Over at The Barleyshakes website there’s a wee mention of the music that Barleyshakes bandmembers recorded in NZ with the NZ Symphony Orchestra for Howard Shore’s LOTR score. [More]
Month: June 2001
A Tolkien fan in Japan did some enquiries into how much awareness there is of LOTR in Japan. Why am I beating this story to death? Because my mind boggles imagining what the LOTR movies are going to do in a big, powerful culture that is so unaware of Tolkien and yet so apparently ready for him! [More]
We got this from “A frustrated (American) Tolkien Fan in Japan,” who’s really looked into the LACK of a ‘LOTR craze’ in Japan. Seeing how things stand at present, it’s possible that this country will go absolutely wild when they see LOTR after having had [apparently] no access to a good translation in print, which is what I’m learning. I’m very curious to see what that could lead to. Here is what our correspondent wrote:
“Regarding the “relative lack of popularity and awareness of LOTR” in Japan, after recovering from my shock of having to wait 3 extra months, I queried several of my co-workers here in Tokyo.
Most are male, Japanese, techie/engineering types, mid 20’s to late 30’s. Most have heard of the name (the old name is “Yubiwa-Monogatari”, The Tale of the Ring; the movie site is pushing a phoenetic version of “Lord of the Ring”, which sounds much cooler), but none of them have read it and none of them knew anything about a movie being made. Role-playing games are huge over here, and translations of Harry Potter crap are all over the place. I have no idea what’s up with Tolkien’s works.
A quick check of Amazon.co.jp lists several printings of LoTR (1972, 1977, 1992), various Hobbits, a Silmarillion (1981), and a couple other works by Tolkien. Just about all of them were translated by one or both of the same two people.
For whatever reason, there is bad market penetration in Japan for LoTR”.
Over at
That MovieLine poll yesterday that had ‘LOTR’ votes removed did so for a reason. Somebody from Movieline explains:
” I had to remove all those entries because most were entered by the same person and also because Lord of the Rings doesn’t come out until this fall, Not this summer. Rest assured I did not remove any votes for movies valid for the poll. I will have a poll for the fall movies, in the fall. I’m sorry for the inconvenience.
Thanks, Al”
And thanks to Eowyn for that news.
Note from Calisuri: Okay, okay – this would be my fault! Don’t worry folks, we’ll get the next web poll! heh :’P
Why did they change that? Whenever there’s a change to the storyline in the films, thousands of sharp minds start guessing why those changes exist. Here’s some insights and best guesses. !SPOILERS! [More]