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Another Hobbit Production Diary to Whet Your Appetite
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is due to premier in just a few weeks and Peter Jackson and crew are in serious over-drive to get the post production effects wrapped up. This new production video has some great looking scenes that we haven’t seen before to whet your appetite and gives a pretty good idea of all the work that goes into making a huge movie like this. Can’t freakin’ wait!
The Hobbit Official Soundtrack – Radagast the Brown
The first musical score for The Hobbit has been released: “Radagast the Brown” composed by Howard Shore.
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.
Behind the Scenes of The Hobbit
I was excited to see this over on Topless Robot and thought I’d share it here. After all the hoopla surrounding this film, it’s great to see things back on track. I can’t believe it’s been 12 years since LOTR!
