Guybrush Threepwood writes: Just wanted to let you know that Christopher Lee will be in Belgium for the Brussels International Festival of Fantasy, Thriller and Science Fiction Film (15 – 30 march 2002). He will be a member of the international jury and should be in the theatre with the public, watching some movies (Oh my… I want an autograph!!!)… You can check the information at http://www.bifff.org
It says: “This gaunt, handsome, deep-voiced British actor is one of the icons of the horror film industry. With his imposing presence he has played many villainous roles, his most famous being the bloodthirsty Count Dracula opposite suave, aristocratic Peter Cushing as Professor Van Helsing in the Hammer horror films. The towering, sharp featured actor has also incarnated the classic “yellow peril,” Fu Manchu, in five films and was a James Bond villain in The Man With the Golden Gun. Lee has also demonstrated a flair for comedy, playing a Nazi officer in Steven Spielberg’s 1941 and a genetic scientist in Gremlins 2: The New Batch. Age has only added to his screen charisma, which he has demonstrated in recent years with parts in Tim Burton’s Sleepy Hollow, the TV series of Mervyn Peake’s Ghormenghast and, of course, in Peter Jackson’s magical adaptation of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. We’re proud to welcome this movie legend as a member of our International Jury.”
-Guybrush Threepwood, the swashbuckling pirate who can hold his breath for ten minutes…
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From: Shana
I’m on the mailing list list of the American Museum of the Moving Image in Queens, NY, and they just sent me a message that contains the following:
“On Thursday, February 28 at 7:00 p.m., the Museum is especially pleased to present a Pinewood Dialogue with one of the key creative figures behind THE LORD OF THE RINGS. Coming all the way from New Zealand, Visual Effects Supervisor Jim Rygiel will present behind-the-scenes footage, and discuss the creation of the remarkable epic, and the upcoming films in the trilogy.
Rygiel is one of the pioneers of digital visual effects in film, with credits including STARSHIP TROOPERS, THE LAST STARFIGHTER, GHOST, ALIEN III, SPECIES, OUTBREAK, BATMAN RETURNS, and 102 DALMATIONS. Special thanks to New Line Cinema for making this program possible. (Tickets: $20 public, $14 for Museum members).
“More information about Moving Image screenings + programs can be found on our Web site. http://www.ammi.org/site/screenings/index.html.”
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The42ndGuy writes: Hi there TORN! Sending along a report on a Tolkien event at my school.
On Wed. 20 February, Prof. Edward James, a medievalist at the UK’s University of Reading, gave a lecture on “Tolkien and the Middle Ages” at Yale University. There weren’t enough seats in the hall for the over 100 people present– many latecomers, including me, had to sit in the aisles.
Prof. James’s talk focused on Tolkien’s work on “Beowulf” as it related to “The Lord of the Rings.” I missed the first half, but it seems to have been about Tolkien’s “Beowulf” work (“The Monsters and the Critics,” etc.) and his conception of power, since James referred back to that concept several times without explaining it in detail.
As I walked in, James was talking about Tolkien’s Catholicism as revealed in his fiction. He discussed Frodo as a Christ figure, lembas as the Eucharist, and so forth; these kinds of references, James said, were subtle but pervasive, and only began to strike him after he recently read Tolkien’s letters, which talk about his faith’s impact on his fiction several times. These subtleties James contrasted with Narnia, which James said Tolkien called privately “as bad as they could possibly be”– a quote I hadn’t heard before, and quite a strong one at that!
James concluded by talking about Tolkien’s work, both academic and fantastic, as a coherent whole. First, he described one critic’s frustration with “Beowulf” for having (I paraphrase throughout in these quotes) “irrelevancies in the center and all the interesting parts on the periphery.” This critic was talking specifically about the story of Ingeld, who was Hrothgar’s old enemy and the kind of duty-bound, vengeful hero this critic preferred to Beowulf: “the story of Ingeld would be worth far more than acres and acres of dragons.” (My thought: Tolkien loved “green great dragons” so much… he can’t have appreciated that!) Tolkien, James said, loved “Beowulf,” and used most of its narrative strategies, such as including peripheral detail that richens the story by reference and gives it resonance. Ingeld serves that kind of purpose in “Beowulf”; in Tolkien the many references to his legendarium do the same. James quoted one reviewer who asked, “Who could possibly care about the cats of Queen Beruthiel?” His reply: everyone cares, of course, but since there’s no answer it makes the world all the more realistic. And in fact, Ingeld does show up in “The Lord of the Rings,” after a fashion: Aragorn’s name, in early drafts, was Ingold. For Tolkien, James said, his fiction was a way of appreciating medieval literature, and a more flexible one than scholarly publication would allow: he could, for example, speculate about how the Anglo-Saxon cavalry would look in a novel. Far from a diversion from his scholarly work, as many of his colleagues and critics claimed, writing his fiction was its culmination.
Questions from the floor dealt with everything from Tolkien’s relations with C.S. Lewis to the Englishness of the Shire to one woman’s suggestion that the Dwarves seemed Jewish. The last point was a piece of speculation I hadn’t heard before, and not entirely without merit: the phrase “Baruk khazad, khazad ai-meinu” sounds like Hebrew, they live largely as a diaspora hiding their native language, they are seen by others as a people apart and foreign. James responded with interest, telling the well-known story of Tolkien’s response to the German publisher who wanted to check on his racial background; but that discussion was speculative and brief, since the questioner was not a devoted Tolkienite and Prof. James knew no Hebrew.
The response afterwards was enthusiastic. It was great to see a gathering of students and professors alike to hear Tolkien discussed seriously, as he deserves.
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Valerie writes:
Peter Jackson was interviewed on the KTLA news that morning (Monday, Feb 18th). Most of the interview consisted of the generic questions that we’ve seen in all the other interviews (he wasn’t wearing shoes, but I have a feeling they may have told him not to as every time they promoted the interview that morning they discussed whether or not he’d be wearing them), but there was one thing I thought was worth noting. Sam Rubin (the Entertainment Reporter) asked Peter if he could give some kind of info on the next movie. He said that TTT will start about 12 hrs. after the story in FOTR ends. Peter also stated that there won’t be any kind of refresher of FOTR because they’re going to assume that everyone has already seen that movie.
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moocholas sends along this cover from Variety Magazine (Feb 18-24)
FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION BEST PICTURE
“Made with intelligence, imagination, passion and skill. Propulsively paced and shot through with and aged-in-oak sense of wonder, the film so thrillingly catches us up in its sweeping story that nothing matters but the vivid and compelling events unfolding on the screen.” [More]
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World Entertainment News Network
The cast and crew of LORD OF THE RINGS: FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING are planning to make OSCARS night 2002 extra special by conjuring up a “big surprise.”
The movie’s costume and make-up expert RICHARD TAYLOR, who was nominated for three of the film’s 13 Oscar nods on Tuesday, admits the crew are considering what to do to turn the awards show into a Middle Earth extravaganza.
He says, “We’re still coming to terms with the achievement of picking up 13 nominations but I know ELIJAH (WOOD) and the stars and PETER (JACKSON) will want to do something special on the night.
“We might all turn up in costume or ride up on horseback. I’m sure it will be a big surprise.”
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