THE HOBBIT films as "sausage fest"

So, setting aside the whole Radagast and prequels thing, now that AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY is out of theatres, interest is beginning to build in the second of the three HOBBIT movies, THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG. No trailer yet, at least that I've seen, but here's a description of what Jackson showed folks at a recent 'making of' event:

WARNING: if you've been avoiding spoilers, 

now's a good time to stop reading.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/movies/2013/03/24/peter-jackson-the-hobbit-desolation-of-smaug-first-look/2015561/

For a more in-depth look, here's a link (posted by Alana Joli Abbott to the MythSoc list on 3/26) that puts things in context more:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2013/mar/25/hobbit-desolation-smaug-sneak-preview?utm_source=Publishers+Weekly%27s+PW+Daily&utm_campaign=b0304aa247-UA-15906914-1&utm_medium=email

The idea of introducing Bard a little earlier harkens back to the similar decision to give Arwen Glorfindel's role in Jackson's FELLOWSHIP; more interestingly, it seems likely to offer chances to juxtapose THE HOBBIT's two kings-in-exile, who share such similar backgrounds and yet end so differently. I can't recall ever seeing a piece comparing and contrasting the two, but it's such an obvious topic, once it's pointed out (like the Theoden/Denethor pairing in LotR, first highlighted by Jane Chance Nitzsche, or the Turin/Tuor pairing noted by the late great Paul Kocher) someone must have worked it up at some point. If not, then this might be one of those cases where Jackson's films send us back to reconsider the text, with his changes helping to highlight why Tolkien did things the way he did in the original.

I do have to say, reading through this list of things that are to appear in the second movie (and mentally adding in all the things I already know are part of the second film from bits and pieces in the production blogs and design books), it seems to cover everything from the Carrock to the death of Smaug. Which really leaves only the Siege of the Mountain and The Battle of Five Armies for the third film -- unless they expand the 'And Back Again' part, which seems rather unlikely. Perhaps the third film will simply be shorter than the first two (say, an hour and a half rather than close to three hours). Time will tell.

Unfortunately, THE HOBBIT recently got drawn into a minor flap set off when at an awards show Dame Helen Mirren (one of the greats) used the occasion to belittle another honoree's speech for not having been politically correct enough (he'd given shout-outs to specific scenes and directors that had inspired and moved him; she criticized him for not including movies directed by women among them). Which prompted film critic Robbie Collin of the TELEGRAPH to take up what he imagined to be Mirren's point and, in passing, denounce Jackson's HOBBIT --which had just won Best Science Fiction/Fantasy film, as well as Best Actor (Martin Freeman)-- as a "tedious fantasy sausage-fest"

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/9951740/Empire-Awards-Dame-Helen-Mirren-on-Sam-Mendes-and-sexism-in-film.html

I think R. Collin must hail from the F. R. Leavis school of critics, who strongly focus on trying to prevent people from reading (or in this case, watching) and enjoying works of which the critic disapproves. Although elsewhere* he identified himself as a Tolkien purist and criticized the movie for not being faithful enough to the original, now he's reversed himself and is  blasting Jackson for choosing to remain true to the book in keeping with Tolkien's all-male cast of characters. As well criticize PRIDE AND PREJUDICE for its lack of Napoleonic battle scenes as THE HOBBIT for its lack of female characters, sez I.

Jackson himself is of course well aware of the problem of no female characters: note how the scenes at Dale, in Hobbiton, at Rivendell, where he can fill in, include a large number of women.** And the team he's assembled to make these movies are not some Old Boys Club: the scripts are largely by Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens, as had also been the case with his earlier LotR movies; both women are also among the new film's producers, along with several other women; six of the seventeen assistant directors are women. Maybe R. Collin will be satisfied by the addition of Tauriel in the second movie, a deliberate departure from Tolkien's original to try to redress the imbalance. But I rather doubt it, given that Collin's criticism ignores the simple fact that Jackson's Tolkien films have been hugely popular among women.

--JDR

current reading: TOLKIEN'S BAG END by Andrew H. Morton (2009)
(quote for today: "In fact, [the real] Bag End was a substantial Elizabethan manor house" --p.18)

*http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/filmreviews/9730525/The-Hobbit-An-Unexpected-Journey-movie-review.html   --He even hates Martin Freeman's Bilbo ("who makes exactly one-third of a good job of portraying the character "), reserving his praise only for Serkis's Gollum.

**there's also some indication that Belladonna Took will appear in the extended edition of AN UNEXPECTED PARTY

Peter Jackson Is Not George Lucas

So, thinking about the Radagast / Jar-Jar comparisons (which popped up in several reviews of AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY back in December, and recently again on the MythSoc list*) actually ties in well with a discussion I was having with a friend (hi, Stan) just after we'd been to see THE HOBBIT again in the budget cinema last Thursday.


Basically, we were mulling over to what extent Jackson's trilogy of HOBBIT films being made as prequels to his LORD OF THE RINGS films of a decade and more before can be considered analogous to Lucas's prequels to his original STAR WARS trilogy.

Having been tremendously impressed with STAR WARS when it first came out, and unimpressed by pretty much all the ones that followed, I was stunned to learn that people approaching the Lucas films for the first time nowadays start with PHANTOM MENACE. I can't imagine how this must skew the viewing experience for seeing the original movie as the fourth in a series. Such viewers know who Darth Vader is the first time he appears -- they've seen the mask and heard the breath at the end of SITH. They know who Leia is as soon as they learn her foster-father's name, and that she and Luke are brother and sister. It must be like people who read THE SILMARILLION before THE HOBBIT: I know there are some, and that the sequence works for them, but it's so different from my own experience that it's hard for me to properly envision it.


