. . . in German (auf Deutsch)!
So, it turns out that the latest volume of HITHER SHORE (HS.IV), the journal of the German Tolkien Society (Deutsche Tolkien Gesellschaft, or DTG), has a lengthy review of THE HISTORY OF THE HOBBIT.* Not being able to read German, I resorted to the local library, where with a good German/English dictionary I was able to puzzle out a bit of it. Finding that too slow, I decided to give Babelfish a try, with highly amusing but thoroughly unreliable results akin to the subtitles of some Hong Kong import anime. Online tools having failed me, I resorted to a friend who speaks German**, who finding it sticky going passed it on in turn to his parents,*** who were actually born in Germany (or what was Germany at the time). And now, thanks to their kindness in translating this for someone they've only met a few times, I can see what the reviewer (Judith Klinger) has to say about my book(s).
In general, she seems to be v. pleased to have Tolkien's original text, plot notes, and later additions/revisions (i.e., the 1947 Hobbit, the 1960 Hobbit) --"a valuable edition of the text . . . For Tolkien scholars it is an absolutely essential addition to the previously published literature."-- She's dubious, however, about my having included commentary in the same work as the text: since my commentary could not be exhaustive, she feels I shdn't have attempted it at all. That is, while she's pleased that I present "a lavishly annotated archeology of a text" she would have preferred "a pure text edition".
As for my mini-essays, she thinks --"Occasionally they cut an interesting path through the jungle of connections between the texts. In other cases they are too short to exhaust the topic . . . Inasmuch as these essays do not claim to be complete . . . one has to ask what is the use of this combination of an edition of sources with a discussion of the historical motives (and all this in a limited space). The discussions remain necessarily selective."-- I take her point, but I have to disagree here: that a discussion cannot be exhaustive or definitive doesn't, for me, preclude having a discussion at all. She does think I establish THE HOBBIT's essential connection to Tolkien's larger legendarium --"a multifaceted basis for additional studies of Tolkien’s way of writing, for the development of his mythology and for the position of The Hobbit in his opus. His edition gives important insights: Thus it is obvious that The Hobbit was in no time intended as an independent work without reference to the lost stories of Arda."-- She also thinks I document Tolkien's "extraordinary obstinacy in the construction of a truly credible 'secondary world'."
She is displeased over the typos: fair enough. I would certainly have prevented them, if I could, and have sought to find and correct them since. But she also calls me out for at times drawing on David Salo's A GATEWAY TO SINDARIN --"which is controversial among Tolkien linguists." --. I am of course aware of the criticisms of Dr. Salo's book, and while I do not agree with his stance that an irregular form by Tolkien is a mistake (I don't see how a language's creator can make a mistake of that degree), I don't think that undercuts the value of his book, especially for my purposes.
Finally, I shd point out one minor glitch in the review: Tolkien's biographer is not "Howard Carpenter" but instead the late Humphrey Carpenter.
All in all, an interesting review; many thanks for all who helped me find and read it.
--JDR
current book: FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS by Graham Hancock [1995].
............
*many thanks, Matt, for sending it.
**hi Wolf!
***many thanks, Dr. & Mrs. Baur
Showing posts with label review. Show all posts
Showing posts with label review. Show all posts
Monday, March 16, 2009
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Two Bad Movies -- part two
OBSESSION: RADICAL ISLAM'S WAR AGAINST THE WEST
So, if THE HAPPENING is an interesting idea with a failed execution, like most of Shyamalan's films (always excepting the superlative SIXTH SENSE), by contrast the second film, OBSESSION, is a competent documentary with a heinous goal. The idea here is not just to make you afraid, but to make you very, very, very afraid. So afraid you'd launch a few more wars, be glad to bomb a few more countries, be willing to have people kidnapped and tortured, so long as it might protect you from Scary Foreign People. While it gives lip service to the claim that it's not anti-Muslim, just against the wrong kind of Muslim, its entire thrust is indistinguishable to me, as someone who grew up in the Segregated South, from racism.
