Cool News
New TWO TOWERS Tidbits Popping Up Online!!
Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
That last trailer was a thing of beauty, and it doesn’t surprise me that hype is now officially kicking into overdrive. New Line has gotten LORD OF THE RINGS down to a science now, and there’s no studio and no campaign more confident as we head into the holiday season. Even HARRY POTTER doesn’t have it’s shit together the way THE TWO TOWERS does.
I wish I was in Toronto right now. Or, more correctly, about a month from now. Don’t think it’s going to happen, though, so that means I have to just envy all you lucky people who are in Toronto at that point.
Why? Check it out...
Heya Harry
Came across this the other day at Toronto Star.com, and thought it might interest you.
Lord Of The Rings fans in Toronto will get a chance to explore the Middle-earth setting of The Two Towers before the movie opens Dec. 18. Costumes, drawings, props and footage from the movie will be displayed Oct. 31-Nov. 30 at the ROM's (Royal Ontario Museum) former McLaughlin Planetarium wing in an exhibit designed to give fans the feeling they are entering the mythical lands where the second of The Lord Of The Rings movie trilogy takes place. Huge crowds at a similar pre-movie display last year at Casa Loma before release of The Fellowship Of The Ring, plus the first movie's healthy box office figures in Canada, convinced distributor Alliance Atlantis to set up the only North American exhibit of The Two Towers artefacts. The Fellowship grossed $53.5 million in Canada, which represented 17.25 per cent of the North American total.
Patrons at The Two Towers exhibit will journey through the Fangorn Forest, the Golden Hall, Helm's Deep, Glittering Caves and Isengard Caverns before reaching Rivendell. It will be set up by the movie's designers, Dan and Chris Hennah, who will com e from New Zealand to prepare the display. Tickets, which go on sale through Ticket King tomorrow, cost $15 for adults, $12 for seniors and students, and $7.50 for children.
Call 416-872-1212.
I went to the one held at Casa Loma last year, and it was an amazing exhibit. Maybe this will be a good enough reason to come visit your eskimo friends to the north! I'll send you another exhibit program if not.
DillardAnd as if that trailer wasn’t enough of a tease, New Line’s showing people a bigger block of footage right now that sounds insane:
We've been hearing for a while that New Line Cinema has been showing sixteen minutes of TTT footage, and so we sent our Crebain from Pasadena out to find out what they could. Today they returned with this spoiler-filled report! After reading it, you'll believe a dwarf can fly. ;)
CLICK HERE TO READ THE STORY!!Thanks, David.
December is a long, long way away... damn it...
"Moriarty" out.
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Neat
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Now I'm jealous :D
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Mind you, this is the same man who wrote the line "I kick ass for the Lord!" which, incidently, is now officially the best... line... ever!
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And LOTR and PJ and Tolkien. And you. Especially you.
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My friend saw the FOTR stuff last year, and I was jealous, but received a pamphlet of the props. He saw Gandalf's hat worn by McKellen, the one ring, different landscapes... Worth checking out! Toronto is beautiful
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Now, Gimli asks Aragorn if he would 'toss' him down an area (hardly a goddamn spoiler) then I guess he says "just don't tell the elf." Why does he need to be 'tossed', can't he jump? Is it purely for the scriptwriter to play up moments that connect? Or create humor for stupid people? I hate these fucking additions, they just get under my skin, and detract things for me. They aren't funny, they wreck the mood, and the original books have PLENTY of humor and life, I don't see why they can't concentrate on and use that. It's like with Legolas ("the dude") boogie-boarding down stairs. And the two women being feminists and fighting each other for a man. "We've sexed it up a bit." they say... I say they fucked it up a bit. LOTR is great, but it's nowhere near Perfect. The trailer certainly wasn't, and I didn't hear that view, it's like LOTR can do no wrong.
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I have been reading and participating on talkbacks for about a year now, and I have come to the conclusion (not a particularly stunning revelation, I realize)that the single largest pain in the posterior are purists. I am tired of the level of whining from these folks when a movie turns out not to be 100% exactly like the source material, e.g. Tolkien purists going on and on about the movies not being word for word replications of the text. Folks it is not sacred writing. (Although, even if it is, a filmmaker still can make the choices they want, e.g. The Last Temptation of Christ, a great movie with one of the best ruminations on the two natures of Christ.) It is literature, and Jackson can do what he pleases. The purist, though, is like a religious fundamentalist, not allowing any variation from what they understand the text to say and mean. Would you rather the movies never be made just to protect your vision of the work? Such intractability bespeaks a most closed system of thinking, kills the creative impulse, as well as squelching any sense of wonder. I am convinced that if Christopher Tolkien (a greater purist about his father's work than JRR himself, it seems) decided to make the movie you would still gripe. Why? Because it still isn't your image of the Platonic ideal of the Lord of the Rings. Get a collective grip, relax, and try to actually enjoy life.
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What's funny is that the responses are filled with people either defending Harry or being idiots. Good job morons. And I'm sure Harry is shaken is his fashionable boots.
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Because on his AOL INSTANT MESSENGER name a few nights ago he was gone. And on his profile thing he said that "right now he was being shown THE TWO TOWERS on SuperMegaWideScope"... I think he's already seen THE TWO TOWERS, but can't say because of New Line and all that shit. So he has to pretend he hasn't seen it and has to wait until December. Bullshit. He's seen it already, folks.
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I have no problem with Arwen replacing Glorfindel in FoTR. I do have a problem with asinine juvenile jokes being inserted to a work which is neither asinine, nor juvenile. Dwarf tossing jokes and a cameo of the director belching at the camera do not belong in LoTR, plain and simple. You folks seem to think that any criticism of PJ is a slam against PJ's overall efforts. I can appreciate the hard work he put into this film and still realize where he made some bad decisions, and not be afraid to speak up about it. (Gets my fellow geeks a-tremblin' with rage when i don't get on my knees and rapturously worship FoTR 100%).
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The report is incorrect. The actual line that Gimli says is,"Kiss me, you fool - but don't tell the elf!". Makes a lot more sense.
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Actually, I get the feeling that our whole fans-and-PJ relationship is becoming one of those insufferrable-to-witness giggly early phases of a saccahrine-sweet junior-high love affair. PJ: "I love you more" FANS: "No, I love YOU more" PJ: "No, I love YOU more!" FANS: "No, I love YOU more!" PJ: "No, I love YOU more!" FANS: "No, I love YOU more!" PJ: "No, I love YOU more!" FANS: "No, I love YOU more!" PJ: "Wow, it's late, I have to get up early and work on Return of the King." FANS: "Okay, g'night!" PJ: "G'night! I love you!" FANS: "I love you more!" PJ: "I love YOU more, but I REALLY have to go now!" FANS: "Okay, bye!" PJ: "Bye! .....You didn't hang up!" FANS: "YOU didn't hang up EITHER!" PJ: "Well, you hang up first." FANS: "No, YOU hang up first." PJ: "No, YOU hang up first!" FANS: "No, YOU hang up first!" PJ: "No, YOU hang up first!" FANS: "No, YOU hang up first!" PJ: "Okay, let's hang up on 'three.'" FANS: "'kay!" [together] "One... Two... Three!" .... FANS: "You're still there!" PJ: "You didn't hang up on three like we said!" FANS: "You didn't hang up either!" PJ: "...Well I didn't want to hang up." FANS: "I don't want to hang up, either." PJ: "But I really gotta work on ROTK tomorrow. " FANS: "I know." PJ: "Cause I want to give you the bestest ROTK you could ever have." FANS: "I know." PJ: "So we gotta hang up." FANS: "I know. I love you!" PJ: "I love you more!" >click!click!< LOTR FANS: "...Geez, what's up THEIR ass?" [stays up all night watching LOTR trailers, again]
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I CAN enjoy life, thanks for speaking for me. FOTR is not life. And the 'creative process' you're talking about is a running gag of dwarf-tossing. Cheap, tasteless Dwarf-tossing gags...in LORD OF THE RINGS.
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Yes, I understand that certain low-brow jokes are unnecessary, I even agree with you. Also, critique is an important part of the discussions on this list. No, Peter Jackson does not walk on water, he makes mistakes, who doesn't. I am not a Jackson apologist. I do have a hard time understanding the anfechtungen of the purists who rail against Jackson every time they find a change that alters their seeming sacred text, i.e. Tolkien's writings. They are turning into Trekkies, obsessives who are more concerned with maintaining the sacred canon instead of participating in the evolution of particular stories. You don't like or agree with changes, that is 100% your right, and you can talk about them. But, and this is where it gets a bit dicey, it is when you go on and on about the changes as if they had wrecked the story completely. They act as if someone added or subtracted to words from the scripture and therefore will have punishments added or blessings subtracted because of the change (a reference to the closing of the Book of Revelation). They take legitimate criticism and head down the road of fundamentalism or fanatacism. It is excessive, to say the least. And, they try to prove their worth to the original text by putting down those who have enjoyed the altered reality that they see on the screen. It is no longer good enough to simply dislike it, they must now prove to everyone who liked that they should not have liked it because it did not hew to the text closely enough. Enjoy or don't enjoy. Discuss and criticize, but don't cross over into behavior that floats dangerously close to fundamentalism. A closed mind misses so much, and attempts to drag down a conversation (and experience)that seeks to find some enjoyable diversion from a world that is dark enough.
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According to the script, it reads like this: Aragorn: "It's a long way down." Gimli: "Toss me, Aragorn." Arargorn: "Are you sure?" Gimli: "Yes. but don't tell the Elf." [Aragorn tosses Gimli] Hudson: "Well whoopee fuckin' do! Hey, I'm impressed!"
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No kidding. I understand that FOTR is not life. Gads, look a bit at the bigger picture, please. No movie, NONE, is worth the kind of heartburn that some are giving themselves because of things they don't like. I agree with you, the running gag of dwarf-tossing isn't my cup of tea. But you know what? It lasts but a second, and I have the ability to move beyond it. It just isn't worth getting that perturbed about. It is a little thing. Oh, and one last point, I was not deigning to speak for you, I was speaking for myself. I was articulating ideas that found their formation in my brain, limited as it may be. I have plenty enough work speaking for myself, that I don't need, and have never attempted, to speak for another. Sorry, if you took offense, I neither spoke for you, nor would want to. You are just a name on a page, and there is no way in all of creation that I could even begin to guess who you are what you think.
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...love Pallando and Corporal Clegg. Because they make me laugh. Thumbs down on dwarf-tossing from me, I'm afraid, but lots of non Canon Fascists like it, so what do I know? ("I know that I don't like it, goddammit!")
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Because it's sooo Peter Jackson. Anyone that has seen his other movies wouldn't be surprised by this. I'm actually surprised he was able to surpress his humorous side so much in these movies, and so far it seems like he's using Gimli and Pippin as occasional channels for his brand of comedy. But find solace is this : whatever side that you are on on the issue, at least the scene looks to last only about 5-10 secs out of a 3 hour film. *** Boy, I remember last year about this time as the movie release got closer, everyone was bitching about Arwen and Enya and the film "tanking" in a week and not making 150 million... and in the end, it blew you all away and through the back wall of the theatre. Face it, the LOTR movies, as my rap lingo brethren would say, "Ownz you!!!" *** Hudson : "Game over, man!"
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I don't care if it LOTR is sacred. The way they did the dwarf-tossing joke in FOTR was very funny. Everyone laughed all 8 times I saw it in the theater. The new joke sounds like it'll be even better. The joke that didn't work was Pippen's "You need people of intelligence on this sort of mission..." It was in an inappropriate place.
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What's next? A deleted scene showing Merry and Pippin going cow-tipping in Farmer Maggot's field? Or perhaps a lengthy sequence in which Gandalf defeats the Uruk-Hai at Helm's Deep by lighting his farts! What we're witnessing is the watering and DUMBING down of Tolkien to appeal to the truck-pull fans in stained Fruit-of-the-Looms and potato chip-spattered wife-beater tees! Can't we have a version that gives the book some RESPECT? No, instead we're going to be treated to a host of juvenile fantasies and poo-poo jokes! And you guys mock Lucas? Coming in November, the extended edition featuring Sam slipping a WHOOPIE CUSHION under Elrond's chair!
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I'm not a huge LOTR buff, I understand the need for stylistic difference from the books, I've been meaning to finish ROTK for months. When I heard Elijah say to 'Sam' "ask Clarissa for a dance." it sounded weird, dumb and out of place, and then I read the book and it wasn't there. It's just sometimes people include references to things that happen in modern times that really takes you out of the time they're setting things in. Some ideas are just wholly, absent-mindedly DUMB, they're going to be way more annoying and obvious in 20 years than AICN tb-ers with healthy criticisms. Things like those ideas, some poor acting, the cave troll dampened FOTR a bit, but as I said, it was a great movie, but it's a great movie with some flaws and there's no harm in saying so, the real fundamentalism is in ignoring these faults. Remember Gandalf's sassy girl head shake ("like...duh!") when Pippen talked about needing intelligence on the mission? And Elrond's stern look? I actually liked that! Though there are many better Pippen comments in the book, I just wish directors could see past some of their own ideas.
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I let my computer download that full screen trailer for four hours and then I couldn't save it. That was the whole reason I bought the Quicktime Pro package, so that I could save all the Quicktime movies even if they don't have a direct link. Curse Apple and Quicktime for this scam! Curse them I say!
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Okay, New Line. I keep asking this, but I guess you haven't been reading these talkbacks. Maybe I'll write a letter. Anyway. I don't like the shield surfing part. It doesn't fit the mood or style of the story. I don't like the dwarf tossing jokes either. I'm not offended by them or anything, I just don't think they fit in, and are just plain unnecessary. Please cut those parts out before the movie is released. Thank you in advance. Eomer Fudd.
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Um, there's a set of links on the site where you can directly download the trailer onto your hard drive... try right-clicking on fullsize one and select "save file to" [they are a separate set of links-they even say "download the trailer" above them]. It's a .zip file, but there you go. Worked for me... [please ignore this if you figured it out already and were just bitching about the software being a rip-off. I feel the same way about Windows Media Player]... but the problem *I* have is that my system has too little memory to play the full-size smoothly, and when I try to go frame-by-frame it crashes everything. Most annoying. Oh, yeah, dwarf-tossing... being short I think it's in poor taste. Have any Little People weighed in on this yet? ;-P
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...so my response to Drath is light-years away from his original comment. Hooray. How hard can it be to write a simple sequential code? Just wondering... and I hated the shield-surfing too; screams Ugly Hollywood Goofy Action Sequence in the worst way to me. Very silly. On the plus side, the rest looks good. [must banish Xtreme Elfsports from brain...]
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You have lost me on the critique of Frodo trying to get Sam to dance with Rosie (her name, and she will become Sam's wife, which is why it is a nice nod to the book). The book mentions the hobbits love of merriment, song, dance, etc. Why would this scene pull you out of the movie? Because Frodo has to push Sam to dance with Rosie? Knowing that Sam is a bit of a stick in the mud from the books, you would understand his reticence, and it makes a good deal of sense in this context. Granted, it is not in the book, but it is consistant with the characters as sketched in the books and the movie. Say more on why you think that a scene about a dance is an intrusion from modernity?
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Oct 03, 2002 3:41:31 PM CDT
You mean someone actually fell for that "we sexed it up" paragra
by nazismasher
Wasn't this the same one that started off something like "well we might not show Viggo's ass but..."? Tsk, tsk. I would have expected AICN talkbackers to be way more savy. Riiiight... and I'm sure Eowyn and Arwen will soon make an appearance on the Elfie Springer Show episode devoted to Middle-Earth trailer-hut trash.
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That's a cool idea. Too bad I'm not in Maryland or I'd audition for Treebeard. "Ni!"
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If any of you have seen the behind the scenes on the DVD you'll see that Orlando Bloom (That stud!) jumps out of airplanes, bungie jumps from cable cars and snowboards so I wonder if it was HIS suggestion to do it. Hey, it makes sense, elves are SUPPOSED to have super-human agility and speed and senses (remember Legolas walking ON TOP of the snow as they made there way across Galadrass or however the hell it's spelled?) I didn't mind the "dwarf tossing" but the line didn't make sense because they were in a dire-hurry with the Balrog on the way and the Orcs shooting at them, hardly the time for a joke that would slow them down and possible cost them their lives. Personally, I found the "Not the beard!" line a little more forced. I don't mind the "Toss me off () just don't tell the wife..er elf (hehehe)! I just hope they don't add another Dwarf line in RoTK to give it "closure." "I want more life, fucker!"-Roy, Blade Runner
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The trailer absolutely rocked. If this movie lives up to its potential, it will be superior to the first. And if ROTK can maintain the quality of this series, it could be unbelievable. Can you imagine Shelob, the tower of Cirith Ungol, the Paths of the Dead, the battle of Pelennor Fields, the battle at the gates of Mordor, and the destruction of the ring all in one flick? When all is said and done, I think this will be the best trilogy ever filmed.
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After reading this talkback, I've noticed that more people are beginning to agree with me about the shield surfing scene. I'm actually glad they put it into the trailer. Now more people understand just how badly out of place it will be in the film. This news about another dwarf tossing joke is particularly disturbing. More and more people are starting to show their outrage at these unnecessary elements. This crap is being inserted into the films for the sole purpose of keeping the attention of knuckle-dragging slackjaws and those with attention deficit disorder! There is still time, Mr. Jackson, to save your masterpiece. SNIP-SNIP-SNIP. That's all it will take. The movie will be 45 seconds shorter, and an incalculable amount better. Thanks.
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I guess I don't get that one, since men have been asking women to dance since time immemorial. And, by the way, her name is Rosie. In this case, if Jackson had faithfully followed Tolkien, we wouldn't have known Rosie existed until Sam begins to dream of her on the slopes of Mount Doom. We would have had no idea there is someone he wants to get back TO. The scene, as played, is entirely charming and adds greatly to the sense of affection between the characters, as is the scene of Frodo and Sam leaving the pub.
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(Obviously) I've been reading these LOTR TBs in the past month a lot more than usual and I haven't seen a lot of "outrage" as you say, if anything more of a 50/50 split, BUT more often a wait-and-see attitude. Anyway, like I said before, PJ isn't going to read this TB and have a epiphany and follow your suggestion. If you are so gung-ho about this, go make a petition like everyone else. *jumps on his shield and fires an arrow to signal his departure*
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El buen Peter nunca se burlar
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Anyway, you gotta admit, since the trailer came out and everybody saw the shield surfing there have been more people speak out against it in these talkbacks. And who needs to "wait and see" it when it's right there in the trailer? Context is not going to change anything about that scene. It's blatant over-the-top ridiculous Hollywood action that is not necessary in the Lord of the Rings. As I said, it would be more at home in a Jackie Chan movie. You think nobody from New Line reads these talkbacks? Maybe so, but at least its a place to vent. Thanks.
