Bidu writes: The 23rd edition of the Portuguese Festróia Cinema Festival (June 1st-10th), will honour Christopher Lee with a Career Award this year. The full article (in Portuguese) can be found here.
Day: June 6, 2007
Matt Blessing, head of The Department of Special Collections and University Archives, writes: June 7th marks the 50th anniversary of Marquette University acquiring the literary manuscripts of J.R.R. Tolkien. More information about the anniversary, new materials in the collection, and details about an upcoming presentation by John Rateliff, may be accessed online here.
Celebriel writes: Anyone headed to London this summer to see “The Lord of the Rings” musical or Orlando Bloom in “In Celebration” should check flights on Virgin Airways – they are offering free LOTR amenity kits on flights to the UK in economy, including a travel wallet with a Lord of the Rings bag tag, “Precious Sleep” eyeshades, socks adorned with a quote from Gandalf, and a limited edition gold pen. [More]
On Stephens Island in New Zealand’s storm-wracked Cook Strait, the tuatara—one of the most ancient reptile species on Earth—is getting a hand from distinctly 21st-century science (see a New Zealand map). Researchers have placed in the wild a very special male that, like its wild cousins, can put on physical displays to establish its dominance. But this reptile’s skin is made of rubber, not scales, and its “heart” is a nickel-cadmium battery. The alpha male in question is “Robo-Ollie,” a robotic tuatara created to help researchers understand the behavior of these rare reptiles, the last species in a family that dates back 200 million years. [More]
Don’t believe the mockers. The latest posthumous work of Tolkien is a masterpiece around the Wagnerian or Sophoclean theme of unconscious incest. Dragon slayers are of perennial fascination, whether they be Saint Michael the Archangel, Bel, Saint George or Perseus killing the sea monster that holds Andromeda prisoner. Modern literature has Ged, the Wizard of Earthsea, banishing the Dragon of Pendor from Ursula le Guin’s Archipelago; or even Harry Potter thrusting his sword through the mouth of the Basilisk. Yet there is no dragon of whom I have read, or whom I have seen on stage – not Fafner himself in Siegfried – who is quite so frightening as Glaurung, the dragon in JRR Tolkien’s The Children of Hurim. [More]