If you're interested in reading another article about the recent thefts of LotR movie stuff, check out this one. A rehash of what we already know, plus a bit more depth on the subject matter. Thanks to MrTadpole for sending that in!

MSN.com has "Thirty things about Lord of the Rings" article available online. While most the information is stuff we already know, its a nice synopsis. [more]

Note: This is a reprint from E!Online in January.

The New Zealand Herald reported that there's a new face directing the second unit for LOTR. (more)

Quickbeam summarizes this year's ComicCon 2000. The lucky guy even had lunch with Sir Ian McKellen!! [final report]

Check out the ComicCon 2000 Photogallery [photo gallery]

UPDATE!
Well it won't be going to the UK Sunday Times I hope. I'm afraid I don't think that latest article on Cate (see below) is totally wonderful. A few weeks I got a bit of flak for suggesting politely that I was surprised that there wasn't more interest in the UK media about LOTR. Specifically, I noted that most of the big papers have done articles repeating each other, and without checking inaccuracies. Sure, we're the pot calling the kettle black, but we're amateurs, and you're not shelling out any cash to buy our news.

The latest report of Cate in the UK Sunday Times, just down the page here, is exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about...[more]

There is an... interesting.. article in the UK Sunday Star Times about Cate Blanchett and her role as Galadriel. It's a unique article with some very original (?) descriptions of Galadriel's role in The Fellowship. [more]

Thanks to Bruce for the tip

Ian McKellen speaks a bit about his role as Gandalf in this x-men-the-movie.com online interview. (LOTR questions begin around the 11th question) [more]

The NZ Herald has yet another story about some more LOTR thefts of props and costumes. [more]

From: John Cook

Hi, Xoanan! Thought I'd let you know of a new Lord of the Rings cartoon caption contest I'm running this week. The comic strip features a falling Gandalf as he battles the Balrog (along with caricatures of most of the other 9 walkers too). Check it out and submit your own punchlines for Gandalf here.

John is featured in our LOTR Comics Section located as a subsection of Fan.TheOneRing.net. Check it out Today! [comics section]

Houghton Mifflin has some exciting news for you die hards! A new paperback release of The History of the Lord of the Rings (a subset of The History of Middle-earth) will be issued on August 3. More details [here].

Call It 'Lord of the Bootlegs'
by Kim Griggs

WELLINGTON, New Zealand -- Filmmaker Peter Jackson is deadly serious about keeping under wraps the movie trilogy based on J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings that he's filming in New Zealand. [More]

Thanks to Daniel W for the tip!

Chris Field himself emailed us to set the record straight. He's the guy who should know: He wrote the music. I took the opportunity to congratulate him, since we'd received so many emails demanding to know who'd written 'that great music with the choir' on the Internet preview.

Field wrote, 'I am writing to clarify that the music"Gothic Power" (the choir music which is in the LOTR's Preview) was composed by me and published by X-Ray Dog Publishing." We had it down as 're-mixed by X-Ray Dog.' It ain't.

McKellen spoke a little about acting and 'coming out of the closet' as well as mentioning LOTR in this interview in TV Guide

While I have yet to confirm or deny Howard Shore as the composer for LOTR, here is some of his other work to ponder.

'Se7en'
'The Game'
'Dogma'
'Cop Land'

You will need either RealAudio, Windows Media or QuickTime to listen to these clips.

Thanks to Lynn for sending along this "blurb" from an interview with Ian McKellan from the July 14, 2000 edition of the Philadelphia Gay News.

"PGN: Two more questions: How are things going on "Lord of the Rings" down there in New Zealand?

IM: I'm in a hiatus at the moment. I go back after "X-Men" and do another five months, and I'm really enjoying it enormously. I'm enjoying being in New Zealand, which is a very, very beautiful small country. The script is astonishing, and I've got a fabulous part [Gandalf] so I'm a very happy bunny, really, and looking forward to being back."

Today, July 24th is the scheduled re-start of principal photography on 'The Lord of the Rings' trilogy. Judging on comments from Ian McKellen (Gandalf) 'I'll be heading back to New Zealand tomorrow (Sunday)' and seeing the Hobbit boys back in town for the Queenstown Winter Festival, it looks like Peter Jackson et all are ready to get back to work.