Of course, where the analogy between Lucas and Jackson breaks down is that Jackson is adapting pre-existing, well-known books. He varies from the books a good deal in detail (more than I wd like) but keeps to the main overall plot and structure. Plus, Tolkien's HOBBIT is not a 'prequel' to his LORD OF THE RINGS -- THE HOBBIT came first, and LotR was written as a sequel (though Jackson's film HOBBIT is a prequel to his earlier LotR films).

By contrast, Lucas's fourth, fifth, and sixth movies (1999-2005) are indeed prequels to the original STAR WARS (1977) and its two sequels (to be a prequel, a work must be made later but set earlier).

Except that while Jackson has everything that happens in THE HOBBIT already mapped out for him, and knows exactly how it shd sync up with the start of LotR, Lucas just makes up things as he goes along (despite claims to the contrary), creating all kinds of continuity problems for himself in the process. Seeing how careful Jackson is in AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY to touch bases again and again with elements in his LotR films, and how hard he works not to clash in this film with what's already been established in the earlier ones, I suspect the final fit between the HOBBIT films and the LotR films will be as seamless as he can make it.

Also, Jackson's LotR is really just a single very long movie released in three yearly installments (similar to Tolkien's LotR, itself not a trilogy but a three-volume novel), a model THE HOBBIT seems sure to follow. Not so both Lucas's original STAR WARS films (1977-1983)  and the follow-up prequels, which are true trilogies: a set of three linked but essentially stand-alone works. And with longer gaps, both between the trilogies and between the films within each trilogy.

So while I can see some surface similarity, I think the analogy doesn't hold. Lucas is Lucas, and Jackson is Jackson. Luckily for me, I prefer Jackson -- but I still remember the 'Beatlemania' moment when the original STAR WARS came out of nowhere and blew everybody away. If only he'd stopped while he was ahead . . .   As I think Jackson will stop when he comes to the end of THE HOBBIT.

--John R.

current reading: TOLKIEN'S BAG END (Morton), THE LAST YGGDRASIL (Young), SPEAKING FROM AMONG THE BONES (the latest Flavia de Luce novel)

*( http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mythsoc/message/24190 )

Radagast Is Not Jar-Jar

So, the first HOBBIT movie has now come and gone, after having brought in about a billion dollars as it moves on to the second-run cinemas (where I saw it again on Thursday). The special tables devoted to Tolkien at the Barnes and Noble stores are gone (as of the last week of February), and in general things have quieted down a bit on the Peter Jackson / Tolkien films front -- at least till things begin to ramp up again in anticipation of the second movie (and extended edition of the first).

Now that the film's out on dvd I've had a chance to watch it again several more times (five times in the theatres, four times on dvd since the 19th, and then once in the budget theatre on the 28th). I feel like I've come to know it fairly well, so thought I might weigh in on some of the criticism I've seen aimed at it.

In general, the consensus seems to be that the movie is good, but my impression is that people are less excited about it than they were over THE LORD OF THE RINGS films twelve years ago. Part of this is the difference between a known and an unknown quantity. People coming to see THE HOBBIT more or less know what to expect from a Peter Jackson Tolkien film, so the wow factor is a little less. It's like a rock musician releasing a first album that wows everybody; the follow-up album, even if as good or better, often gets denigrated as 'more of the same'.

Also, those fans who were swooned over Wood, Bloom, and Mortensen don't seem to have all made the transition to Armitage and the guys playing Kili and Fili. That they get to see more Ian McKellen in this movie than any of the previous ones doesn't seem to make up the difference, nor the returning roles by Blanchett, Lee, Weaving (who's allowed more than one expression this time), Holm, or Serkis. Some of the most devoted LotR movie fans I know haven't bothered to go see THE HOBBIT film yet, or only saw them once and were done with it. So another factor is that the HOBBIT movies haven't captured all the LotR movie fans.

Finally, THE HOBBIT is not THE LORD OF THE RINGS: LotR is universally hailed at Tolkien's masterpiece, while some people who like LotR don't like THE HOBBIT (and vice versa) or view it as an enjoyable but lesser 'prelude'. Thus the built-in audience for these new Jackson/Tolkien films, while huge, is arguably smaller than that for the LotR films. The latter also benefited from 'Author of the Century' synergy of Tolkien's work finally breaking through into acceptance through winning so many 'best book of the century/millennium polls. Some (like me) think THE HOBBIT is Tolkien's other masterpiece, but this is not a universally held position.


Some of the criticism of the new film, however, seem to me less a judgment on its merits (I'd argue this film is as good as the earlier LotR ones) than a manifestation of the phenomenon that people hate success. They love to see those who have succeeded in the past fail spectacularly in new ventures, and gloat over their downfall. How else otherwise to explain repeated comparisons of Radagast to Jar-Jar Binks?

For the record: Radagast is not Jar-Jar. Jar-Jar is a racist stereotype, a high-tech Stepin Fetchit, an offensive parody of a specific ethnic group. Radagast is a goofy character included for comic effect. Remove a few details -- the guano on his robes (a detail borrowed from T. H. White's Merlin), the stick-insect stunt, and the smoke-scene -- and his character wd be greatly improved. Even as is, the character still achieves everything the movie needs him to, including a rather impressive one-man exploration of Dol Guldur (which in the book had been achieved by Gandalf himself).

Those who can't get over flashbacks of bad DR. WHO episodes can comfort themselves that, while Jar-Jar plays a major role in THE PHANTOM MENACE, Radagast only appears in ten minutes, total, of THE HOBBIT film. Which is another reason why comparison between the two is so inapt.

Up Next: Peter Jackson Is Not George Lucas

--John R

A very minor spoiler

So, I'm sometimes bemused or amused but often interested in what Amazon.com puts in my 'Recommendations'. The logic of their algorithm sometimes escapes me, and other times it's all too obvious though wildly wrong.  Yet their system also lets me know about some interesting things I wdn't come across otherwise.

