From RosaNegra:

I thought to share with you these cool LoTR goodies I found today inside Marinela’s cookies and candy bread, one of the most important Mexican companies. (www.marinela.com.mx)

These things are named DGD2 (don’t ask me why) and are pretty popular among kids. Marinela is used to release a series of DGD2 from the kid’s major movies (like Disney ones) and TV series like Pokemon or Digimon.

LoTR series has 30 different DGD2 (which is a pretty decent number) I can describe them as tiny freezbies. Some of them have The One Ring you can remove from the inner circle (that has a character photo). You put The One Ring in a notch from the inner circle and if you throw it, they fly like a freezbie.

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Reading The Lord of the Rings—this time as an adult—remains an overwhelming experience
By Gene Edward Veith

Here are beauties which pierce like swords or burn like cold iron; here is a book that will break your heart.”

That blurb on the back cover of the old Ballentine edition of The Lord of the Rings captured exactly the way I felt, as a 14-year-old having just finished the last book of Tolkien’s trilogy. The comment seemed so apt that the name of the critic stuck in my mind: someone named C.S. Lewis. Not too long after that, I was browsing in a bookstore and saw his name on a book of his own: Screwtape Letters. I opened it up and saw that it had been dedicated to J.R.R. Tolkien. Surely, I had to read this book by someone whose taste in literature was so much like mine. Eventually, I would read Lewis’s Mere Christianity, which opened up to my broken heart the sword-piercing beauties of Christianity.

Still later, when I was in college, an off-handed remark about “the one ring” helped me connect with a young woman who turned out also to be a big Tolkien fan. We ended up getting married. Which led to having our children.

How odd that a work of fantasy should have such an impact in my real world. While many Tolkien fans re-read the trilogy over and over, I never did, being content to keep savoring my first impression. Now that a trilogy of movies is coming out based on Tolkien’s saga—the first of which, The Fellowship of the Ring, is scheduled for release on Dec. 19—I resolved to ready myself by reading the books again.

Then I was 14; now I am 50. Then I was just waking up to a love of reading; now I am an English professor, a professional reader (something else I probably owe to the impact of the trilogy). Then my world was a lot smaller and my experiences much more limited than they are now, after 36 years of living. Reading it again after all those years, I could remember how the different events in the story struck me the first time and compare that with my reactions as I am today. I know I understood it better this time—seeing it not as just a children’s book but as a work that raises issues only adults can fully grasp—and I can say that it was just as good and maybe better the second time around.

“The world changes,
and all that once was strong now proves unsure. How shall any tower withstand such numbers and such reckless hate?”

—The Two Towers

Fittingly, my reading project had an auspicious beginning. I started The Fellowship of the Ring in earnest the week after the Sept. 11 attacks. I was taking my first plane trip after the hijackings, one of the few passengers in a big airliner bound for Detroit, uneasy, frisked at the gate, still overwhelmed by the magnitude of the assault upon our country.

Here I was, reading about those complacent, ordinary, homebound folks, the hobbits, whose comfortable lives were interrupted by the Shadow. In the weeks ahead, as our nation geared for war, and then as our forces attacked, what I was reading had a special resonance. It was not just that Tolkien kept referring to two towers, or the suspense that kept building through the first two books and the weeks after the attack that would finally break out in a spectacular war. Here was the city of Gondor, a once great civilization in palpable decline, having to regain its history and its nerve. Here, for all of the military exploits of great warriors, the real heroism was on display in ordinary folks that the high and mighty had always overlooked.

As I was flying in that airplane under terrorist alert and reading my book, something else compounded my intimations of mortality: turning 50. The AARP sign-up cards had already arrived in the mail, I was feeling my age, and I had been finding myself fantasizing about retirement. But before we landed in Detroit, I read about how both Bilbo and Frodo began their adventures on their 50th birthdays. I left the plane oddly exhilarated.

“Good and ill have not changed since yesteryear; nor are they one thing among Elves and Dwarves and another among Men. It is a man’s part to discern them, as much in the GoldenWood as in his own house.”
—The Two Towers

As Lewis tells the story of his conversion in Surprised by Joy, it was Tolkien’s witnessing—and his arguments—that led him away from atheism into the Christian faith. Those stories they both loved, drawn from legend and fantasy, about a Dying God, about resurrection and redemption: These are not just myths, Tolkien argued. They became true in the Jesus Christ of history. Jesus is really who He said He was, God in the flesh, who died and rose again to bring human beings new life.

When Lewis accepted this truth, he became a great apologist for the faith. Tolkien, on the other hand, kept writing fantasy.