From: stuff.co.nz"

Lord of the Rings stars hit mall for Sunday lunch
24 JULY 2000
By MEAGHAN MILLER

Lunchtime browsers in Queenstown's Mall yesterday had an opportunity to see Lord of the Rings stars tucking into brunch and bubbles, but anyone with a camera was sent packing. [More]

From: Stuff.co.nz

Ex-guard took Rings film set photos
22 JULY 2000
By POST REPORTER and NZPA

A former security guard on The Lord Of The Rings film set took 500 photographs of scenes he was supposed to stop other people recording.

In Wellington District Court yesterday, production company Three Foot Six Ltd won civil proceedings to have the photographs and negatives given to it. [More]

It's all getting a bit silly isn't it? Is this movie really worth going to jail over?

News from the Edoras set near Christchurch from The Jazza. [More]

Check out this very cool spy report from Ringer Spy Altariel. [more]

!!!SPOILERS!!!

Thanks to Ringer fan Kaplan for this tip!

"Just a quick mail to tell you the guys at SoundtrackNet think that the composer Howard Shore (ED WOOD, EXISTENZ, THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS) has been hired to score the upcoming trilogy."

You can check out the article at SoundtrackNet. [more]

Quickbeam just sent in a report of his day at Comic-Con 2000, and has quite a tale to tell. You can check out exactly what Quickbeam has to say in Special Reports. [more]

!!!SPOILERS!!!

A note from myself, it sounds very much like the footage shown at Comic-Con was an edited down version of the much talked about Sho-West footage. If so the artist talking was John Howe, though Alan Lee is mentioned immediately before.

Thank you for the additional reports which were sent in by a variety of loyal fans. After I get some sleep I may try to put together a montage of them to give some general audience thoughts.

Directly taken from C. Lee official page
This is a direct quote from himself:
"I recently finished playing Saruman the White, the Wizard in 'LORD OF THE RINGS'. It has always been a dream of mine to bring to the screen the marvels of this wonderful work and this has allowed me to take part in a production which could well be the pinnacle of my acting career. I can't talk about it more than that, so you'll have to wait and see!"
Thanks to Arathorn for that.

Pippin's Diamond remembered where he'd seen the answer to all those questions about the preview music.
This from Der Herr der Ringe:
"Today I got the official information from NEW LINE and KINOWELT about the music and sounds in the preview-trailer. These are the three tracks:

1.) "Lord of the Rings" is composed by Jeff Pfeifer and Robert Pfeifer
2.) "Gothic Power" remixed by X-Ray Dog
3.) "Wired!" by Jeffrey Fayman and Yoav Goren

Jeff Pfeifer is the composer of the music from the TV-Series HIGHLANDER: THE RAVEN. Yoav Goren is the producer of Leonard Cohen and composer of some little movies. I Don't have any idea who the others are!"

Marie, webmaster of Bloomin' Marvelous, sent us this link to a Southland Times article on the recent Hollywood Ball in Queenstown. [more]

I'm currently sitting at the IGN booth in the San Diego Convention Center Exhibit Hall. It is an unbelievable cavernous space with thousands of people milling about in all directions. The atmosphere is at once casual and yet also energetic...[more]

The Hall of Fire is readied again with a Tolkien character topic. This time 'round we'll be taking a close look at another of the Nine Walkers, Legolas.
Legolas Greenleaf: Elf of Mirkwood

A fast friend to dwarf, human, and hobbit, Legolas is a character to warm the heart. Quick and deadly with knife or bow, this good elf was also a keen lover of all things forest. What details are known of this great elf? Do you have any favorite Legolas quotes, scenes, or deeds from LotR? What is his fate at the end of Middle-earth's history?

Date: Saturday, July 22, 2000
Time: 5:30 p.m. EST [ 10:30 p.m. GMT]
Location: #thehalloffire on theonering.net server
Directions: come to our chatroom Barliman's and then type /join #thehalloffire

You can catch Liv Tyler (Arwen) in 'Cookies Fortune' on TMN.

At last!!! We got word direct from the official website folk about the music that was on the preview we all downloaded in April. Here's what they said:

"There were three musical composition pieces used in the LOTR internet
preview:

1. Special LOTR original composition
2. 'Gothic Power' remix Composed by X-Ray Dog
3. Trk 6 'Wired!' on Immediate Music vol. 18.

Hope this helps! Doesn't the music just move you??

Wendy Rutherford
Interactive Publicity"

Before you all email to ask the obvious question, don't. We've asked for you, and we'll let you know if we get a reply.

