Classic FM’s Movie Music Chart is the world’s largest survey of film music tastes. Every year they ask…
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Classic FM’s Movie Music Chart is the world’s largest survey of film music tastes. Every year they ask people to vote for their favourite film scores – and Howard Shore’s The Lord Of The Rings score was at the top in 2012 . They are asking all LOTR/Hobbit fans if we would like to get behind his music and ensure his great scores remain at the top.
Voting is now open and will remain open till 11:59pm Monday (UK time). Click here to register your vote!
With all the product images of the “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey Extended Edition,” hitting the interwebs, we checked in with Warner Bros. to see what was official. We were told there are currently three official images for the three official editions. One each for the 3D Blu-ray set, the Blu-ray version and the DVD version. (And hey, how cool would it be to have them on VHS tape to go with the many copies of “Fellowship of the Ring,” that were sold to those who hadn’t converted to DVD yet? Sorry for the digression). We have them all below and you can click on them for much bigger versions. Anything else floating out there, including the collector’s set, aren’t yet approved from the studio. That isn’t to say they aren’t genuine, but so far, they aren’t official.
If you click on any of the three images below it takes you to a page of that image only and if you click again, you get a much bigger version — for you folks who love the details. Updates when more details are available.
During the first month of this century, Tolkien fans were asking the following questions to our Green Books staff at TheOneRing.net…
Q: Dear Everybody, I was just curious as to when it is Frodo’s and Bilbo’s birthday according to our calendar? I really enjoy your site, keep up the great work.
– Dan
A: Frodo and Bilbo shared their birthday on September 22nd, as stated in “The Long-Expected Party.” The Hobbits called this month Halimath. The duration of the solar year for Middle-earth was the exact same as that of our Earth; namely 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, 45 seconds (see Tolkien’s note in The Return of the King, Appendix D, “Shire Calendar”). So we are basically measuring the same span of time but with a different enumeration of days. Small differences in each month’s duration make it a little tricky to compare the Shire Calendar to our Gregorian Calendar. We have months with 28, 30, or 31 days, but every Shire month is exactly 30 days. But look very closely, and you’ll see Tolkien added days like 1 Yule, 2 Yule, the Midyear’s Day, etc. It’s enough to cross your eyeballs!
I managed to do a simple overlay of our current year 2000 (which is a Leap Year here in the United States) with the Shire Calendar table. I added the Overlithe holiday the Hobbits would have used for their Leap Year (as we would add February 29th) and counted forward to find the equivalent of Halimath 22nd. It turns out Frodo and Bilbo’s birthday falls on the day we call September 23rd… at least this Leap Year. Any other year it would fall on September 22nd. But don’t ask me to calculate for the Chinese or Hebrew calendars, I claim no talent in mathematics!
Update!
I saw the question you answered about Frodo and Bilbo’s birthday in relation to our calendar, and looked it up in Appendix D. I noticed that it says that the hobbits’ Midyear’s Day corresponded to the summer solstice, making our New Year’s Day the hobbits’ January 9. Therefore, Bilbo and Frodo’s birthday would be September 12th (13th in leap years).
– David Massey
Interesting process of calculation, David! I am afraid I’ve spent too many years counting my own branches and little else, leaving me ill-equiped for higher forms of algebra.
