The mythos, landscapes and characters that Tolkien created are nothing short of spectacular, and it has taken four decades for cinema technology to reach the necessary level of sophistication to bring them to life. Now, Peter Jackson has accomplished the extraordinary feat to make three motion pictures simultaneously to capture Tolkien's vision in its entirety.
For the past several years, Peter Jackson and his team of dedicated film-makers have been working day and night to bring J.R.R. Tolkien's masterpiece of epic adventure, The Lord of the Rings, to the screen. They have filmed all over the spectacular landscapes of New Zealand, and drawn upon the skills of a small army of artists - including digital wizards, medieval weapons experts, stone sculptors, linguists, costumers, make-up designers, blacksmiths and model builders - together with a cast of internationally renowned actors, and literally thousands of extras, to make this ambitious dream come true. And the boundaries of special effects have been pushed up to, and beyond, their limits to make The Lord of the Rings Trilogy a ground-breaking, and visually stunning, cinematic experience.
Designed as a celebration of the films, The Lord of the Rings Official Movie Guide is a lavishly illustrated behind-the-scenes guide which includes full-colour photos of the cast, locations, sets, monsters and costumes, together with exclusive interviews with Peter Jackson and all the principal cast. It also features an entertaining overview of the conception, design and filming of the trilogy over the last five years that will give the reader a privileged insight into the making of the most important movie trilogy of the decade.
It's one of the most anticipated movies ever, and now you can see for yourself how the magic of Tolkien's fantasy masterpiece was created on screen in
The Lord of the Rings: Official Movie Guide. Brian Sibley's straightforward approach takes the reader from the initial conception of the movie as it was developed and passed around studios (it initially started life as a two-hour condensed version of the three novels) to the months of complicated special-effects work necessary to do justice to Tolkien's extraordinary imagination. The book features interviews with all the key cast and production members and is liberally decorated with full-color photographs and behind-the-scenes images from the film itself. Sibley manages to document perfectly the filmmakers' painstaking attention to detail, much of which will be missed by many moviegoers, but he also captures a sense of camaraderie from all involved who wanted to make the best movie possible.
If it's facts and background trivia you are after, then this is the best place to be--the perfect starting point for those new to Tolkien or eager to find out more about how epic movies are put together. Dedicated Lord of the Rings fans who have been following the epic moviemaking process via the Internet won't find anything here they didn't already know, but this is still a very good companion no matter what level of knowledge or understanding you have of the greatest work of fantastic fiction ever written. --Jonathan Weir, Amazon.co.uk
