LORD OF THE RINGS IS KING OF THE YEAR’S FILMS By Anita Singh, PA
Showbusiness Editor The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King has been voted best film of the year.
The third and final instalment in the Tolkien trilogy topped a poll by viewers of the BBC’s Film 2004 show, hosted by Jonathan Ross.
In a year which saw it win a record-equalling 11 Academy Awards, The Return Of The King was runaway favourite in the survey.
The two previous films in the trilogy, The Two Towers And The Fellowship Of The Ring, also took the title in 2002 and 2003.
Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, starring Kate Winslet and Jim Carrey, was second in the survey.
Winslet appeared again at number three with Finding Neverland, the biopic of Peter Pan creator JM Barrie in which she appeared with Johnny Depp.
Lost In Translation, the quirky film which starred Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson, was fourth.
Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban was in fifth place.
There was also room in the top 10 for a low-budget British hit and a foreign language film.
Zombie comedy Shaun Of The Dead was sixth and Chinese martial arts epic Hero was seventh.
Recent animated smash The Incredibles, blockbuster Spider-Man 2 and Tom Cruise thriller Collateral made up the top 10.
The results of the poll are being broadcast in a Film 2004 special tonight.
Film of the Year:
1 The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King 2 Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind 3 Finding Neverland 4 Lost In Translation 5 Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban 6 Shaun Of The Dead 7 Hero 8 The Incredibles 9 Spider-Man 2 10 Collateral
Rasputin the Evil Balrog writes: I just wanted to make sure everyone knows that there are two Easter Eggs on the Extended Edition of ROTK. The bogus interview of Elijah Wood conducted by Dominic Monaghan (as German journalist Hans Jensen) that PJ mentioned at the Oscar Party was already confirmed by your earlier report from Britain and is found on the first disc of the film.
On the second disc there is a second Easter Egg, though, that I haven’t seen anyone mention. It’s this year’s MTV Movie Awards skit featuring Vince Vaughan and Ben Stiller taking a meeting with Peter Jackson to pitch their ideas for a sequel to Lord of the Rings (“The Ring was destroyed.” “But what if it wasn’t?”). Not my fave of the three years of MTV Eggs, but still hilarious.
Oh, and FYI, the Eggs are accessed on each disc by going into the chapter selection menu, choosing the last chapter, then pressing the down arrow on your remote. A Ring icon will appear at the bottom of the screen, and you hit enter to access the egg. Very similar to the previous EEs.
Claire writes: Just to tell you that my husband and I took our two children and a friend’s daughter to the Old Vic in London last night (Sunday, 19th December) to see ‘Aladdin’. Before we went, my 13-year-old son wasn’t too keen – “Pantomimes are too babyish”, he said. And at the beginning, while most of the audience were joining in with the traditional booing the villain and shouting “He’s behind you!” and “Oh, no, it isn’t!”, he kept quiet. However, he soon loosened up and joined in too.
When Ian McKellen first appeared as the Widow Twanky, he and his sister were fairly squirming with excitement. He was quite brilliant, sang and danced like a real trouper – and we girls agreed that he had a pretty good pair of legs on him!
Here is some background to her approach, in the author’s own words:
Tolkien did not intend his story to be about Good vs. Evil with clearly defined boundaries. It is significant that in his letters he often puts “good” in quotation marks as if to say “supposedly” good. The book is about the way that evil (understood as power over others) has the capacity to insinuate its way into the hearts and souls of absolutely everyone. Not even Gandalf is immune. That, for me, is the greatness and the subtlety of [LOTR].
My own conviction is that the theological structure of the book (what I call the “deep narrative”) pervades the entire work and is subtly disclosed by Tolkien by [his use] of the passive form of the verb in sentences (“Frodo was meant” to have the Ring) and the frequent references to “some other will.” The observant reader will gradually come to feel an overpowering sense of the presence of God, or — in an honored theological term now unfortunately less used — Providence. Tolkien uses the passive the way the Bible does, to indicate the active, shaping presence of God (“their eyes were opened,” “the rocks were split”).*
Tolkien calls God Eru, “The One,” or Ilúvatar, “Father of All.” In his own words, the One “intrudes the finger of God” into the plot at various identifiable points. It is this One whom Tolkien calls The Writer of the Story, quoting with obvious approval the words of a reviewer who referred to “that one ever-present person who is never absent and never named.” **
What seems especially impressive to me is that the author developed most of her understanding and insight simply out of her own love of LOTR. It wasn’t until after she had sketched out her book that she read some of the secondary materials. “I came upon Tolkien with virtually no presuppositions. . . . I had a hunch that I had uncovered something in the book that had not yet been sufficiently celebrated.”
