Welcome to The Big One!, a website created 15 January 2002 dedicated to British actor Dominic Monaghan. In case you didn't know, Dominic plays Merry, one of the hobbits in the series 'Lord of the Rings.' 'The Fellowship of the Ring' was released in 2001, 'The Two Towers' was released in 2002, and 'Return of the King' will be released later this year.
Why is the site entitled The Big One!? This is a reference to one of Merry's lines in 'Fellowship.' To know what I'm talking about, watch the movie. ;-)
If you wish to send anything my way - news, articles, pictures, links, wallpaper, etc. - then don't hesitate to email me at xander1600@excite.com. Just please, do not send anything addressed to Dom himself, because he's not gonna get it. I guarantee it; I don't know him personally, and I sure as heck ain't Dom himself.
Also, please do check out BoardDom, a message board for fans of Dominic Monaghan to talk about him and other stuff. Hope you enjoy the whole site!
25 February 2003
Eek, sorry for the total lack of updates! School kicked up once again, leaving me chasing after deadlines and group meetings and the like. Bah. Anyway, I'll probably start looking for a site host which has Blogger/GrayMatter support, so that updates will become easier to do. If you're willing to host me, make me an offer.
First things first. 'The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers' was nominated for 6 Academy Awards, less than half than the 13 nods 'The Fellowship of the Ring' got last year. The film is up for Best Picture alongside 'Chicago,' 'Gangs of New York,' 'The Hours,' and 'The Pianist.' LOTR:TTT is also up for Editing, Sound Editing, Sound, Visual Effects, and Art Direction. Peter Jackson, sadly, was not nominated for Best Director. The ceremonies will be on March 23, 2003 (LA time). For more Oscar-related news, check out OscarWatch.
Meanwhile, LOTR:TTT took 3 awards at the BAFTAs (the British Oscars): The Orange Film of the Year Award (voted for by the public), Best Visual Effects, and Best Costume Design. 'The Pianist' took Best Picture (in a race which mirrored the Oscar category) while Roman Polanski ('The Pianist') beat Peter Jackson for Best Director.
LOTR:TTT took Best Film at the Empire Awards, making it two years in a row that a LOTR flick won, beating 'Minority Report,' 'Spider-man,' 'Road to Perdition,' and 'Die Another Day.' LOTR:TTT took no other awards. Dom (along with a whole bunch of LOTR actors) was present at the ceremonies, and we have a bunch of pictures to prove it. (You can also find the pictures above.) For a complete list of winners as well as pictures (and other goodies), check out Empire Online.
Speaking of Dom appearances, Dominic Monaghan was also on hand at the ACE Eddie Awards (which honor excellence in film editing). Dom and actress Sarah Wynter presented a Best Film Editing (Musical or Comedy) to 'Chicago.' (The drama award went to 'Gangs of New York.') Thankfully, we have some pictures (also, see above).
And now, for even more Dom news. It looks like Dom is doing his bit to save the environment. Ananova reports that Dom has purchased a forest in Bangalore, India, as part of the Future Forests program by CarbonNeutral. For more information, read up at Ananova. (Also, check out the Official Future Forests Website for more information.)
Also, it seems as if new episodes of 'Hetty Wainthropp' are coming to PBS in July 2003 as part of the 'Mystery!' series. No word on whether or not these episodes will have Dom in them. For more information, check out the official PBS website.
As an added bonus... Bag End Inn has a lovely scan from a magazine featuring Dom wearing a tanktop. Drool. Go check it out!
Howard Shore took a Grammy last Sunday in the Best Score Soundtrack Album For A Motion Picture, Television Or Other Visual Media category for his score of 'The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring' (LOTR:TTT's score isn't eligible until next year, because of the Grammy's weird eligibility dates). Also, Coldplay - another CarbonNeutral supporter like Dom - won two Grammys, Best Rock Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocal ("In My Place") and Best Alternative Music Album ("A Rush of Blood to the Head"). (Yeah, no real reason to mention Coldplay, but hey, they rock! Besides, Dom likes them too!)
