Over the last few weeks I’ve had the pleasure of chatting with the wonderful Conan Stevens (Bolg) about his life and career.
Month: October 2013
We’ve all been wondering at the relative absence of poster artwork for The Desolation of Smaug. Well, this new poster featuring Thranduil, Legolas and Tauriel may help whet the appetite! Continue reading “Brand-new poster artwork for The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug!”
If you’re a bit of a vinyl fan (confession: I am), you’ll find this news about The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug soundtrack quite exciting. Apparently it’s going to be released on good old-fashioned vinyl on December 3. Continue reading “Soundtrack for The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug to be released on vinyl!”
There are many places, stories and events which are said to have been influences on J R R Tolkien in his tales of Middle-earth. One which has long intrigued the Professor’s fans is Perrott’s Folly in the West Midlands, England. This extraordinary tower is located in the Edgbaston area of Birmingham, near where Tolkien lived as a boy. It is a 96 foot tall structure, built by John Perrott in 1758 for some reason which is unknown today – possibly it was simply a status symbol, though the more romantic belief is that he wanted a building from which he could see his wife’s grave 15 miles away (even though she was still alive when first Perrott built the tower; the sceptics say he was in fact using it to spy on her infidelities…)
You can read more about Perrott’s Folly and its supposed influence on Tolkien here. Normally this strange building is not open to the public; visitors on the Tolkien Trail in Birmingham are turned away, disappointed. However, next Saturday, 26th October, the Folly will be open for a ‘Drawing Event’, organized by Trident Reach the People Charity, which manages the building. The occasion will be a family friendly, experimental art event, where mirrors, odd objects and noise will be used to imagine how Perrott’s Folly might look, sound and function in the future.
The day will run from 11am to 5pm, and is free and open to all. You can read more about it here. If you’re in the area, don’t miss this great opportunity to see inside a landmark which would have been very familiar to J R R Tolkien, and which just might have been a seed for one of his ‘Two Towers’.
[Click here to find out more about Trident Reach the People’s Folly Project.]
The CBC radio show Ideas ran this interesting two part series on C.S Lewis and the Inklings.
In the first podcast Frank Faulk explores the early life of C.S. Lewis, and the experiences that would shape him on his journey to becoming one of the 20th century’s greatest thinkers and writers on Christianity. In part two Faulk looks at C.S. Lewis’s conversion from atheism to Christianity, and his deep friendship with Tolkien, Barfield and Williams.
You can download Part One and Part Two here.
A big thank you to Ringer weaver for sending us the podcast.
I love Kermit the Frog to bits, but I think he’s got some competition! Thorin Puppetshield is the work of illustrator, crafter and artist Rosemary Travale, and it’s quite, quite brilliant. Thanks to Ringer MJSpice for the heads-up!
Over the summer I decided I wanted to attempt to make a muppet-style puppet. It’s something that I’ve always wanted to try and when I was joking with a friend that Richard Armitage’s Thorin Oakenshield would make a good muppet, things just sort of came together. In between working on my stop motion thesis film at school this year, I’ve put in some time here and there to finish this!