As a rule, I only check the Recommendations in Books, but a week or so ago I accidently hit a button that made it show All Recommendations, which included lots of little action figures from the newest Peter Jackson/Tolkien movie. And one among these caught my eye, since it's of a character not appearing in the first movie (nor, I suspect, the second): Bolg, son of Azog. Given the context (he appears in a two-pack with 'battle-damaged' Gandalf) and Tolkien's original, I suspect he'll be making his appearance in the third movie, just in time for The Battle of Five Armies.*

In any case, if (like me) you didn't know Bolg was scheduled to make an appearance in Peter Jackson's version of HOBBIT-world but find evidence that he will interesting, and if (unlike me) you like to collect four-inch figures,** you might want to check it out. Here's the link:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Bridge-Direct-Gandalf-Adventure/dp/B008LQWNV4/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1361755783&sr=8-1&keywords=bolg+hobbit

--John R.

*The text accompanying the figure on the amazon site says he appears in the first movie, which is not the case; either they've got which installment in the three-film set wrong or he'll actually be in some extended version of this first one down the line.

**I'm oldschool enough that I prefer little lead miniatures you can paint and use in yr DandD game. I still have some of these from the Bakshi LotR film. Of them, one of their hobbits, the Saruman (or 'Aruman' as Baskhi sometimes called him), the Gandalf and Strider figures were all pretty good, though best of all was Gollum (and worst was horned-hat Boromir, though that was not the miniature-maker's fault)

I Am Interviewed (Smithsonian)

So, in addition to being Tolkien Day, today's also a good day for me because a piece I'm quoted in has just been published online at Smithsonian.com : "The Tolkien Nerd's Guide to THE HOBBIT", by Rachel Nuwer.

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/The-Tolkien-Nerds-Guide-to-The-Hobbit--185546102.html?c=y&story=fullstory

I was happy to be interviewed for the piece, both (a), because it's Smithsonian, and (b), because it's on a topic of special interest to me. I know the text of THE HOBBIT really well, and am also pretty well up on references relevant to THE HOBBIT in Tolkien's other work. Given the resources available to Jackson -- THE HOBBIT itself, all the references to events from the time of THE HOBBIT in LotR, and Jackson's own LotR films to which these films are prequels -- how wd he weave those strands together? Equally important, how wd he handle to tricky issue of material relevant to his work-in-progress to which he did not have the rights, like "The Quest of Erebor", "The Istari", and "The 1960 Hobbit"?

As for the article itself, I enjoyed it. It takes on an interesting subject -- how did Jackson use the sources available to him, and how did he work around relevant works that were not available? -- which I suspect will be the topic of some essay or essays in some future version of a follow-up book to Jan and Phil's PICTURING TOLKIEN. And I think it does a pretty good job with it.   It's easy to nit-pick (Tolkien's LotR is not a "trilogy", although Jacksons films of LotR arguably are; the sword's not the Necromancer's but the Witch-King's; we don't know if Thror's murder was one-on-one or not) but I know the piece's author went to a good deal of trouble to try to get details accurate.

Which, combined with problems I encountered in the two Tolkien-themed Trivia books I've been reading lately, has reminded me just how difficult it is to paraphrase Tolkien correctly. Tolkien's work has always been complex, where detail really mattered. We may have to face the fact that with the publication of so much draft and unfinished material Tolkien's writings are now too diverse and complex and contradictory to hold in the mind in toto, as we used to be able to do in the days before UNFINISHED TALES. I know for a long time I've distinguished between scholarly and popular works; the former I'm pretty ruthless with so far as details go*, while I'm aware I mentally 'grade on a curve' with the latter.

Did find the quotes and comments from Michael Drout interesting; he obviously had a v. different response to the film than I did in that while we like and dislike some of the same bits, our reaction to the parts we dislike is dissimilar.** Here's a link to his own review of the film:

http://wormtalk.blogspot.se/2012/12/the-first-hobbit-film-some-thoughts.html

In this Smithsonian piece, I disagree with Drout that "the Tolkien estate . . . are litigious". Tolkien Enterprises (the people who own the movie rights) is certainly litigious, but the Estate (an altogether different entity, being Tolkien's family) strikes me as resorting to lawsuits only when driven to exasperation (e.g., by the news of hobbit slot machines). In any case, the lines cited don't sound particularly close to me (the sentiment, yes; the phrasing, no).

--JDR

current reading:
 THE PRICE OF POLITICS by Woodward without Bernstein, on the Kindle (bit dreary)
 GREEN SUNS AND FAERIE by Verlyn Flieger (fascinating, as expected)



*I once listened to, and enjoyed, an hour-long talk by my friend Taum Santoski about Tolkien artwork and, afterwards, had a one-word response: "Denmark!" -- he having at one point mis-identified which country the queen who illustrated the Folio Society's edition of LotR had come from as Sweden. To my credit, I was heartily ashamed of myself afterwards once I realized what I'd done -- which was to pick a point of disagreement as a starting point for the next round in our endless discussion of all things Tolkieian.

**I think the difference is that Drout falls into the group of Tolkienists who take those departures from the original that don't work as a sort of personal insult, while I just dismiss them as a part of the film that didn't work when it cd have worked, had they been more faithful.

Three Films

So, it seems the rumors (or is that 'rumours'?) were true: Peter Jackson announced yesterday that, having just concluded principal photography on the two HOBBIT movies, he's now decided to go ahead and make it THREE films instead.

