Are you a top notch LOTR TCG Player? Have you smacked the Balrog around and lived to tell the tale in the Fellowship of the Ring for XBox? Have you mastered every last one of Aragorn’s combo’s in The Two Towers for PS2? If so then you might be perfect as a Gaming Havens Chat Helper!
We’re looking for Gaming Savy individuals who can be on call to help our chatters in #Havens. Be it with a trick to get through a certain level, or just a rules clarification for stacking sites. Plus members of our Chat Helper program will be eligible for a special prize each month from one of the many Gaming Companies who make Lord of the Rings Games!
Youthful encounters with the magic of Middle have inspired many wonderful creative works, including the artistry of John Howe and Alan Lee, the writings of Ursula LeGuin, the BBB production adapted by recent TORn guest Brian Sibley and a host of others.
On Friday, December 13 at 6 p.m. EST (11 p.m. GMT), TheOneRing.net is pleased to host a chat with renowned Tolkien scholar, Douglas Anderson, editor of “The Annotated Hobbit.”
This newly revised and expanded book is an exhaustive look at the sources for, influences upon, and alterations to Tolkien’s “Hobbit.” In addition to the full text and annotations, there are over 150 illustrations — including many of Tolkien’s own creation.
Anderson’s own early readings of “The Lord of the Rings” set him upon a path of medieval and mythology studies and a life-long interest in Tolkien’s publishing history. His other works include J. R. R. Tolkien: A Descriptive Bibliography (1993) with Wayne G. Hammond.
As Anderson wrote in tribute to the professor, “Tolkien’s writings have occupied a large part of my mental landscape for nearly thirty years, and I expect that they shall do so for another thirty years, as I continue to study the man and his writings, and learn new ways to appreciate various aspects of his creative genius.” Please join us for what promises to be a most interesting examination of Tolkien’s first published work. To participate, join Barlimans and then type /join #thehalloffire. Further connection help can be found [Here]
Nessimë writes: Went down to the cafe at work, did the stealth thing and stole the souvenir mag to delight over at my desk. It covers the following articles:
Other ‘new faces’ that they talk about include King Theoden, Grima Wormtongue, Eomer, and Gamling.
There is an article on “The Creatures” (Gollum and Treebeard), an article on “The Frocks” (Arwen’s and Eowyn’s dresses), there is a small part on the locations, a Middle Earth map of the journey of the Fellowship, an article on Eowyn/Miranda Otto entitled “The Warrior Woman”, an article on Saruman/Christopher Lee entitled “The Evil Wizard”, and finally a piec on “The Story – Shaking Middle-Earth’s middle” which talks about changes and the script.
There are also some excellent ads in there including the LotR exhibition at Te Papa between 19 December – 28 February (www.tepapa.govt.nz and also found through www.wellingtonnz.com, the books and DVD (The Collector’s Edition is $179.99 – save $20 *ouch*). There are some adverts for tertiary courses in NZ in regards to media, sfx, makeup artistry etc.
The soundtrack is out, with one of five collector cards in each one.
There is also a “Safari of the Rings” – A 4X4 tour visiting locations (www.outback.net.nz), and an advert for Brinkley Village (www.brinkleyvillage.co.nz where PJ and the actors stayed. Further information on this area or “stunning film locations” for screen production companies are given as www.ashburtontourism.co.nz and www.filmsouth.com. This last information is more generalised than LotR.
Now that I’ve had my LotR fix for the day, I guess I’d better get back to work. Hope you have a great day – mine has certainly started out the right way!
“YOU SHALL NOT PASS!!!” The Two Towers, the second of the Lord of the Rings film trilogy directed by Peter Jackson (Heavenly Creatures, The Frighteners), opens with a return to Gandalf the Grey (Sir Ian McKellen in his best-supporting Oscar-nominated role) fighting the Balrog on the bridge of Khazad-dum, from last year’s Oscar-winning, The Fellowship of the Ring. As he tells the shocked Fellowship, “Fly, you fools!” he plunges from the bridge, only this time we continue the fall with him. As Gandalf falls through the gaping chasm, he recovers his sword, Glamdring, and continues a jaw-dropping battle with the Balrog until they both fall into the lake beneath the Mines of Moria.
“GANDALF!” Frodo Baggins (Elijah Wood), awakes from his nightmare of Gandalf’s fall, and thus our journey continues, mere days after the fall of Boromir and the fracturing of the Fellowship at Amon Hen.
And what a journey! There is a darker, more exciting theme to The Two Towers (which refers to Orthanc, the tower of Saruman in Isengard and Sauron’s Barad-dur in Mordor), especially where Ring-bearer, Frodo, is concerned. The closer he gets to Mount Doom, where he must cast the Ring back into the fires where it was forged, the heavier it becomes and the tighter the pull it’s creator, Sauron has on Frodo’s psyche.
