Post by Summer Sparrow on Dec 1, 2003 22:03:36 GMT -5
All orlando fans! Our very own member and dear friend Cali (aka Aximili, Alloran etc etc) and Luthy aka Sita, went to the Premier of ROTK yesterday (Wellington, New Zealand) and gave a full report on the accounts happening that day LOL!! Way to go CALI! Here is the full report, I hope you dont mind me posting it here CALI! 
*sniff* I'm so happy!
Thank you soooo much for that lovely report Cali! *hugs* I love all the pics, especially the ringwraiths! they look so cool!! and I loved that lil speech by Sean Astin! More news and pics here! Cali, I remember you told me once about a friend of yours getting to be an elf during the premiere. So lucky!!!
*sniff* I'm so happy!Originally posted by Calaquendi
Hey, all. Well, I'm here and I've compiled quite a report for you all to read (beware, huge novel coming up). I kept a diary of sorts of the early part of the day, and am writing this now while the later parts are still fairly clear in my mind.
Well, the premiere day started for me at 6am, what with showering, getting ready, etc. At around 7:30am, I got a text from my flatmate Clare, informing me that there were already lines around the red carpet barriers, so I should get moving. And get moving I did - without fully doing makeup and forgetting all about breakfast or packing lunch. I did, however, manage to put on two shirts - the first one being my "slapper shirt" - a very nice red shimmery one which unfortunately was higher cut than I had thought, and also turned out to be a bit big, resulting in me tying it at the back and making it rather tight at the same time. Over that went a bright green shirt (which I usually use for friends to recongize me easily in a crowd), then headed to Courteney Place. Clare hadn't been joking, the barriers nearest to the Embassy were packed. There were quite a few fans who had even slept over - since last night was really cold and Courtenay Pl's roads aren't exactly soft, I guess they had to be admired. Unfortunately, by that time I was already feeling tired (I'm not used to being up at that time! lol), hungry, and was grumpy at being told way too many times "You're in our group's spot!" Eventually I posed as a student journalist from our uni magazine, Salient in order to keep a place. Most of my diary entries here appear to ramble at length about lettuce (I'd found some in my bag), and what the next person who told me off about being in their group's place could exactly do with their precious group (it involved taking them and shoving them in a not very nice place). By this time I was spotting signs, too - one I completely agreed with, "You've Made New Zealanders Proud To Be New Zealanders, Thank you!", and the group making the infamous sign, "Debloom Me, Orlando". Also managed to spot the creator of the orlandobloom.co.nz site. Then, I got very bored with the whole scene and left. And yes, I am saying that I left a pretty good place, but by that time I didn't particularly care - I was bored, frustrated, tired and hungry. I'd lasted around two hours beside the Embassy.
After this I headed to Courtenay Central, home of Reading Cinemas, to track down Luthy. It took us around half an hour to find each other, even with the bright green shirt (apparently Luthy's a bit colour blind when it comes to bright colours ), then basically went to McDonald's before I murdered an unsuspecting tourist (I got to harass the McDonald's staff instead). That left us with three hours to kill before the parade started, so we headed to an arcade where we took silly pictures, attempted to play a ripoff of Dance Dance Revolution (both of us failed miserably) and then air hockey (I finally met someone who I can beat at that game! yay!). After that we met up with Clare on Willis St, and managed to get a very sweet spot to watch the parade, led by the haka, complete with stars, Orcs, Elves and Ringwraiths. It was all followed by a marching band playing Lord of the Rings music.
It was all very cool. Orlando, unfortunately, was facing the other side of the street to that which Luthy, Clare and I were standing on, but Liv Tyler looked stunning. Peter Jackson drew our attention away from him by pointing up into the sky, where an Air New Zealand Middle Earth plane was flying low over the city in celebration. Dominic Monaghan looked hungover - Billy Boyd was as happy and bubbly as he has been every time I've seen him. One of the Ringwraiths saw me taking a picture of him, and waved to the camera, which was very very cool. One of the funnier moments was a kid yelling out "Na na na na" to an Orc, which appeared to take offence and turned around in attack mode. It was actually really hilarious. After the marching band had gone past, Clare, Luthy and I slipped past the barriers and marched after them, with people cheering us on as if we were part of the parade. Very very cool.
