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LOTR News 02/06
'Rings' museum likely
Lord of the Rings nominatd for Writers Guild Awards
Who's off to Hollywood?
How to win an Oscar
Tolkien estate sues over rewrite
Peggy Anderson
AP
A one-man publishing house has been ordered not to publish — at least for now — his "The Lord of the Rings Diary," which puts J.R.R. Tolkien's beloved epic trilogy in chronological order.
U.S. District Judge Barbara Rothstein issued an order last week barring publication of the volume by Inkling Books' Michael W. Perry, pending resolution of a copyright-infringement lawsuit filed on behalf of the Tolkien estate.
"I'm ceasing and desisting," Perry said in an interview. "I'm hoping to work out some kind of agreement. ... I think there's been a lot of misunderstanding."
Wendy Strothman, an estate representative and executive vice president of Tolkien's U.S. publisher, Houghton Mifflin, is not so sure.
It appears the work "amounts to a retelling of 'The Lord of the Rings' in a different form," she said in an interview. "That is not something the estate condones. It thinks if people want to read 'The Lord of the Rings' ... they should read the original.'"
However, it is not entirely clear to the estate what the book is, she said, since Perry did not provide a manuscript until last Thursday's hearing. His book is subtitled "A Chronology of J.J.R. Tolkien's Best-Selling Epic."
Strothman, whose publishing house is not involved in the suit, said the estate's decision to go to court was triggered by Perry's refusal to provide a manuscript. Perry said he advised the estate's lawyer when they began corresponding last fall that he would turn over a copy if the firm would sign "a nondisclosure agreement," which it refused to do.
"I didn't want somebody to steal my format," Perry said.
Houghton Mifflin, ironically, defended a copyright-infringement suit last year involving Alice Randall's "The Wind Done Gone," a parody of "Gone With the Wind." Representatives of the late author of "Gone With the Wind," Margaret Mitchell, had sued to prevent publication. After an initial injunction was granted, a federal appeals court in Atlanta lifted the ban and the book became a best seller.
According to Houghton Mifflin, the Tolkien estate has been quite tolerant of commentary and even parodies of Tolkien's work. One example is Harvard Lampoon's "Bored of the Rings."
But based on Perry's excerpts, the "Diary" is not likely to qualify, Strothman said.
"It appeared to us to be very blatant in its infringement," she said. And while "sometimes the nature of an infringement is such that it can be corrected," that does not appear to be the case here.
Perry considers his slim volume a guide to ease readers through Tolkien's layers of time and space and myriad characters.
"I've added a lot of new information. It really is scholarly. ... I'm engaging in commentary and criticism, not just copying their book," he said.
In an Oct. 9 letter to lawyers for the estate, Perry said: "To be honest, 'Diary' makes for dull reading. It isn't exciting and it isn't literary and it wasn't intended to be. It's like a dictionary, it packages facts about 'Rings' in the most useful possible format."
The estate's lawyers will review the work in its entirety and decide whether to press for a permanent ban on publication. The lawsuit cites the potential for substantial damages if Perry's work is published, seeking "at least $750,000."
But it might have trouble collecting from Perry if it wins. Perry — whose past works include "Stories for Girls," which transforms dense 19th-century translations of Hans Christian Andersen's tales into modern English — estimated his 2001 income at about $7,000.
'Rings' museum likely
Otago Daily Times
Wellington: A museum to display images from
The Lord of the Rings
is a possibility now the first movie in the fantasy trilogy has been released, former Wellington mayor Mark Blumsky says.
Mr Blumsky was on the other side of the Wellington City Council table this week when he reported back to his former colleagues about the impact of December's
Fellowship of the Ring
Australian-New Zealand premiere in Wellington.
Now that the first part of the trilogy had screened, both producers New Line Cinema and director Peter Jackson were more relaxed about a museum, he said.
Questions remained between New Line and the estate of
Rings
author J.R.R. Tolkien over rights to certain images. However, the Wellington Regional Economic Development Agency was behind a long-term plan to establish a museum or exhibit of the movie, filmed predominantly in the Wellington region.
"The movie is doing very well and the director has gone into bat for it (the museum idea), so now is the time to look at that," Mr Blumsky said.
The former mayor was co-ordinator for events leading up to the Wellington premiere on December 19.
The Government was also involved in encouraging spin-offs from the film. The minister with responsibility for
Lord of the Rings
projects, Pete Hodgson, late last year announced investments that included $180,000 film trade stands at US and European film markets.
Another $200,000 was allocated for workshops that would highlight the digital imagery of Wellington-based company Weta to similar businesses in Los Angeles and Seattle.