Lastly, Peter O'Toole and Julie Christie have joined the cast of Wolfgang Petersen's epic 'Troy.' The film now has a great big cast of actors, including LOTR's Orlando Bloom and Sean Bean, Eric Bana, Brad Pitt, and Brian Cox (among others). Check out Yahoo! News for more information.
Discuss these and more over at BoardDom!
31 January 2003
We start with three award-related reports. First, congratulations to the cast of 'Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers' for being nominated for Best Ensemble Performance at the Screen Actors Guild Awards. The nominated cast includes Dominic Monaghan, as well as Orlando Bloom, Andy Serkis, Viggo Mortensen, and Miranda Otto, among others. They're up against the ensembles of 'Adaptation,' 'Chicago,' 'The Hours,' and 'My Big Fat Greek Wedding.' We hope that this is a good sign that LOTR:TTT will at least be nominated for Best Picture come Oscar time. Good luck!
'Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers' also took seven nominations at this year's Empire Awards. If you recall, last year, 'Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring' nabbed Best Film, while Dom (along with Billy Boyd) was nominated for Best Debut, losing to Orlando Bloom. This year, it's up for Best Film, Best Director (Peter Jackson), Best Actor (Viggo Mortensen), Best Actress (Miranda Otto), Best British Actor (Sir Ian McKellen AND Andy Serkis), and Scene of the Year (Gollum's Debate). The ceremony will be held on February 5 at London's Dorchester Hotel. Good luck!
Lastly, 'Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers' took the 4th Annual RT Award, which goes to the best reviewed film of the year. 'Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring' took this award last year; do you guys think 'Lord of the Rings: Return of the King' gets it next year? Congratulations!
Want to buy a pair of underwear signed by Sean Bean (Boromir)? Then check out the Bristol Cancer Help Centre, which auctions off underwear signed by various celebrities, including Sean Bean. (No word on whether the celebrities actually wore the underwear or not.) Sean's is currently selling at over 100 British Pounds. Proceeds go to charity.
More pictures from Orlando Bloom's 'Pirates of the Caribbean' are being released, including this high-resolution image. Check it out!
Andy Serkis is the talk of the town (Hollywood, apparently). A whole bunch of articles and interviews with and about him are being uploaded online. Here are the four most recent, from NPR's Marketplace, TheHotButton.com, Ain't It Cool News, and FilmForce.
Discuss these and more over at BoardDom!
28 January 2003
It's Elijah Wood's 22nd birthday! Happy birthday to the guy who became Frodo. May you have a whole lot more birthdays to come. (And you're still older than me, Lij.)
Want to know a few random tidbits about Dominic Monaghan? CBBC has a few pieces of interesting trivia. Dom's a huge fan of Manchester United, and if he weren't an actor, he'd be a football player for said team. He also hates girls who smoke, so ladies, if you smoke, that is reason enough to quit, don't you think? Check out the rest of the list here.
Alloy.com is giving us a chance to put words in Orlando's (and Dom's) mouth(s)! A picture of Dom and Orli is at Say What?, where visitors to the site can post their own caption for the pic provided. I've also added the pic to my gallery, under Vanity Fair.
A sculptor from Sideshow Weta Collectibles, Sacha Lees, made a Meriadoc Brandybuck bust for the company. For this, she met Dominic Monaghan, and an interview with her has a picture of her with Dom. Said picture is now at the gallery, under Miscellaneous.
Congratulations to 'Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers' for earning nine BAFTA nominations! Last year, BAFTA - the British equivalent of the Academy (which hands out the Oscars) - honored the movie with the Best Film award, while Peter Jackson won Best Director. This year, LOTR:TTT is nominated for: Best Film, Best Director (Peter Jackson), Best Cinematography (Andrew Lesnie), Best Production Design (Grant Major), Best Costume Design (Ngila Dickson and Richard Taylor), Best Editing (Michael Horton and Jabez Olssen), Best Sound, Best Visual Effects, and Best Make Up and Hair. Good luck! Meanwhile, the Screen Actors Guild will announce their nominees sometime today, so let's hope for the best!