We catch up with the Human, Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen), the Elf, Legolas (Orlando Bloom) and the Dwarf, Gimli (John Rhys-Davies) as they search for their Hobbit friends Merry (Dominic Monaghan) and Pippin (Billy Boyd) after their capture by marauding Uruk-hai in Amon Hen. Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli trail their friends to Fangorn Forest, where they run into an old friend – the Grey Pilgrim returns to them and completes his tale of his battle with the Balrog, and how he’s now Gandalf the White. He assures them Merry and Pippin are safe – they’ve been found and cared for by one of Middle-earth’s oldest denizens, Treebeard the Ent (a tree shepherd). Gandalf, Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli make their way to Edoras, the realm of King Theoden (Bernard Hill) of Rohan, who has been mentally besieged by Grima Wormtongue (Brad Dourif you’ll want to have a shower after seeing Brad’s remarkable performance as this slimy, insipid fiend). Aptly named, Grima is a servant of Saruman masquerading as a trusted advisor to King Theoden. Gandalf releases Theoden from Grima’s twisted hold, and Grima flees Rohan back to Saruman. The people of Rohan escape to the safety of the keep at Helm’s Deep. They are attacked by some 10,000 Orcs, Uruk-hai, wildmen of Southron and Easterlings.
The 300 men and boys able to defend Helm’s Deep seem hopelessly outnumbered until an Elven army sent by Elrond (Hugo Weaving) and lead by Haldir (Craig Parker) of Lothlorien arrive to renew their alliance with Men and fight along side them once again.
Through all this Aragorn goes through his own test – a test of love and loyalty. It becomes quite obvious that Theoden’s niece, Eowyn (Miranda Otto) is quite taken with the ranger, and Aragorn is visibly torn between his love for Elrond’s daughter, Arwen (liv Tyler), and the attentions of Eowyn.
Peter Jackson himself has said that Tolkien purists may have some trouble with this second installment of the trilogy of films as they’ve taken the most liberties with the story line of The Two Towers, more so than either Fellowship or the next year’s Return of the King (Dec 17, 2003). I consider myself a Tolkien purist, having been a devoted reader for the last 25 years (The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings are the two greatest books ever written), and I have no problem with any of the additions, deletions or expansions made by Peter and his team.
It seems that fans are most keen to see the CGI-created characters of Treebeard (voiced by John Rhys-Davies in a dual role of sorts) and Gollum. We got a mere tease of what to expect with Gollum in Fellowship, his full characterization in TTT is nothing short of spectacular. A key element to Gollum’s realism is surely due in part to actor Andy Serkis, who acted directly with his co-stars on set. Then, in a specially-designed suit, he recreated every single one of his own actions for the CGI geniouses at Peter Jackson’s WETA studios, who magically brought Gollum to film. Serkis also voiced Gollum (and must have gone through dozens of boxes of throat lozenges!) Hopefully, in Return of the King, Gollum will finally be able to dislodge that fur ball
Treebeard and his gnarled cronies too are a fantastic realization of Professor Tolkien’s written word, it’s a shame they aren’t in the movie more. The lads and lasses at WETA studios went all out in bringing out of the pages the dragon-like beasts the Nazgul are now mounted on, the Wargs, vicious bear/wolf-like creatures ridden by the Orcs, the magnificent Oliphants, and two new cave trolls who ‘man’ the Black Gates. I smell a few awards coming their way!
My favourite part of the movie, is the Battle of Helm’s Deep. The battle took four grueling months of night-shoots but it was worth it. I DARE the viewer to stay slouched down in their theater seat, to not shout and cheer out loud. You’ll want to pick up a sword or a bow and join in the battle (choose your own side). The battle lasts approximately 40 minutes with a few respites returning to other plot lines and then you’re thrown right back into the battle. A bit of trivia: to get the voices of the Host of Sauron, Peter Jackson directed the half-time crowd of about 20,000 New Zealand rugby fans to chant, stomp their feet and make a din suitable for an army of Orcs and Uruk-hai and he used the taping to great effect!
I found myself getting so involved in each scene that I kept forgetting there were other story lines going on until we were taken back to them (a positive thing in my book!). I saw Fellowship 21 times in theaters (go ahead, ask me if I liked it) and I have a feeling I will easily break my own record with The Two Towers. Bring on Dec 17, 2003 and the Return of the King!
Movies have their own special magic, of course, but it helps a lot to have a great book and great words behind them.
A supreme recent case in point: the visually spectacular and absolutely mesmerizing “The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers,” a state-of-the-art epic opening Dec. 18 that surpasses its predecessor (last years “The Fellowship of the Ring”) for sheer thrills and visual splendor.
Yet, packed with technological marvels and rousing scenes and characters as it is, “Two Towers” could not have spirited us away to all those lands of wonder if it weren’t for the shy Oxford professor of Old and Middle English who dreamed it all up: John Ronald Reuel Tolkien.
The Head of the Class
No recent movie exploits all the various modern resources of cinema – from computerized effects, animation, sound recording and crystalline location shooting – with more flair than Peter Jackson’s film of the adventures of Frodo Baggins and the Fellowship of the Ring.
Few movies this year have been more faithful to their source – in this case, one so universally familiar. Yet few have a source more consciously literary, more drenched in academia and learning, than Tolkien’s fantasy novel cycle.
