The Hobbit World Premiere: Wellington - It Starts!

There will be live streaming from Wellington, New Zealand of The Hobbit world premiere!
I know we are all pretty excited to see Richard Armitage on the red carpet. (Understate things much?)

Photo courtesy The Gallery at RichardArmitageNet.com

Here are two links where you can find information about watching the big night on the web:


news.mymiddleearth.com
AND

www.theonering.net (TORn)

Don't forget it will be happening in the late afternoon on Wednesday in NZ, but if you are in the USA you will watch on Tuesday evening. TORn links to a great event clock here to help you figure out the timing.

And check out more ways to help you connect with other RA admirers if you want to chat during the event.

On Twitter:
Check out #RAHobbitNZ to chat with our little circle of RA supporters. Look on Twitter here or simplify things using TweetChat here.

TheOneRing.net (TORn) will be using #HobbitNZ if you want to follow wider tweeting about all of the New Zealand premiere, likely with slightly less emphasis on RA.

Facebook:
Feel free to post on the Armitage Watch Movie Club wall.

Another option:
Judi Grant (@judiang) has a nice chat room here for those of you who prefer not to use Twitter. It gets hopping, so be prepared!

If you have another place online where you'll be meeting with friends for this event, please share a link in the comments, or tweet me and I'll edit this post to add the info.

Here we go, people!

Hang on for the ride!

Is It Time to #LookBack? North and South Watch, Redux

Attention!

Well, it looks like those of you who bothered to have a say have chosen to watch North and South again this Saturday. It wasn't very scientific, what with Blogger's glitch and the polls being reset (twice) but Saturday, 10 November, all 4 episodes in a row definitely had the most votes every time I checked. We'll run through the show twice, once for UK evening times, and once for US evening times. The UK evening times are afternoon in the US, and the US evening times are mid-day Sunday Down Under, so hopefully you will all find a time that works for you.

RichardArmitageNet.com

My real life will be taking priority and I doubt I'll be able to participate in the Watch, but I will set up timetables and pre-program some tweets to help you all stay on the same page. 

The official tag, courtesy of @Sinjoor will be #LookBack. Apropos, wouldn't you say? Love it. Please feel free to use #LookBack to talk amongst yourselves ahead of time and plan with your friends so you know who will be on Twitter and when, so you can Watch together.

RichardArmitageNet.com

"Look back. Look back at me."

Screencaps courtesy of richardarmitagenet.com.

Captain America #HeinzWatch

Sorry for the delay for this post. I've been trying to figure out why the polls in the sidebar stopped working. Turns out it is a problem all across Blogger and who knows when it will be fixed. Apologies to those of you whose votes were lost. I'll let everyone know when things get back to normal and perhaps you will be so good as to come back and vote again then?

Until Blogger gets its stuff in a pile and fixes the poll widget, Captain America: The First Avenger will be our last scheduled Watch. Once the polls are again able to do their magic, I'm hopeful of scheduling an encore for North and South, and then maybe we'll see if there's interest in any of the roles we skipped over from shows like Moving On, Miss Marple, or Miss Marie Lloyd.



Here's the thing about Captain America: Richard's part in the film is too darn short. But the DVD is widely available (check your local public library or Netflix, it's also streaming on Netflix) and Chris Evans is easy on the eyes. Another thing - if your family can't take any more of these multi-hour Watches, you can pop in from about 32 minutes after the hour to 43 minutes after the hour and see our man RA's entire performance, chat with us for just a bit, and pop out again.

The TweetChat room will be #HeinzWatch.

Here's the timetable for the Watch on October 27 (in the USA):

Evening UK

USA East Coast	USA West Coast	United Kingdom	Australia NSW
3:00 PM	12:00 PM	8:00 PM	5:00 AM

Evening USA

USA East Coast	USA West Coast	United Kingdom	Australia NSW
9:00 PM	6:00 PM	2:00 AM	11:00 AM

More North and South? Yes, please! (edit)

***This is what I get for writing posts late at night. "Southern Hemisphere" times is not what I meant on that middle poll. Or course I was thinking Oceania or Australasia and that made me think Down Under which led my brain to South Pacific for some reason and pretty soon I was singing "I'm as corny as Kansas in August" and the whole thing just went south from there. Apologies! ***

Helpful Time Zone map is here.

Have you looked at the Armitage Watch calendar lately? We are fast approaching the end of #GuyWatch. If you don't want to click over, I'll just tell you - the last three episodes are next Friday. I know, I know. Guy! Then the Captain America Watch will be Saturday night. Details for #HeinzWatch will be in tomorrow's post.

This post is to ask: What do you think of another North and South Watch? There's been some chatter about it around Twitter, but so far no decisions have been made. After Captain America, we have no more Watches scheduled, which leaves us with more than six weeks open before The Hobbit starts showing to general audiences around the world.


Are these fabrics from Marlborough Mills? Only John Thornton knows for sure...



And so, a poll. Please see the sidebar to answer these questions:

If you are in favor of another tweet-along watching of North and South, which weekend do you prefer?

Which day and what time of day are you most likely to participate?

Do we need to have the Watch over several days/time zones similar to the first Watch?

Feel free to leave a comment if there is something you want addressed that is not part of the poll.