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and shield surfing, for that matter. Yes, it'd be annoying if all of the trilogy were filled with "summer-movie-speak," but they're not. A dwarf-tossing joke here or there does absolutely no harm to the bigger picture. As for shield surfing, who's to say Legolas definitively wouldn't have done so? Ok, maybe it's more Blue Crush than Fellowship, but hey...let's not miss the forest for the trees. PJ's done a superlative job thus far. Finally, regarding the Sam-asking-Rosie scene, as ridiculous as this might sound I think it was mostly required to point out to non-readers that Sam's not gay. Particularly given Frodo and Sam's later moments in TTT and ROTK (of which Sam kissing Frodo's hand in the trailer is just a sliver), PJ just threw that scene in early to point out, "Hey, they're just good friends." Whether or not it was necessary is a different question, but now at least non-readers can better ascertain Sam's intentions when he goes all "Oh I do so love you, Mr. Frodo" throughout the next two films. Not that there'd be anything wrong with that, of course.
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Purists need to get a life. I have read LOTR 33 times and change, and you know what? I like most of Jackson's changes. A few were a bit too much but they amounted to less than a minute of a 3h movie.
A movie and a book are in a different format and things MUST be changed and added. Books can say something like "they greeted each other". The movie must create actual words and gestures to replace the text. The book can say the elf and dwarf killed 83 orcs. The movie has to show this, even though only a few of the kills were described in the book. The movie must show the characters present in the background doing and saying things which a book can simply ignore. The movie is much shorter than the book, and things must be condensed and combined. The movie displays information in a different manner than a book, thereby making certain elements more presentable than others.
Get over it, enjoy the 2h59m of beauty. -
Oct 03, 2002 6:21:10 PM CDT
Drath! And others having trouble saving a QuickTime file...
by aliceinwonderlnd
Don't know if this will help, but you can save these files even if the save is disabled on your menu (this is true of all .mov files). The movie you downloaded (unless it's streaming, and the trailer won't be if you got the QT version) is actually hiding in your Temporary Internet Files folder. It has to live there in order for you to play it, so it exists on your computer whether you've saved it or not. Where this folder is depends on what version of Windows you are running, I'm on 98 so the path to mine is C:\Windows\Temporary Internet Files (you have to play it for it to appear there, sometimes the Refresh doesn't cut it). If you're like me, this folder is full to bursting, so search for it if you know it's name using the search (though sometimes the name is different than you think, in which case arrange your icons by type and try it that way). When you find the .mov, copy it to somewhere else on your computer. Some trailers and general cool shit has an expiry on it, but to be honest, once I've moved stuff out of the temporary folder, I've never had it vanish on me. And you should be set then. Hope this helps.
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You know, the thing that doesn't work for me is Peter Jackson holding a carrot and belching in the rain, but NOT because he gave himself a rude little cameo. (Hey, he's entitled, after all he's given us.) No, it's because it is entirely out of context for any man to be standing in the DARK, in the pouring RAIN, eating a carrot. Even in good weather, pre-industrial people tended to get where they were going and stay there, after dark. Not just because of the physical danger, but because without streetlights, they couldn't SEE, unless by moonlight. The idea that a man would stand around chomping raw vegetables in a downpour... no, that one is (to me) far more improbable than either dwarf-tossing or shield-surfing - neither of which bother me, and I'll explain why. If you strip away from the phrase "tossing a dwarf" all of its current offensive connotations (say, if Gimli had said, "No one throws a dwarf!") so that we weren't thinking of barroom games, it could be read simply as an assertion of pride in his own dwarfish self-sufficiency (which would also work for the bit cited in TTT). And if we took away the word "surfing" from the idea of Legolas finding the quickest way possible to get down a flight of stairs during a battle, then why not balance on a shield and slide? He has the lightness, the agility, the balance, the reflexes.... A human doing it would strain credibility, but not an elf. So I say, leave it in! It took me quite a few viewings (and someone else pointing it out) before I even noticed his light little leap over the stairs in Moria, but once I saw it, I was happy.
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My goodness, don't you think you are overreacting a bit yourself, with all the caps and exclamation marks? I wasn't saying the Carrot Incident had ruined the movie; I was merely making the point that this particular two seconds of film time (which I barely noticed the first time through, nor did I recognize the actor as Jackson) was more wrong-in-context to me personally, especially on repeated viewings, than the other instances we have been discussing. (Though I think someone else brought it up first.) Are you making the point that in Middle Earth people routinely eat carrots in the rain? Good and evil is not one thing to men and another to elves, nor are soggy carrots.
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About the importance of inserting Rosie early on, that is. Aside from the intrinsic charm of the scene, we establish that Sam has a thing for Rosie, that Rosie (at the pub) is flirting a bit with Sam, that Frodo knows and approves and indeed encourages it... all of which goes a long way toward establishing that Sam and Frodo don't think of each other In That Way, and that their obviously strong and emotional bond is one of friendship.
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Oh yes, my little modem is just burning as I download that trailer. Lucky Canadian bastards. So close! ***** morGoth, I sent you an e-mail. ***** Quick checklist of the purist complaints: Asking Rosie for a dance
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Isn't Grima Wormtongue from Rohan? I always pictured the kinda norse look for them, they've done a great job with the look of the Rohirrim. But shouldn't Grima look at least kinda like he's from there and not some evil spy from Hell? Sheesh! They shoulda just given him a curly black mustache to twirl as he cackles in an evil laugh!
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I'm back baby!
Yeah some of you need to chill out. Eomer Fudd - you felt the 'ask Rosie for a dance' line was 'wierd, dumb and out of place' ? WTF? The film had just started - the characters had not yet been established. Therefore nothing could be out of place. At that stage, a quick shot of a group of hobbit children playing 'soggy sao' could not have been 'out of place'. As for Jackson's brand of humour, I don't hear anyone complaining about Merry and Pippin's antics with the fireworks, or about their ears being pulled by Gandalf afterwards. Or about the 'that was close' or 'I think I've broken something' lines later on. Or about the 'I don't think he knows about elevenses, Pip' scene. Or about the Boromir wrestling with the hobbits scene. None of these humourous asides were in the novel. They all made the film more enjoyable. They served to contrast with the darker elements of the story. They also served to distinguish the warm and merry natures of the characters involved (even Gimli in his tossing linges) from other dour, stern characters (both good and evil) who are too invested in 'important matters' to crack a smile. It sounds as though some of you would prefer the entire trilogy to consist of 'Where .. is .. Gandalf .. , .. for .. I .. much .. desire .. to .. speak .. with .. him' style seriousness. There have been a couple of Hudson references already. His character in Aliens illustrates the principle of humour conrasting with and amplifying cinematic drama quite nicely. Many of his lines, and also Burk's 'Why don't we build a fire, sing a few songs' line did exactly that, while being open to the accusation of 'dumbing down' or 'detracting from' the film, which, of course, is bullshit. As Harry might put it, penetration cannot be all plunge and no pull. Hudson: 'Yeah, Bishop should go! Good idea!'
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A plot prediction based on the TTT trailer. .....................................It looks as though the Roherrim peons are heading to Helm's Deep, as opposed to Dunharrow in the novels. This is good, because the final battle will be more emotional with periodic cuts to cowering women and children. Anyway, I think that the King and Aragorn are forced to fall back to defend the people from the harassing forward elements of Saruman's army - including warg-riders, I'm sure (can't wait to see more of those guys). That is the point when Theoden instructs Eowyn to lead to the people to Helm's Deep, while the men ride off (featuring Aragorn's hero pose on horseback in the trailer). So it looks like we'll get some preliminary action that was not related directly in the books. Hudson: 'Well why don't you put her in charge?'
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Look for his post, as the posting order now defies all logic. Harry's angry with us all...
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I think the dwarf tossing line is one of the highlights of the film. Keep in mind it's only funny to the audience. When Gimli says it to Aragorn it's a matter of pride and he's completely serious. Actually the line that does bother me is when Gandalf says 'Let the ringbearer decide' on Carahras. It's like he knows what they have to do but he doesn't want to take responsibility. Very Un-Gandalf like. Can someone explain to me why this change was made. Also, anyone else notice the absence of the Star Wars geeks in these talkbacks. They used to always try to ruin these things, now it appears they're all gone.
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Oct 04, 2002 1:37:13 AM CDT
What is it with you people and the @#$$%^&$ "T" word?!...
by skyway moaters
...which I will not utter here! Knock it off already! What, is there some kind of 'vogue' associated with the word T@#$ogy that I'm not aware of or what? People seem to want use it for ANYTHING associated with the number 3 for pity's sake! I swear to Eru, my brain is going to melt and leak out my goddamn ears if you rash fools do not desist in your CONSTANT incorrect usage of this term! *** Apologies gentle posters to those of you that don't know what the hell I'm talking about. It's my 'appointed' rant you see. There
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I can't believe everyone is directing their attention to this line. I thought it was funny, didn't bother me at all. I was also kind of amused by "You will taste manflesh!" and "Let's hunt some orc!". I suppose you had problems with them to, hmmmm? All in all, the movie rocks and bring on December! I want some shield surfing!!!!
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Carrot eating in the rain in the middle of the night after a drinking expedition is a regular activity where I come from. Don't knock it until you try it!
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Oct 04, 2002 2:45:17 AM CDT
Yes morG, Awen's end truely is tragic, heartbreaking...
by skyway moaters
.. I always get kind of 'sniffelly' when I read that part of the appendeces. Not meaning to steal your fire or nothing: "...But Arwen went forth from the House, and the light of her eyes was quenched, and it seemed to her people that she had become cold and grey as nightfall in winter that comes without a star. Then she said farewell to Eldarion, and her daughters, and to all whom she had loved; and she went out from the City of Minas Tirith and passed away to the land of Lorien, and dwelt there alone under the fading trees until winter came. Galadriel had passed away and Celeborn also was gone. and the land was silent. There at last when the Mallorn-leaves were falling, but spring had not yet come, she laid herself to rest upon Cerin Amroth; and there is her green grave, until the world is changed, and all the days of her life are utterly forgotten by men that come after, and elanor and niphredil bloom no more east of the Sea." *** The hill of Cerin Amroth in Lothlorien was where she and her Estel had been troth-plighted so many years before... *** "Onen i-Estel Edain, u-chebin estel anim" = "I gave my hope to the Dunedain, I have kept no hope for myself." Who said THAT Tolkienoids? Got a fine pouch of Old Toby and a big slice-O-Lembas Pie for poster what answers first!
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...and yes we're all overreacting whether you're bothered or accept the shield surfing and humor about the tossing (there's an update at Tolkien Online on that BTW). If you're bothred by it it won't be any harder to bear than what was in FOTR. On to to Jaquen's theory, I think it's on the right track and the exclusion of Dunharrow as the primary refuge is the only thing here that isn't in line with canon. - SPOILERS - In the books the force that set out from Edoras in fact did not intend initially to make their stand at Helm's Deep but rather to reinforce what was left of Theodred's army at the Fords of Isen. Only once they learned of the complete disaster that had befallen at the Fords did they double back and make their stand there. My theory is they leave all the civies at Helm's Deep, then ride forward to the Isen, realize it is too late, and then fall back with Saruman's army at their heels, keeping it pretty much like the books except again for the lack of Dunharrow. That in itself is not unprecedented either since it happened once before when much of the population fled to the Hornburg when the Dunlendings first invaded Rohan in the time of Helm "Hammerhand".
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Skyway - Gilraen, Aragorn's mum said it (nice play on his Elvish name there). Where's my prize? Regarding Sam and Rosie, my comments go something along the line of "Jesus Christ". Rosie, like Arwen, is one of those chicks that pop up at the end of the book for the express purpose of marrying one of the primary characters, after their existence and significance has been hinted at in the text in the most vague, throwaway ways imaginable. No, he isn't dancing with Rosie to prove he's not *gay*! It's like saying the whole reason that Arwen was at the Ford was to prove that Aragorn isn't gay. I think what we're seeing here is a different, more innocent way of looking at the world. When the book came out, written by Tolkien who'd fought in the trenches and had strong male friendships, the whole world wasn't on the look-out for "gayness". You could say, "I love you, man" and it wouldn't instantly be interpreted as an invitation to elope to San Francisco. And I think it's a shame, because it's a beautiful thing, and it's cool to read about these two guys who are totally committed to holding one another up in the line of fire, written by someone who had some experience of what that was like. Anyway, just needed to vent. Anyway, Sam is a stud. Doesn't he go back and become like a pocket Fertility God in the Shire, what with making it all bloom with his box of dirt and having an incredible number of kids?
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.... right you are fair Alice. Just you fasleggit on over to Howe Fents, (about three faggers souf eas from Widders Dump)and Iwl make sure you get your comping station!
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If only I could win a new job. So, they're talking in the Independent about TTT tickets going on sale soon. I'm curious... where and when will you be seeing it, and who with? Answers on a postcard please. For myself, I'll probably go and check out a midnight showing in London with my longtime geekbud Julian and his geek friends. Some hardcore purism going on there, and there is some Dungeons and Dragons in our collective pasts (though not recent pasts) so that could be scary. Or, the work lot will doubtless turn up en masse again (we did FOTR as our ersatz Christmas Party last year). In which case I'll be seeing in in Birmingham (home of the Shire, believe it or not, though it more closely resembles the inspiration for Mordor if you ask me. All we need is a bigass volcano and we're all set to go...)
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... make sure you say "Trubba Not" when you come up on the gate house becaws thers sure to be a rumpa if you dont and you myte end up with a arrer in your froat before the crowd even knows who you are or what your binses is...
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Moaters - I know you're determined to end my never-ending spree of swoonage, but I do think that firing projectile weapons at me is a bit strong.
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If you're going to give Tolkien the finger and throw in modernisms and broad humor, I have some suggestions. Make Merry a Mary for some hobbit love action, have Arwen and Eowyn get into a cat fight where they tear each other's tops off (a la "Tom Jones"), make sure Gimli's sole purpose is to be the butt of fart jokes (literally), and Sam should be picking his nose all the goddamn time. Pippin will come a runnin' to Gandalf shouting "Faramir has a BOMB in his RIB CAGE!" When Gandalf meets the WitchKing in ROTK, one of those two should belt out: "King Kong ain't got nothin' on me!" As Gollum dances around the Crack of Doom, he should really bust a move, maybe have some Britney Spears inspired dance number with orcs and lava creatures backing him up. May I suggest Cher and Celene Dion to replace Enya as the artiste for the 2nd and 3rd movies, respectively. I mean you want this to be accessible to the masses and fun and stuff, right???
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... I know you Alice, but I aint no kind of hevvy and the res of the Howe Fents crowd DONT know you. If you say "Trubba Not" theywl say "No Trubba" and let you right in. Parbly theywd ask you "why dont you say trubba not?" before they uppit bow but it depends on whose on the Hywalk at the tyme. If its Fister Cruchman or one of Straighters regeler nexters then parbly you wont have no trubba. But if its Durster Potter or one of the other hevvys in this here crowd it could very wel be Arga Warga and off whith yer Aunty on her gyint rat if you dont say: Trubba Not
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The discussion was actually about the context of changes, and I think DoT is being a bit bullied here. She was just saying (not that I'd speak for someone else, but I will anyway) She was just saying that contextually its the odd thing out of the changes. Though I always fancy a kebab for some reason when I'm staggering around drunk in strange villages. That said, I wouldn't countenance one when I was sober. Maybe carrots are the ME equivalent. I notice that Merry was most dissappointed when his got broken, perhaps he was saving it for later when he got bevvied. Actually, carrots, even raw, are nicer than kebabs, but try telling me that when I've had a few. Kebabs. Eww. Warm, moist, rotting RandomLambFlesh twirling slowly on its skewer.
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I finally realized how much in denial I have been. Jackson, Walsh, Boyens and all the rest involved with this fiasco clearly hate Tolkien and this story. The contempt for the source material permeates every snide, insincere frame. Every single ego-self-stroking change of scene or dialogue from page to script to screen is an act of hubris so egregious as can only seen to be, as one fellow so succinctly put it, "giving the finger" to J.R.R. Tolkien. [Version 1] These louts merely wish to ride the back of LOTR's recent meteoric resurgence in popularity to rake in the dough of us clueless slavering Doritos-dusted-fingernails Consumers. How have I not put 2 and 2 together before this. Over the past couple of years, Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings" has doubled, tripled, and quadrupled in sales. More people are reading it than ever before. More people are RE-reading it than ever before. More people are buying copies to replace their well-worn editions, more people are giving copies as presents, than EVER before. The Tolkien Estate is being rewarded with untold, exorbitant millions in reward for their late patriarch's labor, craft, and imagination. Is it a coincidence that NOW these movies are being made? You can just see the little cartoon dollar signs popping up in Hollwood's eyes, complete with cliched little "ka-ching!" cash-register-drawer sound effect. The motivations of them all is grotesquely, deplorably base and obvious. [Version 2] With the creation of these films, the written word of J.R.R. Tolkien is lost forever. Soon an entire generation, and every generation after until the end of time, will know nothing of Tom Bombadil or the Barrow Downs. They will think Elves were always at Helm's Deep and that the Council of Elrond was a brief, contentious affair. The power, the importance, the Absolute Significance of FILM is more than just time spent in a cinema, or home theater. By adapting and applying visuals to a tale, the original literature is LOST. Destroyed. Forgotten. It is no longer What Matters. It isn't a "separate entity" or "retelling of the story" for God's sake! When a movie is made of a book, the movie is THE story, from then and ever on. Now that there is a cinematic "version" of "The Lord of the Rings" (said with irony, as that movie is in NO way "The Lord of the Rings"), there will be no more reason for anyone to read Tolkien's brilliant novel. Interest will wane, book sales will decline, the Tolkien Estate will crumble to ruin. This is the tragedy we "Purists"--and how DARE you all use that term derogatively--are in fear of, and know will happen. We wish to protect the works of Tolkien, in the face of its imminent destruction. Perhaps this is but shaking our fist at an approaching tsunami, but our defiance is no less noble for its futility. Perhaps one would say nobler. [Coda to both Versions] This, THIS is why we are Better Fans than thou. And this is why we are Important. WE can see the BIG PICTURE.
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Alice, I got the book today. Anyone want scans of the new stuff? That is, IF I can get the scanner to work. Moaters, did you want the book sent to you? *** DoT, I hope you don
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this is starting to sound like the Iraq debate. If you criticize Bush's unilateral approach, you're a Saddam-hugging dove, if you criticize some of PJ's artistic decisions you're deemed a PJ-hating Purist (which just recently became a term as derogotary as "liberal"). Can we defy apparent human nature and NOT polarize into two camps here? Which inevitably leads to demonization of the Other and eventual genocide, Rwanda or Balkan style, or maybe just mass noogying at the TTT premiere line. p.s.what carrot? p.p.s. Actually I always thought Merry could've been changed to a girl with no problem, it would have added to the grrrlpower involved in slaying the Witch King. So much for purism.