Then came the red carpet. I hate to say that we spent most of this time losing ourselves, finding each other, and generally getting lost trying to get to the front of the crowd. This, by the way, was an impossible feat. Organizers had predicted 100,000 people would turn up, according the New Zealand Herald, this figure was actually passed. The crowd was so thick that occasionally you could not turn around. Several enterprising people climbed onto balconies and signposts on Courtenay Pl, with police chasing them away every time. The funniest was the guy who snuck onto the Embassy itself, with security both above him and below him, but neither group could reach him.
The upper part of Courtenay Place.
Orlando was wearing a orange shirt which proclaimed "I love New Zealand", he drew attention to this by pointing at it several times. He spotted the "Debloom Me, Orlando" sign but thankfully just laughed it off. Sean Astin spoke on camera, as did his daughter, both of them thanking Kiwis for the welcome of the movies. And we had a godawful interviewer who kept asking stars questions that really shouldn't be asked, or had obvious answers, such as: "So, you've had Botox?" to Hugo Weaving or "Are you proud of these movies?" to Peter Jackson. Around this time, we left for home - I was getting tireder and grumpier by the minute (sorry, but I was! lol), and was majorly sunburnt. Clare just wanted to get home, and so we dragged Luthy off with us. When we left, Peter Jackson had gotten the cast up on stage to talk to the media and give interviews, by far the best were comments from Ian Mckellan, Andy Serkis, and Sean Astin, who gave a speech rivalling that of Sam's in The Two Towers:
In front of the newly restored Embassy, the man of the hour, director Peter Jackson, was greeted as a conquering hero before making a long speech thanking individually what seemed like a sizeable portion of the 23,000 New Zealanders who had worked on The Lord of the Rings trilogy, as well the cast and craftspeople behind it.
For good measure, he invited the principal cast and crew onto the stage.
"This city played host to The Lord of the Rings for nearly 18 months while we were shooting. We had a group of actors come from overseas who fell in love with this city, the bars, the cafes - the women," joked Jackson.
"Yes," responded Sir Ian McKellen, "the bars of Wellington, the cafes of Wellington, the women of Wellington - and the men."
In his speech, Andy Serkis briefly fell back into the split-personality character and voice of Gollum: "Wellington sucks. No, we loves it. Wellington is our friend. Oh, okay, just this once."
Sean Astin, who plays hobbit Samwise Gamgee, won admiration for heartfelt words that went beyond the "Thanks a bunch, New Zealand" of other cast-members.
"It's such a tenuous time on the planet," said Astin. "So much darkness and so much villainy in the world but this city and this country are a beacon of hope.
"Your warm, bright, smiling faces, your huge hearts and your enormous welcoming spirit are a hope for the world, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart and on behalf of my family. God bless you all."
(source: New Zealand Herald)
Orlando on the red carpet, Sean Astin and his family.
After a two hour break, Luthy and I headed back into town (Clare came too but disappeared soon after). It took an hour of standing outside the Embassy before stars appeared - Elijah Wood (who didn't sign any autographs), Andy Serkis (he signed a couple), Sean Astin (also signed a couple), Liv Tyler (again, a few autographs) and Peter Jackson, who gave an autograph to everyone he could get to. I have to say that after their perfomances over the last few days, Peter, Sean and Viggo Mortenson are, in my most humble opinion, the ultimate celebrities. After a little while, security informed the group of fans that the cast had actually been split up for the premiere, and so Orlando, Dominic and Billy could all be found at Readings. So off I dragged Luthy to Readings, where of course we were too late to catch anybody except for closing security.
