Today (January 4th) is actor Graham McTavish’s birthday – Happy Birthday to him from everyone here at TORn! Back at the start of December, our favourite tattooed dwarf sat down with TORn staffer greendragon, to chat about The Hobbit, about his latest project (playing Dougal MacKenzie in the Outlander series), and to reveal what it’s like to spend months working with a bunch of sweaty men in fat suits – and even to risk inviting them over for parties! Continuing greendragon’s ‘Inside the Middle-earth Actor’s Studio’ series, McTavish also discussed at length his approach to acting, what he sees as the greatest challenge in creating a role, and how he began his career on the stage. McTavish is an excellent raconteur, and there were many laughs during the conversation – read on to find out all that he had to say.
Continue reading “Graham McTavish talks exclusively to TheOneRing.net”
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From scientific american.com: What does a narcissistic flying reptile that loves the taste of crispy dwarves have in common with a beetle that shoots hot, caustic liquid from its butt? More than you think.
A few weeks ago, audiences were finally treated to the Cumberbatch-infused reptilian villain from J.R.R. Tolkien’s classic The Hobbit. Smaug (pronounced and interpreted as if you smashed together “smug” and “smog”) is a terrible dragon that long ago forced a population of dwarves from under a mountain. He laid claim to all their treasures. He burned all their homes. The titular character of the book is then tasked with helping a company of these displaced dwarves take back the mountain from the beast. It wouldn’t be easy—the most common descriptor of a dragon is “fire-breathing,” after all. But unlike other aspects of the book and now the film that are wholly magic, Smaug’s burning breath is actually one of the least magical, and can be wrangled into plausibility. Doing so involves looking inside a beetle’s butt, a Boy Scout’s satchel, and a bird’s throat. [Read More]
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We know that Tolkien fans are a creative bunch – we’ve seen fan made paintings, drawings, sculptures, even cakes! The latest Hobbity handicrafts to come to our attention are the brilliant creations of a lady in Wales. Denise Salway knits characters from the Hobbit films, planning her own designs and sometimes taking over a month for one piece! Readers may have seen her work on twitter, where she is @KnittingWitchUK, and where Stephen Hunter and Graham McTavish have admired her knitted Dwalin and Bombur! Read more about her amazing work – and see some stunning photographs – in this article.
Share your own artistic endeavours from Middle-earth at our ‘Fan Art’ page on the message boards.
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From boingboing.net; Michelle Nijhuis’s five year old daughter insisted that Bilbo Baggins was a girl. After arguing about it for a while, Michelle decided to read her The Hobbit, switching Bilbo’s gender-pronoun throughout. And it worked brilliantly. Bilbo is a great heroine: “tough, resourceful, humble, funny, and uses her wits to make off with a spectacular piece of jewelry. Perhaps most importantly, she never makes an issue of her gender — and neither does anyone else.”
Continue reading “Gender switched Bilbo makes The Hobbit a better read”
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In this piece, Matt Lebovic of The Times of Israel explores the eternally fascinating question of the parallels between Tolkien’s dwarves and the Jewish people. Allegory is almost certainly too strong a word for the relationship, the quotes that Lebovic draws from Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien and various interviews make clear Tolkien’s dislike of the allegorical style (although Leaf by Niggle makes one wonder and Letters #241 and #153 provide conflicting evidence there), and his sincere admiration of the Jewish people.
Edit to quote from Letter #153:
…I might say in my myth I have used ‘subcreation’ in a special way (not the same as ‘subcreation’ as a term in criticism in art, though I tried allegorically [emphasis mine] how that might come to be taken up into Creation in some plane in my ‘purgatorial’ story Leaf by Niggle (Dublin Review 1945))…
Couple of quick points of nit-picking: the Company has 13 dwarves, not 12, it’s Middle-earth not Middle Earth, and arguably Khazad-dûm (Moria) is more accurately the spiritual home of the Dwarves (especially of the Longbeards of Durin’s line) rather than Erebor. As a point of trivia, the Dwarves eventually reclaim Khazad-dum under Durin VII sometime in the Fourth Age. As for the Arkenstone, some people hold that, within the Legendarium, it might have been a Silmaril, but that seems unlikely to this writer. Continue reading “Are Tolkien’s dwarves an allegory for the Jewish people?”
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.
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John D. Rateliff is one of the foremost experts on J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit. He is, of course, the author of the two-part book The History of The Hobbit which was published in 2007. It is considered the definitive examination of how the book came to be.
So just what does Rateliff think of Peter Jackson’s newest installment of his three-film adaptation? He’s blogged about it on his own website. Follow the link to his blog to find out. Choice quote: Continue reading “John D. Rateliff reviews The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug”
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.
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