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But is it me, or have the TBs gotten insufferably BORING lately? I've been travelling a bunch last couple weeks and stole some time this morning to catch up on the past few I've missed. My eyes are now glazed past the point of caffeine rescue. Good grief, such tedium, such redundancy. Heavens Bless The Tailend, of course, but just feels like everything else UP to that eventual transition has become deja vu all over again. I honestly can't say I'm looking forward to another two years ('til the ROTK DVD, I'm assuming) of the same old same old YEARS-OLD squabbles with the haters, both pro-Tolkien and anti-Tolkien. (The two're starting to look quite a bit alike to me.) Just getting a lot harder to have FUN with the people who Just Don't Get It, you know? Because if they STILL don't Get It, it's doubtful they ever will or want to, and laughing AT em's getting a bit too Schadenfreude. A bit too akin to mocking a disability. I'd rather ignore em, hang out by the stereo speakers, make frequent trips to the bar, smile and wave to me mates across the room, chat up a passing potential swooner on occasion ;) and basically let the party peter down to the Interesting Folx before, well, paying much attention to the scene. See y'all then. *** Meanwhile, Mister Mofo, can't BELIEVE we haven't hijacked one of these things into NCAA Football territory! Certainly my recent schedule's fault, but that can be rectified. Whaddaya think, we'll be numbers 1 and 2 going into December 8th....?
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No, I'm not feeling too horribly bullied about the carrot issue... had thought it was a bit obvious that my own comments were fairly tongue-in-cheek... though when it comes to very recognizable directors doing cameos - Hitchcock got locked into doing it, and then had to think of a way to insert himself as early as possible, so the audience could get back to watching the movie and not waiting for him to show up. I do think Jackson's drunken, belching, carrot-eating bit pulls me out of the movie for a second or two, but as I also said, he's entitled. ***As for the rather intense male relationships in LOTR, which I happen to love, there is an excellent chapter about this in "Master of Middle Earth," my favorite collection of essays about Tolkien's work (I own a first edition), in which it is pointed out that Tolkien is drawing from an older, heroic tradition which allowed men to be overtly emotional, weep over and kiss fallen comrades, embrace and kiss each other at regular intervals, etc., which we have definitely lost - ironically, especially in British/Scandinavian-influenced countries. Years ago, during Family Hour at the local YMCA, I was larking about in the pool with my sister - doing nothing more sinister than giggling and occasionally touching each other's shoulder - when a very hostile man approached us and accused us of being lesbians and said we made him sick and should get out of the pool. I yelled after him, "We're SISTERS, idiot!" But, you know, so what if we had been? (By contrast, in Italy we can stroll around with our arms linked after a good dinner, and no one thinks anything of it, because they are all doing it.) Part of the childlike/innocent quality of hobbits is that they do touch and hug as easily as only children can in our culture. And in any case, Tolkien's characters are awash in loving relationships in which sex has nothing to do with it. But - and with no intention of starting a flaming controversy - I do think there's more than one reason Rosie was introduced early, and that's so a certain percentage of the audience doesn't start speculating about something Tolkien never addressed.
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Wasn't that a Led Zeppelin song from "In Through the Out Door"? Or was the "The Carrot in the Rain Song" from "Houses of the Holy"? Oh, no...I'm thinking of the Milli Vanilli song "Blame it on the Carrot in the Rain," right? No, wait a minute...I'm thinking of the live version of "Box of Carrots in the Rain" from the Dead's "Europe '72" album! I believe we are witness to the birth of a new, and glorious, AICN catchphrase.
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I grew up in La Crosse, and my Dad and I spent a summer helping the UW Archaeology Dept. in a dig on the South Side [the city was putting a culvert thru a village site]... I personally found a nice big potshard w/handle, but the other side of the dig found a human burial. That was in 1982 [I celebrated my 11th birthday on-site w/a watermelon w/candles stuck in it!]. Sounds like you're off in the dunes north of Onalaska though? Hope you enjoyed it! I know it was a rewarding experience for me. As for weird out-of-place lines, I didn't really like "Let's hunt some orc" either, but I'm a crabby English major who tends to piss and moan about such things. Toodles!
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... for all wannabe Tolkien screen adaptors, and I'm partly posing this to illustrate how difficult it is. What line would you substitute for "Let's hunt some orc!"? The music is swelling; strong purpose must be established; we've already had the line about not abandoning Merry and Pippin to torment and death - more importantly, SOME strong note of victory or hope must be established, as this is the last we will see of these three for another year. I think "Let's hunt some orc!" is a good, forceful line - a bit contemporary action hero-ish, maybe not perfect (though every audience I've been with has loved it), but it definitely does the job. So, again, my question to all who don't like it: what would YOU have Aragorn say in its place?
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Howdy ya'll. Missed ya! Been on vacation. Forgot how to speak in complete sentences. OK, I'm better now. Ya know, I've always found open displays of love (non-sexual, not that there's anything WRONG with sexual) between men to be very touching. No double entrendre meant, I assure you. The sections of LOTR where the male characters risk all for each other and make no bones about showing their feelings are the parts that affect me strongest emotionally. I used to be a huge fan of the Bird-McHale-Parish-Johnson-Ainge Boston Celtics, and seeing their unselfish play (lots of passing and taking of hard fouls) just made me feel all gooshy. In a good way. So it really pisses me off to hear the idiots go on about the "homo hobbits". Here in Texas there is a lot of homophobia, though I love my state dearly. I just wish guys would be more willing to show love to other guys. Because it makes me kind of horny to tell the truth.
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I would have him say something along the lines of "Let us hunt the Uruk-Hai... to the gates of Isengard!!" a little bit longer, but not as modern action gung-ho-ish. Again, a personal taste sort of thing.
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How bout "Let's GET IT ON!" or "Let's lay the SMACKDOWN on their candy asses!"... or "Let's DO DIS THANG!" or "Let's get ready to rumble" or eh....no I guess those are dumb too. Actually the one above is good: "Let us hunt the Uruk-Hai...To the gates of Isengard!" That's good. Dude you should go to New Zealand and offer them your advice. Seriously.
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No, I am not that up on the archaeology of any of the Americas (they didn't really offer it as a specialisation at my uni, since the specialisations all tend to be what the teaching faculty do, and my lot specialised in Europe and North Africa in the main). Mine was the neolithic, Bronze, and Iron Age in Western Europe. Was pretty cool though, I got to dig in Denmark, Tunisia, and got took around some cool places in Czechoslovakia and Italy. One of the perks of being at my uni was that I got let inside of Stonehenge! That was awesome. Though I sat on one of the fallen stones and a guy in a bowler hat came *running* out of a little booth and told me to get off it! Like my arse is going to pulverise this house-high pillar that's been lying there for 5000 years. And I got to play with ancient swords in the museum. I would love to go back and get my PhD, but you know, bills, bills, bills. But I must second the horniness factor of emotional yet heroic men! Yes, indeedy! Give me some whole people, that's what I want! Pallando, I'm so sorry I'm boring you! I don't know what happened to the trolls - I saw Elfy revived himself briefly for a moment there, but appears to slunk away. We could always fight amongst each other, that's good for a laugh. Somebody pick names out of a hat and match them up. I would pick on the purists, but to be honest, I am a purist Canon Nazi sort of person myself. I mean, I can control it, I understand that books and film are different media, but I do have the Tendancy. Not quite a Nazi along the lines of the guy that wants to put hot pokers to Marian Ravenwood in Raiders of the Lost Ark (why does Dufy spring to mind, suddenly?), but definitely one of the GenericNazis that smirks evilly in the background.
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Was that it wasn't preceded by, "Be vewwy, vewwy quiet..." ** All right, surliness expunged with some Real World good news. (Nothing big, just thought I was gonna be out a large chunk o' $$ through the eff-ups of others and, turns out, I ain't! Woo-hoo!) So to clear up a few things: *** Gyp, when I wrote BORING it was that Iraq jibber-jabber that was foremost in mind. No thank you, and don't drag it over here. *** I'm no blind devoted He-does-no-wrong PJ-hugger. Well, when he earns it, sure, he gets a big public hug from me (I'm that secure in my masculinity--though I balk at the foot massage :) ). Like everyone else I've got my own private list of Things In PJ's FOTR That Gnaw My Back Teeth and I'm sure (AFTER I see it) I'll have a complete set for T2T as well. But with the thousands of decisions that had to be made in making the movie and the millions of things that could go wrong making that movie, WHY dwell on the handful of those that didn't work for me? When I put on the DVD, just as Galadriel turns green (I like the visual, btw) but before her voice changes (I loathe that Rankin/Bass Villain Voice, btw), I switch to ESPN for 10-15 seconds. Catch a SportsCeter highlight. I've actually had excellent luck coming in right when she does that fantastic Coming Down Again gasp and tremble, before "I pass the test..." etc. And then, I'm back enjoying the other 99.9978% (yes, that is scientifically measured) that don't suck. And then while here, I prefer to go over the Cool Parts. *** Nothing wrong with wanting a movie that's a close as possible point-for-point to the Great Story we already know, because until one is done we'll always have to wonder if it wouldn't be better that way. But don't completely shut out the possibility that PJ's making some pretty goddamn good movies in their own right. There's nothing dirty about the word "purist" (and when did "liberal" become dirty again? Isn't Rush deaf now?), just purism's sour, humorless extremists, as in all things. I have LONG been on record as saying that if the final words of spoken dialogue in ROTK before fading to black is NOT Sam, at home, sighing to Rosie, "Well, I'm back," that I will set fire to the grease stain on the bottom of my half-full popcorn bag turning it into a Molotov Concession Item and hurl hot flaming death toward the projection booth. But that's just MY purist thing. *** I'd like to take this moment to thank whoever it was in this TB that facilitated my forehead-smacking revelation concerning the "Hudson" references. Yeah I've been away, but that's no excuse. Bill friggin Paxton! Aliens, for frigs sakes! Jayzus! I can now say, yes, I Get It. And Clegg, retroactively, holy fucking shit that's been hilarious. :) *** Miami, I don't think you guys will have ANY problem with FSU or UT! They're punks, PUNKS I tell ya and they can put that on their bulletin board! ;) Meanwhile, Pitt always dissapoint until they play US (the bastards), and I have a total numbing fear of playing in The Dome. Freakin Syracuse, what the HELL is a college doing with a freaking DOME?!? I hate that place. One game at a time, but we can do it... Got those lims, too, they were great! *** Now then, for something completely different. Or just slightly. I am going to shift my poetic sensibilities Eastward. I will now resist further temptaion to Limerick. I am now going to try my hand at the occasional X-rated Middle-earth haiku. *** sam weeps at the loss * stubby, knuckled, and supple * frodo's ring finger
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A simple "We follow the Uruk-Hai" or "We will rescue Merry and Pippin" preceded or followed by a shot of the Uruk-Hai running off with the hobbits would convey what the remaining heroes are going to do. Without sounding like a lame action movie. For the record I talked a vehemently anti-fantasy person, of course a Tolkien virgin, into watching the movie. Most of his resulting complaints were stuff that PJ had changed . . .
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*Pallando must die* His rhymes excruciate me * Hitmen are dispatched
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And that goes for the most of you mugs out there, you all knows who you is. I was mainly beeyotching about the the usual rotating slew of strangers that for the first 36 hours say the same.... thing.... every.... time... for the past... two... fucking... YEARS. In some form or another, the gist seems always to be the same. After an intense dig through the 3-4 recent TBs that didn't live long enough to End, I felt a little burnt out on it all. And, again, like I said, chalk today up to today being 99.9932% (yep, again, measured) quite shitty. Luckily, 87.2562% of that turned out to be illusory, but it did pee in my fruit loops there for a bit. New bowl now! Milk's good and gloopy and purplish. And enough of that metaphor. Now, is there sort of a darkened mood all over AICN lately or is it just me? What's with some wag petitioning Harry? Did I pick up something about Superman movies? >shrug< *** Program Note: while the 5-7-5 syllables are the only set "rules" of haiku, I am self-imposing the haiku-looking rules of all lowercase and no punctuation. There, just so it's on record and y'all can bust me when I cheat. Also, a great excuse when they're not funny.
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Thank goodness haikus don't gotta rhyme! ;^D
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This is just passing time on a Friday afternoon, but I think "Let us hunt the Uruk-Hai... to the gates of Isegard!" has a few things against it. For one thing, it lacks the pure pithiness of "Let's hunt some orc!" Then there's the fact that an overwhelming number of people in the audience (despite internal film references to both Uruk-Hai and Isengard) will be going "Huh? They're going to hunt what? Where?" Because - I can assure you - there are a great many people who, after one viewing, would not have a CLUE what Aragorn was talking about. They do not have the map of Middle Earth burned into their brains, and could not with a gun to their heads name more than two or three members of the Fellowship. My stepmother, after one viewing, couldn't even remember the name FRODO, for heaven's sake, and how many times is THAT name spoken? (Though she has always been exceptionally unimaginative, and my 78-year-old father has since run off with a young thing of 70, though not for that reason....) But how many times have we all heard Legolas referred to in casual conversation as "the blond guy with the arrows"? I know I have. One of the attorneys I work for (a very bright young woman), in discussing the scene at the end, mentioned how dumb Frodo was to be wandering around loose in the woods "when they knew the mud people were on the island." (!!!) Do you think she would have recognized "Uruk-Hai" from one earlier line? I'm not talking about dumbing down the movie, but I AM talking about the necessity of making the narrative reasonably intelligible to people who have NOT memorized the book, its characters and topography... but may be approaching Tolkien for the first time. Also, speaking as someone who has done a fair amount of theatre, I can tell you I would hate to be saddled with the "Uruk-Hai... Isengard" line. Just try saying it half as convincingly as "Let's hunt some orc!" It looks very nice on the page, but it does not "play."
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so dude i read you missed the trolls who ain't coming around much anymore. well fun guy has returned so you can all fuck off. anyway all you people that think this next movie is so great just remember one thing. theres gonna be more dwarf tossing jokes and more stupid shit like that. parts of it will be cool like the books but most will suck like the mission, quest, thing line. fuck all you anti-purists who have only one goddamn line "there different media. they can never be equal to the books...its an adaption and it PJs vision." Fuck that shit. that dumb crap doesn't have to be in the movie and you all know ittt!!!
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Okay, scratch the no punctuation rule. Just no "quote marks" to highlight a "pun." ....And now I blank. Thought I had a had a good one with Shadowfax and a sheep, but it's gone now. [Alice: "Oh, shoot!" kicks pebble] *** I would think carrots, among the many convenient portable snack foods available of that era, would hold up in the rain quite favorably in comparison with such options as cabbage, crebain nuggets, or fruit loops. [Skips off into the weekend singing "Caaaaarrot in the Raaaain, a Caaaaaarrot in the Raaaain! What a woooonderful feeelin', I'm >BELCH< gaaaassy againnn..."]
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Yeah, People might go "Huh? Ise-wha?" but I don't care. I likes me own version better, an' I'm a-stickin' to it! ;-) Anyway, it's more in line with the period-style dialogue they had been speaking up to that point. Maybe Joe Six-pack wouldn't get the specific items named, but he would get the 'epic' tone, and the point that they were serious about the revenge thing. OK, self-aggrandizement over. ;-P I personally just found "let's hunt us some orc, bubba" a tad jarring and took a little bit of resonance from the scene for me. Otherwise I liked the little flick, so it's no big deal, eh?
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I've never been pithy in my life. And I don't wanna be... sounds painful! ;-P Seriously, the whole movie was saddled w/awkward lines that come out a bit weird to a modern audience. Why not one more? But then I'm an old-school fantasy geek who likes my epics full of bombast and burly he-men smiting their foes. Basil Rathbone coulda made it work... but then he would've been Saruman. Oh well.
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*dull are all our trolls * never thought i would say these words: *"i miss elftickler"*
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The original sounds SO much better, doesn't it? A bit long, yes, but it really sez it all. I bow to the Author... although I did like your 'meet in the middle' part too. So very butch! :-)
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Oct 05, 2002 12:39:55 AM CDT
GypsyTRobot, posterboy for the League of Talkback Halfwits.
by the pardoner
LOTR (text) isn't "juvenile" eh? - IT'S A CHILDREN'S STORY, YOU FUCKING GYPSY: something written for small, cute things that like the word "poopy" and are afraid of pervasive pseudo-threats other than credit card companies and people from the desert. I don't think it's a particularly well-written children's story, but it does have a sense of sheer, sublime, vertiginous scope that kids of all ages dig.
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Is it just me or does the CG Gollum look like shit in some of the scenes in the newest TT trailer? He is such a pivotal character so I hope they don't fuck him up in the rendering.
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*autumn leaves fall soft* alice looks around herself *talkback is silent* I guess people are still recovering from the riot that was the Madonna TB. That was funny.
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Well. Wonder where this will end up.
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Elanor, you are most eloquent about the ways in which Jackson has actually enhanced the experience of reading LOTR. ***And to anyone who still insists that this is a "children's book"... well, perhaps he or she has not attained sufficient adulthood to comprehend how mature the book really is. Once upon a time, my dears, there were no "children's books" or "adult books," there were only books, read by young people and adults alike, provided they had the vocabulary and wit to appreciate them. (As examples, I offer the works of Mark Twain, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Herman Melville....) Then, somewhere in the late Victorian/Edwardian era, there began to evolve "children's literature" - i.e., books written FOR children. "The Hobbit" is an example of this. "The Lord of the Ring," while it did evolve from "The Hobbit," is not. It is a work of adult fiction that can be read and enjoyed by children (as can "Huckleberry Finn" and "Moby Dick"), but gains in depth the more maturity you bring to it. I offer as evidence the number of fully mature and extremely well-read adults on this talkback who rank it with the finest literature in the English language.
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That was a little before my time but glad to hear you had fun. I think there was a picture of you in the Mississippi Valley Arc. Center for a while. (you were sooo cute! ;) ) Yes, it was fun except for the shovel. I enjoyed the rather nutty group I dug with. Almost like a new TB with manners. Gotta run - posting 'tween classes.
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Oct 07, 2002 3:26:01 PM CDT
You see, the real trick with x-rated haiku is, you gotta keep th
by pallando blue
fangorn very happy * new resident, good neighbor * legolas takes root
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Please change "very" to "quite" I swear to Eru. Or hell, "happy" to "pleased" or "very happy" to "tres content" fer cryin out loud. Fool! Ninnyhammer! Nitwit! ...I'm sorry, d.o.t., what was that about "fully mature adults"? ;^)
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I have finally seen the trailer on the big screen! And by an odd chain of events, it cost me nothing. I paid for "Red Dragon," intending to ditch for "Four Feathers," thinking there would be plenty of time for concessions between the previews and movie, but the previews ran long (six of them to endure before TTT - I was in despair!), and when I emerged to switch theatres the concession line was long, so I opted for the new-fangled soda-dispending machine, which ate my money and would not cough up a drink.... By the time I gave up wrestling with it, "Four Feathers" had started, so by presenting myself at the manager's office, I was able to not only get my soda money refunded, but traded my admission for a fresh movie ticket, good anytime (as opposed to the bargain matinee I'd paid for). As for the trailer, I was glad I'd seen the frame-by-frame, because it went by much too quickly... especially Frodo. But next day, a friend did download the trailer, and we watched it seven or eight times. "Requiem for a Dream" works well, but Shore's music will be better. ***And the biggest treat is yet to come! An old friend who works at the midwestern newspaper where I used to work gave me a call, and said he had managed to nab a promotional DVD for the Extended FOTR, something intended for video stores and film critics, and it should be in my mailbox today! Guess I know what I'm doing tonight.... Report tomorrow.
