Variety yesterday quoted Peter Jackson concerning an event about to start in New Zealand. The Association of Film Commissioners International will be holding its Cineposium International conference in Wellington from November 19 to 23.

Here’s Peter on the event:

Peter Jackson, whose “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy lensed on location in New Zealand, said the Cineposium helps filmmakers who work on a variety of locations and rely on the local film office to aid production teams on the ground.

“It’s great that the AFCI Cineposium brings film commissioners together to learn and exchange information and best practice,” Jackson said.

Twenty commissioners will come together from around the world. I note that Kate Bedya, New Line Cinema’s senior VP of production, will be one of a panel of three on a closing-day session on “how studios and film commissions can work together creatively and as partners to make productions more efficient and successful around the world.”

Peter gets in a plug for New Zealand as a filmmaking location: “The region is a terrific environment for filmmaking and filmmakers. The residents and local government are incredibly enthusiastic, helpful and friendly.” Given what we saw happening with LOTR, that’s obviously true.

I come to you from the lowest spot on earth. I mentioned that I’m on a tour of Jordan. In the last couple of days we’ve seen the northern sites of Jerash and Pella, and this evening we checked into the Marriott on the edge of the Dead Sea. Actually, the surface of the sea itself is 410 meters below sea level. My floor of the hotel is more like 385 meters down.

Even from such a remote spot, I am able to connect to the internet, so I send you all greetings and a couple of links.

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Again it has been a while since I posted anything. Not that there’s much going on at this point. Guillermo Del Toro has been giving some interviews on the occasion of Hellboy II coming out on Blu-ray, but the Hobbit-related news in those is mainly that he can’t give us any Hobbit-related news.

GDT did say some interesting things about his approach to The Hobbit in an interview posted on Bloody Disgusting on November 12:

“THE HOBBIT is a book that is not as much of a children’s book as people seem to remember it. It is not a gory book, were not going to create gore for the sake of gore. There is some intense stuff, as there was in the trilogy. I remember reading it at 11-years-old and being frankly, pretty spooked! We are not imposing any darkness or goriness for the sake of it, we are trying to render the book in the best way possible.“

(You should be aware that the site lives up to its name! If you explore it, you’ll find some gory film images.)

For those of you interested in GDT’s other projects, the interview has some news about a version of Pinocchio that he will be co-producing. He’s also working on the script. When does the man sleep?!?

Right now I’m in London, about to leave on a nine-day tour of Jordan. I should have internet access during part of that, so if anything significant happens, I’ll try to post about it. Otherwise I’ll leave it to TheOneRing.net to keep you informed.

In Chapter 9 of The Frodo Franchise, I discussed how The Lord of the Rings had a positive impact on independent and foreign-language film markets around the world. Shortly after a major slump hit those markets in 2001, the first part of the trilogy pumped money into the overseas distribution companies that had helped finance LOTR. They in turn put that money into buying more films, helping bring the slump to an end.

For many international independent distributors, New Line was a major source of films. Now with the studio absorbed into Warner Bros., it is no longer distributing its own releases. Warners has its own international distribution system, and it now handles all of New Line’s films.

On “Observations on film art and Film Art,” I’ve just posted an entry on how other companies are moving in to supply overseas distributors. It’s clear from what some of the people running those companies say that the impact of Rings is still being felt. The distributors who benefited from the trilogy are still around and still buying films. As I said in the book, “The international art cinema has emerged the better for this ‘Hollywood’ blockbuster.”

Yesterday Ian McKellen posted a new set of Q&As in his “Bits and Bobs” e-post. There are some Lord of the Rings-related queries and responses concerning the technique for hitting Denethor and what Gandalf smoked in his pipe. He also deals politely with a rude diatribe by a homophobic chap named Josef, who threatens not to attend The Hobbit. If so, good riddance. As to the rumor that there might be a third pre-LOTR Tolkien film, Ian denies all knowledge of such a thing but adds, “Wherever Gandalf leads, I shan’t be far behind.” (Though I have seen rumors about a third film, I have yet to encounter any solid evidence for it.)

On October 14, I posted an entry concerning the departure of DreamWorks from Paramount. The move meant that DreamWorks would exist independently and distribute its future films through Universal. The new situation is complicated by the fact at least for the near future Paramount will still distribute some films it had developed with DreamWorks and all the films made by DreamWorks Animation, which remains within Paramount. In the midst of the shift, the Steven Spielberg-Peter Jackson Tintin project was thrown into an uncertain state.

Universal was expected to co-produce Tintin films along with Paramount, but its sudden decision not to do has caused delays in the production.

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I must confess that I keep posting off-topic announcements about Ian McKellen. I was a fan long before he donned Gandalf’s beard and pointy hat. It started way back in 1984, when my husband had a Fulbright research grant to live in Brussels for the autumn semester. I had a grant as well, so there we were, with a little apartment off the Avenue Louise, a 20-minute walk from the Royal Film Archive of Belgium.

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“Del Toro Films” is the official fansite for Guillermo Del Toro, run by webmaster Parker. Now Parker has started a separate page for the Hobbit project, called “The Shire” and described as “The Hobbit Movie Fan Portal.”

It’s a links site, listing Hobbit-related stories on “Del Toro Films”; “The Wire,” “Del Toro Films’s” news page; “The Labyrinth,” Parker’s blog; “TheOneRing.net”; and “The Frodo Franchise.” Thanks, Parker, for putting my blog in that select company!

I’m adding a link to the page to the list on the right. It looks like it will be well worth checking at intervals for a dose of Hobbit-y news.

A while back I mentioned that the Royal Shakespeare Company’s recent production of King Lear, starring Ian McKellen, would eventually be out on DVD. It was released on October 6, though only in the UK. Amazon.uk has it here. Be aware that the DVD has a Region 2 (UK/Europe) coding, so it will only play in other regions if you have a multi-standard player or a special program on your PC.

As for TV showings, King Lear is still listed as being on Channel Four in the UK on December 26. No news yet on when the PBS screening will be.

Since I’m pretty much off-topic anyway, I’ll point out that Ian has been updating his blog about his experiences playing Two in the remake of the classic 1960s TV series The Prisoner. He has done four entries now, the latest posted on October 21. Ian is an excellent writer as well as a superb actor, and the entries make for a good read. The filming is being done in Namibia, so there’s a travelogue quality to the reporting. I hope someday we’ll get yet another blog, this time from New Zealand. The Grey Book II, perhaps?

I haven’t posted for quite some time now. Partly I’ve been dealing with accumulated tasks that awaited me on my return from the Vancouver trip, including an epic entry for the “Observations” blog. Plus, alas, there hasn’t been a whole lot of big news lately. There are a few items on my heap of possible entries for this blog, though, and I plan to post on some of them soon.

I received a note this morning from Steve Newman, of David and Charles, the British publisher of John Howe’s new book, Forging Dragons. He alerted me to the fact that there’s a short promotional film about the book on YouTube. It’s about three minutes long and features John talking about dragons and his reasons for writing the book.

Forging Dragons recently came out from Image in the U.S., and I plan to review it soon. In trying to link to the book on Amazon.uk, I discovered that they’re listing it as coming out on October 31, 2009! Clearly a typo, and I assume, or at least hope, that people pre-ordering it will have to wait a week, not a year. The British publisher is David & Charles.

Those of you who missed it might want to take a look at this entry, where I reproduce my own dragon sketch, done by John.