So that's a very, very brief rundown of the day. I know there are a ton of details I missed out on, but those will be filled in later. Hopefully Luthy will have stuff to add too. And now, I feel the sugar that has kept me going for the last 4 or so hours wearing off, so I think I should go.
Can't wait for ROTK!!!!
Hey, all. Well, I'm here and I've compiled quite a report for you all to read (beware, huge novel coming up). I kept a diary of sorts of the early part of the day, and am writing this now while the later parts are still fairly clear in my mind.
Well, the premiere day started for me at 6am, what with showering, getting ready, etc. At around 7:30am, I got a text from my flatmate Clare, informing me that there were already lines around the red carpet barriers, so I should get moving. And get moving I did - without fully doing makeup and forgetting all about breakfast or packing lunch. I did, however, manage to put on two shirts - the first one being my "slapper shirt" - a very nice red shimmery one which unfortunately was higher cut than I had thought, and also turned out to be a bit big, resulting in me tying it at the back and making it rather tight at the same time. Over that went a bright green shirt (which I usually use for friends to recongize me easily in a crowd), then headed to Courteney Place. Clare hadn't been joking, the barriers nearest to the Embassy were packed. There were quite a few fans who had even slept over - since last night was really cold and Courtenay Pl's roads aren't exactly soft, I guess they had to be admired. Unfortunately, by that time I was already feeling tired (I'm not used to being up at that time! lol), hungry, and was grumpy at being told way too many times "You're in our group's spot!" Eventually I posed as a student journalist from our uni magazine, Salient in order to keep a place. Most of my diary entries here appear to ramble at length about lettuce (I'd found some in my bag), and what the next person who told me off about being in their group's place could exactly do with their precious group (it involved taking them and shoving them in a not very nice place). By this time I was spotting signs, too - one I completely agreed with, "You've Made New Zealanders Proud To Be New Zealanders, Thank you!", and the group making the infamous sign, "Debloom Me, Orlando". Also managed to spot the creator of the orlandobloom.co.nz site. Then, I got very bored with the whole scene and left. And yes, I am saying that I left a pretty good place, but by that time I didn't particularly care - I was bored, frustrated, tired and hungry. I'd lasted around two hours beside the Embassy.
After this I headed to Courtenay Central, home of Reading Cinemas, to track down Luthy. It took us around half an hour to find each other, even with the bright green shirt (apparently Luthy's a bit colour blind when it comes to bright colours
), then basically went to McDonald's before I murdered an unsuspecting tourist (I got to harass the McDonald's staff instead). That left us with three hours to kill before the parade started, so we headed to an arcade where we took silly pictures, attempted to play a ripoff of Dance Dance Revolution (both of us failed miserably) and then air hockey (I finally met someone who I can beat at that game! yay!). After that we met up with Clare on Willis St, and managed to get a very sweet spot to watch the parade, led by the haka, complete with stars, Orcs, Elves and Ringwraiths. It was all followed by a marching band playing Lord of the Rings music. It was all very cool. Orlando, unfortunately, was facing the other side of the street to that which Luthy, Clare and I were standing on, but Liv Tyler looked stunning. Peter Jackson drew our attention away from him by pointing up into the sky, where an Air New Zealand Middle Earth plane was flying low over the city in celebration. Dominic Monaghan looked hungover - Billy Boyd was as happy and bubbly as he has been every time I've seen him. One of the Ringwraiths saw me taking a picture of him, and waved to the camera, which was very very cool. One of the funnier moments was a kid yelling out "Na na na na" to an Orc, which appeared to take offence and turned around in attack mode. It was actually really hilarious. After the marching band had gone past, Clare, Luthy and I slipped past the barriers and marched after them, with people cheering us on as if we were part of the parade. Very very cool.
