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Celebrity Casting For LOTR
Heaven help me, it got my head spinning. As a former denizen of that era, my own offerings would have to be:
Momma Cass as Shelob.
Teddy Kennedy as Faramir (before he ate enough to qualify as Shelob.)
Mick Jagger as Legolas (with a twist)
Frank Zappa as Gimli
William Shatner as Boromir
J. Edgar Hoover as Bilbo
As Merry and Pippin?..... The SmothersBrothers or Sonny&Cher
Jerry Garcia as the King of the Dead
Tiny Tim as Galadriel
Timothy Leary as Tom Bombadil (Though George Carlin could pull it off)
Wormtongue played by Attorney Gen. John Mitchell
Eric Idle as Eowyn the warrior-maid of Rohan (though Michael Palin is tempting)
James Brown as King of the Ents (singing "Ow! It's a man's world..." and "I knew that I wood.")
Meat Loaf as the Balrog (played with Marlowean angst, and once Moria with feeling.)
The undead Ring Wraiths must be led by Kieth Richards,... ...plus (at full Valkyrie volume) Martha Mitchell, Joni Mitchell, Nancy Reagan, Nancy Sinatra, Joan Baez, Joan Rivers, Donna Summers, Don Ameche and that Dy-no-mite guy.
Orcs: Mister T and... oh, let him play em all. And I pity the fool who resists.
Lorne Greene as Denethor the Steward of Gondor... (Richard Nixon turned down the part)
Werner Von Braun as Saruman (Sorry Jim M., but instead you can play Aragorn, son of Araplane)
My favorite:
L.Ron Hubbard as (who else?) the mysterious and secretive cult leader Elrond! (Which imitates? Life or fiction?)
... and Jerry Mathers as The Beaver...
Of course Leonard Nimoy would both direct and sing background, with a suitably elf-spockish cameo.
Gotta find a role for Goldie Hawn.
And Raquel, please, in that cave outfit, pretty please. Luan-n-n-na.
Ah, what days those were....
David Brin
(Scientist/author David Brin's novels, including Earth and The Postman (filmed in 1998), are translated in 20 languages. His non fiction book -- The Transparent Society - won the Freedom of Speech Award of the American Library Association. THE LIFE EATERS - a recent graphic novel - explores a chilling alternative outcome of World War II. His more serious ruminations about JRR Tolkien can be found at his site
Probably about the dumbest and least funny things I've read in my entire life.
-Reid
Slashdot just jumped the shark.
My idea is that Slashdot editors should have to submit their own stories anonymously, and let them be reviewed and approved/denied by the other editors.
-Todd
"The details of my life are quite inconsequential..."
wtf?
15 comments and they all are synonymous with "WTF?"
B) Given the unfamiliarity of most posters here with 1980's cultural references (in fact, frequently with 1990's coultural references), I hardly think references to John Mitchell are going to go over well.
C) Naturally, no insufferable boomer nostalgia about the Most Important Time Ever would be complete without rampant errors, here in the relatively benign form of misspelling half the names...
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
This is sufficiently lame that I'm actually posting for once.
There's slow news days where we end up with pretty random stuff over real news, which is ok. But what happened here? "Hmm.. not enough submissions to reject.. I know. I'll paste a lame random email to the front page. woo!"
I vote for a trade in program: Accumulate sufficient mod points, and form a moderation lynch mob. Combine your points and moderate the whole story into oblivion?
yeesh.
Anything Brin writes is automatically posted now? I'm from the same age, I get the casting choices, and I don't think it's funny. It's not that it's insulting or too crazy or anything, just not funny.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
This is probably the worst excuse for a Slashdot article I have ever seen...
Hmm, could someone start a public project to create a LOTR film or would copyright prevent a Free project? I'm thinking a project where people contribute footage, models, scripts, audio, edits or just rendering time. Simultaneously it could build a cg and live version of the film, both continuously evolving and without any canonical versions (so people can include/exclude Bombadil et al in their own cuts. I imagine it would be a very long time before any sort of film would appear from such a project which would be to any sort of broadcast standards, but it could also provide an mountain of material as the basis for Free games/multi-user environments etc. If it ever did manage to finish a film, it would probably have half a dozen shortly afterwards, both different styled versions of the same, and even "spin-off" films ("The Hobbit", "The Council of Elrond" or "Gollum's Tale").
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
Lighten up! Not every post on /. has to stimulate your already bloated mind. Fun posts are just as welcome in my opinion.
I'd love to know how many of the 14 year olds around here even know who most of those people are...
Luckily there's Google.
Don't ever read anything by David Brin. If this is his idea of something worth writing I would hate to see one of his novels.
No, we get it, we just didn't laugh at it. Know why? Because prospective casting jokes are only funny if they are a) topical and b) made before the movie comes out and is insanely successful. I mean, gah! The whole reason this joke is funny is because there's a chance that one or two of the folks mentioned might actually make it into the movie (Patrick Stewart used to be on a joke casting list for Professor X, for example). Since there's no way they're going to remake the LotR trilogy, this list isn't funny anymore. And come on, Mama Cass jokes? The poor woman has been dead for 30 years this Friday, and it wasn't that funny thirty years ago.
I have no idea what this drivel is doing on Slashdot and feel the editors should be ashamed of themselves for including it. I certainly feel ashamed for RESPONDING to it.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
This is what SlashDot has been reduced to? Can we implement a bayesian article filter please?
How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
Stuff that matters.
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PGP Key ID 0xCB8FF658
At the risk of getting my voice lost in the din, this is by far the *worst* thing Slashdot has ever posted. You'd think a professional novelist would be at least slightly funny, for instance, but this isn't even close. This makes User Friendly comics look like comedy gold. This trumps every horribly misspelled article about a mundane and common hardware hack with photos hosted on a home DSL connection for the last 2 years.
This is fucking terrible.
Comment of the year
I realise this, that's why it would take a long time, and also produce multiple films! Continuity would be appalling for a very long time (the pure cg would have it easier), but over time people would be able to cut parts together (it would be one way for a budding editor to show how creative they can be). Also note that I certainly wasn't talking about shooting on film! The actors changing from scene to scene would be a nightmare unless of course you don't show the "wrong" actors, and use the dialog from the right ones :-) Over time I would imagine some interesting works would come out, just look what people did with the Star Wars Kid.
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
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Amazing how a karma bonus mysteriously vanishes when you criticize a /. editor. Sorry Hemos, but this story is pure crap.
vi ~/.emacs
Although your user id is an order of magnitude greater than mine, it is still quite old - I would have an enormous difficult to choose the "worst" story Slashdot ever posted, but there were quite a few worst than this one. This is just a harmless joke, Slashdot has on occasion posted "news" later proved wrong or false that caused real harm to real people for a time (the many false GPL breaches accusations come to mind).
Jon Katz
I'm proud of my Northern Tibetian Heritage
How do I moderate an original post as Off-Topic?
I know the subtitle is "news for nerds" but this is stretching it.
What's next? The 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon getting posted every time it can be linked to LOTR or some other nerdfest?
-- This sig for rent.