Over the last few weeks I’ve had the pleasure of chatting with Shaun Gunner, Chairman of The Tolkien Society….
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Over the last few weeks I’ve had the pleasure of chatting with Shaun Gunner, Chairman of The Tolkien Society. We discussed what he thinks of the Peter Jackson films and where he sees the Tolkien Society heading to in the 21st Century. And because he said he didn’t mind answering some silly questions, I just couldn’t resist putting grammaboodawg’s favourite question from our Getting to know you Q&A’s to him.
Continue reading “TORn talks to Shaun Gunner, Chairman of The Tolkien Society”
The folks of the TORn message board Reading Room, the section of our forums devoted to discussion of Tolkien’s literary works, have just put out for a call for papers for the fourth TORn Amateur Symposium (also known as TAS4).
Previous TORn Amateur Symposiums have published essays on topics as varied as The Physics of The Hobbit, The Corrupting Nature of The One Ring, Concepts of Healing in Middle-earth, The Matter of Glorfindel, and Music and Race in Howard Shore’s Score.
For this TAS, the team of Brethil, Elaen32 and DanielLB are looking for papers that all touch upon The Lord of the Rings in some way.
TAS is an opportunity for those who love Middle-earth to share their ideas on Tolkien-related subjects in a longer written form. Continue reading “Call for papers: the fourth TORn Amateur Symposium”
Ringer Emma has sent us this interview by The Telegraph newspaper with Viggo Mortensen, where he talks about his latest movie The Two Faces of January. He also talks about filming The Lord of the Rings films saying that he felt that Fellowship of the Rings script was the “better organised” of the three films and discusses the use of CGI in the Middle-earth blockbusters.
Continue reading “Viggo Mortensen interview in The Telegraph”
Today, our favorite master of motion capture performance – Andy Serkis – turns 50!
Born on April 20, 1964, Mr. Serkis has long held a special place in all our hearts. The extraordinarily talented actor was originally brought in to supply the voice of Gollum in Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy. However, Andy became a much more integral part of Gollum’s creation than he could probably have ever imagined. Re-imagined through the use of motion capture technology, Gollum became much more than a digital creation. Those of us who sat in theaters on December 18, 2002, witnessed the birth of a new form of performance. What we saw was Andy, transformed into Tolkien’s iconic character. Continue reading “Happy Birthday to Andy Serkis!”
We’ve just heard the sad news that Blanco, the beautiful horse that played Shadowfax in the Lord of the Rings films, has died. We knew that he’d been ill and that his owner and friend, Cynthia Royal, was desperately trying to save him, sadly the decision was made to end his suffering. Cynthia announced this to his fans and followers in an open letter on their website. Our condolences and love go out to Cynthia and all her family. RIP Blanco, running free in the Undying Lands.
Our latest Library feature is a question piece that’s been rolling around my head for the last couple of months. As anyone who knows me well, I’m an extremely curious little cat and enjoy hearing other peoples opinions on a topic, both for and against, so with that in mind:
Book Characters versus Movie Characters
Have your perceptions of characters changed after seeing them on the big screen?
I’ve been thinking about this a lot, ever since I interviewed Peckish Owl and she replied to my question about her favourite characters in LOTR/The Hobbit with;
Continue reading “Lord of the Rings/Hobbit Book Characters vs LOTR/Hobbit Movie Characters”
