News from the set

It will I am sure be a fitting tribute and in no way at all salacious {{{{I've been told to say that!! And besides no one at Pure Publications knows what salacious means}}}}

Isnt it that stuff you find in Amsterdam? or is it a kind of tree bark ? you know the stuff you make Aspirin out of?

It sounds like a sauce you put on fish or eels... I'll check the Forumshire Heart Smart Cook Book...

Barrels and rapids.

http://www.rotoruadailypost.co.nz/news/taupos-rapid-allure-to-hobbit/1249290/

NO! NO! NO! Whats the point of sending the barrels through rapids? What kind of return barrel route is that? This is just for the TH fairground ride! Argggggghhhhhh!

'Mrs Booth said the rapids were an ideal setting for the scene because the spillway turned the otherwise dry gorge into a fast flowing waterfall.'

So now they not only get smashed to bits on rapids they fall down a waterfall too and get pummeled to bits?!!

NOW NOW Petty, we no they dont get pummeled to bits. They come out smelling of apples and wine and lavender and
all things nice

Yes but after rapids and waterfalls they should be smashed to bits!! What sort of dumb assed elves send empty barrels back to be refilled through a rapids system? Not good enough PJ just more cheap drama and cliched pseudo thrills. Pathetic.

Bizzare casting call.

http://uk.movies.yahoo.com/blogs/editors-20111013/calling-hobbits-bizarre-casting-call-hobbit-movie-130047695.html

Men of any height with large biceps.

Ok I'm struggling here to think what they are for! Apart from maybe the Coven's personal harem.

Mrs Booth said the rapids were an ideal setting for the scene because the spillway turned the otherwise dry gorge into a fast flowing waterfall.

Even George Lucas in his later years knew enough to cut the melodramatic waterfall scene from The Phantom Menace.

Pettytyrant101 wrote:Men of any height with large biceps.

Ok I'm struggling here to think what they are for!

My first thought is Beornings. Alternatively, it could be Dwarves (maybe those biceps came from working at forges?). If six-foot-plus John Rhys-Davies can play a dwarf, then I suppose you don't need extras of any specific height.

maybe they are for the lake town men, when the dwarves arrive you know, in the barrels. The people with "character faces" and some funny beards (if I remember correctly and it is the same casting call we are all talking of) I bet is for either dwarves, but more likely the lake men (as they have to be a bit different than Rohan and Gondor). In Gondor they were grey eyed with light, sandy-brown hair, I think, and in Rohan blond hair was more common. So if laketown has a culture of funny looking beards and mustaches that could be cool

Eldorion wrote:

Pettytyrant101 wrote:Men of any height with large biceps.

Ok I'm struggling here to think what they are for!

My first thought is Beornings. Alternatively, it could be Dwarves (maybe those biceps came from working at forges?). If six-foot-plus John Rhys-Davies can play a dwarf, then I suppose you don't need extras of any specific height.

the Beornings? weren't they all bears the whole time? and wouldn't it steal the already little screen time Beorn has?

Eldorion wrote:

Mrs Booth said the rapids were an ideal setting for the scene because the spillway turned the otherwise dry gorge into a fast flowing waterfall.

Even George Lucas in his later years knew enough to cut the melodramatic waterfall scene from The Phantom Menace.

I'm hoping by "waterfall" he just means the rapids we're seeing. The press loves hyperbole after all!

If it's just the rapids we're seeing in this picture, I can almost accept that. I know of rivers here with similar rapids that still have a tow-path along side. Homesteaders would regularly navigate log rafts and small drift boats going downriver, and then drag the boats back upstream against the current, fending them off the rocks with poles. At true waterfalls there would be portage paths around the side. The Native Americans navigated these paths since time before time. The Europeans just improved them and eventually added locks..... but I can't imagine the elves having built locks.......do you think?