Mr Blumsky said it was essential the council maintained the momentum generated by the premiere of the first
Rings
film in its quest to secure a world opening for one of the two sequels.
The council allocated $50,000 for the street event preceding the premiere, and hobbit actor Elijah Wood said it was better than the Hollywood or London premieres.
Mr Blumsky said the street event, jointly run by the council and film distributors Roadshow and attended by up to 15,000 people, received coverage in newspapers as far away as Sweden.
Wellington's web site received more than a million hits afterwards. - NZPA
Lord of the Rings nominated for Writers Guild Awards
BBC News
The first Lord of the Rings film and Bridget Jones's Diary have been nominated for Writers Guild of America awards.
The awards recognise writing both directly for the screen and adapted for the screen.
The nominations in the original material category:
Gosford Park, by Julian Fellowes
The Man Who Wasn't There, by Joel Coen and Ethan Coen
Monster's Ball, by Milo Addica and Will Rokos
Moulin Rouge, by Baz Luhrmann and Craig Pearce
The Royal Tenenbaums, by Wes Anderson and Owen Wilson
In the running in the adapted category are:
A Beautiful Mind, by Akiva Goldsman, based on the book by Sylvia Nasar
Black Hawk Down, by Ken Nolan, based on the book by Mark Bowden
Bridget Jones's Diary, by Helen Fielding, Andrew Davies and Richard Curtis, based on the novel by Helen Fielding
Ghost World, by Daniel Clowes and Terry Zwigoff, based on the book by Daniel Clowes
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, by Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens and Peter Jackson, based on the book JRR Tolkien .
Winners will be announced at the 54th annual Writers Guild Award, which will take place March 2 simultaneously in Los Angeles at the Beverly Hilton and in New York at the Pierre Hotel.
Lord of the Rings Awards Stats
How to win an Oscar
The Telegraph
It's not about being the best. Hollywood has its own rules for an Academy Award film, says Tom Shone
IT's that time of the year again - the season of howled anguish, muffled injustices and angrily pounded armchairs. It is Oscar season, when the great and the good of California's Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences gather, ponder the relative merits of the year's best actors and films, and finally, amid great fanfare and weird interpretative dance numbers, give the Oscar to someone else.
We all know that the Oscars bear scant relation to the merits of the films in question. So what do they bear relation to? In order to answer this question, we processed the winners and losers of the past 20 years into a computer and asked it to come up with a set of rules as to how you win an Oscar. This is what it gave us.
1 Play to Hollywood's weaknesses, not its strengths
What Hollywood does best is entertain and divert. It is, on the other hand, loath to praise itself for these qualities. So instead, every year at Oscar time, it praises itself for the few pictures it has made with an extra-curricular agenda: pictures that educate, enlighten and inform. This is bad news for The Lord of the Rings, which, despite being a perfect candidate for best picture, has the disadvantage of being entirely made up. The Academy does not like pure fantasy - it smacks too much of what the movie business gets up to on the other 364 days of the year.
2 Do not hide your light under a bushel
It is no use being up for best costume design, for instance, if the picture you are up for is not a period picture. That pictures set in the present day require just as much costume research is of no matter: your work must show up on the screen (see Gosford Park, Moulin Rouge and all the other period pictures likely to be up for best film). The only area in which wallflowers are rewarded are the best supporting actor categories - Jennifer Connelly will probably win this year for her elegant long-sufferance throughout A Beautiful Mind. Elsewhere, though, the showy and attention-grabbing will rule.
3 Play the disabled
Playing characters with disabilities is the only sure-fire way of reassuring the Academy voters - an insecure bunch at the best of times - that a performance has occurred, that acting is verifiably in the building. Three performances this year fall into this category: with Sean Penn playing a mentally retarded parent in I Am Sam, Judi Dench playing the Alzheimer's-afflicted Iris Murcoch in Iris and Russell Crowe as the schizophrenic maths genius John Nash in A Beautiful Mind.
4 Play an already talented person
The Academy exists to reward talent, but it is unsure exactly as to how talent manifests itself. Taking the role of someone whose genius is a matter of public record helps settle matters once and for all. In voting for Crowe, you are not just voting for Crowe, but also rewarding a world-class mathematician. The Oscar follows the Nobel.
5 Be serious
The only real challenge to Crowe comes from Will Smith, who plays Muhammad Ali in Michael Mann's biopic. Smith qualifies on several counts: he has made a lot of money over the years - a very important factor in the Academy's mind - although his films have been largely comedies. Funny is not allowed. The academy traditionally frowns on comic performances - which ill befit the piety of the proceedings - but instead loves comics who have put the hours in but finally recanted of their former ways and renounced their instincts for fun. Thus does Smith score big. It will also be hard for people to resist the sight of a standing ovation for the Parkinson's-afflicted Muhammad Ali (see disabilities, above).
