|
Post by johnnypt on Jan 3, 2017 10:27:27 GMT -5
I have Children of Hurin set for a cover to cover read through. I've skipped around through it numerous times over the past decade but wanted to get it done before Beren & Luthien came out. Not sure it's the greatest thing to read at 530a on the subway, but it's there.
|
|
|
Post by Grim Wanderer on Jan 3, 2017 10:52:42 GMT -5
I've been reading both The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings over again. Not because of the Professor's 125th, but just because it's been a few years. Tolkien was not a bare knuckle sort of writer, but there is certainly magic in his prose.
|
|
|
Post by deuce on Jan 3, 2017 23:47:19 GMT -5
|
|
|
Post by deuce on Jan 9, 2017 9:04:38 GMT -5
"[Family life must have been different] in the days when a family had fed on the produce of the same few miles of country for six generations, and that perhaps was why they saw nymphs in the fountains and dryads in the wood - they were not mistaken for there was in a sense real (not metaphorical) connections between them and the countryside. What had been earth and air and later corn, and later still bread, really was in them. We of course who live on a standardized international diet…are artificial beings and have no connection (save in sentiment) with any place on earth. We are synthetic men, uprooted. The strength of the hills is not ours."
-- J.R.R. Tolkien, from an unpublished letter to Arthur Greeves, June 22, 1930
|
|
|
Post by johnnypt on Jan 11, 2017 8:32:18 GMT -5
I have Children of Hurin set for a cover to cover read through. I've skipped around through it numerous times over the past decade but wanted to get it done before Beren & Luthien came out. Not sure it's the greatest thing to read at 530a on the subway, but it's there.
Finished it this morning, actually was able to find a seat to read it both on the way in and at night coming back home, knocking out around 50 pages a trip. Christopher (and Adam) did a wonderful job of taking all the disparate material from the variety of sources and putting together not just a coherent story, but an extremely readable one. Though this is definitely not for the uninitiated, you really do have to have some clue about where the story fits into the context of the First Age because the names and events come fast and furious. And I was surprised it's not as unrelentingly depressing as reading the shorter versions from the Silmarillion and Book of Lost Tales, though it certainly ends up there.
It gives me a lot of hope about how Beren and Luthien will turn out. There seem to be many more versions to pick and distill from, as he returned to this story more times than just about any other with the possibly exception of CoH. It really is the key First age story and does make it clear that B&L really should have been first in their efforts instead of Children of Hurin. CoH makes numerous references to that story, both in relation to "actual events" (the key events of B&L happening when Turin is born) and thematically. But I'm just happy we're getting it. If that turns out as well, they are really going to have to take a whack of Fall of Gondolin, even if it takes another ten years to put that one together (however, it doesn't look like Tolkien ever really wrote an in depth version of the title event and may require far more editorial intrusion than these two).
|
|
|
Post by johnnypt on Jan 11, 2017 15:10:12 GMT -5
One other thing that's clear after reading it: If Adam ever gives the OK for some kind of adaptation (I know Christopher is done with things like that), there is no way to do the story full justice in a film series. There are simply too many moving parts going on at the same time to concentrate on just one story, then try to catch it up with the others. A GOT-like series with 13 episodes would be the only way to cover everything properly. I suspect Beren & Luthien will only make this clearer.
If it ever happens, it might be good to get the Silmarils more involved. Even Tolkien noted in a story call the Silmarillion, they're not really in there that much. They're central to B&L, have absolutely no role in CoH, then pop up at the end of Fall of Gondolin (or Earendil the Mariner to be specific). Maybe have them all get lost when Beren steals the one. One ends up in the Wolf and shows up again at the end, one ends up involved with Turin Turamber briefly and the third with Tuor. It's just a MacGuffin, but it's a way to further tie the stories together.
|
|
|
Post by deuce on Jan 23, 2017 20:57:01 GMT -5
|
|
|
Post by deuce on Feb 13, 2017 11:42:19 GMT -5
A rare Virgil Finlay illo for The Hobbit:
|
|
|
Post by deuce on Feb 16, 2017 12:28:48 GMT -5
Hobitit is an interesting Finnish TV adaptation of LotR from 1993:
|
|
|
Post by johnnypt on Feb 16, 2017 13:11:28 GMT -5
Hobitit is an interesting Finnish TV adaptation of LotR from 1993:
For those who wanted Tom Bombadil in their Lord of the Rings, here you go...all you want...
Wonder what Christopher thought of this one? According to imdb, it was groundbreaking at the time...for Finland anyway.
|
|
|
Post by johnnypt on Feb 16, 2017 13:13:57 GMT -5
|
|
|
Post by robp on Feb 17, 2017 5:04:10 GMT -5
Watched this last night, very good, am lining up parts 2 and 3 for the weekend
|
|
|
Post by deuce on Feb 24, 2017 9:06:30 GMT -5
|
|
|
Post by deuce on Mar 1, 2017 17:47:19 GMT -5
|
|
|
Post by deuce on Mar 4, 2017 11:14:38 GMT -5
Frazetta's renditions of Gollum:
|
|