 |
 |
 |
November 29 : 2007
As we all know, New Line Cinema is hoping to make The Golden Compass the beginning of a new franchise trilogy on the scale of The Lord of the Rings. I’ve blogged about how the studio has been replicating as closely as possible its tactics for promoting The Fellowship of the Ring back in 2001: preview and party at
November 27 : 2007
(Read Part 1 here)
KT: One of the things I talk about in the book is how the film was financed in part by New Line selling the distribution rights for various countries to these little companies in countries around the world. I think there were 25 or 26 of those. One thing that intrigues me is the fact that a lot of them were brought down to
November 20 : 2007
The co-producer of The Lord of the Rings, Rick Porras joined me on September 27 at Barnes & Noble in
November 19 : 2007
New Line’s official website for the Lord of the Rings soundtracks now offers an “Annotated Score” for the trilogy’s music. Each part comes in the form of a downloadable pdf. For The Fellowship of the Ring, click here; for The Two Towers, here; and for The Return of the King, here.
The contents of these are not the same as what’s in the little books that are included in the boxed sets of the complete recordings. Instead, they are offered as “companion pieces” to those books. The books explain the musical themes associated with the various characters and races, specifying which tracks they appear in. The motifs are given as excerpts of musical scores.
The online “Annotated Scores” instead go track by track, with explanations of how the music fits the action. There are also notes on instrumentation and on the unused stretches of music that Howard Shore composed but that were not used in the film. These stretches are included in the complete recordings. The Annotated Scores do not include any musical scores, but the lyrics for the songs, including the choruses heard over several scenes, are given.
So for those who choose to buy the recordings as downloads rather than CDs, you won’t get the contents of the book, but you can at least get some information on the various tracks—though the files are many pages each and would be a challenge to print out in their entirety for convenient reading.
[October 13, 2010: These links are no longer live; the “Annotated Score” PDFs have been taken down now that Doug’s book is out. He assures me that there was nothing in the PDFs that is not in the book as well: “There were some pop-up boxes of trivia in the PDFs, but this material was all worked into the book-text proper. It’s primarily a matter of formatting … we didn’t want to emphasize a non-linear read, and pop-ups worked against us in that regard.” So if you didn’t download or print out those PDFs, fear not, you’re not missing anything.]
November 17 : 2007
At SoundtrackNet, Mike Brennan has posted a lengthy review of the Return of the King complete recordings. After multiple delays, the boxed set is due for release on November 20 ($59.99 on Amazon). A comment added by K. Corey says that the music is already available on iTunes for $25.
November 10 : 2007
Again I must apologize for not posting for so long. In part it’s because I’ve been traveling and was away from the internet for several days. Right now I’m in
The
Frodo Franchise
by Kristin Thompson
Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2007.
hardcover 978-0-520-24774-1
421 pages, 6 x 9 inches, 12 color illustrations; 36 b/w illustrations; 1 map;
1 table
“Once in a lifetime.”
The phrase comes up over and over from the people who worked on Peter Jackson’s
The Lord of the Rings. The film’s 17 Oscars, record-setting earnings,
huge fan base, and hundreds of ancillary products attest to its importance and
to the fact that Rings is far more than a film. Its makers seized a
crucial moment in Hollywood—the special effects digital revolution plus
the rise of “infotainment” and
the Internet—to satisfy the trilogy’s fans while fostering a huge
new international audience. The resulting franchise of franchises has earned
billions of dollars to date with no end in sight.
Kristin Thompson interviewed 76 people to examine the movie’s scripting and design and the new technologies deployed to produce the films, video games, and DVDs. She demonstrates the impact Rings had on the companies that made it, on the fantasy genre, on New Zealand, and on independent cinema. In fast-paced, compulsively readable prose, she affirms Jackson’s Rings as one the most important films ever made.
cover of Penguin Books’ (NZ) edition of The Frodo Franchise, published September 2007. The tiny subtitle reads: “How ‘The Lord of the Rings’ became a Hollywood blockbuster and put New Zealand on the map.”