6 Get your facts right
Since the judgment of quality is an intangible matter, as evanescent as light, and subject to individual interpretation, it is easier to vote on more tangible matters of fact. Thus playing a historical personage or recreating actual historical events helps, but you must get things right, as Jerry Bruckheimer found out when his creative mishandling of Pearl Harbor came to light. A similar fate may befall A Beautiful Mind, despite its success at the Golden Globes, for its suggestion that John Nash was innocently wooing his one and only love, when he was, in fact, actively involved in a number of homosexual trysts.
7 Be in a Miramax film
Harvey Weinstein, the head of Miramax, has, over recent years, perfected the art of Oscar hype: building word-of-mouth on a film's Oscar chances through poster campaigns, magazine advertisements and the like until its ascent to the podium is all but unstoppable. But, The English Patient what began with and Shakespeare In Love continued with , hit a slight snag with last year's Chocolat and this year's The Shipping News, films so top-heavy with previous Oscar-winners - Kevin Spacey, Juliette Binoche, Lasse Halstrom, Judi Dench - that they seem, in some way, to have already won, and therefore in no need of further reward.
8 Be as worthy a winner off screen as you are on
Thus Nicole Kidman is a shoo-in for best actress this year, not just for her performance in Moulin Rouge but also because of her divorce from Tom Cruise. Pity is an emotion that scores at the Academy, and Kidman has achieved that blissful confluence of great acting and red-hot gossip that pushes her into the top league.
9 Illustrate how grateful a winner you will be
Thus do the recent Golden Globes serve as a tip-off to this year's Oscar winners, if only because it provides a dress-rehearsal for the gratitude levels of the recipient. Last year, Julia Roberts's acceptance speech at the Golden Globes was a model mix of self-deprecation and whooping glee, which eloquently bespoke of her Oscarless years, and hinted at her delight were her banishment to end. The academy knew they were onto a good thing. The same goes for Kidman this year, but not Crowe, who won last year for Gladiator.
10 End your movie with applause and/or a standing ovation
Academy members are a suggestible bunch, and climactic scenes in which everyone stands up and applauds the main character will serve to nudge voters in the right direction. Shine set the benchmark in this regard, and A Beautiful Mind plays similarly Pavlovian tricks this year. The best way to win an Oscar, it can be concluded, is to make a film that most closely resembles the Oscar ceremony itself: tears, laughter, awards, big reputations, and tumultuous applause. Easy when you know how.
Nominations for the 74th annual Oscar presentation will be made on Feb 12; the ceremony is held on March 24
Who's off to Hollywood?
Tim Cooper
This is London
It's Oscar nomination time in Hollywood. On Tuesday, the Academy of Motion Pictures announces its glittering lists of movie contenders - 20 awards, five people per award - and the build-up begins.
Painstaking preparation is crucial. The dress and the diet are chosen, the hairstylist and hotel booked, the walk up the red carpet practised.
Russell Crowe and Nicole Kidman are hotly tipped to head the nominations, of course.
Crowe is favourite for a third successive nomination for his star turn as Nobel prizewinning mathematician John Nash in A Beautiful Mind, following last year's victory for Gladiator.
Kidman, who has never been nominated for an Oscar, is hoping to repeat her recent success at the Golden Globes, where she won the Best Actress prize for Moulin Rouge.
But the two films expected to dominate the 24 March ceremony are Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter - which is where the Brits come in.
We could harvest a bumper crop this year. Hopes are high in the Best Supporting categories, with Robbie Coltrane strongly tipped for his shaggy Hagrid in HP, Hogwart School's giant groundsman and Keeper of Weird Beasts. Ben Kingsley, too, is fancied for his chilling portrayal of a psychopathic London gangster in Sexy Beast, but he may face familiar competition from Jim Broadbent, for the role of John Bayley in Iris, and Ian McKellen's Gandalf in Lord of the Rings.
Hopefuls for Supporting Actress, meanwhile, include both Helen Mirren and Maggie Smith in Gosford Park, and Kate Winslet for her winsome and charismatic performance as (the young) Iris Murdoch in Iris.
As for leading actor and actress, Britain should be cheering for Tom Wilkinson and Tilda Swinton, who both gave outstanding performances as American parents facing family crises in In The Bedroom and The Deep End respectively - but then they are competing against fellow countrymen Ewan McGregor in Moulin Rouge and, of course, Academy favourite Dame Judi Dench for her portrayal of (the old) Iris Murdoch in Iris.
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