My first Comic-Con experience has been pretty exciting so far. I can’t say that generalization applied to standing in the Press and Professional line to get my badge—though it can’t actually have been more than about 25 minutes and was handled pretty efficiently. The line of people waiting to get their purchased four-day passes seemed to stretch to the horizon. Once I had my badge, I headed inside for the Wednesday night preview of the contents of the enormous exhibition hall. more »

Recently I had trouble inserting a photo into one of my blog entries. Given that adding illustrations to my blogs is about the height of my technological expertise, this worried me—especially with Comic-Con coming up. I hope to bring you many photos of LOTR– and Hobbit-related events there.

So I figured I should put up a test entry to make sure I can cope with photos. What photo to use, though? For some reason I thought of some pics I took of the big Gollum model that for all too short a time loomed above one of the wings of the Wellington airport. more »

Now that I’m back from Italy, I’ve been catching up with the many little pieces of Hobbit-project news that have come out since my departure on June 25. Of course Guillermo Del Toro has been helping to publicize Hellboy II: The Golden Army, and of course just about every interviewer asked him about The Hobbit. more »

Today TheOneRing.net announced that its team will be interviewing Richard Taylor and John Howe at Comic-Con. That event will happen at the Weta Workshop booth (#2615) at 4:00 on Thursday, July 24.

The interview is in connection with a forthcoming documentary on Renaissance martial arts, Reclaiming the Blade, produced by Galatia Films. Richard and John will be in the film, as will Viggo Mortensen, Karl Urban, and Bob Anderson (who taught the main actors swordfighting for the trilogy). John Rhys-Davies will narrate. These Comic-Con interviews will discuss Richard and John’s other project as well.

Immediately after the interview Richard and John will autograph mini-posters for the film. The interview itself will be recorded on video, which will then be posted both on TORN and on the Reclaiming the Blade website.

Snooping around the latter, I discovered that Galatia has posted some short videos on YouTube. One, from April 23, has excerpts from an interview with Richard at Weta Workshop. Another, posted March 26, features Mortensen and Anderson. Check out the index page, with links, here.

Yesterday Guardian.co.uk posted an interesting piece on Hellboy II: The Golden Army as a franchise film. The first Hellboy was produced by Revolution Studios and distributed by Columbia. It grossed a bit under $60 million in the U.S. and around $100 million internationally. On a $66 million budget (as listed on Box Office Mojo), that’s not enough to turn a profit, since of course a slice of that gross stays with the theater owners. more »

I’ve mentioned Howard Shore’s music for the Korean online game “Soul of the Ultimate Nation” before, mainly here on my other blog. I think any fan of the Lord of the Rings soundtrack would love this one as well. Now I note that a Korean seller with a 99% positive rating is offering new copies of the “Soul of the Ultimate Nation” CD as a third-party seller on Amazon. If you haven’t gotten your hands on one of these yet, give yourself a treat! It’s wonderful stuff (and not on the iTunes Store).

I am getting seriously excited about going to Comic-Con next week. As I’ve said, it’s my first time. I’ll be participating in TheOneRing.net’s Hobbit project panel at 10:00 am on Friday, July 25. We’ll be in Room 32AB. This is TORN’s first participation at Comic-Con since five years ago. Back in 2003, The Return of the King hadn’t come out yet. Indeed, at the time of the Con, stars like Ian McKellen were back in New Zealand for pick-ups, and the third film was still in frantic, behind-schedule production. I was patiently waiting for pickups to be over so I could go down to Wellington in the hope that some of the filmmakers would have time to talk with me for my book. more »

Variety reports that Hellboy II: The Golden Army, has had a successful opening weekend. It’s number one at an estimated $35.9 million. (Actual figures will be announced tomorrow.) According to Box Office Mojo, the pic made an average of $11,200 per theater, which is quite healthy. Given the good reviews and buzz, I’m not surprised.

Of course the release of the film marks a major stage in the progress of The Hobbit project. Now that Del Toro is going to be off the hook for promoting Hellboy II, he can go off to New Zealand to start work on it. These early get-togethers with his filmmaking colleagues will probably be mostly talk and preliminary sketches and so on, but Del Toro has promised some concrete news concerning the project soon. (I’m currently preparing a long summary of Hobbit-related news that has come out during the publicizing of Hellboy II.)

I have to suspect that John Howe, who’s going to be a special guest at Comic-Con next week, may be on his way to New Zealand as well, in order to take part in some of the planning. San Diego is a lot closer to Wellington than is John’s home. (He lives in Switzerland.) Maybe we’ll find out something about that during the Comic-Con session devoted to John’s work, which is happening at noon on Saturday, July 26. You may be sure that my colleagues from TheOneRing.net and I will be there and will report on every precious scrap of information we can glean from it.

TheOneRing.net and Doug Adams’ website have pointed to a new resource for lovers of Howard Shore’s music for the LOTR trilogy. Some time back I posted a link to “The Annotated Score,” a series of analyses by Adams to accompany the three boxed sets of CDs with the complete, extended version soundtracks. At that point the analyses were only available as .pdfs.

Now those same analyses are available in .html form on a new website, “The Music of The Lord of the Rings.” A bigger difference is that the site’s owner, John Jennette, has put in links to excerpts from the soundtracks, broken down into several categories: Analysis, Themes & Motifs, Texts, Instruments, and Performers. Check out the differences between, say, the “hymn” and “lullaby” versions of the Shire theme. It’s a big site, and I’m sure one could get sucked into hours and hours of entertaining enlightenment.

Adams describes Jennette’s site as having started out as “a school assignment.” I’m not sure whether Jennette was the assigner or the assignee of that project. Either way, it’s a terrific resource.

By the way, last week Adams posted an update concerning the current progress of his book on the trilogy’s music. It’s anticipated to be released in the fourth quarter of this year. Adams still has not announced what publisher will bring it out. I’m looking forward to finding out where the book fits into the overall LOTR franchise–which still continues, if at a slower pace.

Recently I revealed that I had been invited to participate in TheOneRing.net’s panel on the Hobbit project at the upcoming Comic-Con. Today the schedule was posted. We’re among several panels happening at 10 am on Friday, July 25. I can’t tell you who the “possible special guests” might be, but the rumors I’ve heard are pretty exciting! I hope those of you who want to attend have purchased your passes already. The 4-day ones were sold out some time ago. The Friday and Saturday one-day passes are also gone, and there are only a few one-day passes for Thursday and Sunday.

(Variety posted an informative story on Comic-Con yesterday. Apparently the Con has finally topped out in terms of attendance–125,000 fans last year–and may be looking to move to larger quarters after its deal with the San Diego Convention Center expires in 2012.)

I’m really looking forward to my first Comic-Con. Years ago this was an important venue for promoting The Lord of the Rings, and no doubt it will be important for The Hobbit as well. This year Weta Workshop will be present, as will Sideshow Collectibles, and probably other companies with LOTR franchise tie-ins. Electronic Arts, the official video-games maker, is co-sponsoring the event.

TORN will be selling copies of The Frodo Franchise, and I’ll be around to sign copies for you. (If you’ve already got one and want it signed, bring it along. No requirement that you buy one on the spot.) I’ll also be blogging during the Con. Hope to see some of you there!