"Failure to Grasp the Concept" Competition - Inklings Division

THE WINNER: WELLINGTON CITY COUNCIL, NZ

"The day The Lord of the Rings opened at the Embassy Cinema in New Zealand's capital, Wellingtonians awoke to discover that overnight their city had been re-named by government decree. To honour the achievement of their local film industry, Wellington was for one unique day exchanged for 'Middle-Earth' on signposts and public buildings..."

- Foreword by Sir Ian McKellen in The Lord of the Rings: The Making of the Movie Trilogy by Brian Sibley (London: HarperCollins, 2002), p 7 [emphasis added].

RUNNERS-UP:

(a) The Return of the King movie promotion contest for which first prize was... a car. And not just any car, but a massive four-wheel-drive SUV. ("Ranchero! It didn't ask! It just took!"). Yep, that's how you market a film based on a book written by a man who could barely even tolerate the Model T: raffling a 4x4 toddler-squasher...

(b) The Lion Witch + Wardrobe tie-in contest that marketed... Turkish Delight.

PS: Welcome to Mr Sibley himself!

PPS:

"It's ironic that Disney is filming The Chronicles of Narnia, because Jack [CS Lewis] negatively cites Walt Disney in Surprised By Joy as an artist who betrays beauty. He disliked Dickens' novels, for example, because the illustrations in them that he pored over before he could read represented, like Disney's art, "simpering dolls intended for our sympathy, which really betray the secret."

- Jon Kennedy, The Everything Guide to CS Lewis and Narnia (Avon Media, 2008), p 41.

A biography of Lewis by someone named "Jon Kennedy" is nearly as apt as one written by a Coren.