reported on Saturday. The 68-year-old star, who played Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings, may appear in a walk-on role, possibly as a nurse or hospital cleaner, after saying he had always wanted to star in the medical drama. [More]

Christopher Coleman from tracksounds.com writes: Just thought you'd like to mobilize the LOTR fans to help vote Howard Shore's LOTR scores as the "best of all time." Of course the competition is tough: Star Wars, Braveheart, Lawrence of Arabia, The Magnificent Seven, The Godfather...and many other classic film scores. The voting is happening at tracksounds.com.

For years speculation has raged that director Peter Jackson was making a World War I movie. Then secretly, in April this year, he did. The film, Crossing the Line, features biplane dogfights, bayonet charges and 30 cast and crew. It was filmed in Jackson's second home-town of Masterton - home to his palatial mansion and estate - and has had rave reviews at audience screenings. It's length? Fifteen minutes. Time taken to shoot? Just a few days. [More]

The technology that brought Gollum to life in the Lord of the Rings movies is now being used to treat injuries. Until recently, wound care nurses had to rely on their eyes and their memory to monitor progress, commonly injecting probes to test the depth of a wound. But now it is all hands off. The Silhouette Mobile uses lasers to record not only a wound's width, but its depth. The measurements are stored on the camera's computer and then compared to previous recordings, mapping the wounds exact progress. [More]

Ringer Celebriel sent in a great this pre-Dcon report, which saves me from doing it and is pretty comprehensive and yet Tolkien-centric. TORn will have a fan table on the lowest level of the Marriott, so stop by and say 'hello' (or some similar greeting) and pick up your Sideshow Collectibles gift card (thanks Sideshow) and play some "Tolkien Trivia" for some great prizes! We also have some really cool t-shirts with an iconic dragon that will be on sale at the convention for $20 and all sales support the not-for-profit TheOneRing.net and will make the people of Laketown proud! Rumors are circulating about some buttons and by strange coincidence there is a Message Board Moot the same weekend! (See the TORn message board for details.) Anyway, thanks to Celebriel and please read the whole glorious report here.

Andy Serkis has swapped the technical difficulties of playing characters such as Gollum in Lord of the Rings, and the giant ape in King Kong, for a role as Hoodwink, a tough local kingpin on a rundown London council estate in Sugarhouse. "He's a very visceral character and he's a very physical character. I suppose the fact of the matter is I'm surprised that more people aren't like Hoodwink," says Serkis. "I think most people live on the edge. How many times have you got into a car and someone's beeping their horn behind you - there's only that much between them getting out of their car and doing serious damage? The thing is [Hoodwink] doesn't have a limiter." [More]