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J. R. R. Tolkien vs George R. R. Martin. Epic Rap Battles of History
Don’t know how I missed this before but it’s so very nerdy I had to share. Thanks to Sable Aradia for the tip.
J.R.R. Tolkien Lost Audio Recording & Poem Discovered
It seems a Tolkien fan in Rotterdam found an unknown to exist reel-to-reel recording of Professor Tolkien talking to fans at a huge dinner party thrown in his honor in 1958. The fan kept it hidden in his private collection for 20 years before being talked into releasing it. Now it’s being re-mastered by Middle-earth Network and Legendarium Media and will be made available to us next fall. Details are sketchy at the moment but they have provided a production blog and registration so you can get up to date info as they release it.
The Huffington Post has the story of the origin and discovery of the missing audio file that will whet your appetite more than the wicked-short snippet above so be sure to check that out.
Thanks to WWEnder Stephen Poltz for letting us know about this interesting development in the Tolkien Universe. I am eagerly awaiting more information and we’ll post any major news on this project as we can.
Hell is Adaptations: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
While writing this installment of Hell is Adaptations, I briefly entertained the perverse notion of splitting this into three, and bloating it with a lot of sidetracks and irrelevant nonsense. I’m sure you can see where this is going, yes? Peter Jackson’s film adaptations of the Lord of the Rings trilogy were serviceable, even though I think the material spiraled out of his control by the third movie, but with The Hobbit he stopped even pretending to respect the source material.
Jackson had originally pitched filming The Hobbit as the first part of a trilogy, with LOTR being adapted as the latter two parts. After a great deal of studio debate, New Line decided to fund a full LOTR trilogy, and The Hobbit got pushed onto the back burner. As it turned out, the LOTR films were a big hit financially, so talk about a Hobbit adaptation made quite the buzz even before the first trilogy had been fully released. Unfortunately for New Line, lawsuits concerning the earnings of the LOTR trilogy were filed both by Peter Jackson and the Tolkien Estate, causing the rights and financial prospects for the Hobbit film adaptation to be entangled by court intrigue for years.
Burn, baby, burn.
Hell is Adaptations: The Hobbit Cartoon
What has a running time of 77 minutes, was once called “execrable” in the introduction to The Annotated Hobbit, and received a Hugo nomination for Best Dramatic Presentation but lost to Star Wars? That’s right, it’s the Rankin/Bass 1977 animated adaptation of The Hobbit! Loved by children and tolerated by critics, The Hobbit is a mix of cheesiness, hasty storytelling, and hippy ballads. And lest you think I’m exaggerating when I say hippy ballads, I give you this:
Many people might look back on this cartoon with fond childhood memories. They remember the dwarfs’ unexpected party, the sudden and electric appearances of Gandalf, the riddle game beneath the mountains, the trip down the river in barrels, the monstrous worm Smaug, the massive battle of the five armies, and think, “That sure was a great movie.” These people are wrong. Horribly, terribly wrong.
Time to suck your childhood memories dry, kiddos!
What makes this movie so bad? Let’s make a list.
Hell is Adaptations: The Hobbit!
Originally published in 1937, The Hobbit has been a perennially appealing source of material for films and other media. The book itself is an entertaining children’s story, episodic in structure, simple in tone and theme, inventively fantastic, and occasionally frightening, but generally acceptable to a broad audience. It is a widely read book, being long but never boring, and especially entertaining for its intended audience.
Insert poop joke here.
So obviously Peter Jackson would decide to change the tale into one of “epic” scope, filled to the brim with violent battles, portentous overtones, and car—I mean, sled—chases. But I am not yet concerned with Jackson’s ill-begotten films. His trilogy of films adapted (or perhaps “inspired”) by the novel is but the most recent example, and film rights to Tolkien’s breakout novel have been passed between studios like Hepatitis B for decades.
Once after receiving a script adapting his Lord of the Rings trilogy, Tolkien complained about the process in a letter:
I would ask them to make an effort of imagination sufficient to understand the irritation (and on occasion the resentment) of an author, who finds, increasingly as he proceeds, his work treated as it would seem carelessly in general, in places recklessly, and with no evident signs of any appreciation of what it is all about.
I cut my tobacco with the shredded remains of your script, punk.
The Hobbit Trailer #2
“If Baggins loses we eats it whole.” Yes, we do, Precious.
UPDATE: More clips!
Bilbo’s Last Song
As part of our ongoing effort to underscore the classier side of genre literature, we continue our Genre Poetry series with a selection from J.R.R. Tolkien.
Bilbo’s Last Song (At the Grey Havens)
by J.R.R. TolkienDay is ended, dim my eyes,
But journey long before me lies.
Farewell, friends! I hear the call.
The ship’s beside the stony wall.
Foam is white and waves are grey;
beyond the sunset leads my way.
Foam is salt, the wind is free;
I hear the rising of the sea.Farewell, friends! The sails are set,
the wind is east, the moorings fret.
