I am currently abroad, attending the wonderful festival Il Cinema Ritrovato, in Bologna, Italy. All week they’re showing restored prints of old films, retrospectives of major directors (Lev Kuleshov and Josef von Sternberg), and all sorts of goodies. Being away from my desk, I can’t blog very well.

Naturally there has been a major development in the Tolkien Trust lawsuit, and I’ve missed it. I would imagine anyone who reads my blog regularly reads TheOneRing.net as well, so you are all probably more up to date than I am at the moment. But for a short, very informative account of the latest, see here. TORN has also linked to a Variety story summing up New Line’s current situation and upcoming slate of films.

So much has happened to New Line this year that once I get home (next week), I plan to write a long entry summarizing the main events since Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes first announced that he was going to fold New Line into parent company Warner Bros. Shortly after that I’ll be blogging from Comic-Con. I also plan some reviews of the new scholarly anthologies on the film trilogy. Here at the festival I ran into one of the editors of a German anthology, which he says he’ll send me. My high-school German is kind of rusty, but I’ll try to figure out enough to give general information about it.

I had the pleasure today of hearing from Halfdan Hansen, complimenting me on my blog. Hafldan is the son of Jens Hansen (1940-1999), the designer of The One Ring used in the movie trilogy. Fans will be familiar with the creation of the Ring from the DVD supplements. I would have said “familiar with the creation of that prop,” but of course the Ring had to be fashioned in various scales to be held by characters of different sizes. There was also the large version used in the Council of Elrond scene for the close-up reflecting the argument among the representatives of various races.

The Hansen firm is located in Nelson, New Zealand. Its website has a page on the One Ring’s design. The company takes custom orders for copies of the Ring, though these do not contain the inscription seen on the Ring in the film. Of course, the One Ring doesn’t bear that inscription unless it is exposed to heat, so I would think a plain ring would be a more authentic replica!

Back on May 24, I posted a piece called “Relax: The Times’ Story about the Lawsuit Is a Tempest in a Teapot.” There I pointed out that the piece published in the London Times, “Hobbit movies meet dire foe in the son of Tolkien,” was essentially a overly dramatic rehash of already-known facts, with a some errors and an unattributed quotation tossed in.

Today, as TheOneRing.net points out, the Times printed an apology to Christopher Tolkien, admitting that the piece contained mistakes and misleading passages. There’s no separate URL for it, and the story is bound to scroll off the “News in Brief” page soon, so instead of linking it, I’ll quote it in full:

In our report of the litigation between the Tolkien family and New Line Cinema, producers of The Lord of the Rings (May 25), we did not make it clear that Christopher Tolkien is suing as a trustee of the Tolkien Trust, a registered charity, and the JRR Tolkien 1967 Discretionary Settlement. It was another member of the family who referred to the action as “one last crusade”, not Mr Tolkien, and the hearing on June 6 was to fix a date for the eventual trial, not actually to halt Hollywood plans to film The Hobbit. We apologise to the trustees and Mr Tolkien for these errors.

So essentially a complete retraction, given that all the other content of the story came from the February 11 lawsuit complaint and was hardly news by that point.

I’m annoyed that these days the media try to ramp up the excitement of an already dramatic situation. It’s not enough that the Trust is suing New Line, but it has to be made to sound like a vengeful personal crusade. Add the inaccuracies, and you have a story that should never have been written. And it shouldn’t have taken nearly a month for this retraction, either. This misleading piece caused a lot of fans to worry about whether The Hobbit, after so many delays, would be scotched altogether. I hope my comments on the original story helped to stem some of that worry.

TheOneRing.net has linked to a story that appeared on the New Zealand news site, Stuff.co.nz, on June 2. “Tenths Trust looking for Jackson deal” reports that Peter Jackson may be considering using a stretch of land on the northwest coast of the Miramar Peninsula to expand his filmmaking facilities. The Stuff description, however, doesn’t explain some of the terms, and for someone who doesn’t know certain aspects of the country’s history, it’s close to impossible to understand the current negotiations over this land. Here is my attempt to clarify the situation. more »

Some of you have written to ask my opinion on the news concerning the Tolkien Trust’s lawsuit against New Line. TheOneRing.net broke the news recently. Those of you who haven’t caught up with it can get to it here. Basically, a court date for the suit has been set for late next year.

