Welcome to The Great Hall of Poets, our regular monthly feature showcasing the talent of Middle-earth fans. Each month we will feature a small selection of the poems submitted, but we hope you will read all of the poems that we have received here in our Great Hall of Poets.
So come and join us by the hearth and enjoy!
If you have a Tolkien/Middle-earth inspired poem you’d like to share, then send it to poetry@theonering.netOne poem per person may be submitted each month. Please make sure to proofread your work before sending it in. TheOneRing.net is not responsible for poems posting with spelling or grammatical errors.
Viggo Mortensen in Captain Fantastic.PARK CITY, UTAH — Viggo Mortensen is back to his ranging ways, living off the land and keeping an eye on trouble in his new film “Captain Fantastic.” TORn spoke with him on the red carpet at the film’s world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival.
Mortensen plays a father who, along with his wife, decided to raise his children off the grid — way off. He wants to raise his six children to be self reliant in a way that LOTR character Aragorn would be proud of. His offspring can stalk and kill deer with knives, they climb mountains, harvest edible food, learn to make their own clothes and are self reliant in every way. And along the way read the best books.
They are, in short, philosopher kings.
So the actor did look back at that character and filming experience on “Lord of the Rings,” with Peter Jackson?
“I thought of it,” he said. “But I also thought of my time as a father in Idaho.”
He spent time with his son there and in the film he has more, but in both he said he was teaching to be aware of nature.
Viggo Mortensen in new film Captain Fantastic“You are only as good as the team you are working with,” said Mortensen. “It is about a family. And made by a family.”
He said the cast spent time before filming getting to know each other and learning the skills needed to be authentic on screen. They camped and learned how to grow food and skin a deer and learned to play music together, all of which were important to the film.
The children’s performances are all excellent, as is Mortensen’s. The film captivated Sundance audiences and good news for Mortensen and film fans, it was also picked up for distribution by Bleeker Street. It specializing in specialty cinema and has this year’s “Trumbo” (Bryan Cranston of “Breaking Bad” fame as lead actor) and should hit audiences in July. UPDATE: The film is slowly rolling out in theaters across the U.S. in July.
The audience at its premiere at the Eccles Theater, the largest venue Sundance offers with over 1,300 seats, responded mightily the film’s opening night. Director and writer Matt Ross, who you might know as Alby Grant from HBO’s “Big Love,” received a standing ovation, as did the children. But it was Moretensen who received the hottest reception. He is a pillar of the film. His character is sympathetic and yet outside societal norms.
Mortensen is perfect for the part and it is difficult to imagine the film working as well without him.
“Good movies ask a lot of questions but don’t necessarily answer them,” Ross told TORn just before the premiere.
In “Captain Fantastic,” Mortensen’s family must leave its forest paradise and journey into the highly-populated world with all its social expectations and demands. They all must face traditional society and family bonds and the children’s unconventional education are tested — to the limit.
“I am a dad and there is no such thing as a perfect father and mother. This character is doing the best he can,” Mortensen said.
The film wasn’t rated at Sundance but the unconventional cast isn’t afraid to use unconventional language that may earn it an R rating. And, Mortensen having a cup of coffee in his birthday suit probably erases any chance of it being anything else. Yes, Mortensen gives the film everything he has to offer.
“Captain Fantastic” is full of ideas, exploring family and fatherhood. Some parents will leaving feeling horribly inadequate but audiences will be fulfilled by the intelligent ideas and questions the film asks.
Fans of Mortensen will not want to miss yet another fascinating role in a fascinating film.
Welcome to the Week in Tolkien Cosplay! Each week, we’ll be picking a few of our favorite Tolkien-inspired costumes. If you’d like to be considered for an upcoming post, please send in your photo and the following information to cosplay@theonering.net
Name (can be a nickname if you’d rather not have your secret identity revealed)
Who you are cosplaying as
Photographers name (if known)
A short bio (such as: who made the costume, how long it took to make, and any other details about it you’d like to share
Characters: Kili, Bofur, Thorin, Fili, Bilbo Baggins, Legolas
Photographer: Shinigami Photography
Bio: This Family was brought together by a love of all things Tolkien. A lot of love and hard work went into all of these costumes (for Legolas, it was their first ever handmade costume, and the first big armour build for Thorin!), down to the contract that was hand-written by Kili, the incredible detailing on Bofur and Kili, and the incredible beard and wig work.
Name: Alex Oakenshield
Character: Thorin Oakenshield
Photographer: Antonio Casorio
Bio: I made the whole costume by myself, took me a few months and a lot of elbow juice. It’s made out of pvc and other thermoplastics, the picture was taken in August, It was unbearably hot that day under all those layers! I have made almost every single outfit that Thorin wears in The Hobbit trilogy but this one is absolutely my favorite. Being a greedy dwarf inside I guess I can’t resist the dragon sickness. Cheers from Italy!
Name: Kayoss Cosplay
Character: Eowyn
Photographer: Isotropic Photography
Bio: When I first read the Lord of the Rings in the late 90’s, I felt an instant connection to Eowyn and since then she’s been one of my all time favorite literary characters. So for my first ever cosplay I decided to make her Dernhelm battle armour from Return of the King. I made everything entirely by hand, including the sword and chainmaille, the latter of which I individually cut and sanded from 12 metres of PVC pipe. All up it took me 6-7 months to complete the costume. This photo was taken in Middlemarch, New Zealand near where the Rohan scenes were filmed. Unfortunately I couldn’t fit my helmet and shield in my bag to bring them to the shoot too, but nevertheless it was a priceless experience!
Glaurung the dragon, one of the chief weapons Morogth used to defeat the Eldar in Beleriand. Artwork: John Howe.
Welcome to our latest Library feature, in which Andrew B shares his theories about the “Were-worms” from The Hobbit. Personally I’d always envisaged them as lesser flightless dragons of the line of Glaurung and not the escapees from Arrakis that we saw in The Battle of the Five Armies, so I found Andrew’s ideas very interesting 🙂
If you have a Tolkien/Middle-earth inspired poem you’d like to share, then send it to poetry@theonering.net. One poem per person may be submitted each month. Please make sure to proofread your work before sending it in. TheOneRing.net is not responsible for poems posting with spelling or grammatical errors.
It’s been almost a year since The One Last Party, but we haven’t forgotten it, and we didn’t want Peter Jackson to think we’d forgotten about him either. As you may remember, one of the promises we made on the Indiegogo campaign was that we would send Peter a “thank you” card. To be exact, we said, “Your name will go on an EPIC ‘thank you’ card we will present or send to Peter Jackson, from fans everywhere, to express our appreciation for the immense effort he and his cast and crew have put into the epic journey of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit films.”
After the campaign ended, the TORn staff began brainstorming how to get all the names on one card – there were a lot of them! We decided to create a keepsake ‘Red Book’ for Peter. TORn staffer and designer, Mithril (Nancy Steinman), found a gorgeous leather journal and then designed and illustrated the interior pages and bound them into the book. Out of the 194 pages of the journal, 180 of them were the list of names!
Peter now has his journal, but we thought all of you deserved something to remember that fantastic night, too (besides your gift bags), so Mithril reached out with some questions to one of the party planners who was absolutely instrumental in making the party happen. Following is the interview with TORn Senior Staffer greendragon, and scroll down to see some photos of the journal and the party.
Welcome to The Great Hall of Poets, our regular monthly feature showcasing the talent of Middle-earth fans. Each month we will feature a small selection of the poems submitted, but we hope you will read all of the poems that we have received here in our Great Hall of Poets.
