Tonight's Dancin' w/the Stars theme was rock music - guest band was KISS. Every costume was head to toe black. One of the songs chosen for contestants was the Rollin' Stones 'Paint It Black'...had to tweet:
Last week Wm Levy did the salsa on Dancin'...he explains beforehand why his family found life in Cuba so difficult. During tonight's show Wm said no one is allowed to listen to American music in that country, therefore he wasn't aware of the long-haired rock bands phenomenon. I'd call that cruel and inhuman punishment:)
Are you planning a Hobbit party for Dec, 2012? Why not order customized M&Ms? You can even upload a Thorin or other pic to be printed on each mouth-melting chocolate-filled piece of candy.
No need to mention the name of the historic/spiritual figure this brings to mind--especially for Easter weekend:
Yet another Game of Thrones, ep 2 review however this one doesn't mention Stannis -- how could the writer not mention the once sex-apathetic Lord of Dragonstone's chess table romp with the red priestess Melisandre??
The first The Hobbit tshirt was recently released - much prefer this version;)
Maids of Honour Row, London - luvvvv this type of historic trivia. It seems there's a connection to Charles Dickens due to the fact a character in Great Expectations visited a woman living in one of the houses. The historical origin of the townhouses is fascinating as well. (see link below)
NEWS: I've not stopped watching him for the last 3 years ;) but MTV alerts others that Richard Armitage is on their ONES TO WATCH 2012 List:
THE HOBBIT NEWS:2012 MTV’s Ones To Watch
Richard Armitage
Elizabeth Banks
Taylor Schilling
Adrianne Palicki
Alice Eve
Taylor Kitsch
Josh Hutcherson
Liam Hemsworth INTERVIEW EXCERPT:
MTV: You ended up with middle ground in terms of the amount of makeup. Did you feel lucky?
Armitage: It did evolve. We all started with quite an extreme version of ourselves. I think because my character does spend a lot of time onscreen and you really have to understand what he's going through emotionally, it became clear that if we started make the prosthetic as close to my features as possible but still make him a dwarf, it would be much easier to read the character. He has to go on such a journey, it was really important to do that. I grew my own beard after the first block because I felt that it was restricting my face. The jaw is so connected to emotion that I wanted to have that free. It made such a huge difference.
It's really weird now because I can't play the character when I haven't gotten everything on. It's very hard to rehearse when you're not in costume, when you haven't gotten the prosthetics on, but I look in the mirror when it's all finished and I don't see it. I can't see where it starts and where it ends. I just see the character. I've never had that before. It's such a unique experience. It's a face that doesn't belong to me. It belongs to WETA workshop and the people that created it. http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1677131/richard-armitage-hobbit.jhtml
Sincere thanks to: http://www.richardarmitagenet.com/latestnews.html
EXCERPT: But the dwarf who is most likely to become a household name is the more fully titled Thorin Oakenshield and we think not only will we have an unforgettable character on the first Hobbit day (Dec. 14, 2012, the release of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey) but also the actor Richard Armitage will become a household name. While there are many who know and love the English actor, that day and the films, will change his career forever.
Thorin will be a stern and occasionally callous dwarf, but he comes from a royal lineage of kings and has very personal reasons to want to travel to The Lonely Mountain (often called Erebor) and kill the dragon Smaug. It was Thorin's grandfather, Thrór, who was King Under the Mountain when Smaug attacked and wreaked the kingdom, driving the dwarves away and into exile. Thorin escaped but the mark on his family is a personal one and if you watched the first Hobbit trailer released, you have already met his father Thrain.
So when we see Thorin in Bilbo's house, he carries with him the physical remnant of his family's legacy: a map showing the secret entrance back into The Lonely Mountain. He also carries with him the failure of his fathers and the hope of his people. Like his father before him, he is taking his kinsmen and heading back — with a burglar and a wizard — to reclaim his kingdom. He will drive the dwarves, and the film, with this desire that may at times boarder on obsession. But hey, if a dragon burned and ate your family, lived in your underground castle (not the one that a balrog lives in during The Lord of the Rings) and slept on your pile of gold and jewels, you might obsess a little as well.