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There is soundtrack news on TORN, but, alas! it seems we will have only DAYS to absorb "The Two Towers" score before the theatrical release. The CD is being released December 9. And not a word of when we might expect a more complete version of the FOTR score... the one on which I hope to hear the music underlying Boromir's speech at the Council, Frodo and Gandalf in Moria, the revelation of the mithril shirt.... ***By the way, all lovers of great films, I hear that "Lawrence of Arabia" is being re-released to the big screen. This is the one I thought would never be surpassed.. until FOTR. But if you're wondering what my yardstick is for cinematic greatness, that is it.
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Well, cool beans! I had my Personal Development Review (they don't like to say non-PC stuff like "assessment" anymore since that sounds kind of judgemental on my work performance, I guess, go figure...) and while I was filling out my half I was thinking about what I'd put in it if I were being completely truthful - "Effectiveness: Name an instance where you were effective" "Well, I downloaded the new TTT trailer in Quicktime the first morning it had appeared, analyzed all the potential changes to the text and their impact on the story that could be gleaned from it, swooned at least four times, and was able to post my opinion on it on AICN before lunchtime. Admittedly, this meant that the other "work" you guys kind of insist I do went to shit, but hey! I'd been meaning to talk to you about my workload and how that peripheral "money-earning" shit potentially distracts me from what I see as my core role as Company Tolkien Crack Whore." Well, I didn't write that. Or rather I did, but deleted it. After all, if they fire me, I lose the broadband...
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There was a pic of me on display?? Neat! Just in case, I was a brown-haired girl wearing glasses and probably a huge floppy hat Dad insisted I wear. I know the dig got in the LaCrosse Tribune 'cause Dad still has the clipping. Haven't been back to LaCrosse for years and years [aside from very short day visits]- I went to college in Madison and never moved back- but I have a lot of memories of going to Arc. Society meetings w/my Dad at the Public Library... do they have their own building now? feel free to Email me about it if the TB gets slow. Off to watch Toonami... Zoids is almost on!**** Nothing really to add about LOTR except the Risk game sounds slightly more interesting than regular Risk... but only if there's an option to play an 'Elder Days' version so I can conquer Beleriand as Morgoth.
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"Lose the broadband... and starve to death".
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The Blue Istar has taken the place of the White! Soon his vile Uruk Haiku will overwhelm the fair (cough, cough) lands of AICN. He has learned to breed them with the Nazgul
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Oct 07, 2002 5:17:48 PM CDT
Alas for Runelord, daughter of... some people whose names I don
by aliceinwonderlnd
*another one falls * is pallando a vogon?* let's hunt some wizard*
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That almost sounds like it means something.
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Two jobs back, it used to drive them absolutely crazy that I could never come up with a "five year goal" for myself during my annual reviews. (I lasted through four years of hell, and then one of my three bosses had a bad hair day. Despite lack of goals, the other two - who were out of town at the time - said they have never found anyone as good to replace me.) I suspect many of my fellow posters also suffer from "The Hamlet Syndrome" (from the book of that name which finally explained it all). The authors of the book set out to answer the question why so many of the brightest and most creative students, when caught up with 10 or 20 years later, are settled into low-level jobs and not exactly setting the world on fire. In fact, they positively resist promotion. They tend to be very efficient and organized and good employees up to a point - mainly, so that they can spend the bulk of their work hours on OTHER THINGS. (Before the Internet, it was long letters, private art projects, etc.) Well, the short answer is that the authors found that the sorts of things that made one succeed in school were the exact opposite of what made one succeed on the job: an interest in many things and a desire to go ON learning, as opposed to single-minded focus; a tendency to see both sides of a question, and thus, to agonize over and postpone major decisions (like picking a career); and maybe most important, the desire to do the right thing morally, to not compromise one's principles. When I first read the book, I cracked up laughing (because it was so close to home) over the case of a young man who got a job in the mail room, easily licked his eight hours of work into four, spent the other four writing "monster letters" to his friends and doing sketches, was given additional work for more pay (which now occupied the whole eight hours) - and couldn't understand why his supervisors didn't understand his logic when he grew unhappy and asked to have the additional duties removed, so he could go back to writing letters and working on his art! A person with Hamlet Syndrome wants to get the job done and be LEFT ALONE... to do the things that matter. And (unless you can support yourself working for a non-profit organization), "things that matter" are the opposite of what most jobs consist of. We are focused on the eternal verities. (And thus, perpetually insecure financially.)
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...will live eternally on the web. Some comfort in that, eh? I'll go look for it as soon as I pry myself off of here. Thanks for letting me know about it, Runelord!!! What a weird, small world it is... Hope you enjoy your sojorn at UW-L- I have great memories of going to a Violent Femmes concert at Valhalla Hall [when I was in High School, many moons ago] and lots of other strange events. :::getting homesick:::*** and Daughter of Time, thanks for sharing about Hamlet Syndrome. Now I have something to tell my family when they get on my case for just being a housewife who spends minimal time cleaning and maximum time making model robots and studying various strange subjects. I guess I'm lucky; I got carpal-tunnel syndrome in my thumb so I was unable to work for several years and no one has been able to force me back yet... for more than a few months. God is work a waste of time. :::grumpy, thinking back to last job a few months ago, while hubby unemployed, mopping blood off floors at local HMO at night::: nice to know I'm not alone in being a differently-motivated weirdo. Yay!
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pallando loves sport * he plays with the dwarves all day * a gifted tosser
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Yes, why doesn't Sauron beam in on Sam the moment he puts on the Ring? For that matter, why doesn't Sam immediately feel exposed to the Eye? No "I see youuuu...." for him. Maybe it's easier to jam the Enemy's radar closer to home, or maybe it's just Sam's thicker skull! ***Speaking of the Eye, did anyone else notice that in the TTT trailer, it seems to be more fully formed? Less flaming and more cat's-eye, both in the palantir and the Barad-Dur vision. Forgive me if ten people have already cited this.
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Pulzar, don
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...is for me one of the perfect things in the film. It has just exactly the pitch and accent I find most attractive in all the world (give or take the times when he's screaming because yet another monster has him by the ankle). And Elanor, I really think Frodo SHOULD look 21. The matter of Frodo's youthful appearance has come up more than once, but whether or not you factor in the book's additional 17 years before the Quest, the fact remains that Frodo inherits the Ring when he turns 33, his coming-of-age. Given hobbits' longer life-spans and references to their "irresponsible" tweens and of a hobbit in his tweens not being fully adult, I should think a hobbit at 33 was more than likely the physical equivalent of a human at 21. In fact, I have often been annoyed by the middle-aged (not to mention stumpy) Frodos one sees in calendar art. (The only physical description we get from Tolkien is that Frodo is "taller and fairer than most (hobbits) - a perky chap with a cleft chin and a bright eye" - and that's before the occasional suggestions of elvish beauty.) And it also seems the mere possession of the Ring extends life, whether or not it is actually worn, since neither Gollum nor Bilbo wore it routinely. Nor does loss of the Ring make one "revert" to one's true age or Gollum would have turned to dust when the Ring passed to Bilbo. Though Jackson does age Bilbo in Rivendell, the evidence from the book suggests that one simply begins aging physically again when the Ring passes to another bearer (and that Bilbo passes the Old Took in part because he got a 60-year boost). ***By the way, I again must credit the book "Master of Middle Earth" for pointing out something rather fascinating, but Frodo's elvishness is not in looks only - he is, of all the characters, the one most given to dreams and visions.
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That explains why I couldn't find it! Guess I should send another Email to the lady in charge of the program... as I sent her one requesting an Ecopy. Oh well, they'll just assume I'm a nut! I'm used to that. Anyway Runelord, I believe you're right about Sauron being distracted by Aragorn; as I recall that was the only reason why he showed himself- to take attention away from the Ringbearer. Off to draft an Email to the nice lady at the website... ;-P While I'm gone, wanna start a Hamlet Syndrome support group? Hee.
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Oct 08, 2002 6:27:56 AM CDT
Sam's Ring Issues, Frodo's Well-Preservedness, and the T
by aliceinwonderlnd
Sam doesn't claim the Ring, no, but he is tempted by it. He does indeed wear it, and also, I think, for an extended period of time. Isn't he wearing it when he follows the Orcs to the Tower, and wakes up wearing after collapsing outside? Otherwise, they'd've *seen* him lying there (in a swoon, no less!). I think the problem may be that while the book certainly gives a sense of Sauron looking for the Ring, and being aware of the wearer in a limited kind of way, (and the bearer too, towards the end) it's nothing like as threatening and immediate as was depicted in the movie. Though I do seem to remember a line along the lines of Sam being aware of a great Eye looking for him, and it attempting to see through the shadows that it itself had created. Or something like that. Or maybe that's an amalgam of different parts of the book (I haven't quite Hamlet Syndromed myself into keeping a copy by my PC at work). Interesting to see how Jackson handles this. But Sauron does expect Aragorn to have the Ring - so when he's revealed in the Palantir, Sauron just kind of falls into believing it. Anyway, DoT is on the money about Frodo's appearance. Really, he should look around Merry and Pippin's age and possibly younger than Sam - certainly he's a youth, not a seasoned man, and certainly not middle-aged. He'd look around 20 - 25, even if Hobbits, being innately conservative, placed a coming of age relatively late in their lifespans. However, he'd act like someone older (but not too much older, as the bearer of one of the Great Rings does not grow or gain more life, but merely continues). This might explains why he mostly knocks around with people 15-20 years his junior. And so I have a Syndrome! I feel the weight of uniqueness lifted from me! You know, I was looking at the papers the other day, and thinking - "I'd love to be a secretary", degree from Cambridge or no. They get paid more than me, they turn up, they do their stuff, they go home. They don't work through the night, ignoring their stress-related illness, in order to gain a negative bonus figure. In fact, I did it for temp work at Uni and I really loved it. I suppose it would depend who I worked for. But still, it would be cool. People would stop urging me to develop myself and embrace the company's mission statement. I can make coffee, type like a fiend, and deflect unwanted callers. What else do they need?
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In fact, since I don't have any LOTR art (though I keep my copy of Sheri Tepper's "Beauty" turned out on my bookshelf because I think the Alan Lee cover is so beautiful) one of you guys can doubtless help me. There was a picture of Frodo and Gandalf, I'm sure it was by Alan Lee, and Frodo had longish, blondish hair. They're stood on a little hill, and I think Frodo is holding Sting, or leaning on it. I saw it once, years ago, and have never seen it again. Anybody ever see this? I thought it was way cool. Is it Lee? What book is it in?
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I definitly remember there being a part of th book that claimed towards the end (probably around the black gates and the captains of the west; in the last debate,) that Gandalf realised their only purpose wasn't to win but to distract Sauron up until the last possible moment. I also think that Morgoth's post in the other talkback about Sauron's shadow's around his land is true, but i was wondering if anyone had any thoughts about whether Shelob could have concealed her lair from Sauron or not? Also, i think in Bree, the Nazgul were actively looking for the ring, but they get distracted later, so maybe that's a factor. It may be interesting to see how it's explained on film. And lots of people i know keep complaining that Elijah Wood is too young for frodo, but i don't agree! He's meant to look strange by hobbit standards! He's a baggins!
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Well, she and her twin were living in my Dad's barn in France without detection with nothing but the occasional missing dog to betray their presence. They were serious spiders. I told my Dad he ought to hitch them up to a cart and save on petrol, but I don't think he was terribly happy about putting harnesses on them. Anyway, could Shelob conceal her presence from Sauron? Really hard to say, because much depends on Shelob's psychology, which Tolkien gives us good insight into. I can't imagine her giving much of a shit either way. If Sauron doesn't want her in his mountains, well, HE can come down there and say so. And get eaten. I can't imagine Shelob *wanting* to conceal her presence. She's just sort of there.
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If memory serves, Sauron IS aware of Shelob's existence. I'm pretty sure "The Two Towers" makes reference to Sauron sending Orcs, men and small kittens her way from time to time. Well, I'm a bit hazy on the small kittens part, but the rest seems right. Anyway, I don't have my copy in front of me, so I can't verify this.
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Yes, but Frodo's wearing-it-but-NOT-claiming-it still seems to draw the Eye fairly quickly, and Sam DID wear it for a considerable time on the borders of Mordor (see Alice's comments, above) - longer, by far, than Frodo at the Inn and possibly longer or at least as long as Frodo on Amon-Hen, when he had quite a narrow escape from the Eye. I did read the other talkback, but didn't find it entirely persuasive. Love for his master(and humility) may be what gives Sam strength to resist the Ring, but merely putting ON the Ring (in all other instances)is what draws the Eye. I can only conclude the Enemy's timing was off with Sam due to the focus on Aragorn and whatever influences were jamming his radar.
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Is the line I believe Clegg is searching for in the deep wells of memory. Or something like that. I don't have the book in front of me. Regarding Sam and Ring-wearing Sauron-avoidance, it is a potential movie problem that simply wasn't one so much in the book. Frodo doesn't see Sauron at Bree, and only sees him on Amon Hen because it is specifically the Hill of Seeing - in fact, it is *Frodo* that sees Sauron, not the other way around.
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No, it does make sense, it's an archaic usage. To "own" someone is to acknowledge them, and to admit that their claims in respect to you are true. "She acknowledges him not."
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Perhaps P.J. could have avoided some later difficulties (with Sam on the pass)if he'd made it clear the Bree "I see youuuu" was more in Frodo's head than Sauron actually taunting him and visually nailing him to the floor. But then again, how could he? The whole scene was brilliant. I can't imagine a more concise seque, from Pippin being an innocent idiot to Frodo trying frantically to stop him and being tripped up (literally) to the frantic grab at the Ring as it settles onto his finger. In fact, the whole scene (for me) played far more naturally and inevitably than the original.
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Uruk Haiku...ooo you clever girl! Made me laugh, you did. More please.
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That DVD promo of the SEV did NOT come yesterday. In this case, hope comes not at dawn, but sometime between two and four o'clock today.... ***Alice, I AM a secretary (though I have been other things). And the scary thing there is that with computers, guys have finally learned to type their own letters. One boss used to bring in tons of hand-written stuff from his commute on the train. Now he has a laptop, and I barely get to edit.... "The Hamlet Syndrome" was written in about 1990, when the authors concluded that most Princes and Princesses of Denmark were able to survive fairly happily with their modest expectations (enough to support books, films and a bit of travel) - in fact, they tended to be less in debt than the ambitious and extravagant, but I wonder what their take on the subject would be a decade later, when rising rents are fast outpacing any ability to live minimally but well. (Hamlet(te)s also tend to have exquisite taste, which further complicates the issue.) If I travel now, it's because someone else pays the air fare, which is the most brutal thing about having no ambition. (Well, that, and living in a country with no safety net worth mentioning, as regards health care and housing.) ***Swooners! I notice TORN has adopted our vocabulary!
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For clearing that up! I knew that information was lying somewhere in this tangled rat's nest of buzzing neurons. Now, the prudent question remains...without Shelob in "The Two Towers" (a choice that, to me, is like leaving the Balrog out of "Fellowship"), how will PJ choose to end the film? Somehow, Sam has to decide to take the Ring and go it alone. To me, it's the perfect cliffhanger. Another choice in my mind is the scene in which Frodo, Sam and Gollum see Sauron's army marching from Minas Morgul towards Gondor (hinted at in the trailer?). It sets up the tone for ROTK nicely. Either that or when they come across the toppled statue of the king and the sunset gives the appearance of a crown. Your thoughts, all?
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Whatever cliffhanger ends the second movie, Sam certainly isn't going to take the Ring and "go it alone" - not with Shelob and Frodo's "death" removed to ROTK. I like dark endings, so I'd opt for watching the troops march out, and Frodo and Sam turning to the Stairs. Anyway, it's 76 days now, and then we'll know.... I'm taking off work the 19th to see it with a friend, so may not check in on the 18th for what will undoubtedly be massive spoilers. It IS reaching a point where I'm almost happy to wait for the whole thing on the big screen... not that I'll resist any TV promotions. By the way, do you suppose we'll have to wait until late March 2003 for the first real ROTK footage?
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Swooners referenced at TORN! It's probably coincidence, but I prefer the other explanation, if only to annoy Skyway ;).
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http://www.tolkienonline.com/ thewhitecouncil/messageview.cfm? catid=13&threadid=56414 (take out the spaces). Should someone tell Harry?
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Oct 08, 2002 5:35:50 PM CDT
SPOILERS? Well, let the bold decide for themselves...
by aliceinwonderlnd
Here it is Morgy, super-vague, but hey..."Well, he has seen the most recent rough cut which is running at a little over three hours and is about ten days from being locked.
We only had a quick chat about things but he said that, in his opinion, TTT was a better film than FoTR - in his words, much better!! He said the film had time to breathe and some of the character development was very interesting. Apparently Woods' potrayal of Frodo by the end of TTT is harrowing and makes him wonder just how dark this portion of the tale will become in RoTK.
He felt the Battle of Helm's Deep was slightly too long and might be snipped a bit before the lock. He was concerned that showing so much violence but trying to keep that violence within PG13 boundaries sort of made things a bit numbing and repetitive. Although he admitted that some aspects of the siege and especially the incursions of the Uruks were spectacular. He really liked the Uruks who burst into the caves and the action which followed.
He also thought the charge of Gandalf the White into the massed ranks of Saruman's force was very impressive.
Treebeard was excellent when relatively static, but needs work when he moves.
The Wargs are undergoing plenty of work and, he assures me, look much more wolf-like than like giant Guinea pigs.
He said the Fell beasts were particularly good, looking ancient, evil and serpentine. There is one set of scenes involving one of these, Frodo, Sam and Gollum which he says is more spine chilling than all of the black rider material in FoTR.
He didn't like the Morannon, but he isn't a fan of the angular look to Sauron and his works. He thought the Oliphaunts were very good indeed, and the rampaging beast particularly impressive.
Arwen apparently recieves more screen time than in FoTR and is more than likely now to be in several scenes which contain Eowyn.
The fall of Gandalf is apparently awesome and his struggle with the Balrog epic and at times strange.
I can say more and I could answer a few questions, probably, but he kept his information brief in view of the fact that he saw the cut only recently. " -
MorGy, I will agree with you about Sam not being in the line-of-sight from Barad-Dur... or why would going over the crest have made such a difference (my reading of the text, anyway)? In point of fact, I would never worry about any of these things, if I didn't have time on my hands - or on my brain, really. My HANDS could certainly find more work to do at the office. ***Walrus, the authors of "The Hamlet Syndrome" had nothing to say on whether the Syndrome is hereditary (they seem to think it has something to do with being a financially-and-emotionally-sheltered baby boomer, which is ridiculous, given that it clearly crosses generations - nor were many of us particularly sheltered), but they DID say that if you have it, you had better mate young, as almost the only chance Hamlets have to find each other is in college. Nothing to do with innate physical attractiveness or sexuality, but given that in the larger society, males tend to be rewarded for financial success and females for looking good, both male and female Hamlets tend to lose out. Males, because no Hamlet makes serious money, and females, because what money we do make goes for experiences, up-keep. But mainly, we're just too busy pursuing our solitary little interests to put effort into finding each other. We can be sparkling, even charismatic, at the occasional dinner party... but on the whole, we prefer soliloquies. The authors, by the way, did not think Hamlet-ishness is something from which one could be cured, or should be - on the contrary, they thought the world could benefit from our moral musings and found it sad there is so little place for us.