Obviously, this will involve new filming, new scripting, new everything. There's much speculation about where he cd break Bilbo's story into three pieces, but I don't think that's what they'll do. Consider: it's only four and a half months until the release date of the first film. Given all the special effects, scoring, editing, &c. they'll have to do, it's too late to change that one much. Besides which it's clear from hints Jackson has been dropping for a while that he really wants to film material from the Appendices (which for all events and purposes means Appendix B, supplemented by Appendix A). So I think the two HOBBIT films will remain pretty much as they are, and that the third film will be a 'bridge' spanning events from the years between Bilbo's return home and the Long-Expected party sixty years later. We know a lot about the events in these years, but since Tolkien chose not to write that story, any movie based on these materials will obviously contain less Tolkien, and more Jackson, than any of the other five. We'll see what they come up with.

Four and a half months to go . . .

--John R.

current reading: WHERE THEY STAND and MEMOIRS OF HECATE COUNTY

Christopher Tolkien interviewed in LE MONDE

So, a few days ago (July 6th/7th), an interview with Christopher Tolkien appeared in LE MONDE, France's major newspaper. The original piece was only available for subscribers, and though it was possible to buy a single article (for a euro or so, I think), I didn't have time to try to navigate the directions,* what with being busy babysitting a six-year-old and a year-old toddler all weekend. Thanks to links posted by some good folks on the MythSoc list,** I was able to find the original (in French), which was made available for free online after the first few days:***

http://www.lemonde.fr/culture/article/2012/07/05/tolkien-l-anneau-de-la-discorde_1729858_3246.html

I've been slowly working my way through this -- my college French being such that while I'm pretty good on the nouns and adjectives I'm often uncertain on the verbs (so many variants due to tense) -- and finding it of great interest. Now, thanks to another post on the MythSoc list (thanks, Jason), a pretty good translation is available. Given that interviews with C.T. are so rare -- the last I can think of is in the 1992 film documentary on JRRT's centenary (the Landseer video), rather than comment on this one I'd just like to help draw people's attention to it; I particularly liked the bit about Christopher Tolkien having no regrets at leaving academia behind.

http://sedulia.blogs.com/sedulias_translations/2012/07/was-first-felt.html

--JDR

current reading: A DAMSEL IN DISTRESS (1919) by P. G. Wodehouse

* (thinking the potential for error was high, what with them being in French)

**thanks to Vincent F, Paul W, GHC, and Romuald L.

***although this version seems to lack the reproduction of one of Tolkien's maps that apparently accompanied the original (paper version).

review of my Bombadil article

So, had I had time and better access to the internet while at Kalamazoo, I wd have posted this the weekend before last (specifically, on the 11th). Better late than never in this case, I think.

It's a review of the new McFarland book PICTURING TOLKIEN, edited by Jan Bogstad & Phil Kaveny, in which I have an essay looking at the eight adaptations of THE LORD OF THE RINGS so far (films, unproduced scripts, radioplays, musical) and the different ways they handle the Bombadil material. I forget who gave Jan & Phil the link, but I'm grateful to them for passing it along to me.

Here's the review:

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Picturing+Tolkien%3A+Essays+on+Peter+Jackson's+The+Lord+of+the+Rings...-a0288689254

I'm particularly pleased by this review because (a) the reviewer says nice things about my essay, and I always like that, and (b) he or she concludes by saying that some of these essays actually have worthwhile things to say about the books and thus have a value that transcends just a discussion of the films.

If this were not enough, on the Teaching Tolkien roundtable at Kalamazoo one person (Jan B.) said mine was one of two essays from PICTURING TOLKIEN* she used in her course to help people get beyond the idea that a comparison or contrast between the film and the book had to end in praising one and condemning the other.

So, altogether I'm v. pleased that my Bombadil piece seems to have turned out okay. Now I have my fingers crossed that my next one, due out later this year, will also go down well. Guess we'll see.

--John R.

current book: MY FRIEND RONALD by Arne Zettersten (a.k.a. J. R. R. TOLKIEN'S DOUBLE WORLDS)

current audiobook: THE DARK IS RISING

current manga: PRINCESS RESURRECTION

*I think she said Verlyn Flieger's was the other

THE HOBBIT and QWERTY

So, having been to see the One Man LotR last weekend turned my thoughts back to a post I'd been wanting to make for a week.

The latest news about the Peter Jackson HOBBIT movie(s) is interesting, but not altogether reassuring. Recently he showed a ten-minute segment to film buffs at a con, and about two-thirds of those viewing it disliked what they saw.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/25/hobbit-48-fps-footage-divides-audiences_n_1452391.html#s907018

Not the acting, not the story, not the music: the actual film quality. For the better part of a century, films have been shot and shown at 24 frames per second. No doubt in the beginning this was because that represented the upper level of the technology of the time: running nitrate and cellulose through projectors -- just like films tend to have distinct breaks every twenty minutes, that being the size of the reel for the standard projector for decades. Think QWERTY, the odd arrangement of letters on the keyboard most of us never think about, which originated as a way of slowing down typists so they wdn't hit keys faster than the old manual typewriters cd actually process the results: it took time for each stroke to hit the paper.

What those who were lucky enough to be there in the audience for this new footage saw didn't match their expectations. Ironically, the film quality was so good that it looked fake. That is, the resolution was sharp enough that actors didn't look like characters: they looked like actors wearing make-up. Scenery looked like v. obvious sets. As with any shift in quality of resolution (lord know we've gone through enough of them in music formats, from transistor radios on down), in time viewers will adjust. But it's kind of rough for a movie I want to see so badly to be the test case.

However, the following piece (which, be warned, is full of spoilers) ends with an encouraging note: not every theatre will re-tool to the new technology by this December, meaning that those wanting to see it in standard (24 f.p.s.) format will be able to do so; likewise those who want to go for the new (48 f.p.s.) format, just as you can go to (most) movies now in standard or 3-D.

http://www.theonering.net/torwp/2012/04/27/55378-hobbit-footage-review-massive-spoilers-full-coverage-analysis/

I did love one line in this article that deserves to be repeated:

"be prepared to tell your non-Tolkien reading friends what really happened"

--Although I'm still trying to get my head around the idea that this piece's author thought Slyvester McCoy put in a really good performance. That thought calls for greater mental re-adjustment than processing higher-speed images.