Tolkien hardly seems a likely candidate for cinema canonization. He was a lifelong academic; student of literary texts and comparative linguistics; and a devotee of Norse, English and Icelandic epics who put his vast knowledge to use creating his own world and inventing the history, languages and people – and wizards, orcs, and hobbits – who flourished there. Though Tolkien may have lived in a kind of sequestered academic paradise, the three linked novels of “”The Lord of the Rings” (“The Fellowship of the Ring,” “The Two Towers”, and “The Return of the King”) are a sustained feat of imagination that has entranced millions since their British publication in 1954 and ’55 – especially since their explosion of American popularity in the mid-1960s.
Tolkien conceived and wrote the books seemingly as much for his own pleasure as for the financial success that was at first slow in coming: planning and writing them in a 15-year period beginning in 1937, composing much of the work during the Second World War in segments he sent to his soldier son Christopher. The novel’s huge battle between good and evil probably reflected his and his son’s WWII experience (and the elder Tolkien’s service in the Boer War.) (huh?)
But they were also part of an even longer sustained effort of imagination. The author, born in 1892, spent most of his life (to his death in 1973) creating and describing the imaginary fairy-tale world and history of which the “Rings” cycle is only a part, inventing at least four languages, hundreds of characters and a voluminous history and archeology stretching over many centuries. That’s what lies behind the onscreen richness of the movie “Rings”.
Difficult to Fathom
Can you imagine the pipe-puffing, hugely well-read, devoutly Catholic Tolkien, who liked to compare himself to his home-loving hobbits, hobnobbing with the big-movie sophisticates who put his novel so smashingly on film: the wildman New Zealand writer-director Jackson (whose first features were the gorefests “Bad Taste” and “Dead Alive”) and high-flying New Line executives Bob Shaye and Mark Ordesky? Or trading quips with the studio people to whom Jackson went first: Miramax’s Weinstein brothers? (“J.R.R., baby, here’s how I see Bilbo: Robin Williams crossed with Herve Villechaize. By the way, I’ll tell you upfront: We’ve got to cut it.”)
Incongruously or not, “Lord of the Rings,” which survived an earlier failed attempt at filming by animator Ralph Bakshi, has proven ideal movie material – and more than that, ideal material for the technologies and special strengths of movies today. A “Lord of the Rings” movie made in the ’50s, ’60s, or even the early ’90s, probable couldn’t have had this opulence and fantastic spectacle. It couldn’t have given us so intensely the huge bloody battle of Helm’s Deep, couldn’t have visualized so perfectly the hobbits’ loathsome guide Gollum or transported us so convincingly to the ancient land of good and bad wizards Gandalf and Sauron, with its cathedral-like caves and talking trees, its vaulting towers and horrific, mysterious dark riders.
There are silent epics that have something like the special majesty and magic of “Towers,” including the Babylonian sequences of D.W. Griffith’s “Intolerance,” and the quest scenes of Raoul Walsh and Doug Fairbanks’ “Thief of Baghdad” and the forest scenes of Fritz Lang’s “Die Niebelungen”: three movies that might have influenced Tolkien. But we’re lucky that it took all these years to realize “The Rings” – and that Jackson and his New Line bosses eventually committed to making three movies instead of two, that he made them altogether in one shoot – and that, despite some liberties, he committed himself so fully to Tolkien’s original vision.
Like all moviemakers, Jackson makes changes – even major ones. (Liv Tyler’s character Arwen comes not from the story but from a footnote, obviously a ravaging one.) But if you see the movies right after rereading the novels – which I did – you may be shocked at how close they are.
Topped Reader Polls
That’s only Tolkien’s due, I think. After all, he spent a lifetime imagining Middle Earth, Bilbo, Frodo, Gandalf, Gimli, Aragorn, the Gollum and all their voluminous back story – which is exactly why “The Lord of the Rings,” despite a notable lack of enthusiasm from Tolkien’s colleagues in university literature departments, long have topped reader’s polls for the 20th Century’s best novel.
Jackson deserves his success partly because he did what most cinematic adapters should: stick to the test. Certain authors – Charles Dickens, William Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Tennessee Williams and John Steinbeck for example – translate very well because their works were imagined with cinematic richness and because their adapters usually film them faithfully. (Robbing Henry James’ novels of their convoluted interior narration, which usually happens in the movies, may seem justified but it reduces their impact and shrivels their meaning.)
Consider David O. Selznick, a producer notorious for his endless memos and high standards of quality – and a man who firmly believed that any movie adapted from a popular novel should retain as much as possible the original story and characters or risk alienating devoted fans. Selznick should know. In his heyday, he produced scores of successful films, from classics such as, “David Copperfield” or best sellers such as, “Duel in the Sun” – and he always stuck to the book.
Two towering cases in point: his Oscar-winning films of “Gone with the Wind” and “Rebecca,” two film that pleased (and continue to please) audiences who knew the novels well and audiences who didn’t know them at all.
I think Selznick is right – and that those modern-day producers who ignore his advice and trash or radically change their novels-into-film often do so at peril. Sometimes it works. Often it doesn’t. But with “Hamlet” or “David Copperfield” or “Don Quixote” – or with Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” – you want the words to inspire the image, because it was those words that first inspired us.
