Sixteen-year-old Angela Smith considers herself a die-hard Orlando Bloom fan. But as she stood at the border of the "Elizabethtown" set Thursday, she watched from a different angle — that of a film student.

Smith and a handful of other students working with Hardin County Education and Community Television, a Hardin County Schools-run cable channel, spent most of the day watching crews film a portion of the movie. Though their access was limited, students said they soaked up several lessons from the sidelines.....more

Thanks to NarniaWeb

The four young leads for the film, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe have finally been announced. The New Zealand Herald ran a story in the paper listing their names and ages. .

The actors are: Georgie Henley, 9, from Ilkley in Yorkshire, who plays the lead character Lucy; Skandar Keynes, 12, also from London, who plays Edmund; Anna Popplewell, 15, from London, who plays Susan; and William Moseley, 17, from Gloucestershire, who plays the eldest brother Peter.

William Moseley

Anna Popplewell and Skandar Keynes

Georgie Henley

The Leaky Cauldron is reporting that British actress Miranda Richardson will star as Rita Skeeter in Warner Bros.' Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, hitting theaters November, 2005.

In the fourth novel, Harry wants to get away from the pernicious Dursleys and go to the International Quidditch Cup with Hermione, Ron, and the Weasleys. He wants to dream about Cho Chang, his crush (and maybe do more than dream). He wants to find out about the mysterious event that's supposed to take place at Hogwarts this year, an event involving two other rival schools of magic, and a competition that hasn't happened for a hundred years. He wants to be a normal, fourteen-year-old wizard. Unfortunately for Harry Potter, he's not normal, even by wizarding standards. And in his case, different can be deadly.

Rita Skeeter is a reporter for the Daily Prophet in the story. Source

It gives me great pleasure to bring you an Art Gallery update two days in a row! Yesterday it was Ivyetta Grubb...and tonight it's our very own Kim Kincaid!

Kim has been one of our preeminent artists since we open here at WotR and it always give me pleasure to display her obvious love for Tolkien as expressed through her art.

You can see her work along with all of the other talented artists on display in our Art Gallery! 

Thanks again Kim! :o)

By now, one can safely assume that most people know who Viggo Mortensen is. A few years ago, it would have required explaining, considering that he was best known for having been in a few indie movies, playing Gwyneth Paltrow's lover in A Perfect Murder, a suitor of Nicole Kidman in The Portrait of a Lady, and John Gavin's role in Gus Van Sant's remake of Psycho.... More

The diehards waited all night. Patiently and diligently, they sat on the sides of the road and huddled under trees for a chance to see a part of Elizabethtown history.

They arrived at Public Square as early as 1 a.m. Thursday, police said, to watch the filming of Cameron Crowe's romantic comedy, "Elizabethtown." By the time filming started at 10:30 a.m., several hundred fans had gathered behind barricades to see the movie's stars, especially heart-throb Orlando Bloom.......more

It all started when a Tolkien fan settled down to watch Frodo battle evil in the first part of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, only to find herself distracted by a pouting elf in the background.

While Frodo was bravely stepping up to the plate and offering to transport 'The Ring' to Mordor, Iris from Israel was eyeing up a pretty young slip of an elf in the background and thinking "Frodo is great...who is that??" And from an acronym, Figwit was born......more

Our very own Ivyetta Grubb has sent us in two more pieces of her outstanding art work! :o)

Stop into the gallery and check out her latest creations along with all of our other wonderful artists that show their love of Tolkien with their artistic creations.

Thanks Ivyetta!

Forget about the Eighties-styled combat, countless number of identical enemies and extremely short gameplay; The Third Age is preparing to offer an experience that has all the meat of the novels (something EA has never gained the rights to) and the exhilarating exuberance of Jackson's movies.

Read the indepth review and see the screen shots here!

It was an eclectic crowd that walked around the Public Square Wednesday. Aside from people who work in downtown Elizabethtown every day, there were workmen in boots, a security guard, four teenagers with a tripod and camera and several young and middle-aged women.