--John R.

current reading: ALEXANDER AND THREE SMALL PLAYS; "Atalanta in Wimbledon"

The One-Man LORD OF THE RINGS

So, this is something we heard about a month or so ago from an actor-friend who's in our fantasy book discussion group (thanks Allan!): a guy who travels around the country doing a one-man show based on THE LORD OF THE RINGS. We investigated, and found it's not Tolkien's LotR so much as Peter Jackson's he's doing his homage for. Furthermore, he was coming to Tacoma in the not-too-distant future.

Accordingly, yesterday (Saturday the 5th) saw us driving down to Tacoma to see what turned out to be seventy minutes that reproduce a highly abridged but nonetheless incredibly detailed and painstakingly faithful version of the Jackson films, devoting about twenty minutes to each film. The accompanying link gives some clips from his show --

http://www.onemanlotr.com/?page_id=34

--but these really don't give an idea of how kinetic the performance was: Ross was throwing himself about the stage nonstop in a way that wd have done the ever-stalwart Andy Serkis proud, filling in all the voices plus sound effects plus singing the music where appropriate. He took two brief breaks where the films stopped and started, to chat with the audience a bit and catch his breath. The clips in the link also don't convey how funny the overall effect was. Ross is serious, even solemn at times, but he also knows full well that while he's serious about what he does (you can't do a show like this without really good timing), it's also all a bit silly. The jokey-ness tends to grow a bit towards the end, but he was able to keep the audience with him. For instance, when re-enacting the scene where Saruman expounds to his minion, asking did he know where orcs come from, Ross add the aside "read The Silmarillion. No, really", and elsewhere he lamented not having Tom Bombadil in the films (he thinks Brian Blessing shd have played the part) -- just the sort of touch to warm a purist's heart.

All in all, a really impressive performance. If you don't like the Peter Jackson movies, you're not his target audience, though you might still be impressed by the complexity of his performance. If you do, but don't mind some of their oddities being gently lampooned, then you'll like this. A lot.

Now Janice and I are curious what his one-man Star Wars show is like. Although in that case I'd probably need to re-watch the movies. It's been a long time . . .

--John R.

current reading: PLAYS OF NEAR AND FAR, ALEXANDER by Lord D.

Rewatching Peter Jackson

So, on my trip back from Arkansas just before Tolkien's birthday (e.g., in the terminal at Love Field and later during the layover at Albuquerque) I re-watched the theatrical version of Jackson's THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING for the first time in years. It occurred to me recently that whenever I re-watch this, it's always the extended version, which I've come to think of as the 'real' version of the film.

Rewatching it again, first on my laptop with headphones on in airports and on the flight back to SeaTac (hardly ideal conditions), and then again last weekend under much more congenial conditions,* I'd have to revise that conclusion.

One thing I deliberately tried, as a kind of thought experiment, was to try to look at the film as a self-contained work rather than an adaptation. That is, how would this look from the point of view of someone who'd never read the book, who only knows the story as it's being told, minute by minute, on the screen.

First, the theatrical version holds up very well as a coherent film. There's an awful lot going on, --a complex plot and lots of names of people and places-- but the viewer doesn't get lost. It's moving, and funny, and frightening, and exciting by turns; a love story and a war story and a suspense story and a best-buds story. Its range can embrace thoughtful discussions (the Council of Elrond, Shadow of the Past, Gandalf's long talk with Saruman before the wizard-fu nonsense) to well-choreographed action scenes (the best of which was Aragorn's advancing to take on the entire uruk-hai company solo).

Second, the film contains and conveys an awful lot of information. Enormous amounts of backstory and debate and discussion, often taking up thirty-page chapters in the book, get presented in five minutes or so. The temptation to dumb down the story must have been enormous, and it's to Jackson's credit that he resisted it as much as he did.

Third, the film highlights something truly unusual in Tolkien's book that I've simply gotten used to over the years. Someone watching this film with no preconceptions might well wonder, a half hour or so into it, who's supposed to be the main character. At first it looks like Bilbo, but then he exits, stage left. Gandalf looks like the next best bet, but after the wizard-fu scene he's offscreen for quite a while. Just as you might firmly settle on Frodo, Strider appears and seems to take the lead. There have been so many articles over the years debating over who was the real hero of LotR --Frodo or Gandalf or Strider-- that I'd forgotten how unusual it is in any twentieth century work, fantasy or realist or modernist, to have this kind of bifurcation. Impressive that Jackson embraced this element of Tolkien's work and made sure it came to the fore.

Most of us at Mithlond felt that FELLOWSHIP (a) held up well, ten years later, (b) really did have its own merits vis-a-vis the later expanded/extended director's cut, (c) was the best of the three Jackson films overall.

My favorite comment, which either came from Chris or Yvette (I forget which), was the observation when Gandalf arrived at Orthanc: "when you find out your old friend is played by Christopher Lee, look out!"

--John R.

current reading: MIDDLE-EARTH AND BEYOND, ed. Dubs & Kascakova

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*we decided to devote this month's Mithlond meeting to seeing the film, and our hosts' delightful cat Max joined in (their other cat, Maya, also made a rare appearance about two-thirds of the way through, perhaps wondering why we were still there).

Farewell, FRODO FRANCHISE

So, Monday I found out the unwelcome news that Kristin Thompson's excellent Tolkien film blog, THE FRODO FRANCHISE, is shutting down, apparently effective immediately (or, rather, a couple of days ago):

http://www.kristinthompson.net/blog/

Apparently Kristin's plan all along was to write a follow-up book to THE FRODO FRANCHISE, one which I assume would have included the making of THE HOBBIT and the events of its release, impact, and aftermath. And the ongoing posts on THE FRODO FRANCHISE would presumably be incorporated into that book, or at least serve as part of the ongoing research into its creation.