If there isn't much enthusiasm for the idea of a second N&S Watch, we'll revisit the topic in a few months.
Please help spread the word. Thank you.

To Light a Fire You Need a Spark! #SparkWatch

None of you need me to tell you that Richard Armitage has that spark, and it's pretty obvious that a lot of you are afire already. It makes perfect sense that this coming weekend we'll be setting aside our #GuyWatches (#LucasWatch is over) to join together for a viewing of Sparkhouse.

In part because Sunday Watches in the past have been poorly attended, #SparkWatch will only be scheduled for Friday and Saturday. It's a three episode mini-series, each episode being one hour long, and will follow the #GuyWatch/#LucasWatch model for viewing times. Watch all three episodes at once, or watch some of the show on Friday, some on Saturday.

Another reason Sunday Watches have been abandoned is because there's a new activity planned! Sunday Watch times have been given over to our book discussion of The Sunne in Splendour. This Sunday will be the first TweetChat for the #RA4R3 tag. Our first discussion will cover the first five chapters of the book. See my previous post for more information and links to other blogs with explanations, including a link to Servetus in the comments. As of now there's no particular format we'll be following, we'll see where it goes after this weekend.

One other note:  I'm still including the UK Evening timetables, but I haven't seen any participants during these times in recent weeks. Should we give them up or promote them more? If you care, please tweet me @ArmitageWatch or leave a comment here.

Don't have your own copy of Sparkhouse? Check out the playlists here. This link should work until after #SparkWatch on Saturday.

Evening UK

USA East Coast	USA West Coast	United Kingdom	Australia NSW
3:00 PM	12:00 PM	8:00 PM	5:00 AM
4:00 PM	1:00 PM	9:00 PM	6:00 AM
5:00 PM	2:00 PM	10:00 PM	7:00 AM

Evening USA

USA East Coast	USA West Coast	United Kingdom	Australia NSW
9:00 PM	6:00 PM	2:00 AM	11:00 AM
10:00 PM	7:00 PM	3:00 AM	12:00 PM
11:00 PM	8:00 PM	4:00 AM	1:00 PM

The Sunne in Splendour: A Splendid New Direction

If you've looked at upcoming dates on the calendar page lately, you may have noticed that we are soon coming to the end of our scheduled #GuyWatch and #LucasWatch times. As a matter of fact, #LucasWatch ends mercifully (oh, John) next week, September 22, after which we have a weekend for #SparkWatch (Sparkhouse) and then we start doubling up on #GuyWatches, with Robin Hood filling the #LucasWatch vacancies on Saturdays. This schedule would have left November completely open, with nothing to keep us busy through that last excruciating month before The Hobbit movie.

But now the calendar has some new entries. @Sinjoor has added chapters and dates for a Twitter read-along of the book The Sunne in Splendour by Sharon Kay Penman.

The plan is to have chapters 1 through 5 read by Sunday, September 30 and be ready for discussion Sunday evening (North American times). Following that model, five or so chapters a week will carry us through February. We will be using the hashtag #RA4R3, and chats will be on Sundays, but follow the #GuyWatch/#LucasWatch times. It's fine to post quotes during the week, but no spoilers until after the Sunday discussions.

Why that book? If you are an online Richard Armitage fan, you can hardly have missed it, but just in case:

Conversation with Richard Armitage (Note: This interview contains many spoilers for other RA shows.)

King Richard Week

Fall into Splendour

I Want to Be a Collective Reader

If you wrote a blog post about it or read another great explanation of what we're up to, please put a link in the comments.

Strike Back! It's time for #PorterWatch

It's no secret that I haven't seen Strike Back, so I'm just going to get that out there up front. I did see the first episode of Season 2/Cinemax/whatever-it-was but as RA is only in that for a very brief appearance, I don't count it. Anyway, since I haven't seen it I'm flying blind trying to schedule the Watch in a way that makes sense. Also, I'm a tad under the weather at the moment, so bear with my muddled brain, will you? And do let me know if I'm off base on something

Here's the plan for #PorterWatch:  Two episodes a night for Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

Here's the timetable:

SEASON ONE, EPISODES ONE THROUGH SIX

Friday will be Iraq: Parts 1(E1) & 2(E2)

Saturday will be Zimbabwe: Parts 1(E3) & 2(E4)

Sunday will be Afghanistan: Parts 1(E5) & 2(E6)

Evening UK

USA East Coast	USA West Coast	United Kingdom	Australia NSW
3:00 PM	12:00 PM	8:00 PM	5:00 AM
4:00 PM	1:00 PM	9:00 PM	6:00 AM

Evening USA

USA East Coast	USA West Coast	United Kingdom	Australia NSW
9:00 PM	6:00 PM	2:00 AM	11:00 AM
10:00 PM	7:00 PM	3:00 AM	12:00 PM

As always, we'll be on TweetChat, this time using the tag #PorterWatch. Don't forget, if you want to participate you have to remove any privacy protections you have on your Twitter account. Otherwise, people using the TweetChat page will not see your tweets, even if they follow you in their timelines on Twitter.

(I've been told you can find Strike Back on that infamous site that starts with Y... but right now I don't have a link for you.)