Among the most disturbing things here: a deliberate attempt to portray the Palestinians as Nazis, as much footage of child warriors as they could cram in, vicious anti-semitic rants from crackpot imams, and trying to blur all Muslims who oppose our foreign policy into a monolithic foe. Either the filmmakers don't know that Iran and al-Qaeda hate each other (which is hard to imagine) or, in their conspiracy theorist heart-of-hearts they just can't believe it, or (worst of all) they know what they're saying is untrue but it serves their purpose to say it anyway.
For me, the most interesting part about this film comes at the mid-point in which they briefly raise the obvious question: why do these people hate us so much that they'd kill themselves just for the chance of hurting us? And, having posed the question, the filmmakers immediately steer away from it to a safe, simple non-answer: they're deranged by hatemongers, so their actions don't make any kind of rational sense. It's as if in the aftermath of Nat Turner's uprising white Southerners had concluded that slaves attacked slaveowners because they were violent and irrational (which isn't far off from what they did conclude). A little basic history often helps us understand why our enemies do what they do; willful ignorance of the facts never helped a nation make itself safer.
And now they've made a follow-up film, THE THIRD JIHAD. I've not seen this, and probably won't bother (the first was bad enough), but the previews and excerpts available online make clear that its focus is on "homegrown domestic terrorism". So I suspect its unstated goal will be to make viewers accept whatever spying on Americans the government deems necessary as "a small price to pay" to protect us from "further attacks" -- of which it claims there have already been dozens, each foiled only by the vigilance of our Homeland Security.
The kicker here is that Senator Joe Lieberman appears in this one, lending his stature as one of this country's leaders to the anti-Muslim hate-mongering both films want to convey. Lieberman deserves every American's respect for having been a Freedom Rider back during the civil rights movement, but this is a truly shameful end for a career that started out with such idealism.
--JDR
So, if THE HAPPENING is an interesting idea with a failed execution, like most of Shyamalan's films (always excepting the superlative SIXTH SENSE), by contrast the second film, OBSESSION, is a competent documentary with a heinous goal. The idea here is not just to make you afraid, but to make you very, very, very afraid. So afraid you'd launch a few more wars, be glad to bomb a few more countries, be willing to have people kidnapped and tortured, so long as it might protect you from Scary Foreign People. While it gives lip service to the claim that it's not anti-Muslim, just against the wrong kind of Muslim, its entire thrust is indistinguishable to me, as someone who grew up in the Segregated South, from racism.
Among the most disturbing things here: a deliberate attempt to portray the Palestinians as Nazis, as much footage of child warriors as they could cram in, vicious anti-semitic rants from crackpot imams, and trying to blur all Muslims who oppose our foreign policy into a monolithic foe. Either the filmmakers don't know that Iran and al-Qaeda hate each other (which is hard to imagine) or, in their conspiracy theorist heart-of-hearts they just can't believe it, or (worst of all) they know what they're saying is untrue but it serves their purpose to say it anyway.
For me, the most interesting part about this film comes at the mid-point in which they briefly raise the obvious question: why do these people hate us so much that they'd kill themselves just for the chance of hurting us? And, having posed the question, the filmmakers immediately steer away from it to a safe, simple non-answer: they're deranged by hatemongers, so their actions don't make any kind of rational sense. It's as if in the aftermath of Nat Turner's uprising white Southerners had concluded that slaves attacked slaveowners because they were violent and irrational (which isn't far off from what they did conclude). A little basic history often helps us understand why our enemies do what they do; willful ignorance of the facts never helped a nation make itself safer.
And now they've made a follow-up film, THE THIRD JIHAD. I've not seen this, and probably won't bother (the first was bad enough), but the previews and excerpts available online make clear that its focus is on "homegrown domestic terrorism". So I suspect its unstated goal will be to make viewers accept whatever spying on Americans the government deems necessary as "a small price to pay" to protect us from "further attacks" -- of which it claims there have already been dozens, each foiled only by the vigilance of our Homeland Security.
The kicker here is that Senator Joe Lieberman appears in this one, lending his stature as one of this country's leaders to the anti-Muslim hate-mongering both films want to convey. Lieberman deserves every American's respect for having been a Freedom Rider back during the civil rights movement, but this is a truly shameful end for a career that started out with such idealism.
