The event to showcase technology, creativity and industry in New Zealand will be held at the Christchurch Conference Centre.

He's just completed his first of four test drives around the 10-lap, 18.5-mile downtown Long Beach race track in preparation for Saturday's Toyota Pro/Celebrity Race. . . more

THANKS to the role of Aragorn, the noble warrior king in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Viggo Mortensen is this season's ultimate big-screen hero.

He's been described as a Gary Cooper or Montgomery Clift for the 21st century - a matinee idol par excellence, an undeniable sex symbol with a touchy-feely sensibility......more

After last year's successful launch into the television orbit and a safe return to Earth, the Spaceys are all systems go for a second mission. Sunday night, CHUM Television presents the second annual Spacey Awards on its sci-fi specialty channel, Space: The Imagination Station.

In the best-movie category, for example, will it be Tolkien or Tarantino? One Harryhausen admirer, Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson, will get a special achievement award, though the Spaceys didn't go to New Zealand to hand it over.

"Jackson actually sent us stuff from New Zealand he had his own people shoot," says Llyr, who notes the Kiwi filmmaker is also up for two other awards. With Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers as the big Spacey winner last year, it's probably a safe bet it will be Return of the King all the way this time.....more

Ringbearers-Day event April 10th 2004 preliminary report with pictures....here

Our friends over at Ancanar.com have also posted a report from Joe and Jenna of The Lonely Mountain Forge with some pics from the Ancanar Presentation and Arms and Armour of Middle Earth.....here

Tolkien Scholar and friend Amy Sturgis was recently interviewed check it out here

This announcement concerns the rejection of emails from War of the Ring by ISP's such as AOL, Hotmail, etc. We have been having our normal emails such as registration, subscription, and announcement emails rejected by ISP's around the world, and I wanted to post this to let you know that we are aggressively working this issue.

The problems we are having has to do with the fact that due to another site that was being hosted by our host company being involved in a spamming scheme, all sites by this host were placed on the SpamCop and Spews listings, and as a result most ISP's are currently blocking emails generated from our site as well.

We have taken action and have been removed from those listings, but until all of the ISP's update theirs, we will continue to have these kinds of issues.We would like to apologies for the inconvenience. Once ISP's like AOL stop blocking our mails, you should start receiving notifications as normal.

If you are expecting a email confirmation for your registration with the Community, and have not received it within a few hours of registering, please do not hesitate to contact me directly at Illuvatar@warofthering.net and I will manually activate your registration.

In Fellowship,

Illuvatar

I bought a dirty movie at the local video store last week for $9.99. Rushed home, all excited, to play it on my big screen TV.

And turned it off after only 25 minutes, totally disgusted.

The computer-generated Gollum character who appears in the opening scenes of Two Towers looks and sounds like Yoda from Star Wars' evil and anorexic twin. The moment Gollum jumped on Elijah Wood during their "fight" a scant 10 minutes into the film was also when the movie descended into the realm of childish schlock.....more

Florida State is holding an LOTR marathon this Friday April 16.  They report that all passes are currently gone, but there may be spaces if some passholders are no-shows.  Details are available here

Lord of the Rings star Viggo Mortensen is begging fans to help him recover poems and short stories he wrote while shooting Hidalgo in the Sahara Desert - after they were stolen from his car.

The actor feels sure that whoever took the 12 short stories and 75 poems knew what they were looking for, because money and a computer were left on his backseat but his prose was gone. He says, "It just made me feel like, 'You're not paying attention to the things that matter to you.'" source

We here at WOtR are appalled that anyone would steal personal art and writings from Viggo Mortensen. While it may have been a "crime of opportunity" there is no reason for stealing. To show our displeasure, a new thread has been started by Imdamom in the General Cast Chat forum called "Give Viggo back his art". We hope to show both the criminal and the victim that we are thinking of them. We hope that by showing this person how wrong it is, we can convince them that no one will pay on e-bay for these works, and that there is no intrinsic value to anyone but the artist. Return the stolen items, and show the world that LOTR fans are better than that!!!  view and respond to the thread here.

Fans are petitioning New Line Cinema, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. and United Artists to work out the film rights to The Hobbit, so Peter can make the movie.

Here is an excerpt from the petition:

Fans know that the film rights reside with New Line, while distribution is the legal domain of MGM/United Artists. It would be heartbreaking for the fans to be denied this film, simply because of this rift in rights......

So far the petition has 7937 signatures. Get over there and sign it!!!!

A livestock show and sale is a tough lesson for young people. They raise, feed and care for animals and lovingly prepare them for a show, but when the show is over, the animals are usually put up for sale. And most of the time, the buyer plans to slaughter the animal.

Kasi Whalers, 12, got lucky. She raised a female lamb and the buyer took it to a farm for breeding purposes. She's named her lambs Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom, which could make the breakup especially painful this year. The lambs grew up on her grandparents' farm, Little Acre Farm, in northern Orange County.