All their attention was focused on what was formerly a vacant storefront on the south side of the old courthouse, facing Dixie Avenue........more

Adrien Brody told SCI FI Wire that he's eager to play ex-fighter pilot Jack Driscoll opposite Naomi Watts and Jack Black in director Peter Jackson's much-anticipated remake of King Kong. "Well, for once I get to be, first of all, this action hero and the guy who gets the girl, in a sense," Brody said in an interview. "It's a fantastic journey. It's basically the guy who becomes the man that he wants to be."......more

The "Viggo" watch has hit a fever pitch for Long Bridge Swim organizer and lead push, Eric Ridgway.

The 10th Long Bridge Swim is slated for Aug. 21 and Ridgway is anticipating up to 500 swimmers this year. There were 350 last year -- including 60 swimmers who registered the morning of the race amid a thunderstorm.

Rumors that actor Viggo Mortensen might join the Sandpoint-area's premier athletic event started swirling about two months ago. I reported on the possibility of his Viggo-ness' appearance in a column about the same time.......more

The news coming out of the classical-music world can be pretty bleak these days. With orchestras in dire straits and schools cutting back on music education, some critics have predicted that a whole generation of young people will grow up without knowing what a symphony orchestra sounds like. Yet this hasn't happened -- thanks to Hollywood riding to the rescue.......more

So imagine my skepticism when the rumor mill churned out the jaw-dropper that Coheed and Cambria's latest album, In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3, is cosmically intertwined with the movie Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. That the young quartet from upstate New York meticulously crafted 12 epic, emotional rock songs to coincide precisely with the first movie in the epic, emotional cinematic trilogy taken from the J.R.R. Tolkien novels.......more

Russia's first homemade post-Soviet blockbuster movie hit, "Night Watch," is selling more tickets here than American feature films like "Spider-Man 2" and "Troy," and the director and producer proudly acknowledge relying on time-tested Hollywood formulas to produce that rare result.

Others compared the film, the first of a planned trilogy, to "The Matrix,", "Star Wars," and even "The Lord of the Rings," whose final installment stole the show at this year's Academy Awards.

Read the entire story, here.

Thanks New York Times.

There may be more than one mystery animal running around Maryland -- there are pictures from a sighting in Harford County.

"I looked out the window and I saw something drinking out of the water trough," said Lisa Mathis. "It looked like something out of Lord of The Rings."

Read the whole story, right here.

Thanks to The Hawaii Channel.

SANET has joined with Tolkien fans from all over the country to create the 'Hobbits For Voter Registration' initiative. Our goal is to get out the Vote for this year's U.S. Presidential Election.

We feel our efforts are very much in keeping with Tolkien's belief that "even the smallest person can change the course of the future." Hobbits for Voter Registration encourages and makes it easy to register to Vote! Resources we offer include links to online voter registration sites. We do not support any specific party or candidate.  Our only goal is to make it easy for non-registered voters to exercise their Constitutional right.

You can find all the pertinent information here!

Thanks Rakshi for putting this together and for letting us know!

A little bit of Middle Earth has made its way to Saugus in a sand castle on the corner of Central Street and Adams Avenue. Sean Fitzpatrick has constructed a 10-foot castle complete with Lord of the Rings characters on his front lawn, a labor of love, and practice.

Fitzpatrick is a master sculptor and makes a living playing in the sand, and the snow and occasionally ice and wax........more

We are pleased to bring you an exclusive competition sponsored by the wonderful folks who are staging The Fellowship Festival running from August 28th-30th 2004 at Alexandra Palace in London.

Showcasing the magnificent works of Professor J.R.R Tolkien and Peter Jackson, The Fellowship Festival is expected to see 4,000-5,000 fans per day. Attendees will be treated to theatrical presentations hosted by two of the actors from the films, Craig Parker (Haldir) and Mark Ferguson (Gil-Galad). Presentations will include question and answer sessions with selected members of the cast and crew as well as panel discussions with Tolkien experts.

So...what is the prize? We are giving away one pair of 3-Day Gold Passes valued at £200 each!!

For details on how to enter go here!

Thanks again to Alex, Louise, and all the wonderful folks at Access All Areas Events Ltd. for sponsoring this for us!

Good luck to all who enter!

Tickets to the Saturday performance of The Lord of the Rings Symphony just became available for purchase online at Hartford Symphony.org. Tickets can be ordered over the phone starting August 2 when single tickets to all 2004-2005 HSO events go on sale.

Thanks Johannes for the news!