--JDR
Two Bad Movies--part one
So, last week I watched not one but two truly bad movies on dvd, each of which was bad in its own distinctive way.
The first was M. Night Shyamalan's THE HAPPENING, which I'd wanted to see in theatres but missed. I'd been intrigued to learn it was inspired by Colony Collapse Disorder, the phenomenon that's been wiping out the bees, and thought Shyamalan wd be able to make a pretty interesting story out of that. Unfortunately, I was wrong.
SPOILER ALERT
The short version: this is a thirty-minute episode of THE TWILIGHT ZONE, sans Rod Serling's genius, stretched out to ninety-one minutes (but it seems longer).
The slightly longer version: this is Hitchcock's THE BIRDS, sans Hitchcock's genius, except with trees rather than birds.
It's an interesting premise -- one day trees in Central Park start to release a biotoxin (think phemerones) which causes everyone who inhales them to immediately commit suicide. In short, it's the story of a suicide plague that starts in NYC, then spreads to Philadelphia and other large east-coast cities, then to towns, then villages, then small groups of refugees, then single people. People initially assume it's some sort of terrorist attack using nerve gas and only gradually begin to figure out the truth.
That cd be an interesting film, but unfortunately it suffers from some massive logical gaps. Why is the tree's defense mechanism first triggered in a peaceful spot like Central Park rather than, say, a Weyerhaeuser tree farm being chainsawed and clearcut in the Pacific Northwest? Why does everybody affected by the plague instantly realize the most effective way to kill themselves and immediately carry it out flawlessly? Shyamalan does make v. effective use of Zooey Deschanel ability to look unearthly when standing silently and staring, but it'd have been better yet to have likable lead characters in a compelling plot; the main story here feels more like an afterthought, a frame that wanders around to enclose the twenty or so little snuff films that are the focus of Shyamalan's real interest.
And, I just have to say, that the last time I saw a bad movie named "The Happening" (about forty years ago) at least it had a great theme song by The Supremes. Not the case here.
Next: OBSESSION: RADICAL ISLAM'S WAR AGAINST THE WEST
The first was M. Night Shyamalan's THE HAPPENING, which I'd wanted to see in theatres but missed. I'd been intrigued to learn it was inspired by Colony Collapse Disorder, the phenomenon that's been wiping out the bees, and thought Shyamalan wd be able to make a pretty interesting story out of that. Unfortunately, I was wrong.
SPOILER ALERT
The short version: this is a thirty-minute episode of THE TWILIGHT ZONE, sans Rod Serling's genius, stretched out to ninety-one minutes (but it seems longer).
The slightly longer version: this is Hitchcock's THE BIRDS, sans Hitchcock's genius, except with trees rather than birds.
It's an interesting premise -- one day trees in Central Park start to release a biotoxin (think phemerones) which causes everyone who inhales them to immediately commit suicide. In short, it's the story of a suicide plague that starts in NYC, then spreads to Philadelphia and other large east-coast cities, then to towns, then villages, then small groups of refugees, then single people. People initially assume it's some sort of terrorist attack using nerve gas and only gradually begin to figure out the truth.
That cd be an interesting film, but unfortunately it suffers from some massive logical gaps. Why is the tree's defense mechanism first triggered in a peaceful spot like Central Park rather than, say, a Weyerhaeuser tree farm being chainsawed and clearcut in the Pacific Northwest? Why does everybody affected by the plague instantly realize the most effective way to kill themselves and immediately carry it out flawlessly? Shyamalan does make v. effective use of Zooey Deschanel ability to look unearthly when standing silently and staring, but it'd have been better yet to have likable lead characters in a compelling plot; the main story here feels more like an afterthought, a frame that wanders around to enclose the twenty or so little snuff films that are the focus of Shyamalan's real interest.
And, I just have to say, that the last time I saw a bad movie named "The Happening" (about forty years ago) at least it had a great theme song by The Supremes. Not the case here.
Next: OBSESSION: RADICAL ISLAM'S WAR AGAINST THE WEST
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