That looks death dealing and not anything I pictured it in my mind,I cannot figure out how it would all work out Petty we must get you to New Zealand before it is too late. I am sure some important people would listen to you. They just must.

I bet the elves had the best lock systems in all of Middle Earth, beign elves and all

I don't know Norc. Lock building sounds like dwarf work to me. If only for that reason, it's hard for me to imagine elves dirtying their hands with it.

Here's a photo of one of our west coast native canoes. This is just a small rapids. They ran major trade routes deep into the interior over some really incredible white water, bigger than the barrels are coming through. They were amazing watermen!

http://content.lib.washington.edu/cdm4/item_viewer.php?CISOROOT=/alaskawcanada&CISOPTR=699

I just reread the barrel part of the Hobbit.

"From Laketown the barrels were brought up the Forrest River. Often they were just tied together like big rafts and poled or rowed up the stream. Sometimes they were loaded on to flatboats. When the barrels were empty the elves cast them through the trapdoors, opened the water gate, and out the barrels floated on the stream, bobbing along, until they were carried by the current to a place far down the river where the bank jutted out, near the very eastern edge of Mirkwood. There they were collected and tied together and floated back to Laketown...."

"We shall be bruised and battered to pieces, and drowned too for certain!" [the dwarves] muttered. "We thought you had got some sensible notion.... This is a mad idea!"

"Down the swift dark stream you go."

"The dark river opened suddenly wide, and there it was joined to the main water of the Forest River flowing down in haste from the king's great doors....Then the hurrying water of the Forest River swept all the company of casks and tubs away to the north bank in which it had eaten out a wide bay."

It sounds to me like the main river is swift but navigable, but the tributary stream is not, either because of size or current (otherwise the barrels would certainly have been rafted together earlier.) There's nothing here to suggest the kind of raging whitewater in the picture, but there's some fast moving water and it's clearly what the dwarves were fearing when they're talking about being bruised, battered, and drowned.

Of cours PJ will never miss an opportunity for a thrill-ride scene, but I can see adding this one to make the dwarves fears seem justified.

I'll guarantee it won't be the biggest stretch we see!

Norc wrote:the Beornings? weren't they all bears the whole time? and wouldn't it steal the already little screen time Beorn has?

If I recall correctly Beorn associated with bears but after The Hobbit he also became a chieftain of men known as the Beornings. It's been a while since I've read The Hobbit, though, so it's possible Beornings was also a term used for bears. In any event, I think you're right that including followers for Beorn during The Hobbit would be distracting, but I wouldn't put it past PJ.

On the other hand, the more I think about it, the more likely it seems that the casting call is for dwarves...

ok, this is a spoiler, but I think we all wanna hear this spoiler.
http://www.theonering.net/torwp/2012/01/25/53105-evangeline-lilly-tauriel-is-a-warrior/

Tauriel will be the head of the elven guard, as someone suggested, and she may be a bigger role (probably in movie 2) BUT the most one IS! she will be weilding bow and arrow and two elven daggers... a female Legolas? c'mon! WHERE THE F*** IS THE IMAGINATION!?!?!?!?!?!?! not all elves do bow and arrow and two fighting knives.. oh, hold on! maybe Legolas sets the standard of Mirkwood elves/silvan elves? OMG! NONONONONONO NOOOO!

"and has only a small part at the end of the first Hobbit film"

So looks like film 1 will be ending somewhere around either their capture by the elves or their escape by barrel.
As previously everything about this made up role sounds awful. Xena the elf.

I was quite positive towards this character in the first place, but now... omg.. poor Tolkien..

only a small part at the end of the first Hobbit film

Well that gives us a pretty good idea where the first part will end, doesn't it

oh bugger it, my worst Tauriel fears are realized, flamin warrior kick ass chick, of epic banality. I can just see her drop kicking dwarves left right and centre. they have got to be taking the michael.

Well, PJ didn't get to show of Xenarwen at Helm's Deep, so now we get Tauriel instead.