After a short wait, a few phone calls and one audition, Alexander is one of several Hardin County residents working as extras in Cameron Crowe's movie "Elizabethtown," now filming in various parts of the state. Shooting is set for next week in the real Elizabethtown.

Alexander was one of 11 people selected from a casting call at a Lions Club meeting in Elizabethtown to audition for a role in the film, which stars Orlando Bloom and Kirsten Dunst. At the meeting, people interested were asked to fill out a card with their names and various information on it, then turn it in and have their photo taken by the casting directors.......more

And within the next twenty or thirty years, we'll get them. Children who watched the Lord of the Rings trilogy will take their own children to a complete remake of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. It's inevitable.

Most great movies will never be remade. We will never see remakes of The Godfather, or Gone with the Wind, or even Star Wars. But Lord of the Rings is different.....more

Despite last year's suicide bombings in Morocco and increasing evidence of Islamic fundamentalism, some big-budget western movies have continued to film in the country. Sir Ridley Scott, a British director, brought his crew and stars over from Spain earlier this year to film “Kingdom of Heaven”, a politically sensitive film about Saracens and 12th-century Crusaders that is due for release in May next year. Security was tightened on the set recently when a rumour spread that the film was to feature a crusader stamping on the Koran.......more

Cate Blanchett is a busy woman. She's juggling two children under three, rehearsals for a lead role in a play and an impertinent journalist who's asked to see her breast pump. The device in question emerges when I ask what's in her enormous red shoulder bag. Nappies?

"No. No nappies," she says. Blanchett's older son Dashiell John, two, has outgrown them and baby Roman Robert is at home with his father, the writer Andrew Upton. "There's a breast pump and the ... oh, you don't want to know."........more

Aspen - As Howard Shore began his critique of a student score on a recent morning, the famed composer for the "Lord of the Rings" movie trilogy drove home one point right at the start.

"Bar numbers and tempos are God in film music," Shore said. "You want to number every bar and use a bolder font to do it."......more

AN Ilkley girl has scooped a prestigious role in a major new Hollywood film.

Georgie Henley, nine, a pupil at Moorfield School and a member of Ilkley Upstagers theatre group has landed the lead children's role of Lucy in The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe.

The movie, the first of a planned seven, is financed by Disney Studios and Walden Media and is currently being filmed in New Zealand.

Georgie finally revealed herself to the world this week after months of intense secrecy.......more

Sideshow/Weta have released a new helm to their Lord of the Rings range.

The helm is that of Sauron and is priced at, more details here.

Just in case you haven't entered already, there is only one week left to submit your entry for our latest competition ond win youself  this Orc Bust from our good friends at Sideshow Collectables!

This bust is considered a "Retired Item" and as such cannot be purchased anymore. So if you'd like a chance to have one for your very one, then this is it! :o)

And just think.....all you have to do is answer one teeny weeny question and the prize could be yours!

To enter...go here for all the juicy details!

Good luck!

Variety is reporting that "The Hobbit" could see the light of day now.

"The Hobbit" is a movie project very much on Peter Jackson's ("The Lord of the Rings" trilogy) wishlist. The problem is that the rights to the film are owned by MGM, who refuses to sell the rights to New Line.

But with reports claiming that Time Warner, which owns Warner Bros. and New Line Cinema, may purchase MGM, then the rights would be transferred to New Line, essentially allowing the studio to go forth with a movie based on J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Hobbit."

In recent weeks, Sony has made a bid to purchase MGM but has since dropped out of contention.

Thanks to Cinema Confidential for the scoop!

Fathers of fantasy C S Lewis and J R R Tolkien shared a literary legacy; a love of initials and a desire to spread the Christian message through tales of myths and monsters.

Now the imagined lands of the friends – and rivals – who spent their lives creating "other worlds" are being recreated in the same country, New Zealand.

Read more at The Herald.

June Sawyers covers two very interesting books. Of "There and Back Again: In the Footsteps of J.R.R. Tolkien (Cadogan)" she writes:

This is hardly your typical guidebook. Rather it is a thoughtful journey into the heart of Tolkien country by an author, Mathew Lyons, who was obsessed with Tolkien as a child and adolescent, lost interest as an adult and then, with the release of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, began to reassess Tolkien's work.

And so Lyons chose to follow Tolkien's trail in England to try to uncover the origin of the great writer's ideas and his ambitious goal to create a mythology for England.

Read more at The Province!