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That should read "experiences, NOT upkeep." (As in, given the choice between the extended version DVD and a new dress....)
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gimli asks humpty**who'll toss a wall-dwarf's salad**thus humpty's great fall
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is as foul as my haiku.
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The hell with that! I'm not dying alone in an apartment full of cats! I don't even LIKE cats!
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The problem is not numbers; it is that we are scattered, leaderless.... One must be found who could at least host a good dinner party - or other occasion involving sparkling wit and sparkly green eye shadow.
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I was just called into the office manager's office and told they are assigning me a NEW ATTORNEY to work for - a female litigator who had been working out-of-state and who, on her brief visits here, has been an absolute horror with her insane demands on the support staff. In return, I will be deprived of the pleasant and largely-absent boss who supplies me with free vitamins (he is a millionaire in Amway, as well as an attorney). Aside from the fact that any Hamlet would be chilled by this, it will probably cut HORRIBLY into my reading-and-posting time, not to make me much more nervous about being caught at it. Pray for me.
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In FOTR, Gandalf says that "all his thought is bent on it", meaning, at least to me, that he is trying exceptionally hard to locate the ring. As the story develops, and as more time passes without Sauron getting the ring, events occur that have to force all of his focus off of the ring, he is not omnipotent, afterall. The key is that Aragorn reveals himself to Sauron in the Palantir, so now he has something to think about in addition to all the other planning and searching. Plus, if I am not mistaken, the darkness that is released from Mordor works against the dark forces some, as well. The clincher is when Aragorn decides to march on Mordor. He does this knowing that Sauron does not have the ring yet (otherwise they would be dead or on their way to it) and also knowing that since he does not have the ring, he has to buy Frodo more time. So, to summarize, he is not "looking" as hard for the ring when Sam has it because he fully expects Aragorn to walk on up to the Black Gates wielding it. Maybe not. I love you guys.
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Well, I'm not a bad cook and I do have my own apartment. Alas I'm afraid we're all a bit too scattered and leaderless to make it a regular event. Though I do spend the readies on upkeep, indeed probably more than is wise, practical, or necessary (I have a fetish for Chanel and Lancome make-up (Chanel skincare sucks though)) and never buy cheap haircuts, on the grounds that it's the one thing I wear 24/7. DoT: Ugh! Bossy bosswoman, that is not cool! I, on the other hand, have had a comparatively cool day. I banged out four submissions for this novel I wrote with a friend and three came back today. They're rejections, yeah, but there are rejections and rejections. (I've got quite a collection and have become something of a connoisseur). Two had quite encouraging hand-penned criticism and advice, and the third one was a personal letter from no less a person than an Editorial Director, (Time Warner UK) and signed in ink. Since it is not their job to go through the slushpile, I can only surmise one of the jobbing sorts in the submissions office must have forwarded it to her for her attention. So, it's going out again, as soon as may be (and if we can agree on what of the contradictory advice we've been given that we ought to take). Damn, I need an agent. But anyway, yeah, I love all of you captious soliloquists too.
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Yes, there are rejections and rejections. I understand contradictory advice. Just about the only negative I ever got in a rejection letter was a comment that my pacing was a bit slow - countered by another letter that particularly commended my strong pacing! In any case, I have a hard time finding books worth reading, so obviously, whoever is publishing them doesn't share MY taste. Right now I'm reading "To Kill a Mockingbird," and brilliant, sensitive literary work as it is, I don't care if a bunch of American librarians voted it the book of the century, I vote with the British readers for LOTR. Difference between admiration and PASSION.... ***When I told my fellow wage slaves who I would now be working for, they enfolded me in the kind of gentle hugs you give people in mourning. At least it hasn't started YET. Perhaps I should spend the day clearing the decks for battle, though. ***Alice, agree on Chanel skin care! Horrible stuff, and it stinks! (Good mascara, though.) My favorite skin care is Shiseido - lovely, light scents. (I never said Princesses of Denmark were NO maintenance.) ***Still no DVD. What is wrong with the mail? My friend called Saturday night wondering why no hugs and kisses yet, so it must have been mailed ages ago.
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And we love you, too. Intelligent reasoning always welcome!
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... and trying to generate some discussion. C'mon, gang. I just know everyone will be posting like mad the moment the Driven Careerwoman becomes my boss (condolences are still coming in, even from the other attorneys). Did I mention she's ALSO moving back to town to get away from a long-term abusive relationship? Shudder.... But back on topic, I must say I find the "review" over on tolkien-movies rather underwhelming. (For that matter, I hope we will be spared "reviews" that are merely blow-by-blow replays of the narrative. Even professional critics are doing it these days. Back in my newspapering days, I used to work with an old school movie critic who said he always leaned over backward not to give away plot points, but still thought he was safe with "Romeo and Juliet" - until a reader called in absolute hysterics because he'd given away that they died!) But back to the review, if it was legitimate, it was clearly written by someone apparently indifferent to the very character moments that mean so much to us. Rather intrigued by Frodo and Sam being menaced by Fell Beast, and presume this means that those upper stratosphere swoop-overs and wailing cries that leave them pinned to the ground in terror will be that more up close and personal (though not too personal, or all would be up). And I am dearly wanting to know HOW the Frodo-Sam-Gollum mind games will be intensified. And what of Faramir?
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You know, I tried my darnedest on more than one occasion to enter the contest, but for some reason, they kept kicking back the page, saying I hadn't filled in my e-mail address correctly. It's the only one I have, and I quadruple checked it, so guess I wasn't fated. Glad you won, though.
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Of course. Unless you mean morGy the poster, which I also know but won
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I was attempting to avoid spoilers but that seems impossible. Nothing too bad here at least. Lets see: over three hours, yeah! *raises glass of 1420
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Read the thread after the review. God, they get out of control fast at Tolkien Online, don't they? Strikes me as real purist haunt. Would I have the crap beaten out of me if I said I don't really care about Elves at Helm's Deep? That frankly I wondered why the useless wazzocks weren't there when I read the book 20 years ago? Yeah, they're fading, but they could still pick up a bloody sword. It's not like the humans are fading any slower while the orcs make chutney out of them. I could never get into Elves. Frankly all I care about is that the little dude steams his way to Mordor with his number one fan and his little third-person squirrel dog with all possible white-shirted angst. That, to me, is the main event. Everything else is nice, but it's not going to keep me awake at night, much less swearing to never set eyes on the movie. Oh, and Merry and Pippin and Treebeard. And Aragorn giving out to the Uruk-Hai, and Legolas and Gimli keeping count... okay, maybe other stuff matters, but it doesn't matter as much. At least, to me it doesn't. Oh, and DoT, fear not - I'll try to post regular swoons to cheer you up...
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Oct 09, 2002 3:49:05 PM CDT
Oh, and Congratulations to the Black Enemy of the World!
by aliceinwonderlnd
Which is a lot longer than "Morgoth". Man, whatever else the Elves are, they know how to encapsulate...
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Man, I been drowning in work here. So gotta be even briefer than my skim of this TB. *** DoT, you're scarin the crap outta me! Best of luck with the approaching Queen of the Harpies. Which reminds me: *** Alice, ;^D great to hear on your positive rejections! (one of the lovelier oxymorons) Confession time: I am in hope that by sometime this spring I, too, shall be able to produce a small stack of rejections to call my very own. That is, if I can keep the Hamlet off my back. Persistant bugger, for a fella supposedly so easily distracted. But nooo, he can focus when his job is distracting ME. Agent, me neither, but they're priceless, so I'm told... *** Sam/Eye/Shelob discussion: y'all pretty much covered that ground pretty well. IOW, "Yeah, what he/she said." *** I take that T2T "review" with a block of salt. Doesn't read like anything any one of us couldn't have faked, and I think Leo's been calling that Saranthir a liar for some time (tho just one spoiler's word against another's). So, >shrug<. At this point I feel pretty spoiler-sated anyway. Don't feel much drive anymore to go sussin em out. I'm in full Stage 6 TPJ Mode. What I DO want, is to see the damn MOVIE, and I mean RIGHT NOW. (How long we got? cripes!) *** Congrats, morG! Welcome to the winner's circle! No, no button for me. But last year I DID win me from lotr.booksense.com just one of 50 (so they said) Fellowship T-shirts! Yep, black with near-iron-on-quality print and everything, my geek uniform is complete. Has been, actually, for some time now. Just never bragged about before because, well, [blows on knuckles, dusts em on chest] I'm no Evil Vala, am I? ;) *** Nor am I some bloody Vogon! Bah! Those slobs're just overhyped posers. All rep, no hep. You folx, tho, are givin' me some serious game! HILARIOUS!! seriously, I've been getting some very weird looks around here :~D Welp, now I gotta crawl back in and pull the hole in after me, might could be gone a while, mayhap *** kingly proud and strong * eowyn swoons at the sight * elessar's helmet
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Just a little over two months.... And I AM going to take off on the 18th, after all. My friend talked me into it (instead of the 19th, which might have meant a smaller mob to contend with; but then again, maybe all the ones who saw it on the 18th will be coming again. Perhaps I will meet myself coming and going...). You see what it is to be a Hamlet. Either way, I doubt if I will sleep that night - not so much the night before as the night after. I certainly didn't last year, and this is where we get into the REAL intensity, not to mention SERIOUSLY angsty Frodo. Yes, it's hard to imagine anything much scarier than those drawn swords gliding past Barliman. I actually had a dream before the first movie came out (and thus, based on some deep subconscious connection of my own) that I was in some modern day public hall and a Nazgul flew overhead - and I'm telling you I can STILL remember the complete wipe-out terror, even as (in the dream) I was telling myself it was just their damned EFFECT. You know how some dreams actually become part of your waking memory? Brrrr. Speaking of which, one of the few movies that stood out for me last year, other than FOTR, was the animated "Waking Life." (Hope I have the title right, because I have a hard time remembering the title, if not the movie.) ***And speaking of nightmares, the agreeable boss I am being switched from just got the news at his home office, and apparently was screaming outrage so loudly to one of the partners that his voice could be heard in the hall, even without the speakerphone. This is one battle I wish he'd win.
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Oct 09, 2002 5:21:13 PM CDT
What the hell are they doing? Do they want you to leave?
by aliceinwonderlnd
* she's shelob's servant * its strange as news from Bree * Daughter of Time swoons *
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Received an e-mail from soon-to-be-former boss, telling me not to give up and that he has "an Ace up his sleeve." Can't imagine what that would be, as his appearances here are so erratic I wonder that HE still has his name on the letterhead. ***I just posted over on the other talkback (the one before this one) regarding one of the reasons why Sauron's leadership is so inept - namely, that no one wants to report to him. In fact, his minions will just about crawl out of their skins NOT to report to him. You can imagine the cover stories they told about the "imps" loose in Mordor in order not to fall under the Black Hand or the Lidless Eye or however Sauron is manifesting himself at the moment. So I would say the odds of him getting any good intelligence, let alone hearing any countertheories to his obsessions, are just about nil. (Can you imagine anyone ASKING for an audience?)
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I keep meaning to remark on this, but I think another area of Tolkien's genius is in creating a powerful villain that isn't remotely sexy (and I speak as one who has always loved a sexy villain... though these have become few and far between). Tolkien doesn't make evil attractive and give it all the best costumes and the wittiest lines. And it is also obvious that Sauron is a sadistic villain and not a pragmatic one. He doesn't just want to eliminate or neutralize the opposition. Even when he's too bored to watch the torture, he wants reports. And he has... shudder... all the time in the world to draw it out.
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Oct 09, 2002 7:49:10 PM CDT
Naturally the Charcoal of Doom would torment even as he celebrat
by runelord
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Spill it, ramble, repeat yourselves... I don't care. I am so short of reading material I wandered over to Tolkien Online again, and that is a real desperation move. Whatever I think of Harry's gifs, he certainly does know how to set up a talkback. Ever other site I visit is all graphics and dead space, redundant quotes, bizarre repetitions and general filler. I can't ever figure out who's saying what or why anyone should care. Here, you can have a conversation. Or could... What? Are you all working?
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Seems I managed to stump the mighty vala purely by accident. For the rest of ya, CAP is
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Bjarki, I think it has to be said that the characterisation draws me, every time, although I do love the general idea, as well as the descriptions. It
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Oct 10, 2002 10:11:26 AM CDT
Good point, Miami, the Prof would never cotton to such historica
by pallando blue
coronation day * alteration, arwen sighs * strider's hooded cloak *** [originally "strider's turtleneck" but I couldn't find any textual corroboration ;) ]
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Yes, DoT had a big, sappy smile on her face going from the mailbox to her apartment last night. The DVD was enclosed in a mini-version of the cover due out in November, with the disk nestled in plastic over the map of Middle Earth. There were 74 minutes of material altogether: the preview of the extended edition that we've already seen on the FOTR DVD, followed by several features from the upcoming DVD (Short intro by Jackson, "Book to Film," "Storyboards and Previd," a tour of locations, "Day in the Life of a Hobbit," and - are you listening, Vitaly? - a very nice section on Howard Shore and recording the score). I hope "Book to Film" will finally put to rest all trolling arguments that these people weren't devoted to Tolkien and the books.... We get to see pages of the script (which they revised night and day all during shooting, with much input from the actors), so we can see that in one version, the description of Frodo possibly becoming "like a clear glass... for eyes to see that can" was spoken while he is drifting in and out of consciousness in Rivendell. (And Sam was told to be SURE and take Frodo's hand, as readers of the book would be looking for it!) They also discussed combining character and narrative exposition, always making sure that each scene was accomplishing several purposes. During this section (and another later) we see the scene of Aragorn singing, but it's only a few bars of low murmur, sounding (to me) like some Gaelic lament over Culloden. Viggo wrote the tune and wanted it to sound Celtic, and I would say he succeeded. Frodo, obviously a light sleeper, sits up and says, "Who was she? This woman you sing of...." So he obviously knows Elvish. (And I do wish we could hear him speaking some.) Aragorn looks quietly despairing as he answers, so I gather he wasn't coming back to Rivendell with much hope. "Storyboard and previd" is mostly tech stuff which I won't get into, as you'll see it in a few weeks, but it was interesting that the Moria stairs sequence was originally longer and more loaded with incident, including a Frodo's-eye view of running down the stairs, and a stumble and roll to the brink by him. Just as well they left it out, because I've heard enough complaints of how often Frodo manages to lose his footing. (To which I answer, YOU try crossing hundreds of miles of rough terrain, and see if you don't fall a few times.) "Life of a Hobbit" had nothing we haven't seen, except a lot of bleeped-out words by Elijah Wood, in a sequence where the hobbits were ragging each other for the camera. Sigh. Similarly, the location scouting was just adding detail to what we've already seen. The bit with the score was fascinating, because it really went into detail about use of different choirs and how operatic it will all be. The most single interesting bit was Shore saying that the "Fellowship" theme is first heard as Frodo and Sam are leaving the cornfield, because this is the real start of the Fellowship, that it swells to a peak when the full Fellowship is formed in Rivendell, that it is never completely heard again after Gandalf's fall, and is only in fragments by the time Frodo is making his decision at the boats. (Which should again slap down those idiots that don't think Shore deserved his Oscar or wasn't completely absorbed in creating music that would resonate emotionally and intellectually.) Apparently, we will never again hear the "Fellowship" theme, unless it's an echo of it at the end. The whole score is being approached as three acts of an opera...with breaks where you go to the lobby for refreshments. And I can hardly wait until we can see it all that way! ***Well, it is now 50 minutes after the point where I am theoretically "at work," which shows how little time I will have for this if I am groaning under the whip. So far, no ace up the sleeve has appeared, but no new boss, either. Is this the quiet before the battle?
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Hi Bjarki, your question was asked on TORN last year around this time or maybe a little later as a contest. You were suppose to answer with a paragraph of 200 words or less. They never did announce a winner that I was aware of but anyway here was my paragraph....
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... was Elijah Wood with his size double. It was almost unnerving, because when you first see them together (as Frodo stands on the bank to meet Gandalf) you assume the "real" Frodo is the small one, and the other is the giant. Then you realize the giant is Elijah Wood, and the person half his size is the double. They are, of course, dressed identically, and the sequence shows Wood coaching his double how to act like Wood acting like Frodo... which leg to put in front, how to cross his arms, etc. There were also segments showing how they achieved the illusion of size differences in other ways, and the actors saying how difficult it was to have no normal points of reference and NOT be able to meet each other's eyes while playing to each other, when so much of acting is normally reacting to the other actor. Particularly wierd was watching them set up the camera moves, when Gandalf in Bag End is being represented by a silly head on a pole and voiced by a director's assistant!
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No time for anything profound, but it's a combination of everything he said, my own deep love of Britain as an archetype (as opposed to its post-industrial version) or as a more fully-realized version of itself (now we see Earth as "through a glass darkly," but Middle Earth has all the color and depth restored), and of course, my deep love for the characters, but especially Frodo... who long before Elijah Wood made him so beautiful, I just wanted to wrap my arms around and protect from everything that's trying so hard to hurt him!
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Awwww, I'd rather just share with my friends.
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Gandalf's head on a pole... wandering Bag End... HEE! You just made my day! Been reading the TB but am too tired to post much as I've been cleaning my house for a showing tonight and an open house on Sunday. *pant* *pant* [After all this work, it had better sell soon! :::grumble:::] I'm glad it wasn't only me that found the Sam/ring/?notring?/ring sequence confusing. I always just assumed I had read it wrong... every time I read it. Now I know I'm not crazy. As for wanting to live in Middle-Earth, my father decided that the Hobbit had been such a hit as a bedtime story for me when I was six that he would read me all of LOTR. Thanks to him, I have ringwraith and barrow wight nightmares to this day, and had them really bad the night before I was to see FOTR. But also I see pieces of Middle-Earth all around me. For example: along the Black River in western Wisconsin is the upper Anduin, where Beorn lives; the Dells are haunted by Elves; and when I got off of the tourbus at Stonehenge and realized that the little hills all over the place were BARROWS I almost climbed back on and hid under my seat.
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Went home and watched the DVD a bit more on my lunch hour. Purists take note, she says that according to the way the film is edited, there is nothing to say that they DIDN'T go into the Old Forest and meet Tom Bombadil; it's just something they don't SHOW. She also explained that we don't see anything of Fran, because one of the two has to maintain some privacy, the better to protect the normalcy of their home life, and by the nature of things, Peter HAS to be out there anyway, so it falls to him to be the public front. (And, he obviously loves it!) But it sounds as though all three get on famously. Philippa says she's the best typist and the one with the laptop, whereas Fran tends to sit on the ground surrounded by scripts and notes. Sean Bean mentioned that first thing in the morning, there was always Peter, immersed in the book.... It all just sounds like years of mutually-supportive love-fest and Tolkien devotion. And I'm going to have a very short fuse if any future trolling suggests otherwise. ***DoT is currently swooning over Frodo gently asking Aragorn who he's singing about, and Aragorn sitting with his back turned and downcast eyes, barely able to talk about it.