But, that isn't all there is to Thorin. Besides being generally serious and occasionally angry, his pride and bravery will be a big part of his character. He is intelligent, brave, a fierce warrior and, he can sing. It is his (or Armitage's) voice that leads the dark dwarven song in the trailer — ripped directly from J.R.R. Tolkien's text — that gives the short film commercial its brooding mood. He is a king without a throne and a tragic character who will sometimes be at odds with our hero Bilbo, with Gandalf, men and elves, be he is only trying to do his best to meet his burden and return his people to their glory.
First reflection I had after hearing the above dwarf chant was...
Then discovered this more modern take - but somehow none of the fine voices can compare favorably with Thorin's:) - he's the Middle Earth's Got Talent champion..(just noticed they're not best spellers either:)
Finally had a chance to watch the tv show Martin Freeman and Gerard Butler appeared on within the past few days. Actually, my initial impression is "much ado about nothing" considering both Gerard and his fan seemed to behave perfectly natural and civilized about the situation. He couldn't remember whether he'd ever worn a kilt during an event on his home turf, and she reminded him(from the audience:) that he had worn one in Glasgow. At that point, he smiled warmly at her and didn't seem annoyed in the slightest. An instant look of disbelief did cross the actor's face when she identified the location of a photo of him on a beach in Hawaii. But even that visual feedback wasn't as strong as I'd been expecting after hearing second-hand reports about various reactions to the episode. Butler was very entertaining & charming when he described his mother's hand signals to him as he sat up front facing the congregation - wearing a kilt - at his sister's wedding. All in all, I'd say Gerard Butler never actually ridiculed his apparently *very enthusiastic* fan. As a result, his reactions left me with the opinion he wisely realizes an actor's professional life's blood depends on those in the audience who support (as RA said at one time) "what I [they] do".
In fact, this is the first time I've really enjoyed watching the GN show because he allowed his guests to do most of the talking rather than monopolizing the conversation himself. The results are at times hilarious. See for yourself...
Take the Quiz: Which Downton Abbey Character are you? [UPDATE: the link below leads you to the quiz page - not my result, which is Matthew Crawley haha...hmmm why him? perhaps because politics is one of my fav topics of conversation;]
The test identifying which Downton Abbey character you might be, obviously takes into consideration the cultural strait jackets for females in those days. A *lady* did not discuss politics in the early 20thC. Therefore, the century old computer programming *winks* gave me the Matthew Crawley result. Lol I don't really mind since he's such a cutie(as Mary finally realized:) http://www.weta.org/tv/picks/downtonabbey/quiz
Oooh, look at that - no Lucas cowlick above for a change. Must've been plastered down with an extra quantity of hair dressing of some sort, because the majority of the time both Lucas and John Porter had an adorable...
The talented pianist playing background music is also the videographer. New RA fans should know that the actor deliberately lost many pounds in preparation for playing Lucas North (the spy incarcerated 8yrs in a Russian prison) on his return in Spooks 7..
@merilyn066 They both do. Absolutely. And your boy does, too, btw.
7 Jan
@merilyn066Merilyn
@EricVespe PJ must have a wicked & dark sense of humour!