Some Christians are leery of fantasy, even of Tolkien’s, which contains wizards, wraiths, and the demonic Sauron, who is, in fact, the Lord of the Ring. Might reading this sort of thing lead to meddling in the occult? In the debate over Harry Potter, defenders but also some critics of J.K. Rowling’s wildly popular children’s novels about a school for witches are saying that The Sorcerer’s Stone is no different from The Lord of the Rings.

But there is a difference. As Richard Adanes, author of Harry Potter and the Bible, points out, Tolkien’s Gandalf is not a wizard at all, in the Harry Potter sense; rather, in the Middle Earth universe, he is a being roughly equivalent to an angel. In The Silmarilion, in which Tolkien gives the background and the details of his imaginary realm, he begins with a Genesis-like creation story, along with a fall. He writes of one God who makes all of Middle Earth and fills it with beings with natural—not occult—powers of their own.

As pastor Joel Brondos points out, the themes of the two fantasies are practically opposites. Harry Potter is about an outcast boy who seeks and acquires power. The Lord of the Rings, on the other hand, is about the rejection of power. The whole point of the story, on which the whole plot depends, is that the power of the Ring, because it has been forged by the Dark Lord, must not be used. Though the temptation to use its occult power is great, to do so corrupts the user, even if it were used for a good end or to defeat Sauron. The user would become a new Sauron. The forces of good—Gandalf, the elves—know that the Ring must be destroyed but that they themselves dare not touch it. So they ask the weak but strong-charactered hobbits to go to Mordor, the lair of its evil maker, to destroy the Ring by throwing it into the volcanic crack of Mt. Doom.

The trilogy is filled with Christian motifs—resurrection, providence, sacrifice, the promise that a king will return—but it is not (like The Chronicles of Narnia) an allegory, a genre Tolkien disliked. Tolkien called what he was doing a “sub-creation.” God created the universe so human beings, made in His image, can imitate Him, though faintly, by making creations of their own. Whereas God’s creation is real, an author’s creation (or, rather, “sub-creation”) is fictional, existing only in the mind and the imagination, though potentially meaningful and valuable nonetheless.

“Orcs, and talking trees, and leagues of grass, and galloping riders, and glittering caves, and white towers and golden halls, and battles, and tall ships sailing, all these passed before Sam’s mind.”
—The Return of the King

In his essay “On Fairy Stories,” Tolkien deals with the charge of “escapism,” the objection that fairy tales, fantasies, and stories like his merely provide escape. The assumption, he said, is that escaping is always a bad thing. For someone who is imprisoned, the most healthy thing he can do is to escape the walls that shut him in.

Non-Christians are indeed in a prison. They think that nothing exists beyond what they can see—the hard, stone walls of the material world. They have no understanding of spiritual realities, that good and evil are not mere psychological states but objective truths, that they can be freed from their bondage of sin into an everlasting life wonderful beyond their conception. They need an evangelism of their imaginations.

What The Lord of the Rings offers and conveys is a Christian sensibility. It gives readers a taste of the attractiveness of Goodness and the repulsiveness of Evil. It evokes a sense of mystery and longing, a sense that this world has cosmic significance, as does the part each of us is called to play.

“‘Why, to think of it, we’re in the same tale still! It’s going on. Don’t the great tales never end?’

‘No, they never end as tales,’ said Frodo. ‘But the people in them come, and go when their part’s ended. Our part will end later—or sooner.’

‘And then we can have some rest and some sleep,’ said Sam.”

—The Two Towers.

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From: Unnamed

I live in New York City and have had the opportunity to see a screening of the finished Lord of the Rings last Thursday.I have to say (being a complete fan of the books, and having read them all at least 3 times), that I was BLOWN AWAY at the accuracy and overall dedication to the integrity of the books. MUCH more than I was expecting from Hollywood.They created Middle Earth exactly the way I’ve envisioned it. The battles are gruesomely realistic, Orcs are horrific, all the characters are so nobly portrayed. I heard someone say outside, after the screening, how LOTR was everything Harry Potter wasn’t.

The greatest part for me was having it all the nuances of the stories come back to me as the movie happened. I had worried that since it had been about 12 years since I’d read any of the books that I may be too foggy. No way. I was all as clear as a bell. And such a classic, serious approach to the story. No gratuitous one liners or watered down kiddy simplicity. After the heartbreak of Planet of the Apes I was SO expecting an abomination of the original story.

I don’t know if this is exactly what you want as far as a “spy report”, I just wanted to share my enthusiasm. I totally dont work for any movie company, I just have a friend who does and he got me into the screening.

Anyhow, just wanted to rid any doubt anyone may have on the possibility of yet another Hollywood destruction of a masterpiece, and further the anticipation for the “RingHeads”.