Speaking of the Oscars, it looks like the two nominees for Best Makeup have been "spoiled": Frida and The Time Machine. It's still too early to tell if this is absolutely true, so let's wait and see. Check OscarWatch for the latest Oscar-related news.
Pirated DVD copies of 'Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers' are being sold, well, pretty much everywhere (if you know where to go, I suppose). Most of these are amazingly clear, because they're copies of the screening copy for Academy voters. Anyway, should you decide to purchase one (or if you've purchased one already), please don't turn on the subtitles, unless you want a laugh. Check here for a taste of the horrible subtitling on the pirated DVDs. (Sample from Eomer: "Too long I wanted my sister." Uh-oh.)
Liv Tyler's getting married! Liv Tyler has plans to marry Spacehogs frontman Royston Langdon in Headingly, Leeds. It also appears that the couple will live in the area. We hope they have a long and happy marriage! For more information, check out Sky News and Hello!.
There's another pic of Viggo from his book signing in Japan. This one was a Pic of the Day from Japan Today. The Japanese on his shirt, if you're interested, is his current slogan, "No More Blood for Oil." Ahh, that Viggo. Always being political.
We wrap up our update with information about another Air New Zealand plane. The second plane has an Aragorn/Arwen theme, and this plane will fly the Pacific Rim route: Honolulu, Australia, Asia, and the Pacific islands. Hmm, maybe I'll be lucky enough to see the plane here in the Philippines. For more information, check out Yahoo! Finance.
Discuss these and more over at BoardDom!
23 January 2003
Marie and Kim have wonderfully scanned the article and picture from Sneak magazine (the one where Dom and others talk about the pranks they pulled on each other). They were posted on the Dominic Monaghan Forum, and I've gotten permission to put them up here. (Show your appreciation by visiting Bloomin' Marvelous, owned by Marie.)
If you live in the UK, or if you plan to visit next weekend (the first weekend of February), then do check out Sci-Fi London: The London Science Fiction and Fantasy Film Festival. One of the events is Shorts@Six, to be screened at the Curzon SOHO at 6pm on February 1 and 2. They will be screening a bunch of short films, and one of them is Sniper 470, a short film starring Billy Boyd (Pippin). According to the website, the movie is about a Gunner (or perhaps that's his name) whose main job is to destroy passing spaceships. Sounds interesting. If you do check it out, then email me a review or something. (At this rate, let's hope that 'An Insomniac's Nightmare' will find its way in more film festivals soon.)
If you recall, 'Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers' is up for the Orange Film of the Year, which is voted on by the public. Well, public, now's the time to vote! Check out the official website to vote for TTT and help LOTR win this award two years in a row!
With the first month of this year nearly done, I guess it's not too early to start counting down to 'Lord of the Rings: Return of the King.' ClockDown has released a desktop countdown timer to help you count the days until LOTR:ROTK. The timer comes with four skins: Aragorn, Gandalf, Gollum, and Sam+Frodo. The clock counts down to the North American release date (17 December 2003). Download it here.
Discuss these and more over at BoardDom!
22 January 2003
Congratulations to Peter Jackson, nominated by the Directors Guild of America for Best Director for his work on (what else?) 'Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.' He's up against Stephen Daldry ('The Hours'), Rob Marshall ('Chicago'), Roman Polanski ('The Pianist'), and Martin Scorsese ('Gangs of New York'). Best of luck to Mr. Jackson!
Discuss these and more over at BoardDom!