She thinks she'll probably enter Johnny Depp in the showmanship class rather than Orlando Bloom. "He's calmer," she said. "Orlando likes to not walk and when he does walk, he jumps." (hehehe) source

On Friday April 16 at 7:15 pm LOTR producer Barrie Osbourne is scheduled to speak at Minneapolis' Riverview Theatre.  Details are available at their website, here 

 In the best movie category, for example, will it be Tolkien or Tarantino? . . . more

Wed, 14. April 2004 on UKTV Gold
Wed, 14. April 2004 on UKTV Gold+1
Tue, 20. April 2004 on UKTV Gold
Tue, 20. April 2004 on UKTV Gold+1
Wed, 21. April 2004 on UKTV Gold
Wed, 21. April 2004 on UKTV Gold+1 (thanks to yelsel)

A new poll of Tinseltown's Most Eligible Men has returned some surprising results. The lovely Aragorn – sorry, Viggo Mortensen – rounds off the bottom of the list, thanks to one of the most iconic roles in recent history. source
(thanks to syelsel)

The poll was carried out by US movie magazine Premiere.

Computer-generated character Gollum from The Lord of the Rings, voiced by British actor Andy Serkis, is in ninth place. source

Did you ever read the J.R.R. Tolkien novels or watch the films while munching on Peeps? And if so, did you ever wonder how the marshmallow candies and Tolkien's Middle Earth could be combined? Well if you have, then "The Lord of the Peeps" is for you.....more (http://www.lordofthepeeps.com)

(WOTR is mentioned in the article!!)

timesstar.com has this summary of the May issue of Starlog, full of LOTR-related goodies:)

"From the same publisher that brings us Fangoria comes a science-fiction magazine that throws in Disney's animated "Home on the Range" for no particular reason and a long feature on "Hidalgo" because its star is a king among sci-fi actors, "The Return of the King's" Viggo Mortensen. Jackman dominates the cover, with some of his co-stars given smaller billing, and there are nods to "Hellboy" and "The Punisher." There's also an interview with pretty boy Orlando "Legolas" Bloom from the set of "Troy." Whether or not "Hidalgo" or "Troy" fit the genre doesn't really matter. Once a genre star, always a genre star.

Mortensen and Bloom's co-star in "The Lord of the Rings," John Rhys-Davies (Gimli), is interviewed, and there's a feature on FX wiz and Ray Harryhausen disciple Phil Tippett, hard at work on the "Starship Troopers" sequel. "   Source

At the upcoming Tribeca Film Festival:  A conversation with Academy Award®-winning Lord of the Rings composer Howard Shore about setting Middle Earth to a sweeping score worthy of all its epic battles, touching moments and thrilling victories. Moderated by Film Score Monthly writer Doug Adams.

Date: Saturday, May 8th
Time: 3:30 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Location: Tribeca Performing Arts Center, TPAC2, 199 Chambers Street

More info is available at the festival web site, here

Despite being a golden replica of Frodo's lethal burden in the Lord of the Rings films - complete with elvish inscriptions - the ring did not make the 47-year-old vanish. . . more

Middle Earth Furniture. The name will instantly get the attention of thousands of Lord of the Rings fans all over the world. Fans of Peter Jackson's adaptation of the popular novel by J. R. R. Tolkien will get starry eyed by the thought of rooms in Rohan or Elven decor!

We had our very own Cuiel Rilwen, who is one of our moderators in the Behind the Scenes area of our Community Forum, contact these talented folks, and she was able to get a mail interview with the founders; Jon Broberg and Ross Howard.

Here is her interview with the creators of this unique furniture: Middle Earth Furniture Interview

We would like to thank Cuiel for conducting the interview, and both Jon and Ross for taking the time to answer all of her questions.

[Can you believe that header?!]

LOS ANGELES (Zap2it.com) - Sean Astin and Loni Anderson will share grand marshal duties for Virginia's 77th annual Shenandoah Apple Blossom Festival.

The 33-year-old Astin is best known from his turn as the loyal hobbit Samwise Gamgee who ushered Elijah Wood's character across Middle Earth to Mount Doom in the Oscar-winning "Lord of the Rings" films. He currently stars with Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore in "50 First Dates." . .  more

April is Poetry Month and there is no better time to recognize our own poets here at War of the Ring! Poems will be featured daily and you can view the growing collection here in our Poetry Month Collection.

Come check this out and everything that our intrepid Fanfic Editor Eledhwen has going on over in our Fanfic Section!

Enjoy!

Despite four new openings, the domestic Mega-Blockbuster The Passion of the Christ came in with the 2nd biggest 7th week ever! Only beaten by the worlds largest grossing movie ever Titanic. With an estimated weekend total of $17,087,000 The Passion is predicted to easily run past Return of the King in the USA. The Passion has now grossed a grand total of $354,877,000 in America. 

Mel Gibson who financed the Passion himself is predicted to make at least $400,000,000 for himself alone.

The Girl Next Door starring "24" babe Elisha Cuthbert, did not have a good opening despite premiering on more than 2790 screens. It made $6,000,000 on its weekend opening.

Hidalgo made a low $1,120,000 in America. Viggo Mortensen who stars in this movie, can now hope that it does better overseas.

Return of the King grossing in the USA has now almost reached the end. This weekend it made and estimated $250,000 bringing its total domestic gross up to $375,628,000. ROTK has now reached $1,102,700,000 around the world.

Hullo Folks,

We've just updated our Art Gallery with some great new work from Tolkien fans from around the world.

Aredhel Evenstar, Denise Cohen, Elgaladwen, and Jared Van have all submitted their interpretations of your favourite Tolkien person, place, or scene and we are grateful to be able to present them to you!

Stop in over at the gallery and have a look! :o)

Top five family movies:

1 Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory;

2 ET;

3 The Lord of the Rings Trilogy;

4 Star Wars;

5 Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.......source