Chairman Tobias M. Eckrich of the German Tolkien Society (Deutsche Tolkien Gesellschaft) recently chatted with Richard Armitage about his time on the Hobbit set. What he says about the Erebor interior scenes in the confrontation with Smaug being shot inside nothing but a great green box is interesting — one wonders whether a theatre background helps with the adjustment to such an absence of visual cues.
Don’t forget to follow the link at the bottom for the complete interview. You can find the English transcript immediately below the German translation.
Continue reading “Richard Armitage chats with the German Tolkien Society”
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There’s a lot of excitement floating round academic communities for J.R.R. Tolkien’s forthcoming Beowulf translation (which you can pre-order here) where the prevailing buzz seems to be “best thing since slices bread”. Here, writer Mabel Slattery outlines why.
EDIT: There is an error of fact within the article. Michael Drout did not actually re-discover Tolkien’s Beowulf translation.
I did not “discover” the Beowulf translation, not even in the sense that I found it in the Bodleian Library. This claim is a conflation of a story about one manuscript with information about a totally different text.
The real story is not quite as exciting.
You can read Drout’s explanation in full here.
Don’t forget to click the link to read the full article. Continue reading “Why Tolkien’s Beowulf translation is one of the best things to happen to literature”
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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Warner Brothers UK has posted a short new featurette on YouTube showcasing Laketown and Bard. Curiously, while the video appears to be meant as an advertisement for the new Blu-ray/DVD release of The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, the video itself is not present in any of the bonus features on the set.
The same is the case for the previously posted video “Beorn the Shapeshifter“. The Blu-ray/DVD releases do, however, feature an all new 40 minute documentary titled “Peter Jackson Invites You to the Set”. Continue reading “‘Lake-town – Entering the World of Men’ Featurette”
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Here’s the third of our four semi-final contestants in our 2014 Middle-earth March Madness contest — Aragorn, descendent of the line of Isildur and Elendil, heir to the throne of Gondor and Arnor. In this piece, our own Quickbeam examines just what makes this character tick, and the traits that truly make him … king.
Kingly proof…
by Cliff “Quickbeam” Broadway
Strider, Aragorn, Longshanks, Telcontar, Elessar, and several other names come to mind for this particular character. But the first impression a non-Tolkien outsider would get from a man who has a dozen aliases is that he was probably a criminal. Maybe they’d think he was constantly moving from place to place, switching names because he was the equivalent of a modern-day “identity thief” who was on the lam! Funny how things in our modern world don’t always reflect clearly on mythology.
Continue reading “Aragorn’s kingly proof…”
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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In addition to the featurette posted earlier – showing Orlando Bloom practicing a Laketown fight scene – Warner Brothers UK has posted another sneak peek at the upcoming Blu-ray and DVD releases of The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug.
This clip examines the design of Beorn, with interviews from actor Mikael Persbrandt and Hair/Make-up Designer Peter King.
The Blu-ray/DVD of The Desolation of Smaug will be released this coming Tuesday, April 8. Continue reading “Beorn the Shapeshifter: Sneak Peek at ‘Desolation of Smaug’ Blu-ray/DVD bonus features”
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We’re into the semi-final match-ups in our 2014 Middle-earth March Madness contest. As part of it, I thought it apt to examine each of our four finalists in turn, starting with our questing Dwarf, Thorin Oakenshield.
In this piece, published a while back over on the site of our friends Heirs of Durin, DarkJackal asserts that Thorin unjustly gets a bad rap from readers of The Hobbit for events following the death of Smaug, and that there’s more to his motivations than meet the eye.
Don’t forget to click the link at the bottom to continue to the full essay.
In Defense of Thorin Oakenshield
A Journey from Hero to Villain, and Back Again
by DarkJackal
Thorin is often criticized for the choices he makes after the death of Smaug, and the average reader is rarely sympathetic with his refusal to share the treasure with the people of Lake-town. But when I read the story, I find it hard not to side with him. This essay is an attempt to justify my reaction. [Note: This is based on my reactions to the original Hobbit story only, without factoring in the material from the Appendices, Unfinished Tales, or the film.]
Continue reading “In defense of Thorin Oakenshield”
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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