The “Hobbits” are homeless. Again. In 1978, Mike Canavan painted a mural based on the “An Unexpected Party” scene from the first chapter of J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Hobbit.” The painting was large 40 feet long and 11 feet high and made up of 11 panels. Mike painted the mural as a billboard when he worked a part-time college job for Richards Of Course, the outdoor advertiser. Those were the days when billboards all were hand-painted. The Hobbits need a new place to party
Category: Miscellaneous
Gary Kamiyawrites: Robert Zemeckis’ new film “Beowulf” gives a whole new meaning to the phrase “the sublime and the ridiculous.” Zemeckis took the oldest and most important text of our ur-language, and turned it into a 3-D Disneyland ride so cheesy he should have called it “Anglo-Saxons of the Caribbean.” Of course, there’s nothing new or surprising about this. Hollywood has been profaning history and literature since long before Cecil B. DeMille cast Charlton Heston as Moses. If the Bible isn’t sacred, why should the oldest poem in our ancestral language be?But the “Beowulf” travesty is especially glaring, because of the obvious contrast with another work that mined the same ancient field: J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings.” “Beowulf” isn’t just a bad, although visually spectacular, movie, it’s a huge missed opportunity. With enough imaginative audacity, Zemeckis could have created a mythical universe, one that finds the mysterious threads that connect the distant past to our time. Instead, he turned our shared cultural heritage into a cartoon. (This hasn’t hurt “Beowulf” at the box office: It was the highest-grossing movie in the country after its first weekend.) Beowulf vs. The Lord of the Rings
From hisdarkmaterials.org: Today New Line launced the first teaser trailer for The Golden Compass. This trailer will also be shown in cinemas together with Pirates of the Caribbean 3. It is interesting to note that various scenes from the trailer were also shown at the (Cannes Film Festival) press screening. [More]
New computerized casts of abnormally small Homo sapiens brains are reigniting the debate over the skeletal remains nicknamed “The Hobbit.” Ever since the 18,000-year-old remains of the three-foot-tall adult female hominid were unearthed in 2003 on the remote Indonesian island of Flores, scientists have argued whether the specimen was a human with an abnormally small head or represents a new species in the human family tree. The diminutive creature had a brain approximately one-third the size of modern adult humans. [More]
So what’s with all the head-banging bookworms? Brazilian heavy-metal band Sepultura released Dante XXI, an album based on Dante’s Divine Comedy. And Mastodon recently became metal’s newest stars with Leviathan, a Moby Dick-inspired album with songs such as “I Am Ahab” and “Seabeast.” With its preoccupation with evil, dry ice and alternately shrieking and growling vocals, heavy metal has come by its goofball image honestly. But wearing leather and spikes doesn’t mean you don’t crack open a book occasionally. [More]
Moviefone.com collected millions of votes from movie fans everywhere and the results are now official. According to moviegoers, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is the Movie of the Year! Although each Harry Potter film has been nominated for Movie of the Year, Goblet of Fire is the first movie in the series to take the top prize.
In addition, Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon were voted Actor and Actress of the Year, respectively, for their roles in Walk the Line. Click below to see the full list of winners including Sexiest Kiss, Most Hysterical Performance, Biggest Badass and more. [More]