Then came the red carpet. I hate to say that we spent most of this time losing ourselves, finding each other, and generally getting lost trying to get to the front of the crowd. This, by the way, was an impossible feat. Organizers had predicted 100,000 people would turn up, according the New Zealand Herald, this figure was actually passed. The crowd was so thick that occasionally you could not turn around. Several enterprising people climbed onto balconies and signposts on Courtenay Pl, with police chasing them away every time. The funniest was the guy who snuck onto the Embassy itself, with security both above him and below him, but neither group could reach him.
The upper part of Courtenay Place.
Orlando was wearing a orange shirt which proclaimed "I love New Zealand", he drew attention to this by pointing at it several times. He spotted the "Debloom Me, Orlando" sign but thankfully just laughed it off. Sean Astin spoke on camera, as did his daughter, both of them thanking Kiwis for the welcome of the movies. And we had a godawful interviewer who kept asking stars questions that really shouldn't be asked, or had obvious answers, such as: "So, you've had Botox?" to Hugo Weaving or "Are you proud of these movies?" to Peter Jackson. Around this time, we left for home - I was getting tireder and grumpier by the minute (sorry, but I was! lol), and was majorly sunburnt. Clare just wanted to get home, and so we dragged Luthy off with us. When we left, Peter Jackson had gotten the cast up on stage to talk to the media and give interviews, by far the best were comments from Ian Mckellan, Andy Serkis, and Sean Astin, who gave a speech rivalling that of Sam's in The Two Towers:
In front of the newly restored Embassy, the man of the hour, director Peter Jackson, was greeted as a conquering hero before making a long speech thanking individually what seemed like a sizeable portion of the 23,000 New Zealanders who had worked on The Lord of the Rings trilogy, as well the cast and craftspeople behind it.
For good measure, he invited the principal cast and crew onto the stage.
"This city played host to The Lord of the Rings for nearly 18 months while we were shooting. We had a group of actors come from overseas who fell in love with this city, the bars, the cafes - the women," joked Jackson.
"Yes," responded Sir Ian McKellen, "the bars of Wellington, the cafes of Wellington, the women of Wellington - and the men."
In his speech, Andy Serkis briefly fell back into the split-personality character and voice of Gollum: "Wellington sucks. No, we loves it. Wellington is our friend. Oh, okay, just this once."
Sean Astin, who plays hobbit Samwise Gamgee, won admiration for heartfelt words that went beyond the "Thanks a bunch, New Zealand" of other cast-members.
"It's such a tenuous time on the planet," said Astin. "So much darkness and so much villainy in the world but this city and this country are a beacon of hope.
"Your warm, bright, smiling faces, your huge hearts and your enormous welcoming spirit are a hope for the world, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart and on behalf of my family. God bless you all."
(source: New Zealand Herald)
Orlando on the red carpet, Sean Astin and his family.
After a two hour break, Luthy and I headed back into town (Clare came too but disappeared soon after). It took an hour of standing outside the Embassy before stars appeared - Elijah Wood (who didn't sign any autographs), Andy Serkis (he signed a couple), Sean Astin (also signed a couple), Liv Tyler (again, a few autographs) and Peter Jackson, who gave an autograph to everyone he could get to. I have to say that after their perfomances over the last few days, Peter, Sean and Viggo Mortenson are, in my most humble opinion, the ultimate celebrities. After a little while, security informed the group of fans that the cast had actually been split up for the premiere, and so Orlando, Dominic and Billy could all be found at Readings. So off I dragged Luthy to Readings, where of course we were too late to catch anybody except for closing security.
So that's a very, very brief rundown of the day. I know there are a ton of details I missed out on, but those will be filled in later. Hopefully Luthy will have stuff to add too. And now, I feel the sugar that has kept me going for the last 4 or so hours wearing off, so I think I should go.
Can't wait for ROTK!!!!
Thank you soooo much for that lovely report Cali! *hugs* I love all the pics, especially the ringwraiths! they look so cool!! and I loved that lil speech by Sean Astin! More news and pics here! Cali, I remember you told me once about a friend of yours getting to be an elf during the premiere. So lucky!!!
