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The Hype of the Rings
With the Fellowship of the Rings just around the corner, the Slashdot Submissions bin is overflowing with stories about the
film since it premiered in the UK already for you lucky brits. If you don't mind a little spoilage, here is
the guardian's review, the BBC review, the telegraph review, some pictures from the premiere, and one last review. Also, Scifi.com is reporting that
the film has already been pirated. The reviews have their nitpicks, but on the whole its looking good. M : LOTR tattoos!
are they going to make a Hobbit movie to go along with them ?
THERE IS NO DATA. THERE IS O
Actually, the text of the Guardian review is here.
what self-respecting /.'er doesn't know how this movie ends?
I just hope they didn't recycle Jar Jar Binks and use him as Gollum.
We name our servers after LOTR caracters... one day someone asked what type of network we were using. The answer:
Tolkien Ring
Beware TPB
I think Space Balls had one of the more astute observations when it comes to movies...
it was the scene where Bill Pullman meets Yogurt in the underground desert complex and he's showing off all the SpaceBalls stuff..."Moychendising, Moychendising, Moychendising!"
so expect LOTR The Toilet Paper, LOTR The bedsheets, LOTR The Crayon Set and best of all, LOTR The Flame Thrower (the kids love this one).
BOSTON SUCKS!
I'll admit I was worried after reading stories like Feedback: Not the subtractions, but the additions about changes made to the story during the making of the film.
But after hearing last nights interview with Peter Jackson on World News for Public Television, my fears have been allayed. Jackson was asked what John Ronald Raoul would have thought about the movie. Peter said (approx.), "I hope he'd see the love we put into it over the years. But I think he'd be grumpy about many of the changes we had to make."
He seemed to have a deep understanding of Tolkien the man, and was quite aware that he'd meddled with literature that had been canonized. The seriousness with which he approached his task impressed me.
The Yahoo article doesn't mention this, but this month's print issue of Empire Magazine did. The Fellowship actors' tattoos all depict the Tengwar symbol for 9. (Tengwar being Tolkien's Elvish alphabet; you can see what it looks like here.)
-- If no truths are spoken then no lies can hide --
There's a porn version!? Where in the hell do I get that. Waitaminit. Hot hobbit-on-hobbit action? Nevermind.
the no
It was brilliant chosing for Boromir someone who wanted to play Aragorn. That's the perfect way to get into the character...
Oh, wait. This movie looks cool. Never mind! Give them your money!
I would give an attribution if I had seen one. Probably it's evolved from several sources.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
There's a page out there where you can download the font for the various tolkein languages.
http://home.earthlink.net/~darrenv/tolkein.html
It dosen't look quite as cool as the guilded cursive elven runes on all the merchandise, but what do you want for free?
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
I was fortunate enough to see the movie in late November. (no spoilers follow)
:-))
They did not do the impossible. The length and breadth of Fellowship of the Ring could not be compressed into a 3 hour movie. Nor could they manage to please of all us Tolkein fans, each of whom brings a mental picture of what Elves/Frodo/Gandalf/Dwarves/ Aragorn/etc. *really* looked/acted like.
I will guarantee that each of you will walk away disappointed in *some* aspect of the movie. I also expect it to be a *different* piece of the movie for each person.
What they managed was the remarkable. The movie works, and works well. They have successfully translated a book almost totally unsuited for a movie into a rivetting, astonishingly beautiful piece of cinema.
In other words, keep expectations in check, and you should enjoy yourself immensely. Go, waiting to see what part they adulterated/messed up, and you risk letting your inevitable disappointment in one section overshadow the considerable success of the movie as a whole.
As an aside, I suspect that there's a lot of (non-existent) advertising revenue in a site that allows each user to vote on the five things that they feel the film did wrong. I figure there'd be at least five hundred possible complaints. On the other hand, my comparison with other people's list have found an almost complete lack of unity about what the points are! (How could nobody else realize that they've totally destroyed the Shire scenes by making Bilbo's eyes the wrong color
Oh, I'm going to. I should be getting my region 0 DVD grey import this week, but I won't be watching it until the 19th. But I'm doing this out of respect for Peter Jackson and the cast and crew of this film, not because I'm deluding myself that J.R.R. Tolkien, the author of the similiarly themed book would have cared, or that his estate has any interest, rights or say in this film.
Michael White, biographer of the Oxford professor and Lord of the Rings creator, said the author would have hated the film.
"I think he would have just closed his eyes to it," White said of Tolkien, who died in 1973 aged 81.
"He had a hatred of all things Hollywood and did not believe in the idea of imitation being the best form of flattery."
However, Tolkien's son, Christopher, who owns the rights to his father's literary legacy, denied reports that he was unhappy with the way The Lord of the Rings films are being made.
He had remained silent about the films, but reports claimed he was unhappy with the way the film-makers interpreted his father's books.
Tolkien sold the film rights to his cult fantasy books in 1969 for just £10,000 - meaning his family, and those in charge of his estate, were left with no control over how the movies were made.
It looks like a good adaptation, and I'm completely OK with the removal of elements and the filling in of backstory (like Gandalf's imprisonment by Saruman). However it's had too much added and changed (without the input of the creator) to be an actual canon version.
A petulant rock chick defending a passive Frodo is most definitely not the same as an elf lord unveiled in his fury and a desparate but defiant Frodo. It denies Frodo an important piece of character development just to get some tits and ass on screen.
A troll that appears in the book as a foot and an arm didn't get turned into a frenzied CGI showcase by accident. This is the most minor of my quibbles, but it's an easy way to add drama, and I'm a little disappointed that Jackson chose it rather than playing within the limits of the original source.
Replacing the elemental hatred of Caradhras with machinations of Saruman is a major shifting of the characters, not a minor plot tweak. This is implied as being on the limit of Sauron's abilities, let alone Saruman's. It actually demotes Saruman to a simple "bad assed mofo" role, rather than taking the harder but more rewarding route of focussing on his delightfully sinister powers of persuasion.
A skeleton knocked down a well accidentally is not a stone thrown down it on purpose. Again, minor point, but why change it, other than ego? The original situation is functionally identical and leads to exactly the same result.
And those are just the changes and additions that I know about. Don't get me wrong, I'm completely stoked about this adaptation, but on its own merits, because of the cast (petulant rock chicks aside), the crew and the director, and not because I think I'll be seeing the book "Fellowship of the Ring". The destination appears to be the same, but the journey looks to be different enough to jar.
Roll on the 19th when I can find out for sure.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
It goes like this. A bunch of peaceful little guys are minding their own business in their village at the beginning of the first book. The mysteriously disappearing/reappearing wizard Gandalf shows up and says bad things are coming. Several of the little guys decide to head off from the village. Here's where the story gets underway.
Disclaimer - YES, I'm kidding, dammit! But you've got to admit, there IS a grain of truth to it...
Anyone who DOESN'T know the story (both of you), it actually IS a good, complex tale. I just couldn't help noticing this pattern in it...
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
Funny, I just happened to re-read Tolkien's view on a movie version of LOTR last night. In a 1957 letter to his agent in response to an offer from an American studio, he basically said two things (a) he had no philosophical objection to movies and wouldn't mind if someone tried to create a screenplay/movie version (b) however, since he didn't trust Hollywood, his specific instructions were "either Art or Cash", meaning either full artistic control, or enough cash up front to drown his sorrows.
So I would say ol' JRR had pretty clear vision in these matters.
sPh