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Yeah, I see it too. I went on a field trip to Effigy Mounds recently. They had to talk me into climbing one of the mounds for a group photo. It was just creepy because I knew it hadn
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(And discussion to keep DoT happy. :^) ) Such a simple question but so hard to answer! I don
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What a beautiful concept. Well, I for one have never accepted the idea of Tolkien as escapist. On the contrary, he brings us closer to the eternal and the real - we go "deeper in and higher up," in what is probably a mangled quote from C.S. Lewis in "The Last Battle." Any time we are with the flow, we forget ourselves entirely and feel only our connectedness. ***Speaking of which, my only experience of being IN a barrow was in the Orkney Islands, inside Maeshowe, a megalithic burial cairn that was later plundered by Vikings, who left some oddly delicate graffiti, including the famous "Maeshowe dragon," which I have as a silver brooch. (The dragon itself is no larger than the brooch.) The inside of the chamber can only be reached by stooping through a long passage, and I was a bit afraid of claustrophobia, but the odd thing is, once I was in, I felt just the opposite - infinitely expansive, like being at the center of the universe. It felt so peaceful I really didn't want to leave. The stones were really beautifully fitted, and it was intriguing thinking they'd been put there 3,000 years ago. But mostly I remember the peace and the feeling of space.... Wonder if that was what the builders had in mind.
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To see very cool photos of what are obviously photos of Minas Tirith as well as Helm's Deep and Orthanc, go here: http://warofthering.net/specialnewspages/helmsdeep.shtml
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Someone told me that the Harpie is known for dictating rambling letters, and saying things like, "Put this in after paragraph 2" when she's five pages along, but the worst case was apparently when, after a previous secretary had typed a whole tape's worth of material, she said at the end of the tape, "Oh, never mind all that...." If that happens even ONCE...! ***Well, assuming I have one more day of grace, I hope interesting posts appear tomorrow.
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You still here? I
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guys for the beautiful ideas expressed here.**DoT, of course they're fighting over you. I have a strong feeling that you're smarter and more competent than any of the bosses. I hope it works out great for you. Don't want you moping about like a forlorn carrot in the rain.**Alice, get published soon! I need something new and kickass to read.**I turned someone on to LOTR this weekend - my daughter's best friend! Sat. was my daughter's 12th birthday so she invited her friend over to spend the night. Now this girl is incredibly intelligent, reads voraciously, and is a talented writer. I've tried for the past year to get her interested in LOTR but she always said it sounded "stupid". Because when you're 12 and a genius you're wayyy too cool for wizards, etc. I gently reminded her that she had ripped through Harry Potter like grain through a goose, but to no avail. Anyway, I dropped the girls off at the movies (Sweet Home Alabama - got out of that one!) and we went out to dinner later. Still trying to get her interested, I tried some new strategies. She's already tried her hand at writing game software, so I told her about Massive. That got her attention. Then I told her about Tolkien's invented languages and the mythology he created. "I think I really need to read those books" - victory was at hand. The next day I had to go into work to upgrade some software so I took the sweeties with me (they really are a lot of fun). I showed them the new trailer while we were there since I only have the hateful, hateful dialup at home. When we got back to the house she was ready to watch the movie. For the next 3 hours that child sat on my couch utterly transfixed. No talking, no fidgeting, hardly any blinking. I had to take her home right after and she was in such a trance-like state I didn't ask her what she thought about it. I think it was all still processing. Can't wait to discuss it with her and get her started on the books. I know she has some pretty serious bouts with depression, so maybe Middle Earth can be a light for her in the darkness.
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Effigy Mounds are kinda creepy, but not as creepy as the mounds around Stonehenge, which look EXACTLY like I imagined the Barrow Downs to look. It was a very dark, foggy, rainy day and I just had a HUGE flash to that part of the books and a cold chill down my spine. ::brrr:: The mounds on Trempaleau Island are more creepy to me because almost no one goes there so you really feel the spookiness. And the local tribes leave offerings in the trees- I swear this was the first thing I thought of when I saw Blair Witch Project! Incidentally, there are nice mounds in the UW Madison arboretum if you know where to look for them, including a huge eagle. As for those who would scoff at our seeing ME in Wisconsin- I went to the library today while my house was being shown [except the people never showed up, which means I spent the day cleaning for nothing, but I digress] and found a book on picturesque villages of the French Dordogne and damn if the hills and river valleys didn't look amazingly like the LaCrosse area [and Whitewater state park in Minnesota]... and of course the Rhine valley does too. There are quite beautiful landscapes in the Midwestern US that compare to anything in Europe, if you're willing to tune out the McMansions rich idiots feel compelled to build on the bluffs [castles are much more becoming]. I recommend that our European TBers come and give the upper Mississippi River valley area a look and see why we see elves and hobbits hiding in the oak groves! *** again, this is making me homesick as I sit here in slightly-less-picturesque Janesville... must sell house soon and move back to Madison!
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I managed to miss your post somehow but I
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Yeah, the mounds themselves aren
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DoT, you're not allowed to swoon over things we haven't seen. it makes uss jelouse, it doesssss, yessss. Hope you can still read posts today. Morgoth, do not speak to me of that tricksy little thing called fate! I will state again, that butterfly is a menace! Flapping it's wings everywhere. ack! And anyway, maybe it was fated that sam wouldn't be seen by the big nasty eye, either that or a pixie came along, we may never know. I know i'm rambling, as well as beating an old topic up, but i watched the film again last night, and was wondering about a slight difference between the bree and Amon Hen sightings. In bree, the eye speaks in the common tounge (I sssseeeee yyyoooouu) but it's black speech on Amon Hen. Is this because in one of the versions the eye hasn't actually seen him, but he might think it has? or am i just digging for an explanation? Okay, also, can someone tell me where abouts in England the barrows are? I've been to Avebury, but i don't know if it was a barrow we went into, or just a cave. Help?
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Indeed, Barrows. Barrows are cool. I do not have a problem with walking on them myself, but that's kind of an English thing - most older churches here are flagged with graves - you walk on them to get to your seat. I've never seen Maeshowe myself, but is that the one with the graffiti "(Viking woman's name) is the fairest of all women"? I could write an absolute ton on the whole barrow thing but to basically set the scene for the Americans et al, barrows mainly come in two types in the pre-Roman British Isles, round and long. Long barrows are long, narrow, raised dykes, sloping back from a door or opening that is normally faced with huge dolmens, and sometimes has a courtyard paved with flints. The whole thing slopes back and down to a point where it blends in with the rest of the land. West Kennet is the most remarkable, being about 120 ft long. I've been in there, it's very cool -it's near Stonehenge. Sometimes they are lined with ditches. The doorway, like I say, is normally faced and sealed with huge tall stones (think Stonehenge stones) which are taller in the middle than the sides, so the whole entrance slopes downward at the sides, to follow the curve of the barrow proper. (Argh, much as I hate image posting and it gets egregariously abused by people putting ginormous gifs in their sig, I could do with it here. Screw it, I'll sniff out a link and post it.) Inside there are is a chamber of about man-height, sometimes bisected with huge stones into different "rooms". It is this kind of inner architecture that I take away from "Fog on the Barrow Downs". The walls are lined with large, flat stones, and carefully pointed around the gaps. The roofs are capstone, in that large stones are laid over and other large stones are put down to cover the gaps, leaving you with a kind of triangular shape, raising to a point above your head as smaller stones are laid on larger ones. Another interesting thing about them is that they have astronomical settings - for instance, the big one in Meath in Ireland (built out of blinding white stone as opposed to turves), Newgrange (which is supposed to be a very striking place), has been built to allow the midwinter sun to shine through the door and illumine the contents of the barrow on the solstice. Generally speaking, long barrows, if they contain remains (not all do) contain the remains of many people, and when a new one dies and is interred, the earlier bones are cleared away to the sides and the new ones laid down. The bones may have been defleshed first. Thus the dead melt into one another, becoming generalised "ancestors", or so the theory goes. Anyway, they're earlier than their counterparts, the round barrows. Round barrows are smaller, circular round bumps, of varying sizes. They don't have doors. There tends to be one primary burial of the person that the mound was raised for (the previous barrows seemed to be more about community), though later burials are sometimes inserted along the side the mound. When I say burial, I mean the insertion of an urn containing their burnt remains, and some cool weapons and occasionally jewellery. The urn is always of a special kind of pottery in a special style ("Bell beakers", I think) though these evolved throughout the period. Being buried with all your shit a la a Viking warrior, is a late Iron Age thing onwards, and possibly an import from abroad. Some have been discovered in the far South, where all the accoutrements of a Chief or whatever have been discovered, including disassembled chariots, horses and lots and lots of wine and fish sauce (the upper echelons of pre-Romanic Britain were all wild for fish sauce (garum, made from rotting fish, no less. The nearest thing I can think of as an equivalent would be Worcester sauce. They had it on everything, including dessert. Go figure. On the other hand, spices were priceless in the ancient world, and even salt was dear. Maybe even rotting fish was better than that "healthy, wholesome low-salt diet" we are constantly being exhorted to adopt in the modern world. It's a point of view I could certainly ascribe to) Sometimes these grave possessions are ritually smashed and destroyed. Sometimes the whole structure is burnt after the funeral and the mound raised over it. The feeling I take away from Tolkien is that his barrows are more like long barrows, except that they contain treasure, in common with some late Iron Age and Dark Age funeral practices. So there you go. Whew. That was interesting to remember, actually. Don't know if it was so interesting to read... Actually, DoT, the discussion of spaces and barrows is academically ongoing. Cambridge, which has a globally renowned hard-on for theory, used to spend a lot of time lecturing us on space and agency and all sorts of stuff *way* too esoteric to post on a Talkback, especially when you're already trying the patience of most readers. But yeah, it's a sacred space, a doorway between the worlds of the living and the dead, probably not just something people contemplated whenever somebody died, but also generally.
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Oct 11, 2002 8:13:33 AM CDT
Sorry, meant corbelling, not capstone - the early ones had capst
by aliceinwonderlnd
I'm a schmuck.
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Barrows are all over, some places more than others. The place you went into that was like a cave near Avebury was almost certainly West Kennet long barrow.
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and i assure you it was not boring to read. And the place i visited does fit the description of a long barrow. We weren't allowed to go up on the other mound, which culd possibly be another barrow, because the roof had collapsed after victorian excavations, and we were told that no-ones yet come up with the money to save it apparently.
But you learn something new everyday. Something blindingly obvious that i've always overlooked, just because it's there, is a translation of Mediterranean as middle earth. why i never see these things until they're pointed out is beyond me. -
boston college down * caution, miami mofo * hokies walk the earth
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...But there's something so refreshingly odd about this TB, now that I indulge in a coffee break to catch up on it. A TB in which, most recently, the women deliberate at length on troubles in the workplace, swooning, and archeological theory, while the men write haiku poetry about taxes and NCAA football. What the hell has happened to all the solidly drawn stereotype gender lines? I just can't quite put my finger on it... :^D [Failed to say it earlier, but "Uruk-Haiku"... holy crud, Runelord, you're freakin killin me!] Now, please, back to your intelligent conversation, ladies. :~)
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and to avoid doing homework. Not sure if i've understood your idea, but if i have then i would have to volunteer the point where merry tells Frodo of the quest before he can think of the words himself. I think that's what captures the spirits of the hobbits, for me at least, and hints at the wider things that the characters portray, as well as the themes in the book. but i can't think of other examples, and i'm not sure this one fits the explanation.
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East Kennet long barrow. That'll be the one they don't let people in. It's not as cool as the other one anyway, and money not withstanding, archaeologists actually hate visitors tromping through this stuff. It's kind of the necessary tension in their jobs - to unearth cool stuff so members of the public can stomp through and trash it. Same things going on with the Pyramids in Egypt. And you don't have to do anything malicious, simply breathe and exist and accidentally brush against stuff. So did you go to Avebury proper? What did you think? Pallando, you're right, this is an odd TB. If you would like this to be more masculine pointed, I could talk about some of the Etruscan funeral murals and pottery I saw. The funeral mural, with the chick giving oral pleasure to the one guy whilst another gentleman appears to be doing something behind her that necessitates him standing quite close to her bottom (hundreds of years of stickers being put over important parts of this scene had somewhat damaged the paints and lessened their clarity and impact) was very cool. I mean, what's going on in your head when you have that on the wall of your tomb, unless you're Hugh Hefner? I could just see my family springing for a full length portrait of me, nude, in a menage a trois, to be buried alongside me. On the other hand, the hardcore gay porn pottery on display in the museum was also pretty awesome. Instructive, too. Perhaps I should have done archaeology in Italy, methinks.
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Here's a link, to better formulate your mental picture. It is *pretty damn cool* here. The barrow pictures are towards the end of the page (look for westkennet.jpg) and bear in mind that the stairs and the rectangular concrete things on the top are modern. There should have just been earth there, though some nagging thing in my head says that there was possibly a gap in the roof of West Kennet to let the sun in on special days, though perhaps I'm confusing it with somewhere else. www.stonehenge.brain-jogging.com/ inhalt_r.htm. SWOON UPDATE: Alice is Currently Swooning Over - Striding Aragorn throwing Open Big Doors. For about the Billionth Time.
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Went to avebury last year, around october i think. Went on a day trip with the pagan society in swansa, and it was quite fun. A lot of walking involved, which i'm not always prepared for. went around most of the places there, including a big hill to get to the barrow! But by the time we got to the stone circle it was dark and raining, and i had just managed to fall over, so i chickened out and went i the pub with some of the others in the group. We were planing to visit the stone circles in south wales (apparently quite a few) but never did.
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I think I went swimming there once, in another lifetime. My favorite cousins lived in Winona, on the other side of the Mississippi. Yes, it's very pretty country, but it just never tugged at my heart. Nothing ever felt like "home" to me until Scotland. I never missed the Midwest the way I do Scotland. I want mountains, Gandalf... mountains, or the sea. Preferably both, but New Mexico really does it for me, too (the skies there take the place of the sea in their changing light). Well, I am overwhelmed and humbled by the archaeological knowledge on this site.... The older I get, the more prone I am to experience things, and not study them. I used to know a fair amount about the Vikings in Orkney, and have the essays to prove it (yes, Maeshowe is the one with the "fairest of women" inscription); now I just miss Orkney, for itself. ***I do think my favorite part of the new DVD is the section on the score. You all are in for a treat.... In some places, they cut the voices in a scene so we can better hear how the music is used, such as the faintly Arabic instrumentals in Lothlorien, as they are first walking under the trees and Gimli is warning the hobbits. ***And I probably used to be a better secretary than I am now, when I care less and less about getting my head around minutia, and certainly not legal minutia. No Ch'i yun there! There will eventually come a time when my intelligence cannot overpower my utter indifference. And here I am again, 50 minutes into the workday, and nothing to show for it, so I must go.
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Well, according to Ocham
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Alice, as always I find your posts interesting.
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was the bit in crickhollow. I haven't got the books with me, but i think Frodo says something like "i do notknow where to begin" And merry jumps in saying "Then let me tell it for you..." And so on. But i just thought that that was the first part of the book where the characters seemed real to me, and where i think the themes of the hobbits start from. I think i understand the explanation now, so thank you for explaining it. My brain is concentrating on Byzantine religion at the moment, but i think Ch
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Archaeology, Chi-yun, and Byzantium... "Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing / For every tatter in its mortal dress, /Nor is there singing school but studying / Monuments of its own magnificence; / And therefore I have sailed the seas and come / To the holy city of Byzantium." What can I say? I was just in the kind of mood to post this. Anyhoo, I saw "Red Dragon" but missed the trailers, so I've no idea if this is playing in Britain. The guy at the cinema said it was supposed to be yesterday or today it came in - would it be too geeky to ring and ask what films it's attached to? Or rather, yes, I know it's too geeky, but should I just do it anyway?
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It has to be just about impossible for most people to realize how sex permeated ancient life - not the artificial, computer-enhanced advertising sell we're surrounded with, but the real thing, intimately linked with life and death and fertility and immortality. For most people in most civilizations, privacy was unknown - families lived in one room or one bed, so hardly anyone wouldn't have seen it all. The Romans used erotic art as wallpaper, to the point where I don't suppose they even noticed it. But this is certainly no more peculiar than to be living in a society where eight-year-old girls have sexualized their moves - but the only sex we see is air-brushed choreography devoid of any sensuality or honesty, which is to say, any human connection. (Which is, come to think of it, an odd thing to be discussing on a Tolkien site.)
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It's always a pleasure to hear from another reviewer who correctly acknowledges this for a masterpiece - and the details about sound were interesting. **Speaking of sound, I keep forgetting to mention the absolutely delightful birdsong, as Frodo sits reading under the tree.... **And now, I have mailings to put together for the IRS. Grumble, grumble. But you all keep talking about sex and quoting Yeats...
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Oct 11, 2002 3:20:13 PM CDT
O dear o dear. Alice, you're just going to keep in picking
by skyway moaters
... I TAKE IT BACK. I LOVE that you swoon. I LIVE to hear about you latest swooning exploits. I'm CRAZY for all things swoonable. SWOON = GOOD. Please GOD, teach the world to swoon. When you swoon Alice, the whole world swoons with you! *** When Sam is wearing the ring he has still not actually entered Mordor. The Eye of Sauron is turned elsewhere. He is concentrating on what he perceives to be the new Ring lord: Aragorn. "... I deem that to know that I live, that the Heir of Isuldur walked the earth was a blow to his heart and he is afraid..." (or words to that effect). When Sam actually does cross over into the Land of Shadow he experiences an urgent warning to "Take off the Ring you fool!" And this from Gandalf: "Had Sauron fortified his land so that none could enter then our hope would truly have faded." Sauron thinks that Cirith Ungol is so well guarded, Shelob, King of the Nazgul, Orcs aplenty, that he need not fear any assault on his power from that direction. He is convinced that Aragorn has The One, and all his thought is bent on perceiving his mind and stratagems. He is scared and strikes in haste before his preparations are complete, Wise Fool...
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Oh, man. That
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Surely you jest Runie old man (heh heh). Believe it or not I'm actually capable of intellectual conversation when my cob-webby old excuse for a brain doesn't
have some self esteem axe or other to grind. What's this "special subject" you mentioned? I've read all the posts and I'm not sure which discussion you are referring to. Did you mean the pervasive nature of sexual activity so prevalent in ancient societies? Or am I, as often seems to be the case with me, missing the boat? Testosterone?... TROLLERS BEWARE I'M THE BADDEST blah blah blah... give it a rest ya goofy old conexxions man. Did you read my post about The Evenstar?