That such a book will now never be written is a real loss to Tolkien Studies. Kristin's was the best of all the books that dealt with the movies,* and I'd have to say that hers is the best of the essays in the new PICTURING TOLKIEN that I've read so far.

The good news is that she's not disappearing: she'll be posting occasionally over at TheOneRing.Net and has two book projects in the works. The first she describes as "a book-length analysis on stylistic and narrative techniques in Tolkien's two hobbit novels"; this wd presumably be the same book mentioned to the endnotes of her PICTURING TOLKIEN piece, where it's described as "a book about The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings where I will discuss such points as who the protagonists of LOTR are" [page 43, Nt 10]. Being a great fan of her earlier book on the Wooster & Jeeves series, I'll be looking forward to this one.

The same applies to her other in-progress project, though that one's further afield: "a large book project on the statuary of the Amarna period" -- i.e., Egyptian art from the time of Akhenaten, the most famous piece of which is the bust of Nefertiti. Having a longstanding interest in ancient Egypt myself, I'll certainly be looking forward to this one as well, though it's outside my field of expertise.

And so passeth a Tolkien blog. It's not one that I checked daily -- more like a place I'd go once a month and read up on what'd happened lately -- but it was a reliable source of information about a specific field in Tolkien studies, one that's not my own main focus. It will be missed.

--John R.

current reading: PICTURING TOLKIEN

current audiobook: OCCULT AMERICA y Mitch Horowitz (just finished)

*of the ones I've seen, anyway -- a few are so prohibitively expensive that I haven't picked them up yet.

Interview re. PICTURING TOLKIEN

So, today I came across the following recent interview of PICTURING TOLKIEN editors Jan Bogstad & Phil Kaveny by Kristin Thompson, herself a contributor to that collection (as am I), on Kristin's website. As fellow members of the University of Wisconsin Tolkien Society (the group that also produced Tolkien scholars Richard West, Matt Fisher, and David Salo), Kristin, Jan, & Phil all go way back. And as the author of the best book on the films, THE FRODO FRANCHISE, Kristin is well-positioned to ask good questions about what differentiates this collection from the others previously released about the films. Here's the piece:

http://www.kristinthompson.net/blog/2011/08/18/editors-discuss-picturing-tolkien-a-new-anthology-on-the-lotr-film-trilogy/

All I'd add is that, as a contributor and bystander to some of the events mentioned in the piece, I know who some of the people in their editorial war stories are, and admit to wholly unwarranted curiosity about the rest. I might add that in the Table of Contents she gives at the end, the author's name follows his or her essay, rather than proceeds it.

--John R., looking forward to the first reviews of the book.

My Newest Publication: "Two Kinds of Absence"

So, yesterday my contributor copy for Jan & Phil's new book arrived, PICTURING TOLKIEN: ESSAYS ON PETER JACKSON'S The Lord of the Rings FILM TRILOGY, the latest in a growing line of Tolkien books from McFarland. This one has been in the works for about two or three years, and it's really good to have it in print. For one thing, it gives me a chance to read the other contributors' pieces.

So far I've only read four of the essays: my own (both to see how it holds up and to see if there are any horrific gaffs I overlooked until too late), Verlyn's (which focuses in on the filmmaker's dilemma of having to choose one specific way to depict things that Tolkien left open to each reader's visualization*), Kristin Thompson's (which is rightly the volume opener and sure to spark discussion, esp. since at one point she argues the filmmakers' presentation of one scene is superior to Tolkien's),** and Jan Bogstad's (about Tolkien's horses); next up is Dimitra Fimi's (on folklore in the films). On the whole, and unlike most of the essays in Croft's TOLKIEN ON FILM, the essays here are far less dismissive of Jackson's work; I suspect the two volumes will wind up making interesting complements to each other.

Since I've only read a quarter of the collection so far, for the rest I'll just give a T.o.C. of titles and authors:

Preface -- Bogstad & Kaveny

Introduction -- ibid

Part I: Techniques of Story and Structure

"Gollum Talks to Himself" -- Kristin Thompson

"Sometimes One Word Is Worth a Thousand Pictures" -- Verlyn Flieger

"Two Kinds of Absence: Elision and Exclusion in Peter Jackson's LotR" -- JDR

"Tolkien's Resistance to Linearity" -- E. L. Risden

"Filming Folklore" -- Dimitra Fimi

"Making the Connection of Page and Screen in Tolkiens and Jackson's LotR" Yvette Kisor

"It's Alive!: Tolkien's Monster on Screen" -- Sharin Schroeder

"The Materiel of Middle-Earth" -- Rbt C. Woosnam-Savage

Part II: Techniques of Character and Culture

"Into the West" -- Judy Ann Ford & Robin Anne Reid

"Frodo Lives but Gollum Redeems the Blood of Kings" -- Phil Kaveny

"The Grey Pilgrim: Gandalf and the Challenges of Characterization in Middle-earth" -- Brian D. Walter

"Jackson's Aragorn and the American Superhero Monomyth" -- Janet Croft

"Neither the Shadow Nor the Twilight: The Love Story of Aragorn and Arwen in Literature and Film" -- Richard West

"Concerning Horses" -- Jan Bogstad

"The Rohirrim, the Anglo-Saxons, and the Problem of Appendix F" -- Michael Drout

"Filming the Numinous" -- Joseph Ricke & Catherine Barnett

And now, back to reading.

--JDR

*based on my skim through the book so far, this seems to be a recurrent theme, just as the earlier Croft collection included many discussions of Tolkien's letter re. the Zimmerman script.