Rather than break down her commentary into separate chapters with different themes, since she is tracing a single “theme” throughout all of LOTR, Rutledge has chosen to present her material as part of a running “retelling” of Tolkien’s pertinent plot points, moving from chapter to chapter in sync with Tolkien’s original six books. She tells us in the Introduction: “Instead of identifying various themes and then analyzing them, I have chosen to be guided by Tolkien’s own professed trust in the revelatory power of narrative. This power is well known to all who have responded to Tolkien’s exceptional skill as a storyteller; it is part of the mystique of the beloved tale. In my discussion, I wanted to hold on to Tolkien’s narrative momentum, because it seemed to me that something of fundamental importance was being conveyed precisely through that momentum.”
Inter-cut with the commentary and adding further richness to her insight are wonderful quotations from various other sources. This author is obviously well-read and well-rounded herself, and she elaborates on her discussion of LOTR with citations from numerous diverse sources: from Shakespeare to Joseph Conrad, from historical documents to poetry, from the Bible to George Orwell.
One of her reviewers commented: “Fear not! Fleming Rutledge has carefully avoided reducing Tolkien’s thrilling stories to doctrine or his characters to typology.” No, she has reduced nothing. She has expanded and enhanced and revealed depths I had only vaguely suspected.
Rutledge has said it is her hope that Battle will “give pleasure to those who may already have detected the presence of the sub-narrative, and insight to those who may have missed it on first reading.” Whether you fall into one of these categories or not, if you love reading not only what Tolkien has written but also what others have written about him and his works, I recommend that you add this book to your collection.
*Excerpt from roundtable discussion about Return of the King posted on belief.net 12/03. **From the Introduction to Battle.
I’ve sent in some pictures that I took of Dominic Monaghan from our “RINGERS: LORD OF THE FANS” narration recording session. We recorded at the same studio where he does the looping for “Lost.” It’s located in the mountains behind Honolulu and was quite lovely! Everything went well and I’m sure that the Ringers out there will love his narration. We had a lot of fun with it! Dom kept noodling away at a piano in the studio on breaks.
Dom is looking forward to seeing everyone at ORC, and is hoping that his “Lost” schedule will permit him to attend our “RINGERS” premiere in Park City, Utah on January 21st at the Slamdance Film Festival. (For tickets go to slamdance.com) Dom will be joining us on our ORC “RINGERS” panel, and we’ll show a segment from the film and some clips and hopefully some behind the scenes footage!
For more info about “RINGERS,” visit our website. For the list of our interviewees, click the Interviewee link!
Aloha!
Carlene Cordova “RINGERS: LORD OF THE FANS” Director
If you already have your copy of the Return of the King Extended Edition, you’ve probably worn it out by now.
And we bet you’re burning to talk about the additional footage: how well it works, whether it fits in and how well it adds to the overall storyline.
That’s why this weekend in Hall of Fire, we’re having a special session on the Return of the King Extended Edition: ‘Return of the King EE: Are you satisfied now?’
Come along and join and give us your opinion!
=== Upcoming topics
Dec 26 Only: Share Your Story What Tolkien Means to Me.
Jan 1 and 2: Q and A with the Hall of Fire staff You ask / we answer
Jan 8 and 9: The Power of Song in Tolkien
Jan 16 and 17: The Silmarillion Ainulindale & the Valaquenta
=== Place: #thehalloffire on theonering.net IRC server. Need instructions? Go here: http://www.theonering.net/barlimans/instructions.html
=== Chat Times:
Saturday Chat: 5:30pm EST (17:30) [also 11:30pm (23:30) CET and 9:30am Sunday morning Australian summer time]
Sunday Chat: 8:00 pm (20:00) CET
[also 2:00pm (14:00) EST and 6:00am Monday morning Australian summer time]
EST = Eastern Time, USA’s East Coast CET = Central European Time, Central Europe AEST = Australian East Coast
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