David writes: The largest TV company here in Sweden were airing a commersial about some kind of a olympic games documentary. It was named something like “The Olympic Rings” refering to the olympic symbol. [More]
Day: January 21, 2002
From: David
It was only a few minutes ago that I heard my sister scream for me to turn on the TV. Channel 2 of SVT, the largest TV company here in Sweden were airing a commersial about some kind of a olympic games documentary. It was named something like “The Olympic Rings” refering to the olympic symbol.
The thing that made me jump up and scream was what they used to play on the rings theme in the commersial. They used the LoTR trailer.
What I saw was the full third trailer played by Swedish actors dressed up as athletes. Instead of nazgûls there were hockey players from Finland, instead of the ring there were the five olympic rings and so on. It was hilarious! The whole show ended with “Spelen kan börja” (May the games begin) and someone dressed as Gandalf smashing his staff to the ground!
siverjam sends this in from Roger Friedman with Fox News: The big surprises of the night: that Lord of the Rings was completely shut out of the winning. This movie was the odds-on favorite, and certainly a perfect Golden Globe winner if ever there was one. But a lot of people I spoke to said that the movie’s made “too much money” – how do you like that! – and that the Hollywood Foreign Press (which has suddenly become the bastion of respectability after years of being loony) wanted something more artistic. Thus, their choice of A Beautiful Mind.
CBS is re-broadcasting the December 11th ‘David Letterman’ show with Elijah Wood (Frodo) as a special guest. The re-broadcast will air on Friday, January 25th.
A number of people – including LOTR film languages expert David Salo – wrote in to warn us that the books about Tolkien’s languages that we recommneded are out of date and contain some errors. [More]
Several people wrote to warn us all that the books currently in print that teach Elvish are ‘seriously out of date.’
Jeremy wrote about the Ruth Noel book:
“Noel’s book in particular was published in 1980 – before the History of Middle Earth (HOME) or any of the subsequent work published in Vinyar Tengwar. So many of her suppositions turned out to be wrong.”
Sulien did like Noel’s “The Languages of Middle-earth and said why:
“It has a complete table with all of the values of the tengwar and cirthas, as well as a fairly complete English to Elvish (and vice versa) dictionary up to and including words from the Silmarillion. It also has sections on Khuzdul (Dwarvish) as well as Hobbitish and some of the Mannish languages (Rohirric) (sp?). The book also goes on to explain some of the derivations Tolkien took from “real world” languages. I would recommend this book VERY highly for anyone interested in learning Elvish.
The final word comes from David Salo, Elvish language specialist employed on the Rings films:
“I read your notice on Elvish books below, and just wanted to point out that while these books are available, they are in fact either very much out of date (“An Introduction to Elvish”) or were not particularly good to begin with (“The Languages of Middle-earth”). People trying to learn Elvish languages may be seriously misled by these books. “The best resource currently available on Tolkien’s languages is Helge Fauskanger’s web site Ardalambion I am now looking for a publisher for my own book on the type of Elvish (Sindarin) most used in the movie, which will help people understand the work that I did in Tolkien language translation for The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.”
Here’s a link to an article on Elvish.org that explains the shortcomings of that book. {More Talking of book-buying, this came in from David New:
“You may like to know that there is a truly excellent little bookshop in Oxford (our beloved Prof’s home for many a year) called Thorntons. It has that small bookshop charm that is lacking in the high street these days and they offer a good range of old editions of LOTR as well as old calendars and a few books such as the “Introduction to Elvish” you mentioned. If ever you’re in Oxford, check it out. I have a sneaky suspicion that JRRT may have visited this shop in times gone by, it is but a short walk from Merton.”