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Finally getting back to the TB... OK. Runelord, I do get back occasionally as my Mom still lives in Onalaska [where I grew up] but I usually make her come to us to visit as 1)my hubby is allergic to her dog and 2)I don't want to run into anyone I went to high school with. But I do try to visit the parks every few years... they feel more like home to me than most other places because my Dad took me out camping about every other weekend during summers so I kinda almost grew up in Trempealau [Perrot] SP. [DoT, Maybe that's why they speak to me but not you?] We'd also go biking on the Elroy-Sparta trail and to this day, movie or no, the gates of Moria are the doors to tunnel #3 between Sparta and Norwalk [it's 3/4 mile long and very fun to walk thru w/no lights]. As for the Temp Mtn creepy-factor, oh very yes. The offerings I've seen are little ghost-hanky things wrapped w/string and tied into tree branches to catch the breeze, usually in little eerie groups that you don't notice until you almost walk into them. Add to this that the first time I climbed the Mtn. my Dad and I almost died... he'd had wrong information about where the trail was so we went up the wrong side and ended up free-climbing the cliff- Dad finally had to push me up through a bunch of blackberry vines and poison ivy while he almost fell off... to this day he gets quiet thinking about it. Luckily he finally found a foothold and was able to make it to the top, where I had found the trail on the other side of the blackberries. ***As for majestic Scotland, the strangest feeling I had was of how similar to the LaCrescent area it looked! Especially when I found the great big cottonwood tree in the middle of Inverness! [I still wonder who planted it...] So during my stay in the UK I mostly felt completely at home in the wild places, but it was only when I went back into the cities and everything was weird [different traffic signs, different accents, everybody driving on the wrong side of the road ;-P] that I felt homesick and out of place. *** As a further aside for those like Walrus who can't afford the airfare but want to know what a barrow down kinda looks like I recommend the place Runelord was mentioning [don't walk on the dead folks!] Effigy Mounds National Monument across the river from Prairie Du Chien WS and of course the one in Ohio whose name and location escapes me. They generally aren't as big and impressive as the European ones but they give you a sense of atmosphere, and some of them are in amazing animal forms. I also recommend Aztalan SP near Lake Mills WI [N of Madison] as it reminded me a bit of the Barrow Downs too, plus it has a creepy pyramid [if I remember coorrectly]. Gotta go now as G Gundam is on and I have to see how that goofy, goofy show turns out...
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That should be "Prairie Du Chien WI". Also forgot to mention that while at the library I picked up the Hamlet Syndrome book and so far it's depressingly familiar... esp the bit about the example guy's excuse/lament "but there's no good jobs for English majors anyway.." commercial break over, back to goofy Gundams...
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...so I'm free 'til Samurai Jack. Went back to see what I missed in the TB in my epic babbling last post, so here we go: *** McMansions... my Dad's former boss built the huge nasty one that you see on the bluff above I-90 headed for MN... he was a very rich asshole and the "look at my vast ugly house spoiling your view" was right in character. He apparently once shot a hunting dog that had tangled w/a pocrupine because he didn't want to abandon his hunt... So now I have his image/persona associated with every single McMansion I see on a hill anywhere and send waves of loathing at the occupants. ***dead folks: I too can't be forced to walk on a mound. Being 1/8 native is partly to do w/it but its also the respect due the dead plus its just creepy. I had a hard time in British churches 'cause as was mentioned the floor is practically paved w/tombs! I must've looked like I was playing hopscotch or something trying to avoid tramping on Lord So-and-So. And yes I knew about the picnics... I really can't blame the Ho-Chunk/Winnebago for being honked off to this day. The site I was excavating [watermelon incident] was next to a housing development that was on top of a huge burial. According to stories the bulldozer operators who were prepping it for the development [in the 60s] used skulls for bowling balls on breaks... there were just piles of bones they threw in the garbage. This was the main reason we kept kinda quiet about the burial we found when the news people came to see what was going on; we were treating it respectfully but we didn't want to reopen old wounds. If any suburb deserves the "Polergeist" treatment, that one sure does! I know I wouldn't live there... well, I think that about catches me up and my fingers are going numb from the typing [as your eyes glaze over, no doubt] so apart from saying thanks to Runelord for the well-wishes on the house [as you can see I'm taking a break from the cleaning today and yes it does now free up most of Saturday for realxation, so I guess it wasn't a total waste..] and bye til later. I'd compose a haiku but am too tired to have dirty thoughts. Bye!
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Well, you know, it isn't just the shape and look of the hills, but the whole history behind them... and the light. The light is NOTHING like Scotland in Wisconsin, or at least only rarely. I go absolutely crazy over the shape of some hills north of Albuquerque, and so does my sister - and we have no "home" association with them whatsoever; in fact, they remind us of nothing but themselves, unless it's a soul memory. (Like Elijah Wood, we were born in Cedar Rapids - a good place to grow up, and a wonderful school system, but there's nothing there I miss.) And even my mother misses my Scottish accent.... Truly, it just seemed to suit my vocal cords better and feel softer and easier. I don't mean I kept it after returning (except, for a while, a tendency to say "airth" instead of "earth," especially during the Lord's Prayer), but I do pick up accents, and that one just suited me. Once, when I was traveling around there, a woman told me I had a wonderful Inverness accent, which I took as a compliment, because I'd once read that was considered the most attractive (not that I was trying to reproduce one). On my last trip, over 20 years ago, and five years after I'd been living there, I went back for a month, and within a few days a woman on a train told me she'd been trying for several hours to place my accent, and finally decided I was a Scot who'd spent some time in America. Certainly, that's what I felt like, if you subtract accidents of birth. Now... well, it's been decades, and I don't suppose my joints could stand the damp I used to love tramping around in (I liked to walk, not hike, and come home to a cosy B&B with tea, not a tent)... but then, I'd have cheerfully traded a decade of my life to be able to stay. Now I dream of retiring to Italy, where my sister has taken me a couple of times (she makes two or three times what I do AND she has travel industry perks). Wonderful food, amazing culture, beautiful scenery (there cannot be anything more awe-inspiring than the Amalfi Coast, after a storm), engaging people... another lovely language to get my tongue around... and no doubt, gentler to my aging bones - though I might have a problem with all those stairs. And, of course, I've never tried New Zealand... for all I know, it is indeed the best of all worlds. Well, this is a long and rambling post, just to say that home is where the heart is, not where you're planted.
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How's that for a title; sounds like some British mystery on A&E.... My own thoughts on the subject are that the dead aren't where they died or are buried (unless there's some problem, as with the Wights!), and it never bothered me to walk in old churchyards, or old churches. Where the civilization is old, the dead - or their remains - are everywhere. (If Londoners had taken the same attitude as some New Yorkers, that a place where people have died should remain "sacred ground" and not be built on, London after the Blitz would have remained in ruins. And so would Dresden.) I don't mean that I am into desecrating tombs, but... dust to dust. And to quote Esther in "Ben-Hur," "This life is more than we know...."
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I guess the thing I was trying to say is that I found home everywhere I went in the UK; that the hills were enough like where I grew up that it never felt like I was in some foreign land. It was only the *people* who made me feel odd. Sure it was majestic and cool and the light was definitely different [being further north] but mostly it felt more 'homey' to me than, say, Nebraska. And I lived in Kansas before I lived in WI! But you and a particular friend of mine should get together- she is totally in love w/Scotland and Ireland and spent her honeymoon there and would probably live there forever if given the chance. Then there's my husband who spent a year in Denmark and wants to live THERE. Good place for a pair of Hamlets, no? Back to Scotland... the only place I felt weird was at Loch Ness which has a distinct vibe that kinda put me on edge [but not in a bad way]. I guess I prefer to think of the whole planet as home and try to see 'home' wherever I go so I feel more connected to it... but I can feel that without trying to associate a particular familiar area to foreign lands... for instance I felt a connection to Stonehenge that went beyond all that. Even though it was a dreary day and I'd just had the eerie barrow downs realization I turned and walked over to the monument itself and as I looked at it I felt perfectly centered and at peace. There's something there that is timeless... Also, I don't think the people themselves are still haunting their graves or anything, but [w/o going into my entire belief system- think of me as semi-Buddhist] there IS a resonance where people die and are laid to rest. I respect that energy, whatever it is, and try to respect those places. My personal superstitious aversion to stepping on graves dates to being a child in a graveyard and getting yelled at for skipping amongst the headstones... I know it's silly but I can't help it... the vivid picture painted for me of dead rotting people under my feet that was planted in my head when it was explained why I shouldn't do that pops up whenever I go past a graveyard. Think I need therapy? ;-P Pizza's almost here, so I should wrap it up. Here's to home sweet [Middle] Earth!
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Iwl say Im goof e
Dont sharna pax becaws I aint your nemminy you myswel call all us connexion men and tel women here. Trubba Not for my tel its jus words to put down on the Puter. Riddley tol it bes wen he said There aint that many sir prizes in life if you take noatis of every thing. Iwl tel you I aint no ol hevvy tho. Im only 20 and a lady tho no stoan boans. ** Yeah, that book -
...God's Holy Trousers!! You have or have not read Riddley Walker, by Russell Hoban? If not, your command of "Inland Speak" is entirely remarkable and just about unexplainable! Are you, like me, a huge fan of invented languages and dialects? Morgy puts me to shame when it comes to Elvish, but it's only because: "I programmit that Quenya, Sindarin and the like are pretty much above the likes-o-me and I'm too scared of making a mistake. Are you perhaps a student of Nadsat and Vogon as wel? If so remember that: "thinking is for the gloopy ones, and that the omni ones use inspiration and like what Bog sends". Namarie-Trubba Not. My fires col my story
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... There is an absolutely GORGEOUS hardbound edition of RW available from: The Indiana University Press, for the measly sum of $20.00 or there abouts. (They have an excellent web site.) The original, sadly, has been out of print for about 8 years. Be forewarned however: I tried to turn Ingold onto it about a year and a half ago and he HATED it. It's not an "easy read" by any stretch, and some of the more subtle themes of the work will only come with repeated readings. It is never the less, in my opinion, (despite my esteemed associate Ingold's perception, (Don't take this the wrong way Ingold but: How old are you? (You're one funny mo-fo regardless of your age BTW)), a truly great and important novel, and indeed one of the few works of literature of the 20ieth century that truly deserves to be called "A Work of Genius". It deals with the deep down central issues of what it means to be a human being on planet Earth. Ahhem! (clears froat), LOTR is even MORE important in my mind, in it's contribution to 20ieth century literature; lest the hardcore Tolkien fans jump to conclusions. Finally, all of this aside: All you numbknuckle Tolkienoids need to read some freaking Anthony Burgess!!! (and Ray Badbury for that matter
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Thanks Moaters! I'm pleased to hear that you have grown to love my swooning, for I'd no real intention of stopping and this makes things much less stressful for everybody! I agree about Anthony Burgess, I really enjoyed "A Clockwork Orange" and I think the ending, which never got as far as making it to the film, was awesome. Cutting it was like cutting The Grey Havens from LOTR. God, this TB gets weirder and more tangential every minute. Rune: I quoted only a snippet, the whole thing is here: http://hyperpoem.homestead.com/yeats.html. It's not about Byzantium particularly, but Yeats going there as an old man to see the sights, and contrasting his aging body and the constantly changing, dying and living world with the immortality of art and knowledge. Well, that's my interpretation, which I've never subjected to much critical scrutiny. Yeats rules, incidentally. And I must totally thank you for the Moche erotic pottery tip! What cool beans! I'm with DoT on that one - the figures and expressions have this non-embarassed, sensual, earthy delight. This whole, "We're having sex! Isn't it great? Life is good!" thing going on there. In fact all of the Moche stuff was pretty cool, though the leaping from the sacrificial mount thing was a bit disturbing. Regarding home, and the grand vista settings that suggest ME to various TBers, I've got to laugh. When I was living in Southern CA, about the time the Bakshi film came out and Lisa was indoctrinating me into the ways of all things Tolkien, we lived near this field for want of a better term, which we called The Field, this kind of patch of scrubby undeveloped land with a small, stagnant pool containing depressed-looking minnowy fish and half a rotting surfboard. Anyway, that summer the developers moved, clearing half of it and raising a ginormous jagged mound of earth in the center. The pond promptly became the Dead Marshes and the mound Mount Doom. In fact, so popular became this nomenclature that all the neighbourhood kids called it Mount Doom too. We would scale it and slide down it and attempt to ride our bikes up it. Better yet, one day we arrived their on our bikes to discover that awesomely, huge trenches had been furrowed out of the ground and large concrete tubes placed within them. These were then covered up, and became accessible by a sewer drain (minus metal rails), so naturally, we crawled in there and hey presto! Instant Paths of the Dead! We used to take flashlights in there, and just hang out, occasionally reading bits of Tolkien's works to one another. And of course this was in a pre-litigious (or at least relatively so) society where nobody bothered to fence anything off in order to prevent children clambering over heavy, unstable earthworks and shimmying on their bellies through unused sewers. Fantastic place to play. I believe there is an enormous Marriott hotel there now. Why not call it the Mordor hotel and be done with it, we wondered. But Denmark, yeah, that's a cool place. I dug there one summer on the island of Als. I thought it very Bree-like, all these cozy homes, normally brilliantly lit on the inside and through the windows you could see all their bright collections of plates and clocks and pictures, surrounded by this kind of wild, flat, boggy, moody countryside and threatening-looking trees. I know Scotland quite well - my Dad and his side of the family are from Glasgow, and I've visited friends in Edinburgh, (I also lived in Glasgow briefly but retain a slight Scottish lilt, possibly from living with my Dad's full-on Scots brogue all my life - but possibly my two favourite places are the shores of Loch Lomond and Waternish on the Isle of Skye. Waternish is awesome - the island basically forks, and huge cliffs lead down to this inlet. At sunset, the setting sun streams through the clouds, lighting up all the Outer Hebrides away in the distance. Very, very nice. They've also got a mini mountain range. I kind of imagine Valinor looks like that, only with hopefully slightly warmer weather.
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...I was 'afeart' that someone would interpret my choice of words in that post just the way you have. But I didn't notice until I'd already posted and couldn't change it. All I meant to convey is that he got a sudden powerful urge to take the damn thing off as soon as he actually crossed over into Mordor. My intent was to paraphrase Sam's internal monologue. But I chose Gandalf's exact words to Frodo on the seat of seeing upon Amon Hen, DOH! The actual passage from the book, (single novel you knuckleheads) follows: "He ran forward to the crown of the climbing path, and over it. At once the road turned left and plunged steeply down. Sam had crossed into Mordor. He took off the Ring, moved it may be by some deep premonition of danger, though to himself he thought only that he wished to see more clearly. "Better have a look at the worst,' he muttered. 'No good blundering about in a fog!' And then this, a little later when he contemplates putting on the ring again while trying to figure a way into the Tower of Cirith Ungol: 'And anyway all these notions are just a trick,' he said to himself. 'He'd spot me and cow me , before I could so much as shout out. He'd spot me pretty quick. if I put the Ring on now, in Mordor...'
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Suit No. 1: "So that's great, Greg, glad your flight was good, I'll swing round tomorrow to pick you up for the presentation to the Sales Department. Which hotel are you staying in?" Suit No. 2: "Actually, Jeff, I'm at the Barad-Dur in Torrance." Suit No. 1: "Oh gee, Greg, um... (nervous pause...) Yeah, that's great..."
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...where does the expression "God's Holy Trousers" come from? I'll have smoked all the Gothmog's Glory before anyone posts an answer at this rate!...
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Give me a little time, Squizzle!
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but I cheated. It was bugging me so I did a google search... Funny, but I don't actually remember it being said in THAT particlular story or movie [must remain vague], had thought it was something else. Must access it again! Anyway, MorGy, you seem to be implying that you personally were at the Skunk Works... how old ARE you?? j/k Yes, the world is a much better place w/Blackbirds in it, and thus my guest room is better for the model of the prototype in IT. My husband is happy you liked Denmark Alice, but noted that it isn't a good candidate for ME as it is far too flat. He only just got off the PC and let me on; he was searching for Danish model trains on Ebay. His secret project these days is to build a model railroad based on ME, named the Mithrail, and I've been trying to convince him to have the hobbits' trains in Z scale, the dwarves' in N and elves/men's in HO... the line is supposed to go from Hobbiton thru Bree and Rivendell to Moria, eventually, as $ and space permits. *I* think the elves should have a monorail, any thoughts? It's barely begun yet so modifications are easy at this point. As the household's freak who customises model robots, I'm the one who has been given the job of making Rivendell as Hubby has little modelling experience and doesn't feel up to it. Come to that, I'M not up to it. So complicated!!! If anyone has any suggestions on how to achieve this lofty goal, please sing out. The hobbit holes and mounds aren't a prob but Art Nouveau Elf architecture is a bit beyond me!
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That was just niggling away at me but I
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I just finish watching "Clockwork Orange" on BBC America and then I come on here to that last post.... it's too much for me poor gulliver.... must get to sleep... open house on the morrow. Toodles!
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Slightly on topic for once. I think I
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Yes, it is a doozy of a language. Nothin
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Oct 13, 2002 11:26:48 AM CDT
Impressive Runelord, most impressive (insert aqualung breathing
by skyway moaters
... an' the pouch of "G,s G" has been dispatached via special messenger! Dint want another sitching waytion like when Alice slyed over to Howe Fents to fetch back HER comping station. She finally remembert to say "Trubba Not" but not before ol' Durster Potter got all ascited an uppit bow. I thot I heard Aunty getting her iron willy ready for dear Alice then right enuff! But After the wotcher ben said an' we all smoakit Durster took greavis an wantit to put a farness between him an Alice. Which wer a good thing cause Alice were hy and rayging about Durster just a littl bit, and it lookit like it myt be Arga Warga for him in stead. I connectit rite then that itwd parbly be better to send your comping station by the ol' quik post down Shire way and not chance another rumpa. *** Yep, old Rudyard was a remarkable writer. Cut me teeth on Riki Tiki Tavi, The Jungle Books, and some neat damn story about a seal that I can't quite bring to mind just now. *** Keep on reading folks untold riches await! And no, Runelord I don't really think that thinking is for the gloopy ones. But I do believe you have to pay attention to inspiration and what Bog sends too, and that's not always an easy thing to do. It goes by so fast, blink at the wrong second, and you'll miss it. *** That's my tel, fare you wel. Namarie Mellyn, Trubba Not. SM{;-0
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Thanks, Moaters. I
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Okay, I
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..."she crushes you down with her stoan boans and iron tits and then finishes the job with her lower set of teef"... The story of "the bloak as got on top of Aunty" (in the novel) tells of a man that did the juicy with her and DIDN'T die. It was during 'the bad time' right after whatever catastrophe blasted the world back to the stone age. This man had lost everything, his wife and children were dead, and he was ready to die himself. So he chased after Aunty. This made Aunty laugh. She liked the way he chased after her and let him get on top (so as not crush him with her stone bones and iron tits) and she pulled in her bottom set of teeth. Then she told him "ok run away now, but next time I see you I'm going to be on top, and nothing you can do about it". I'm sure you can all guess how the story ends: Wel it wer Arga Warga for him then wernt it? ...SM{;-0
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I'm not that familiar with the works of Russel Hoban. But the sex/death motif in some ancient religions is indeed well-attested, and continues to exist in Western art and tradition. The French call orgasm "le petit mort" and paintings of martyrs and so forth depict them as wearing an expression of almost sexual ecstasy. This makes a kind of sense too, since medieval Christianity was often ecstatic and fasting and mortification of the flesh was pursued in order to enter a mystical relationship with God, often characterized, particularly by female adherents, as a "marriage". But each civilisation has to be studied in its own context - in the case of Etruscans, funeral murals depicted shagging scenes, but they also depicted hunting, gardening, dining and other earthly pleasures. Such accoutrements of such pleasures find their way into grave goods all over the world, in the expectation that the deceased will be set up to pick up where they left off in their earthly life. On the other hand, the depiction of Kali, the Hindu Goddess of Destruction (one of my ambitions is to one day visit the Kalighat, the Temple to her in Calcutta, which is named for her) resembles the idea of Aunty. She is described thusly; "Kali is represented as a Black woman with four arms; in one hand she has a sword, in another the head of the demon she has slain, with the other two she is encouraging her worshippers. For earrings she has two dead bodies and wears a necklace of skulls ; her only clothing is a girdle made of dead men's hands, and her tongue protrudes from her mouth. Her eyes are red, and her face and breasts are besmeared with blood." The article goes on and is extremely interesting: http://www.exoticindiaart.com/kali.htm. But yeah, LOTR... watched it *again* last night. Is it um, just me, or is anyone else starting to suspect that Peej has colonised their brain? Presumably as the first move in an invasion of some kind? We wonders, Preciouss, aye we wonders. And nobody answered my question about the Frodo and Gandalf image I mentioned aeons ago! Does nobody know anything about it?