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Sebastian writes: Today the Christchurch Press has a feature about the South Island’s involvement in LOTR, here’s an article about the making of the One Ring prop:

RINGMAKER

The ring is the thing that all the excitement is about, on screen at least, and when it’s flashed around the world’s movie screens from next week, audiences will be seeing the results of craftsmanship practised in a small jewellery studio near the cathedral in central Nelson.

But Thorkild Hansen, who runs Jens Hansen Jeweller, is unmoved by the fuss surrounding this particular piece of work.

It may be about to become the movie world’s most famous piece of jewellery, but “at the end of the day, it’s just another ring”, he argues.

Hansen and his father, Jens (who died in 1999), were approached by a member of the Rings production team and asked if they could make the movie’s centrepioece.

They knew the story – father had read it to son years earlier – and they produced 15 prototypes for the movie makers to choose from, all variations of a simple, plain gold band (the engraving which features on it in the film was added digitally).

About 35 versions of the rinal ring were created. With a large number of different actors wearing it throughout the three movies, different sized copies were needed to fit different sized fingers, and spares produced in case of losses.

Hansen has kept the original and it sits on his workshop bench, “like a paperweight”.

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From: Heather

Here’s some new information. I was at the listing of tvguide.com and went looking for E!s “Behind The Scenes” show around the time the movie opens and there it was.

Behind The Scenes: LOTR

Wednesday, December 19th 7 PM
Thursday, December 20th 3 PM
Sunday, December 22 9 PM

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Greatest Show on Middle-Earth
By Joe Merret

It has taken £200 million to bring Tolkien’s magical world to life in an awe inspiring movie trilogy. But as I sat back and watched the first part of the spectacle unfold before me yesterday, I knew it had been worth every penny. As one of the first people in Britain to see the Fellowship of the Ring, I felt as though I had been scooped up and carried away on the most incredible journey of the imagination. Peter Jackson has turned a literary epic into a feast for the eyes and mind, bringing picturesque Hobbiton to life with each hand crafted house down to each blade of grass and tulip, every frame is visibly overwhelming.

But mythical Middle-earth has its share of violence and ugliness too. Within the landscapes are the most horrible characters – evil creatures. Nor is the blood and gore understated. Arrows pierce eyeballs and black blood squelches out as slimy creatures are decapitated. It’s not for the very young or faint hearted. (here the critic lays out the usual plot details here that are cut) On his journey, Frodo and friends are pursued by nine black riders, sent to capture him. It is not long before Frodo is embroiled in a series of vicious, bloody battles that, unlike the Harry Potter film, are definately aimed at the older audience. I found much of this part truly terrifying. At one point they were surrounded by a swirling mist so realistic that I could feel a chill on the back of my neck. And the ferocious orcs are even more terrifying on screen. They are grey, wrinkly, slime coloured creatures that will play a part in many nightmares in the coming weeks. The orcs, together with the Uruk-Hai warriors and a cave troll, attack Frodo and the fellowship in the mines of Moria, blah blah, (usual story telling bit cut here )

The story realy works as a film, and like the tales themselves, has an appeal that’s hard to beat. Sadly for JK Rowling, Harry Potter does not have it on the same grand scale. There is a real sense of drama and urgency as you find yourself being drawn into this world of good versus evil, where passion and morality are the supreme forces. The movie touches the audience with real emotion and fear, setting it apart from any other of its type that I have seen. When young Frodo was scared, I could feel my muscle tensing for him. The famous faces woven into the story are masterful. As gandalf, Sir Iam MacKellen is the most wizardly wizard imaginable, with wispy beard and pointed hat. And veteran star Christopher Lee is chillingly evil as Saruman. The beautiful Cate Blanchett is a shimmering vision of goodness in her role, while Sean Bean is as sexy and surly as ever as Boromir. When Liv Tyler appears in a stunning, cream coloured dress that sets off her dark hair, she makes you gasp at her beauty. As Arwen, she performs brilliantly, particulary as she speaks in Elf talk accompanied by subtitles.

Jacksons camera work keeps the film moving swiftly and is perfect for the rapid action battle sequences. To all those people who have been turned off by the prospect of Tolkien, viewing his tales as simply wierd stuff about trolls and elves, I say: Do go and see this film. Its is gritty and scary in a down to earth yet mystical way that makes you feel like there is a little bit of hobbit in everyone. Despite its PG certificate, I really would not recomment taking young children to see this. It’s far to gory for that. But to anyone else, The Fellowship of the Ring will prove irresistable. It is a hugely satisfying watch and a chance for a little escapism for a few hours. I cannot wait to see the next two films and get another helping of that magical Middle-Earth.

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