7 Jan
EricVespeEric Vespe
Before winning the Oscar for Into the West, Fran Walsh and Peter Jackson wrote this song (and it's even better): http://tinyurl.com/7fabll3
Following restaurant review is of interest to The Hobbit devotees. The main course is Beef Wellington but that fact doesn't signal it's location is in NZ - rather it's in California. Reading the menu descriptions has caused me to ponder whether Bilbo or Thorin would feel more at home partaking of a 7-course dinner at The Hobbit:
The dark arts of film demanded Jackson ham up the love story in LOTR, but bringing the Necromancer – later Sauron – into The Hobbit's denouement could break the story's spell altogether
Fans of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy who have also read the original JRR Tolkien books will no doubt remember the uncomfortable moment in The Return of the King when Hugo Weaving's Elrond rocks up rather randomly at Dunharrow and starts spouting nonsense about Arwen's fate being tied inextricably to the fate of the ring. It wasn't in the book, and it wouldn't have been in the movie had Jackson and his team not been determined to give the romance between Aragorn and his elven belle more screen time in line with Hollywood convention.
Never mind, most of us thought, forgiving a film-making team that had pulled off a minor miracle in bringing Tolkien's fantasy work to the big screen at all, and managed to do so with great care and brio. I wonder if we'll be so generous if new rumours that Jackson is planning to change the end of The Hobbit turn out to have any basis in fact.
Empire online spoke recently to Benedict Cumberbatch, the Sherlock star suspected of possessing his own magic ring that requires all major Hollywood directors to cast him in their latest productions. As well as voicing the dragon Smaug and the Necromancer (who morphs into evil eye Sauron for the Lord of the Rings) in Jackson's two-part take on The Hobbit, the British actor is also in line for a turn as the major villain in JJ Abrams's Star Trek II and is currently starring as Major Stewart in Steven Spielberg's Oscar-tipped War Horse. If you don't want to know anything about his Hobbity ventures before December 2013, when second instalment There and Back Again hits cinemas, TURN AWAY NOW.
"I'm playing Smaug through motion-capture and voicing the Necromancer, which is a character in the Five Legions War or something which I'm meant to understand," Cumberbatch told Empire. "He's not actually in the original Hobbit. It's something [Peter Jackson]'s taken from Lord of the Rings that he wants to put in there."
Hang on a minute. The Necromancer at the Battle of Five Armies (which is surely what Cumberbatch is referring to here)? Tolkienistas will know that the aforementioned conflict, a five-way rumpus involving dwarves, elves, goblins, wargs and men for the treasures of Erebor, marks the denouement of The Hobbit. There is little indication in the book that it has anything much to do with Sauron, who has recently been kicked out of Mirkwood by the White Council in events we hear about from Gandalf in retrospect. The idea that the Necromancer turns up to lead a battalion of (presumably) goblins seems to come from way out of left field. It's a bit like remaking the original Star Wars trilogy and inserting the ewoks in the first movie (OK, perhaps not quite that bad).
Could Cumberbatch have got it wrong? He does seem a little confused about his Tolkien terminology, so we can only hope that befuddlement is to blame here. With so many different roles to play in 2012 and beyond, who can blame him for getting a little mixed up?
Jackson has already shown a propensity towards presenting The Hobbit in a form which allows it to segue comfortably into the Lord of the Rings, and there's not much wrong with that. After all, Tolkien himself revised his earlier book after delving into deeper, darker territory in its three-part sequel. Few have complained that Galadriel, Saruman and even Legolas are due to appear in The Hobbit, since the book's background events offer Jackson some licence to include them, but allowing the Necromancer to play a major role in the film project's finale seems to me a step too far.
The Hobbit's major villain is Smaug, and nothing should be allowed to undermine that. The mean old worm may be an evil brute with a heart of frozen, inky darkness, but he is unconnected to Sauron and the dark lord's more ambitious machinations. Most would be happy to see the new films prefigure the rise of evil in Middle Earth, but few would expect to see the later books' villain promoted to a major antagonist before his time. By all means let's see the Necromancer get kicked out of Mirkwood, but please keep him well clear of the Lonely Mountain. Mordor is, after all, rather a long way south.
Then we can visit the lovely Longwood Gardens. What could possibly be more beautiful than their conservatory during the Holiday season - unless it's The Nutcracker's Suite..stunning marriage of the two...
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