21 January 2003
'Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers' was shut out at the Golden Globes last Sunday. Peter Jackson lost in the Best Director category to Martin Scorsese (for 'Gangs of New York') while 'The Hours' won Best Motion Picture: Drama. Oh well, let's hope we fare better at other award ceremonies. Anyway, Sean Astin (Sam) and Barry Osbourne (one of the producers) attended the ceremony on the film's behalf, while Cate Blanchett presented Best Foreign Language Film (won by Pedro Almodovar's 'Talk to Her'). We've got pictures above, from Yahoo! News and Getty Images News. By the way, the nominees for the Director's Guild of America Awards will be released later today; let's hope Peter Jackson gets nominated!
Bag End Inn (an excellent site, by the way, all Dom and LOTR fans ought to check it out) posted a couple of pics/scans last month of Elijah and Dom in "some sort of odd event at an airport." Looks like we have the answer. Daily Record reports that "Elijah Wood helped give a pal a showbiz send-off at Los Angeles airport. Elijah and his boisterous group formed a circle around the friend, named only as Dave, and sang songs at him as he checked in for a flight to London. Brandishing jokey placards, they threw glitter over embarrassed Dave, blew party horns and did an impromptu conga." Yep, it certainly describes the event we see in the pictures here and here. It's a damn shame that the article doesn't mention Dom as one of the members of Lij's "boisterous group," and the article doesn't even have a picture. Oh well. Anyway, you can read the rest of the article (which isn't much longer, really) here.
Meg's Boyfriend of the Week has chosen Dominic Monaghan and Billy Boyd as her Boyfriends of the Week! Excellent choice, Meg. Quoting Meg, "So, cute, smart, funny, sweet, gorgeous, hilarious, adorable, cool, hip, talented, AND single. Both of them! If that doesn't make for the perfect menage, then I just don't know the meaning of the word anymore." For the rest of her analysis, go here.
How successful are 'Lord of the Rings' and 'Harry Potter'? It looks like some tourists are seeking vacations and trips to the series' fictional locations. Hogwarts, Mordor, and Rivendell are showing up as some of the top destinations visitors of travel websites search for. For more on this interesting phenomenon, check out Irish Examiner.
'Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers' is barely more than a month in theaters, but it's not too late to start the hype for the final film in the series, 'Return of the King.' This picture of Legolas and Aragorn has been circulating the internet; I saw it for the first time on War of the Ring. Check it out! (ROTK SPOILERS!)
Sean Astin's short film, 'The Long and Short of It,' is being screened at the Sundance Film Festival, but you can view it (or perhaps a clip of it, I'm not really sure, haven't downloaded it yet) here. Let's hope 'An Insomniac's Nightmare' will be available to us easily as well... soon.
Lastly, a site update. I've added a new affiliate, Beriain Edhellen (yet another site featuring the four hobbits and one elf). Check it out!
Discuss these and more over at BoardDom!
19 January 2003
I've been busy for the last three days, and I expect to be busy for a few more days as well, so updates might be rare, but we'll see. Anyway, 'Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers' has been nominated by the Producers Guild of America for Best Picture. Other nominees are 'Adaptation,' 'Chicago,' 'Gangs of New York,' 'My Big Fat Greek Wedding,' and 'Road to Perdition.' Meanwhile, the Critics Choice Awards were handed out by the Broadcast Film Critics Association, and Gollum won Best Digital Performance over Yoda and Dobby. (The movie didn't do too well in the Best Picture race, playing second-to-last out of ten nominees. 'Chicago' took the award.) Lastly, the Golden Globe Awards are tonight. 'Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers' is up for Best Motion Picture, Drama, while Peter Jackson is nominated for Best Director, Motion Picture. We wish them luck. (Check local listings for broadcast times. And I have no idea if anyone from the cast is coming.)
Pictures from Orlando Bloom's summer blockbuster (or potential blockbuster anyway) 'Pirates of the Caribbean' are finally coming out, like this one from Coming Soon. More can be found at Orlando Bloom Multimedia.
Discuss these and more over at BoardDom!
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