Shadows long before me lie,
beneath the ever-bending sky,
but islands lie behind the Sun
that I shall raise ere all is done;
lands there are to west of West,
where night is quiet and sleep is rest.Guided by the Lonely Star,
beyond the utmost harbour-bar,
I’ll find the heavens fair and free,
and beaches of the Starlit Sea.
Ship my ship! I seek the West,
and fields and mountains ever blest.
Farewell to Middle-earth at last.
I see the star above my mast!
The Hobbit Movie Trailer, My Precious!
OK, this just totally sneaked up on me, gollum, gollum! I’m not sure it starts out very strong but by the time the dwarves started singing I squeed like a little girl.
There is a lot to see in this trailer too. Galadriel and Gandalf consulting about Dul Guldor in Southern Mirkwood? Flashes of some key adventures like the trolls and Rivendell and a dwarf covered in spider webs. I really love the look of the dwarves here. I always pictured them more homogeneous so I like that they all seem to have their own look and personalities.
Very excited to see this coming together after the rough start. What say you?
YA Genre Fiction Month: Bilbo the Doughboy
When you think of WWI fantasy, especially in the young adult genre, you might think of steampunk sci-fi, like Scott Westerfeld‘s Leviathan series. I, on the other hand, think of The Hobbit. Tolkien wrote this classic in 1937, well after the Great War, but much of it came from his experience in the trenches. The book begins with Bilbo puttering around Bag End in the idyllic setting of the Shire, not unlike Tolkien’s own neighborhood in north Oxford. He is then, quite literally drafted by Gandalf to join a platoon of dwarves and sent to the front of a war to witness the Desolation of Smaug. It’s a story similar to Tolkien’s own experience in the Great War, where he was struck with trench fever in 1916. It was while recovering from the disease that he began writing The Book of Lost Tales, which would establish the history and continuity of Middle-Earth.
At first glance, trench warfare might not seem like a suitable inspiration for a children’s book. Perhaps that is why it took so long for The Hobbit to be written. Although set in Middle-Earth, Bilbo’s story wasn’t penned until the 1930s, when, upon spying a blank sheet of paper Tolkien impishly wrote "In a hole in the ground, there lived a hobbit." It might have been terror and illness that inspired Middle-Earth for the author, but the first published account of that world would be more childlike and innocent.
In this sense, one might say that the story of Tolkien’s world is backwards. The Book of Lost Tales was the first thing Tolkien put to paper, but it wouldn’t be published until 1992, long after the author’s death. We, the reader, would begin not in desolation, but in delight. That’s how it started for me, of course. The Hobbit was one of the first YA books I ever read (after The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis, and Ursula K. Le Guin‘s Earthsea Trilogy). It was a great transition for me, because it was really the only YA book set in Middle-Earth. Of course, I read the entire Lord of the Rings series as a teenager, but it was really intended for adults. By the time I graduated to The Silmarillion, I was out of my element. At 14, I barely understood the mature themes and deep mythological references.
The Hobbit, then, is not just a children’s or a YA book. It’s an introduction to wider world that continues to expand in depth and complexity as its reader matures. It is, as the best of fantasy ought to be, the first in a series of books that taps into human tradition and reminds us of what we once believed…and might believe again. What does all of that have to do with a fruitless war that is universally regarded as a dark chapter in human history? Like many works of the Lost Generation, it is a reaction to the event — one that recognizes the inevitability of conflict and human misery. Unlike many of those works, however, there is more hope than mourning. Bilbo returns from his war changed, possibly less innocent, but not truly lost.
There is a reason an entire genre was inspired (perhaps overly so) by this new kind of young adult fantasy, and, as great as our current crop of writers are, I’m not entirely convinced that they have topped this classic.
The Illuminated Silmarillion
This is something quite different from our usual science fiction and fantasy news: German art student Benjamin Harff created a hand-illuminated manuscript of The Silmarillion for his exam at the Academy of Arts. In Harff’s own words:
I created the deluxe-Silmarillion for my exam at the Academy of Arts. My first idea was to create illustrations for the Lord of the Rings, but I realized that the films had left a too strong impression upon me, so I could not work free. So I decided to illustrate the Silmarillion. The calligraphy was first planned to be reduced to one single initial for each chapter. So I studied the “History of Middle-Earth”-books as well as the Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien and especially his works as an illustrator, which give many indications about his imagination of Middle-Earth that cannot be derived from written words. I also tried to find out what inspired him lyrically and visually and I think you can put that into one word: nature.
It is obvious that Tolkien was also a lover of calligraphy, especially medieval. In the book “J.R.R. Tolkien – Artist and Illustrator” I found a hint about a book concerning calligraphy Tolkien had read. So I bought the same book and worked it through.
That was the point where I had more and more fun in doing medieval calligraphy and finally I had to make a decision: Illustrations OR calligraphy. This was not easy, because I had made very excessive preparations for the oil-paintings, but my time was so short, that I could not do both.
I do not regret my decision, because I have made my exam now and there are still tons of studies and prepared wood-plates waiting for paint. One study in pencil I put along with these words, they show the taking of Arathorn by the Hill-Trolls.
Thanks to Make for the link.