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Second the Isle of Skye for Valinor, though the Cuillins on an ugly day could do for Mordor.... I still can't believe they built a BRIDGE from Kyle of Lochalsh. Is nothing sacred? I was miffed enough when the Ballachulish ferry, immortalized in "Kidnapped," disappeared beneath a modern span. But Skye... it was like bridging Bruinen! Sacred isles, or even unspeakably beautiful isles, should always be difficult of access. Though I don't suppose the people who have to pay extra for freight, or who actually WANT the daytrippers, would agree. As long as they never commit the ultimate sacrilege of bridging Iona.... For that, the waves should indeed rise up. **Under a certain age, there's nothing like a good construction site. Small mounds of dirt (or those enormous heaps of ploughed-up snow, if you're a Midwesterner) make such tricky mountain paths. ***From such evidence I've seen, we're not going to get the whole "Lay of Luthien," but a few bars, sotto voce.... ***I wasn't going to bring it up, but since Alice did... When I said Frodo looks like a Renaissance martyr, I didn't JUST mean he looked all lovely and suffering. That one freeze-frame in particular gives the impression his pain is crossing over into... something else. (Whew, back to work!)
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I can't believe I forgot to mention this earlier, but in the new preview material, there was a snippet of the gift-giving scene that showed Merry and Pippin giving close attention to their new Elvish daggers (not belts) -presumably the film's substitute for Blades of Westernesse! Well, this is a prime example of what Philippa Boyens was talking about when she said they were constantly finding ways to make one scene make several points - in this case, they are given gifts AND missing weaponry. The blades and sheaths were very Sting-like in design (and reproductions will no doubt be offered by WETA). I am starting to yearn for elvish cutlery myself.
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if post falls in wood * and noone is there to read it * is it a talkback *** ["noone" is, of course, one syllable.] *** like one hand clapping * there is no effing use for * one poster yapping
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morpheus? I think I remember him. Bleech. ** Moaters, he didn
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Busy day today, but I took a quick look at one of the reviews over on TORN, which stated that (in the extended version) Boromir's last stand will be "even more heroic and emotional"??!!! Is this even POSSIBLE? When it took me 18 or 20 viewings of the LESS emotional and heroic version before I could get through it without kleenex? Sometimes it would be the first arrow going in, sometimes the second, but it took me a long time before I made it past the third arrow without losing it... and just the other night, "...my Captain... my King" set me off again). Bwah, I want to see this on the big screen!!!!
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Oh ho, that System Maintenance flick makes a LOT more sense than nobody posting for 2-plus days! Can't tell you how ripped off I was feeling this morning, fully expecting a few days' worth of good Tailend, to find bupkus. So.... things still hinky? I don't even have time strike up much of a convo, dammit! Sigh. P'raps next week, there'll be less hole to dig out of... *** Hmm, after pausing for 20 minutes after typing "of..." with nothing to show for it, seems the poetic-dirty-pun lobe of my brain seems to be on the fritz. So how about a couple weeks of tribute haikus. The second line has to be "special extended version". Example: *** this wait is torture * special extended version * my thighs are moist too
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Hmm... I wonder if it is true, as one of the people who has seen the extended version posted on TORN, that once we have seen it, we will never go back to the theatrical version. From the reports coming in, this seems quite likely.... And it makes me the more unhappy that nothing has been said of releasing the longer version to the big screen. What are they thinking? Of course, we might run the risk of going broke by Christmas and having less money to pour into TTT, but it's all going into New Line's pockets, isn't it? ***By the way, does anyone know whether that army of craftspeople that worked on the film - the glassblowers, leatherworkers, weavers of Elven cloak materials, etc. - has been given any "points" in the profits? It would be nice to think they got more than a paycheck and our eternal gratitude.
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Looks like two days of talking trash about movies got wiped. Alas, that such weighty opinions and wise words are lost forever. Nice to see PB and morGy again, for I thought they had fled. What were we talking about before this TB got torpedoed? I think I was burbling on about the Ring at some point. This is what happens - I write my brain down at AICN, and then something like this happens, and I'm like completely lost - I have to send off for another one. And they charge you for replacements, you know.
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Oooooooohhhhhhhh, head hurts with the logic of it all. Darn, was hoping to read that system maintances talkback at the weekend. oh well, less that a moth to wait until i can bore my flatmate with a new versin of LotR. (She loves both book and film, and it was her that got me interested, but i have managed to take the obsession further, and i have to rewatch at least parts of the movie at least every other day. so yes, it is addictive!) And only two moths till two towers! Yay! (off topic) And only a month till eddie izzard's video! I think i will run out of money before christmas. Happy days!
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Can i have the file? Please? Pretty please? The donkeys have decided that computers are the work of evil and the matrix is happening. All we gotta do is find out what has to be destroyed/who has to be killed to start the end of this evil reign!
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Oct 18, 2002 9:43:53 AM CDT
Isn't the person who has to be killed in order to start the end
by aliceinwonderlnd
actually me? Hmm. I thought I heard that somewhere. Oh well.
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Whose arse did she kick? Mind you, kind of moving off into Silm territory there, of which my knowledge grows hazy. But of course morGy loves the Silm, because it's all about HIM. With the odd interruption from poncy Elves and scruffy Men.
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Vos ist? Yer right, Mofo. Looks like I got meself, once again, access to 2 different AICN servers for some damn reason. Not that I have any idea what happened to the version of this one everyone posted on over the 15th and 16th, but I do know I can get both System Maintenance TB's. In fact, looks like my a-bit-late-to-the-party SM "trolling" now has the glory of being FRIST! In the Bizarro replacememnt TB I try to explain just how my parallel-universe powers are working... Work for anyone else? *** Hey morG! Are you positive about those easter eggs?!? Cause that would be... that would be... well, that would just about be perfect then, wouldn't it? Good Grief. *** By the way, just to drive you good, undeserving people insane with frothing, writhing-on-the-floor jealousy, looks like tomorrow a bunch of us are trooping down to our local Cinema n Drafthouse, for the Very Last Showing Ever (in our area) of FOTR on the big screen, WITH the T2T reel, natch. With the T2T reel and, might I emphasize, beer, and a very large room of rabid fans. It's a pretty damn good screen, too, and they take good care of their prints for a second-run (and in this case 10-months-later run) theater. WOOOOO >cough-cough-ahem< (pant, wheeze) HOOOOOO! *** Well, the rest of my Friday's already shot for fun-time, so see y'all next week. Alice, I never flee for good. When I'm too busy to read AND post, I just sit in the back, try to listen in, and play mumbledypeg with BG. :) (OW! Dammit, wait your turn! MY turn, MY hand, MY knife! Now give it over!) *** jack black, ringbearer * special extended version * the one prince albert
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Oct 18, 2002 10:44:39 AM CDT
*death is the sentence* for writers of crap haiku * you'll get y
by aliceinwonderlnd
Pallando, possibly you've got a copy of that TB cached somewhere on your system. For myself, alas, System Maintenance is a mere dream, a memory. Shame, as I was enjoying it. I hate you all, people with divida players, I hate you and want to become you.
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You magnificent bastard! Reposting here so everyone knows. All is not lost
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Yay me! [WARNING: Heavy "System Maintenance" Spoilers] ...All right. What they been doin' is, switching the site over to "www.aintitcool.com" as opposed to the ol' "www.aint[hyphen]it[hyphen]cool[hyphen]news.com" From what I can figger, they started copying everything over to the new, abbreviated url on the 14th or so, but then everything posted on the old hyphenated url after that copying was left behind. And now unless you're deliberate about it, you'll get navigated to the new one, not the original, where the posts from the 15th and 16th were posted. (Am I making any sense?) So, I went to this TB, manually inserted hyphens and "news" in the url window up there, hit return and voy-lah! There it all was, everything everyone said this week up to the point I suddenly showed up and found everyone, and I mean everyone, "missing" yesterday. ...Whew. Now that that isn't bugging me like a popcorn husk stuck in the gums, I really do gotta git.
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[A husk beyond the powers of tongue and fingernail. For the LIFE of me that sucker's wedged right in there...] For now, what I just put up there is true for the off-the-front-page TBs, like this one. But, now even the hyphenated version of the SM TB goes to the new version. Oh well, thanks for playin. *** system maintenance * special extended version * lost in the ether
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...that I meant "Tour De Force" in terms of AICN TETB posts; which, ahem, could be taken as at least a backhanded compliment, and a downright insult at worst, err, depending on your particular disposition...I heard some one mention "Master of Middle Earth" by Paul H. Kocher? I'd be interested to know what the general consensus on this book is. I have a copy, copy right 1972 that unexplainably seems to have been loveted from my high school library at some point along the way. I re-read it awhile back and am curious to hear any impression by any of you familiar with the work. What did you for example think of the essay: "Middle Earth: An Imaginary World? Or Perhaps: "Sauron and the Nature of Evil"? Namarie Mellyn Trubba not, (Repeat after me...) NO TRUBBA. SM{;-0
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The new boss (who's been ignoring me all week) finally decided to drop into a chair by me and get chatty - of course, at quitting time! - so I was half an hour late leaving work last night. Had to keep an interested smile on my face while she explained the frenzied pace of litigation filings and how I'd be learning exactly the kind of hideous bureaucratic details I simply can't make my mind retain.... As soon as I could bolt, I made a beeline to Suncoast Pictures and put my pre-order in there for the Extended Version, since even amazon's expensive one-day delivery was beginning to prey on my mind as not quick enough. Must remember to cancel amazon order.... Decided to reward myself with a glass of wine and an evening of freeze-frame indulgence. I came up with some more good ones: 1) Sam and Frodo just after Sam has hauled Pippin off Frodo in the cornfield; Frodo looks so shocked and disheveled, almost disoriented, as Sam's trying to smooth him down. 2) The faces of Merry, Pippin and Sam as Frodo walks away from them toward Bilbo in Rivendell. Merry's got a mouth full of apple, and he and Pippin are grinning, while Sam is gazing after Frodo with a devotion almost equal to that at the end of the movie. In my quest to discover Frodo's Most Beautiful Moment, I may have settled on him gazing up at Galadriel after she gives him the Phial; he's so "filled with clear light" himself, suspended between peace and suffering, and you can go frame-by-frame as he tilts his head up. (God, what are court filings to such immortal moments....) ***I almost said he looked luminous, but I can never hear the word "luminous" without being reminded of Joe Orton's "Loot," the most hysterically funny play ever written, when the old father bitterly accuses another character of not being human, and adds, "You're probably luminous in the dark!" ***But back to FOTR, all of this freeze-framing confirms, over and over, how incredibly well-composed, lit, shot, designed, directed and acted this movie is. There is never a false moment; never a time when focus lapses or when the characters in the background of a scene aren't as deeply committed as the ones in the foreground. Watch Sam and Frodo steadily re-packing the pony all during Merry and Pippin's dialogue about second breakfast - or how the background fighting maintains its ferocity in Moria! ***Oh, bother, I suppose I must work....
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so satisfying**special extended version**size really matters
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Well, my strong recommendation of the book was one of the things that got erased the other day - along with my long tale about how I spent MONTHS hunting down a copy for a onetime pen pal, who 1) never read it, 2) read "The Hobbit," said she "like it" but never went on to LOTR, despite two years of my pleading (and begging her NOT to read "The Hobbit" first), and 3) was largely indifferent to FOTR. When I think how few copies there must be left, and how one of them is just SITTING there, unread, when I had impressed on this person how MUCH the book meant to me and how much trouble I had gone to to find a copy for her.... (Grrr, pant, pant.) However, not having it at work, I can't get into any serious debate on the contents. I just love the many points it makes, and urge everyone to hunt it down at the library, at least. Skyway, if you have it with you, or a better memory than mine, feel free to quote.
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Perhaps I
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I hope this gets placed somewhere readable. Right. All your comments about this book, master of middle earth, has got me interested, so i looked on amazon. The uk site does have some second hand copies, but they have an addvert for a book by paul Kocher (i'm assuming thats the same author) "master of middle eath" (but only as paperback) that's being re-released: "Paperback - 224 pages new edition (7 November, 2002) Pimlico; ISBN: 0712636978" Is this the same book? the synopsis mentions the chapter sauron and the nature of evil.
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Thanks MorGy for the info. some of those blades look great. i thought the whole book was based upon the eagles (just kidding!)
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... why don't we let the damn thing make the rounds in the snail mails? I'll get a foam rubber lined box for it and folks can just forward it on when they've finished with it. You'd take care of it right? *** Quotes and comentary in a bit. I've got to refamiliarize myself with the the text, it's been several months...
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Yes, I know that one was a groaner, but ya'll can take it, right? Somebody HAD to say it, after all. PB - was that screening at the Alamo Drafthouse? Didn't see it in the Chronicle listings. MorGy - did you get my email re: the file? Sent it through my work email and the attachment might not make it through our rather restrictive server. If it doesn't, try the address linked to my user id. Thanks in advance! I'm definately going to check out the book you recommended. New cool stuff to read - bliss. Is it too late to get on the list for Harry's book?
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If shown in theatres / special extended version / Deep Vein Thrombosis.
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I think I mentioned before that I was a member of my high school marching band (1st chair flute/piccolo 1971-1974, thank you very much!) - and that we actually DID play "Smoke on the Water" and "Joy to the World". I'm happy to report that this storied ensemble is still cutting edge in its repertoire. My mother attended a recent Friday night football game and she told me that the band's halftime show had a LOTR theme. Sadly, she couldn't give me any details about the music, only that it was about LOTR and that they brought some kind of arches (bridges?) onto the field and marched across them. I can only imagine what that was all about.***Miami, what a great soundtrack for a long nighttime drive! Allow me to attempt a tenuous connection between Mr. Keen's album and Professor Tolkien. James McMurtry wrote "Levelland", which REK covered beautifully on "Picnic". James' father, as I'm sure you know, is Larry McMurtry. While JRRT created a mythology for England, L. McMurtry sought to de-mythologize Texas in several of his novels, most notably "Lonesome Dove".
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Peter Jackson
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So they're saying over on TORN that TTT is finished. Does this mean I can see it now? I mean, like, right now? Not, in a little bit, but NOW?!?
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(bangs on ceiling with broomhandle) Guys! It's hosed!
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If HP makes more at the box office than TTT I'll be very surprised. And speaking of HP, when is bloody JKR going to release the next book? I've been waiting over a year for this book now. I thought the whole idea was to release one book each year so that Harry Potter and his young fans would grow up together. At this rate the original 8 year old fans will be retired before Harry hits puberty. It's just God damned typical, now that she's made her millions she couldn't care less about the fans. And then there's poor Harry, suck at the Dursleys while Voldemorts on the loose again. Oh what will become of poor, poor Harry? And will the sexual tension between Hermione and Ron ever come to anything? Man I hate addictive books. They must be putting nicotine in the ink, or something. I think I need to pop outside the building for five minutes and read a quick chapter or two. :-)
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I know! "The Page You Were Looking For Could Not Be Found" totally kicks the ass of all films about crying midgets and speccy broom-riding wizards. It rocks. And I think you are a tad harsh on JKR, BG, IMHO. Sometimes inspiration dries up, sometimes you get so worked up about not dissappointing people, that it starts to get to your creative process. I mean, she could be on a yacht somewhere, laughing it up, or alternatively she could be tearing her hair out with writer's block. Hard to say.
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i say we stay here until the other talkback settles down, then colonise it! Once they've got bored of the purile jokes, we'll give them the dirty hikues. Hehehe. Anyway, this one may be hosed, but at least it's not broken yet. And BG, you are just being mean! But i agree that the damn books are almost as addictive as lotrs! sigh, supposedly the next ones out at christmas, although i'm beginning to doubt that as surely they would have given us much more warning and hype. I wanna find out what happens! Wanna find out whether dumbledore is actually really really shifty and evil! And i STILL have to wait for fellowship and towers! But, the films thankfully just as interesting, despite having watched it practically every other day. Gimli mutters in dwarfish at balins tomb! I never noticed it before until i read it at torn!
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...to be honest my post about JKR was only semi-serious. I'm sure the reason for the perpetually forthcoming fifth book is not due to JKR 'selling out'. That was just my frustration talking. Maybe she's caught Tolkien disease and can't publish a book until it's been revised and rewritten many, many times. And what's all this about Dumbledore! He can't be evil! That would be like Gandalf turning out to be Sauron in disguise. *** Miami - I can see the headlines now - "Prime Minister declares national emergency as Miami madman tours the country leaving a trail of destruction in his wake. One distraught local commented 'The Golf courses alone will take years to recover.'" ;-)
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Inconceivable! You didn
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Everyone is evil! Grrrrrr to dumbledore. but no, seriously, he's definitly very shifty by the end of the fourth book. i can't get the line outa me head! once he finds out dumbledore has overcome the curse that wouldm't allow him to touch harry, he's described as having a triumphant gleam in his eye!
And i've decided that there is no threat from britain in the world, except for the incompetence of our rail service! DoT, thanks for the email, finally got lycos to cooperate with my computer again, and i'm checking it more often. i've not been sent junk mail through it for at least 10 days! Personal best for them i think! -
In that case, do what you feel you must. Sorry, Mofo, I missed your post the first time around. I don
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I don't know whether it was my ISP or a funky router somewhere or the site was down or at least on it's knees or what, but I haven't been able to load this page for days! Anyone else in the same boat? Well the time away has been well spent upon a partial re-reading of "Master of Middle Earth". The first thing that strikes me is that it was written before the publication of the Silmarillion. It was published in 72, and so was probably written during the preceding 2 or three years. The author's insights into Tolkien's work are at times, IMO, astonishing, then taken in this context. This collection of essays was produced before the great glut of criticism, paparazzi, Tolkien Geeks, TSR, Dungeons and Dragons, Renaissance Faires, SCA, and the rest of the great tale's motley progeny. More simply put I don't know how this guy figured out all the things he did without the Silmarillion as a reference. It lies chiefly I think, in the fact that he made very careful examinations of not only LOTR, with especial attention paid to the appendices it would seem, and The Hobbit, but also of JRRT
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