I’m delighted that you have found my explanations of various aspects of what has been going on with New Line this year useful. For the legal aspects, I wouldn’t dare weigh in on my own. In past entries I’ve mentioned my lawyer, who has helped me in sorting out what’s going on, or might be going on. I have alerted him to this development, and as soon as he has time to sort these latest developments out for me, I’ll be posting.

[Added later the same day: TheOneRing.net now has a summary of the history of the Tolkien Trust lawsuit against New Line, posted by Douglas C. Kane. If I come up with anything more, obviously I’ll post it, but in the meantime, this discussion should bring people up to date.]

Recently I wrote about John Howe and dragons. Now I discover that he has a new book coming out, Forging Dragons. It contains John’s paintings of dragons, as well as the sketches he made in preparing them and some information on how he did them. There’s even discuss of the mythological background of each dragon. The book’s not due out until October 10, but already Amazon has it available for pre-orders here.

Yesterday the New York Times published a lengthy story on MGM’s current situation as it moves toward again producing films and regaining its historical status as one of the major Hollywood studios. There’s only a passing reference to Peter Jackson’s production of the two Hobbit films (for which MGM owns the distribution rights), but for anyone who wants to keep up with the companies involved, this story provides a good snapshot of MGM’s current problems, projects, and strategies.

On June 8, Chris “Calisuri” Pirrotta, one of the co-founders of TheOneRing.net, was interviewed on the “Fictional Frontiers” program on WNJC 1360 am, Philadelphia. TORN has posted a transcript here. There are main topics of conversation. One is the history of TORN, including the three Oscar-night parties of 2002, 2003, and 2004. Much of this will be familiar to readers of The Frodo Franchise, since I interviewed Chris and some other TORN people for the book. Still, Chris provides additional information and a lot of details. He also goes over some of the main points of the recent Peter Jackson-Guillermo del Toro Q&A session.

If I’m emailing someone in New Zealand and want to know what time they might receive my message, I think “seven hours ago tomorrow.” That’s the time difference between Madison, Wisconsin, and anywhere in New Zealand. Right now there’s a lot of filmmaking going on in that distant place.

The May 2 issue of Screen International published a three-page spread on the lively production situation in New Zealand. It contains plenty of evidence that the positive impact that the LOTR trilogy had on the industry there continues. In the last chapter of The Frodo Franchise, I described how both productions from abroad and local films have benefited from the world-class production and post-production facilities created by Peter Jackson’s team. The gorgeous scenery that played Middle-earth continues to draw productions for location shooting.

more »

I haven’t posted much lately. That’s partly because there hasn’t been a lot of news—though plenty of speculation. It’s also partly because my husband David Bordwell and I have been hard at work on the revisions for the third edition of our textbook Film History: An Introduction. Now that it has been shipped off to the press, I’ve got a lot more time. I may need it, too. Even as I write, that meeting concerning the Tolkien Trust’s lawsuit against New Line is presumably happening in Los Angeles. There may not be any immediate announcement of progress or changes resulting, but I suspect we’ll hear something in the not-too-distant future.

In the meantime, I did get one piece of excellent news yesterday. My friends at TheOneRing.net have asked me to join them on a panel concerning the Hobbit films at Comic-Con! I’ve never been to Comic-Con (San Diego Convention Center, July 24-27), which I discuss briefly in The Frodo Franchise, but for years I’ve wanted to go. I interviewed some members of the TORN team for the book, and I look forward to meeting more of them in person. John Howe is among the announced guests, so maybe I’ll get to meet him as well. John was very cordial about letting me reproduce one of his paintings in the book, but that was all handled by mail. Of course it has been confirmed that he’ll be working alongside Alan Lee and the rest of the designers on the Hobbit project. And finally, I hope to meet those of you who will be attending Comic-Con.

I’ll post information on the TORN panel closer to the time, and I certainly expect, like many other fans, to be blogging from Comic-Con. There’ll be some companies associated with the LOTR franchise, like Sideshow Collectibles and perhaps Weta Workshop, so I’ll be sure to check out their displays.