The opening line ‘Listen!’ is not a proclamation and should not have an exclamation mark, according to new research by an academic at the University of Manchester.
It is perhaps the most important word in one of the greatest and most famous sentences in the history of the English language.
Yet for more than two centuries “hwæt” has been misrepresented as an attention-grabbing latter-day “yo!” designed to capture the interest of its intended Anglo-Saxon audience urging them to sit down and listen up to the exploits of the heroic monster-slayer Beowulf.
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.
Part one of this spotlight on Evangeline Lilly and her character Tauriel was published yesterday. Click here to read it.
(Evangeline Lilly as Tauriel.)In the first part of this story, Evangeline Lilly discussed her childhood love for “The Hobbit,” and her decision-making process that led her to move her family to New Zealand and work with director Peter Jackson as a character not found in J.R.R. Tolkien’s 75-year-old classic. She plays an elf in the forest kingdom of Thranduil where his son Legolas also lives.
How does an actor differentiate her character in a set of films stuffed full with grand, immortal elves?
“Somebody asked me, ‘Did you study a lot of the other elves? The performances of the elves from Rings to do this role?’ I said distinctly ‘no.’ I intentionally didn’t re-watch the movies because I was afraid of trying to copy someone’s performance and I wanted it to be original.”
“All the other elves you’ve ever seen in these movies are at least twice my age, at least twice Tauriel’s age, so they are very wise and they’re very well established in their power and their understanding of the world. I’ve intentionally tried to demonstrate that she’s not there yet. She’s young, she’s only 600 years old and in elven terms, that is so young. She’s just a baby.”
Lilly is even playing some layers of the role in a way she wants those diehard fans to understand.
“I like the idea of playing with a young elf, how would they behave? How would they be different from the aged elves? And I hope that it doesn’t come across as wrong, you know what I mean? I hope it doesn’t come across to people who really know the world as she’s not quite got it down. Because that’s my goal, to not quite have it.
“She wants to be as wise, she wants to be as much of a presence as all of her elders but she’s not. She’s a kid and there’s a part of her that is always a little too excited about things or maybe a little too engaged in the world, the way kids can get. And I think that was something I wanted to tell the really diehard fans.
WELLINGTON, New Zealand — Those outside of the movie making business often don’t understand what The Producer does on a film. The quickest answer is: They get the movie made. They get things done.
In the case of Zane Weiner on “The Hobbit,” it meant getting in touch with someone nobody was meant to get in touch with.
Evangeline Lilly.
Living in Hawaii, she was a month removed from the birth of her child, email turned off, not taking calls about work and still confined to bed rest.
“So I was still in bed with the baby,” she told TheOneRing.net in full Tauriel outfit and gear during a lunch break on a full day of filming on “The Hobbit.”
This lunch tent, while perhaps not glamorous, is an essential part of Stone Street Studios and making Peter Jackson movies, designed to feed and shelter quite an enormous crowd. Breakfast was served there for anybody wanting to start the day off right. Coffee and tea were available on any sound stage but also in the tent — a first stop for many on a shoot. Continue reading “Evangeline Lilly gets personal with TORn about Tauriel and ‘The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug’”
You just might be in for a frightful tale if you’re brave enough to join Fili and Kili to learn how to make caramel apples… Happy Halloween! If you want another thrilling tale, check out Kili’s book here. WARNING: This caramel is dangerously sticky/chewy! The recipe is below if you’d like to try it out yourself! Continue reading “Happy Hobbit: Caramel Apples (Halloween Special)”
Yes, this story will be riddled with spoilers in it, and some snark.
With less than 2 months to go before The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, we at TheOneRing.net thought you might like a little survival guide if you happen to be Arachnophobic or Drakonophobic. The Lord the Rings: The Return of the King was a little hard on many avowed Arachophobe Tolkien fans, this reporter’s sister being one of them. She watched the entire Shelob sequence from behind her purse every time she saw it on the big screen. It was only when she saw it on DVD that she could watch it unfettered.
Long before Tolkien conceived of Sam fighting off Shelob to try and save Frodo, he placed an entire Colony of giant Spiders in Mirkwood to trap the Company of Dwarves for Bilbo to rescue. This was Bilbo’s first real challenge to help the Company and he rose to the occasion. Here you can see the fear on Bilbo’s face, but he conquers it to save the Dwarves, and you can conquer your Arachnophobia too.
As for Drakonophobia, that may have been made up word, not quite sure, but better safe than sorry. Now, to be fair, there are probably more Arachnophobes than there are Drakonophobes in the world simply because there are more spiders in the world than there are dragons. We have all those Knights in Shining Armor to thank for that. Except in China, where the dragons settled in the Rivers and became good luck symbols and come out every Chinese New Year. Gung Hey Fat Choy!!!!
Dragons as seen in Tolkien’s Middle-earth can easily instill Drakonophobia in man and beast alike , and Smaug is the most famous of those dragons. There was fear, mixed with anger and sadness when Thorin told the story of Smaug’s attack on the Lonely mountain, killing so many and driving out the few survivors. Thranduil would not risk his own people to help and Dale was completely destroyed. The entire area around the Lonely Mountain was called the Desolation of Smaug while the Men of Lake-town built their town on stilts over the lake in the hopes of surviving future dragon attacks. Smaug has not been seen in 60 years, and yet Drakonophobia is still affecting the people of Lake-town to this day. But no one is really sure he is still really alive since it’s been so long since he was last seen, at least not until Bilbo makes his fateful first burgal attempt.
So, without further ado, here are a few helpful pointers on how to survive your inner phobias when spiders and dragons appear onscreen.
1) Read The Hobbit before the film opens, familiarity makes it easier to handle shocks of this nature, at least the chapters in Mirkwood through Bilbo entering the Lonely Mountain.
2) Go with a really tall friend and sit behind them. If you have no tall friend, find a tall person in the theater and sit behind them.
3) If you prefer to see the film unfettered, then bring a jacket or purse to put in front of your eyes during the spider or dragon scenes.
4) Failing a jacket or purse, buy a soda or popcorn to raise up, my preference would be popcorn, because if you spill it from fright, it is less messy and certainly not cold or sticky.
5) Bring Litzi (Red Envelope with money or gold in it) purely to use as a Chinese New Year gift/bribe
6) Put on your Ring of Power and hide
7) Hold hands with your best friend, try not to cut off the circulation.
8) Run out of the theater during the scary bits (works for children)
9) If running out of the theater seems to be a waste of money, just close your eyes, but you may need to hold your hands over years ears too, those spiders seem to make some creepy noises. Smaug, on the other hand has a rather awesome voice.
Humphrey Carpenter’s excellent biography, Tolkien, was published way back in 1977, and it is still considered the best of its kind. I remember reading it shortly after it came out and learning that in 1911, when Tolkien was a young man of 19, he formed part of a group taking a walking tour in the Swiss Alps. It was his first and only experience of really large mountains, and as he later made clear in several of his letters, the experience inspired the mountain landscapes in his Middle-earth writings.
At the time, I vaguely thought it would be wonderful to take a tour of the places Tolkien and his companions visited, to see exactly what had fired his imagination. Over the years that vague thought occasionally resurfaced, but I never imagined that I would actually be able to do it. Not until December 1, 2012, when TheOneRing.net posted an announcement that there was to be a tour based on that idea: “In the Footsteps of Tolkien.” Continue reading “In Tolkien’s Real Misty Mountains”
The opening line ‘Listen!’ is not a proclamation and should not have an exclamation mark, according to new research by an academic at the University of Manchester.
