Slashdot Mirror
Lord of the Rings and Hype
tenchiken writes "Lord of the Rings finished principle shooting this last week - trailer is online . It is supposed to be be shown in theatres in two weeks before Thirteen Days, which starts Jan 12th. By most reports, PJ's (Peter Jackson) direction of Tolkien's masterpiece should truly be amazing. Also, Tolkien recently won the Amazon.com's "Best of the Millennium" award. (Which I have to admit is a crock, given every single book in the top ten was writen this century).
The online trailer has already blown away TPM's records for most downloads. It seems to be getting a fair amount of international press as well. USAToday recently ran a good report on it Here.
."
If they went page-by-page, the movie would run approximately 32.4 hours!
;-)
And what, exactly, would be the problem with that?
Steven King has had numerous mini-series that have exceeded 12 hours of crap (Tommyknockers, It, and the awful version of The Stand), and all we get is six hours out of the ultimate fantasy story?
---
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
FYI, you can read it on the Web via Project Gutenberg (use a search engine).
A couple of other influential pre-Tolkien books (though not so early as Morris's 1896) are -
- Lord Dunsany's[*], The King of Elfland's Daughter, 1924, didn't like it.
- E.R.Edison's The Worm Ouroboros, 1926, one of my all-time favorites, though somewhat twisted for common tastes.
And then there's Tolkien's direct influences, the Norse myths and sagas, some of which come across as very simarillionesque. I just finished Hrolf's Saga Kraki, and though parts of it bordered on the lame, parts were quite charming, and not unlike modern fantasy (a sword that could only be drawn thrice, etc.). The Lay of Volund in the Poetic Edda is well worth looking up, abeit somewhat grim (somehow reminiscent of Tolkien's Unfinished Tales -- a very good book itself, BTW).Beyond that there's always the Illiad and Odyssey, the latter being more accessible to the modern reader, and very much like a modern fantasy in some regards.
But if you want to sup with the gods, you have to read something rather newer, Jack Vance's Lyonesse trilogy (The Green Pearl, volume II, being my all-time favorite book). You can wash the trilogy down with some rip-roaring tales from his two books about Cugel, which have just been re-released in a thick paperback with the early & influential The Dying Earth and the rather erratic Rhialto the Marvellous. It's worth picking up just for the two Cugel books included in it. I believe the volume is called Tales of the Dying Earth, and is in the stores now.
[*] His actual name was Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
AICN has a great piece covering Harry's trip to the set in New Zealand. This link is to the index, which has a conclusion, and then a link to each of the ten other articles that he wrote.
To summarize, he lavishes praise on the director, costumers, actors, effects people, etc. and says that the only down side was a bit of bad food that he got one day. This is Harry, and he's prone to hyperbole (espcially when he wants to like something), but he's very specific in these artciles, and I'm at least impressed with the apparent attention to detail for Gandolf (the Gray/White).
Here's hoping, but of course, there's no way I can be as pleased with it as I was with The Matrix. Not because The Matrix was a better film (we'll see), but because that was the one movie that was furthest from my expectations. No matter what happens, the best Jackson can do is bring The Lord of the Rings as I've already read it, to life. That's a tall order, but in general I'm more impressed when someone starts with a blank slate and suprises me.
Anyway. Go read, download the trailer and start your countdown timers!
I'm sure much more has been written this century than all previous centuries combined. If you take a random sample of ten written works, from all the written works to date, they will likely have been written in the 20th Century. We had typewriters and computers back then.
So, whether you agree with their choices or not, it's not necessarily a crock that their favorite 10 of the millennium are all from a single century.
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Leaving out Tom Bombadil shows a grave misunderstanding of the story.
Yes, I will agree with the amount of press. When your local ISP puts a copy of the first trailer on a local server for users to download, yeah, it's getting around. But, talk to someone not on the I'net. They know very little to nothing about what looks to be a fantastic movie. One of the things about the Internet that I have found amazing is its ability to generate its own hype. All a production company has to do is put out one trailer here, one press release there, and it spreads like a wild fire. Free publicity. I guess it is a little early to be building up a movie for those who are disconnected from the digital world, but when they decide to start doing it, the hype will never reach the level it is experiencing now on the I'net. What's my beef? When you comment about the hype surrounding a movie, it should not be classified as I'net hype, or paper hype. Just like the Amazon thing, purely I'net hype.
Bryan R.
Bryan R.
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, or $12.50 as seen on eBay.....
Trevor Goodchild wrote:
"I really don't have a problem with kids not reading so much as I have a problem with not enough good old books being brought to the silver screen. You can't expect a child of today to waste hours and hours of their life plodding through a book. It was great for me 20 years ago, but it can't compete with a PS2, nor should it have to. We have evolved."
You MUST be kidding. Care to wonder why Joanne Kathleen Rowling's HARRY POTTER books are selling at an incredible clip that makes the sales of Lord of the Rings during its heyday in the 1960's seem like a minor incident? And more impressively doing it in HARDCOVER? Explain why the 5.3 million initial print run of HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE sold out in less than a week after publication.
Look, if you have the right story that resonates effectively with readers, people will put down their videogames and start reading. I think if Peter Jackson can get the "gist" of the LoTR trilogy correct in the movies, expect a big bump-up in the sales of Tolkien's novels in very short order.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
I read this parody Bored of the Rings back in the early 80s. Hadn't thought about it until I read your post's title! Very funny stuff!
can you really base your opinion on the movie on the trailer?
The Star Wars Phantom Menace trailer look pretty awesome and...
How many pieces of crap have I seen where the trailer was the best part(s) of the movie. (literally)
E.
Build Your Own PVR/HTPC news, reviews, &
Amazon's list is a POLL of readers, not a list compiled by editors or something.
These books were produced by a poll of Amazon.com shoppers.
Take it for what it is and stop bitching about how bad it is.
This is the same trailer that was posted earlier this year.
h tm l
http://slashdot.org/articles/00/04/07/0757212.s
Damn I was hoping for some new scenes.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Well it'd be number one on my top 10 list of books of the millenium about hobbits .
I'm watching it now, and it is the same trailer that was out in May. It's still an incredible trailer (even at 25 MB, but that's why we've got multiple T1s at work, right?), and I can't wait to actually see it in a theater.
Still, I'd like to see a new one, and I'd love to find a movie poster (they *still* don't have one online).
The best site I've found so far for movie information is www.theonering.net -- lots of good information, and easy to browse through.
If they want to call it the top ten books of the millenium, they should have been polling a representative sample of readers from the whole millenium! But no, that would take a lot of expensive exhuming, and Amazon just can't bear to get it's hands dirty.