**one piece of good news buried in her endnotes is that she's currently at work on a book about THE HOBBIT and THE LORD OF THE RINGS

Filming Begins on Peter Jackson's HOBBIT

So, Janice had shared this with me a few days ago the following promo clip about the start of filming on THE HOBBIT. Now, thanks to another Janice (this time Janice Bogstad), I've seen a link for those of us not on Facebook. So, for any of those semi-Luddites like me who are (a) on line but (b) not on Facebook, yet (c) obsessed w. all things Tolkien, here's the piece:

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=10150223186041807&oid=141884481557&comments;

It's nice to see old familiar scenes (Bag-End, Rivendell) and faces (Jackson himself, McKellan, Alan Lee, Serkis, the final voice-over from Ian Holm), and to have a chance to see new cast members (Martin Freeman, the dwarves). Jackson mentions how walking around in the rebuilt sets gives him the odd feeling of being inside a movie -- and of course he is inside a movie, making a documentary at the very moment he's speaking. It's also odd, from my point of view, that Jackson now looks younger to me than he did a decade and more before due to all the weight he lost: it takes me a moment to recognize him when he re-appears. The Maori blessing-of-the-soundstage seems a bit stagey, but it was interesting to learn that they're apparently going to start filming the best scene in the book on Day One: Bilbo's encounter with Gollum.

We wants it, my precioussss.

It's going to be a long twenty months between now and then . . .

--JDR

Forthcoming Publication: PICTURING TOLKIEN

So, I just got word that I can now share the good news about a forthcoming publication that includes a piece of mine. It's an essay called "Two Kinds of Absence", appearing in the collection PICTURING TOLKIEN, edited by Jan Bogstad and Phil Kaveny and due out from McFarland half a year from now (official release date: July 31st 2011). Here are two links to descriptions of the book, the first at the McFarland website

http://www.mcfarlandpub.com/book-2.php?id=978-0-7864-4636-0 *

and the second at amazon.com

http://www.amazon.com/Picturing-Tolkien-Essays-Jacksons-Trilogy/dp/0786446366/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1297226695&sr=8-1

My own contribution (the full title of which is "Two Kinds of Absence: Elision & Exclusion in Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings”) examines the claim of Jackson and his co-writers -- that scenes not appearing in the movie nevertheless took place in the film world -- by looking closely at the Bombadil material. In the process, I also take into account how seven previous adaptations (film, audio, and stage) dealt with the Bombadil chapters. It was an interesting mental exercise to distinguish between characters and events that could appear (say, in a hypothetical vastly extended cut) from those that could not, pre-empted when events in the film-world diverge from what happens in the book. It having been some years since I'd written anything about the films (in the extensive three-part review I did at the time the films were released), it was also a good chance to renew my acquaintance with the first film in particular on a v. detailed level.

What's more, I'm pleased to be in such good company: here's a table of contents listing.

Introduction: Jan Bogstad and Phil Kaveny

1. "Gollum Talks to Himself" by Kristin Thompson

2. "Sometimes One Word is Worth a Thousand Pictures" by Verlyn Flieger

3. "Two Kinds of Absence" by John D. Rateliff

4. “Tolkien's Resistance to Linearity" by Edward Risden

5. "Filming Folklore" by Dimitra Fimi

6. “Making the Connection on Page and Screen” by Yvette Kisor

7. “It’s Alive!" by Sharin Schroeder

8. “The Matériel of Middle-earth" by Rbt Woosnam-Savage

9. "Into the West" by Judy Ann Ford and Robin Reid

10. "Frodo Lives but Gollum Redeems" by Phil Kaveny

11. "The Grey Pilgrim" by Brian Walter

12. "Jackson's Aragorn and the American Superhero Monomyth" by Janet Croft

13. "Neither the Shadow nor the Twilight: the Love Story of Aragorn and Arwen in Literature and Film" by Richard West

14. "Concerning Horses" by Jan Bogstad

15. "The Rohirrim, the Anglo-Saxons, and the Problem of Appendix F" by Michael Drout

16. "Filming the Numinous" by Joseph Ricke and Catherine Barnett

--congratulations and thanks to Jan and Phil for all their hard work assembling these essays and seeing the book through the editing process. I'm really looking forward to the chance to read the other contributions.

--John R.

current audiobook: more Kipling (gah!)

current book: Verne

current music: Bare Trees (Danny Kirwan/Fleetwood Mac)

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* for a convenient listing of all four of their books on Tolkien, see http://www.mcfarlandpub.com/searches/advanced_search2.php?advanced=tolkien&x=0&y=0

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UPDATE 2/13-11: It's been pointed out to me that I got the publisher's name wrong; accordingly, I've gone back in and fixed 'Macfarland' to McFarland. Thanks to Jason for catching that. --JDR

Total Drama World Tour: Tolkien tribute (spoilers)

So, tonight they broadcast the finale of TOTAL DRAMA: WORLD TOUR, the third season in the 'Total Drama Island' series. This Canadian cartoon is the perfect 'reality show', in that it's totally reality-free. There's never a shadow of a doubt that it's all fake, every action, line of dialogue, and elimination scripted. That said, they did a clever homage to the Peter Jackson films in the final scene.

(spoiler space)

When one of the two finalists won the million dollars (by tossing a replica of the other finalist into a Hawaiian volcano), he/she was clutching the case with the cash when suddenly a sinister figure appeared behind him/her: Ezekiel, a.k.a. 'Homeschool', the first contestant to be eliminated, who had gone feral and lurked around the fringes of the show all season. Now a hunched, stunted, degenerate figure, he tackled the winner, and they wrestled for the precious prize on the lip of the caldera -- until, seizing the prize, he fell into the lava, holding the precious case above him as he sank until it too finally fell onto the lava.

