Welly-moot #5.3 Report

The Welly-moot group met yesterday at the Embassy Cinema. We have new members whom we met at the Middle-Earth movie marathon in March this year. Welcome Kay, Molly and Helena!

Unusually, we didn’t have a specific Tolkien topic for this meeting. We started as usual with a round table discussion, with updates, and we shared our experiences of the movie marathon. After that, it became a very enjoyable non-topic discussion.

We discussed the upcoming Armageddon Expo in Wellington next weekend; the excellent Hobbit Location Tour "Hairy Feet Hobbit Locations" in Piopio Waitomo; the latest Superhero movies (X-man, Avengers, Captain America, Superman vs Batman, etc), TV shows, costumes, etc. The Welly-mooters are a wealth of geeky knowledge, and we had no problem filling the afternoon with a wide range of movies, TV series or characters.

Some updates for everyone.

• There is a Middle-earth-themed LARP event (Live Action Role Playing) in Queenstown later this winter. We will update as soon as we have more details, on this site. In the meantime, if you're interested, follow them on facebook.
• The new Rivendell Rebuild project for Welly-moot is the Bilbo bench/statue in Kaitoke Park. We have two wonderful Sculptors to give us a hand. We will be pushing this project forward this year!
• We're also organising a Welly-moot craft meeting, hopefully for later this year. The idea is to have Kim Beaton (who you may have met at the Marathon) show us how to sculpt a beautiful miniature Hobbit door, to decorate your garden with. There will be somecosts associated with that, so will keep everyone updated as we go.

The next Welly-moot meeting is to be a mid-winter party like we did last year. The date will be Sunday the 31st of  July. It will be fun so don’t miss it.

Also, some Welly-mooters are going to the Armageddon with their own costumes this weekend. We (Alex & Jack) will be going on Monday the 6th, if all goes well. See you there!


   - Alex & Jack

That was one successful marathon!

It's finished. It's done. We came, we watched, we survived (most of us). All six extended Middle-earth movies in a row, in a single sitting. Truly, the end of all things.


I hope everyone enjoyed the event as much as we did! Everything went right, from the chosen date of Good Friday, March 25th (which won't happen again until the year 2157!), to the fantastic venue The Roxy Cinema. Thank you again for hosting this for us, you were marvelous!

In fact, a few thank you's are in order.

Thank you first and most importantly of all, to the Roxy Cinema for all their support, and in particular to Alice, who helped so much the whole way through; to Phil and Valentina for supporting it throughout the planning and preparation stages; and to Richard for keeping things flowing at the event itself! And of course to the other, invisible, behind-the-scenes staff who set up, cooked, and cleaned up afterwards for us. You all did a great job!

Thank you to the Roxy also for the amazing prizepacks both before as well as during the event. And of course congratulations to the prizewinners!

Anna receives her prize.

Thank you to the Miramar Events Trust, for you support, and assistance talking to the media.

Thank you to the Weta Workshop, and in particular to Tania Rodger, for setting up the venue in true Weta style.

Thanks to Daniel Tararo and Kris McMeans who blogged, tweeted, facebook, and most importantly, periscoped their way through the event, with live interviews for the world to watch.

Thanks to Erica, Wilson and Luke for recording the event for your documentary. Let me know when it's available to watch somewhere!

Thank you to Chewy from Wellington Rover Tours for supplying the courtesy shuttle, for getting people There And Back Again, and also for printing the much appreciated Survivor's Certificates. They will make great reminders of this mega event.

We lived!

Also thank you to Mojo Coffee for making sure there was enough caffeine to go around for the fans!


A HUGE thank you to all the special guests who came and honoured us with their presence - Jamie Selkirk (with Oscar!), Daniel Reeve, Daniel Falconer, Peter Hambleton, Sanit Klamchanuan, Kim and Warren Beaton, and Sadwyn Brophy. You made yourself so very available to the fans, with conversation, photos, autographs, and (to Daniel Reeve in particular) with your amazing skills.

A special thank you to Jed Brophy for being there right throughout the event, and getting just as tired as the rest of us! Your dedication is amazing!

A HUGE thank you from me (Jack) to the rest of the Welly-moot committee - Cinnamon, Alex, and Kris. Cinnamon, I forgot to mention you in the speech before the first movie - but I couldn't have done it without you. Alex, you were always by my side. And Kris, my costume looks amazing, thanks to you!

And last, but not least, thank you so much to the amazing fans we managed to convince to part with a not-insignificant amount of money, some who came dressed up, some who flew from halfway across the world, and at least one who walked about 40kms to get to the cinema on time. Your dedication to these films is always amazing, and knowing that support existed made the efforts to organise this so much easier.


Thank you all - I for one, enjoyed this event immensely! I trust everyone else did also!

   - Jack Machiela