The latest McKellen update - Radagast, Arwen, etc.

This was from a June 16 interview on the official McKellen site:
www.mckellen.com/epost/l000616.htm

THE GOOD NEWS

- Peter Jackson and Ian McKellen both make anonymous visits to fan sites and the latter occasionally even corrects the wilder rumors. Hey, come to the Trail!

- The pointed ears of the Elves are for artistic purposes of exemplifying their eternal youth.

- Ian's been trained to use both Gandalf's staff and Glamdring.

- They're pronouncing "Saruman" correctly! Now let's see if they get "Sauron" right...

- About Gollum: "Gollum's vital connection with the One Ring is explained in the first movie. Gandalf and he do not appear together onscreen, although this may change when we come to film the sequence in the Mines of Moria, where Gollum spies on the Fellowship."

- He's debunked the Arwen rumor before, but here's a really nice exact quote that I love:
Q: "There has been a very nasty rumor that the character of Arwen (Liv Tyler) will accompany the other characters on the quest. Is this true, somewhat true or not true at all? A "spy" had noticed filming at the Door of Moria about to begin. He/she had walked away by the time filming actually began, but did overhear a woman's voice screaming. This was assumed to be Arwen (Liv Tyler)."
A: "The "spy" is incompetent if he/she ever existed. There were no women at the doors of Moria and no screaming.

And to put an end to it - Arwen does NOT accompany the Fellowship in the movie."

THE BAD NEWS

- Radagast will not appear.

- The songs will "not feature as regularly in the film as they do in the novels."

OTHER STUFF

- The movie will not feature any events from The Hobbit but he says, "Our screenplay refers to Bilbo's adventures much as Tolkien does in the trilogy." However, I'm not sure this includes trolls.

- To McKellen's knowledge, nobody's been confirmed to score the films yet.

- This one is very unclear - McKellen didn't actually answer the question:
Q: "How is the production going to portray the invisible wearers of the ring. Is the wearer going to be completely visible to the audience and just 'ignored' by the others on screen, or are they going to be misted etc. to create the effect of being invisible?"
A: "As far as I can judge, once the One Ring is worn, invisibility is complete. Even the ring itself will disappear as well as its wearer."

On the last thing;
it's not impossible that they really will make them dissapear; they can always do the "footsteps" on the dust.
As for my preference, I would prefer if they either shrouded them or made them completely invisible.
And Radagast wasn't "seen" in the book either. I hope they mention him, though...

I was just wondering, what is the "correct" pronunciation of Saruman?

Aaawww.... The scene of Gandalf finding Radagast from the woods picking reagents and talking to birds would have been just perfect!


I think Saruman is supposed to pronounce "Saruman" and not "Sheruman".

Could the Saruman pronunciation bit be in reference to the Bakshi movie, where Saruman became Aruman? Just a thought.

Can someone please explain to me how pointy ears symbolize eternal youth? Last time I looked, my kids did not have pointy ears...

I don't know... But pointy ears are the thing! There is no other way you can distinguish an elf from a man.

Once I saw a man on the street and he had pointy ears... And I just don't mean that they were big, but they actually were pointy!

SAH-ru-mahn.

And he said the hobbits have prosthetic ears as well, but didn't go into detail.

All very interesting news. About Radagast, he was never actually "in" the books, just mentioned. So as long as he is mentioned in the movie, all should be well(a flashback scene would be interesting, though).

And what's this about Saruman's name? The way IronParrot pronounced it is the way I've pronounced it since I first read it(about a week ago).

That's how it's being pronounced in the films. Yay!

That e-post is ancient. The Bits and Bobs one is the new one.

And since today is the first day of the month, I'm checking E!Online as well.