There was no finger biting, and thirty seconds of action didn't drag on into five minutes of screen time, but otherwise it was a nice visual tribute to the climax of THE RETURN OF THE KING. If you enjoy such things, I suggest checking it out: I found it quite a hoot.

--John R.

Oh, and as an added bonus after the closing credits they had another little bit of film retelling the fate of the other finalist, replicating in TOTAL DRAMA terms the final scene in REVENGE OF THE SITH.

Bring on Season Four!

THe New Arrival: Puzzling

So, the day before we left for our trip the latest Tolkien book I'd ordered arrived, an eight hundred page, fifty dollar tome. I haven't had a chance to read it yet, so the following are a few impressions based on some skimming.

The book:

J. R. R. TOLKIEN: THE BOOKS, THE FILMS, THE WHOLE CULTURAL PHENOMENON; INCLUDING A SCENE-BY-SCENE ANALYSIS OF THE 2001-2003 LORD OF THE RINGS FILMS by Jeremy Mark Robinson [2010]

Preliminary comments:

(1) eight hundred page books really shd have indexes. The absence of one here means any passage that catches yr eye is pretty hard to find again. For instance, so far as I can tell from the Table of Contents there's only one two-page section of this book devoted to THE HOBBIT (pages 260-261), and it concerns itself entirely with retelling (not entirely accurately) the story of how that book got published.

(2) the author starts off by listing fourteen authors he prefers to Tolkien (pages 11-12).* This cd be seen as A Bad Sign: if he feels that way, why not writing about them instead? Why not a book on Le Guin's Earthsea and its two film adaptations, the horrible Sci-Fi channel miniseries and the Miyazaki Jr. anime? Answer: because, being about LeGuin, only a fraction of people wd buy it compared to those who'll buy a book about the Tolkien films sight unseen.

(3) similarly, Robinson lists fourteen directors he wd have preferred to have worked on the LotR films over Jackson (page 345), including Kurosawa (who's dead), David Lean (likewise), Werner Herzog, Ingmar Bergman, Terry Gilliam, Borman, Orson Welles, and, most bizarre of all, Sam Peckinpah (!). This, despite his belief that some of those he names "none . . . would be quite right for Tolkien's kind of story". The mind boggles.

(4) however, it's hard to take Robinson's Jackson-bashing seriously, once you realize he hates the Peter Jackson films so much that he tries to denigrate them through a point-by-point comparison with Bakshi's cartoon, which he much prefers. For example, he attacks Jackson for having some characters undergo so much make-up and prosthetics that it interferred with their ability to express facial emotion (page 341).** Fair enough. But then in the very next sentence of the same paragraph he praises Bakshi for having his actors wear masks so it was quicker to get them ready for filming. This makes sheer nonsense of his argument.

(5) Robinson has a casual approach to accuracy. Sometimes these are simply slips ("Christopher Manlove", "R. Purhtill").*** Others seem to reveal a superficial knowledge of the material. For example, Roy Campbell and Roger Lancelyn Green ought not to be listed as members of the Inklings (page 39). Elaine Griffiths did not "[work] at Allen & Unwin's offices (on Tolkien's recommendation)" (page 260). Christopher Wiseman did not die on the Western Front in 1917, as Robinson claims (page 25) -- as I can personally testify, having met him in 1981 and again in 1985. Robinson also occasionally makes up details in what's meant to be facetious mockery of Jackson's work (e.g., pages 340 and 344), so you never really know if what he's saying is true, meant to be true, deliberately false in an attempt at humorous exaggeration, or simply wrong.

(6) even more oddly, Robinson seems to forget what he's written from one paragraph to the next. For example, he includes "The Immigrant Song" in a short list of Celtic-inspired Led Zeppelin songs (page 192), then on the next page (accurately) notes that the song is told from the point of view of a Viking raider -- which is not v. airy-fairy Celtic at all. And let's not even get into his describing their song "Kashmir" as another of their Celtic-themed songs (does he even know that Kashmir is not in Wales but on the India/Pakistan border?)

(7) At first I thought the book improved and the accuracy picked up when I got to the part about the films (500 pages out of the 800 page total), then realized I needed to evoke Grubb's Law: just because I knew less about this material, and thus spotted fewer mistakes, didn't mean his accuracy had actually improved. On the whole, though, his giving his opinion is preferable to his giving facts about Tolkien's life and books, since I assume the opinions are genuine whether I agree with them or not, whereas an unknown but too high percentage of his 'facts' are just plain wrong.

In the end, I'm really left wondering who the audience for this book is. It's too long, and much too expensive, to tempt any casual reader. It's too careless to hold up as scholarship. It seems aimed at people who love Tolkien but despise the movies, yet who's going to spend fifty dollars to read eight hundred pages about a movie they dislike? Maybe things will become clearer to me on a more careful reading that are a little murky on a mere skim.

--John R.

Postscript: and I have just learned this weekend that Robinson also released a second book about Tolkien on the same day as this one: J. R. R. TOLKIEN: POCKET GUIDE (272 pages, $22). I confess that I suspect this is an abridged version of the larger book, with all the parts about the movies stripped out -- not least because the three paragraphs from its Introduction given on amazon (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1861712782/ref=oss_product) appear, word-for-word identical, in the larger book.

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*including Petrarch, D. H. Lawrence, Jn Cowper Powys, Henry Miller, Hardy, Chuang-tzu, Byron, and Le Guin.

**Rhys-Davies' Gimli being a case in point. It's to be hoped that Jackson & Co. simplified the dwarf make-up for the new HOBBIT movie, or there'll be real trouble here.

***every book has this type of regrettable lapse -- my own most cringeworthy offender in HISTORY OF THE HOBBIT being a passing reference I made to Jn Gower as the author of PIERS PLOWMAN -- gah! All you can do is keep them to an absolute minimum and fix them as soon as some sharp-eyed reader catches them.