Not only do we have a great topic for this week's Hall of Fire, we also have added a second session to make it easier for folks to participate! Read all about it here and make your weekend plans accordingly!

Tolkien fans have chance to 'Escape'

TIM STANLEY ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE

EUREKA SPRINGS -- J.R.R. Tolkien's "one ring to rule them all" is not the only ring that rules Arthur Morgan. [More]

From: DR

Today two Auckland men appeared in court on charges relating to the Lord of he rings movie. One a 39 year old Company Manager is accused of stealing: 12 LOTR video tapes, 2 LOTR scripts 2 swords used by the Rohan and the Elves, and photocopies of approved costumes and armour designs.

The second man is being charged with possession of $10.520 (NZD) which is alleged to be the proceeds of a money laundering operation. (which may have ben money obtained from sale of stolen articles from the movie.

They have both been given name suppression and will reappear in 2 weeks.

Hmmm... somone's getting coal in their stockings for x-mas...

Thanks to ringer spy Kotukunui sends in some pics from the Queenstown Hollywood Ball. In attendance were our very own hobbits Elijah Wood (Frodo), Billy Boyd (Pippin), Dominic Monaghan (Merry), Sean Astin (Sam) and their Elf-Friend Orlando Bloom (Legolas). [More]

You can catch, however brief, Miranda Otto (Eowyn) in the new thriller 'What Lies Beneath' which opens today in North America.

Leandro over at the Spanish site Elfenomeno sent us a bit of news about one of those 'Troll' pictures we saw recently. He'd heard from the super-spy Galadriel that this thing is an Olog-Hai, or a hill-troll. They're described at the end of Appendix F1, 'The languages and peoples of the Third Age,' where it says that they were bred by Sauron.This is what falls on Pippin, at the end of the chapter 'The Black Gate Opens.'
The picture of this CGI beast is here, scroll down to the news for June 20th.

This is getting bigger by the minute. NZoom and TV1 News have the latest on what appears to be a crime ring stealing props and film from the LOTR production.
You can view their report here
UPDATE: There's more detail again at stuff.co.nz
Hmmm. Osborne did not, if one reads carefully what he said, ever rule out that those props were stolen.....

Ever since the NZ army got involved in peacekeeping duties in East Timor, the Net has been reporting that this would mean that they couldn't supply the thousands of extras wanted for some of the LOTR battle scenes, as originally planned. This was an early rumour, but it's gone on growing until some of the sites it sound like the whole defence force is over there.
According to Radio NZ, there's 660 NZ defence force personnel in East Timor now. I rang the army and asked them how many they have in total, and they said around 4500. So providing a few extras for LOTR shouldn't cripple them too much. According to this July 18 report in "Stuff" they're only providing 100 soldiers.

Just a reminder to any TORnadoes in Queenstown: The four main hobbits and Legolas (Orlando Bloom) will be back from holidays to take part in the festivities in Queenstown as part of the Winter Festival, so keep an eye out for them. They'll be at the ball tonight.
The full story's on "Stuff" here

According to Radio New Zealand, a second man is due to appear in court this morning to answer charges of stealing film footage from 'The Lord of the Rings,' and another man is being spoken to by police.

One of the projects I have been a long time supporter of is Distributed.net. I have contributed computer time to it for over 2 years, and until recently there was no Tolkien related team (to my knowledge). There are teams relating to almost anything else imaginable, from computer advocacy groups to small groups of friends, etc.

Two days ago, resulting from a conversation with the Webmaster of Rolozo's Tolkien, I created Team Tolkien to fill in the Tolkien gap at Distributed.net.

More information on Team Tolkien is available on the team page I created.

5 months (who said 4?...not I) to go until the Lord of the Rings trailer in movie theatres across North America!

Attached to the Cuban Missile Drama '13 Days', the Lord of the Rings trailer, or more likely, teaser, will have fanboys melting in their popcorn buckets.

See you in line...

There's no really new news here, but Jason did get a rare opportunity for an overview of much that has happened when he saw five volumes of photos from the LOTR set. There's a rumour that Liv's role is cut down; other sources we've heard suggest that though more of Arwen's scenes are done by Liv's body double, her part in the story's not necessarily smaller. You can read Jason's view here, scroll down to the green type and call in the SpellCheckers. (Spellcheckers? Is that the Magic Police? Have I been reading too much Harry Potter?)