In my internet wanderings, I sometime stumble on cool Tolkien things. Not necessarily news, but interesting — like this transcript of a live chat with renowned Tolkien scholar Professor Tom Shippey (author of the acclaimed J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century) over on Tolkien Library to celebrate the release of The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun back in 2009.
Yes, we can all agree that’s fairly old.
However, if you’re interested in Norse myth, Shippey’s thoughts on Tolkien’s parallels with other early fantasists such as William Morris, Lord Dunsany and E.R. Eddison, as well as what he thought of meeting Tolkien himself, then you’ll find (like I did) this a worthwhile read. Continue reading “Tom Shippey talks Tolkien and Norse myth”
If you have a Tolkien/Middle-earth inspired poem you’d like to share, then send it to poetry@theonering.net. One poem per person may be submitted each month. Please make sure to proofread your work before sending it in. TheOneRing.net is not responsible for poems posting with spelling or grammatical errors.
Mark Lee at Overthinking It follows up his Words in Books per Second of Movie analysis of The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings and other successful movies with some additional analysis examining IMDB ratings, plus the trend in adaptations over the decades.
In last week’s article, I started with a simple question: how do book lengths, as measures by word count, compare to their adapted movie run times, as measured by seconds? I was mostly looking for a statistical basis to express my displeasure at The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (and by extension, parts 2 and 3 of this unnecessary trilogy), but I wound up comparing the density of the Hobbit movies, as measured in Words in Book per Second of Movie (WIBPSOM), to other prominent movie adaptations of books: The Lord of the Rings, The Hunger Games, and the Twilight franchises.
The findings were interesting in and of themselves (TL;DR: The Hobbit Books have way smaller WIBPSOM values than the other franchises), but they begged for a larger scale analysis, both in size of dataset and scope of inquiry. To address the size of the dataset, I found all of the (English language) entries on this list of best-selling books that have theatrically-released, non-silent movie adaptations. After including multiple movie adaptations of the same movie and excluding movies where I couldn’t find any data on book length as measured by word count, I came up with a dataset of 59 movie adaptations of best selling books.
As for scope of inquiry, well, let’s get down to brass tacks: is there any relationship between the density of a book’s movie adaptation, as measured by WIBPSOM, and the quality of the movie, as measured by its IMDB rating?
In a word, the answer to this intriguing question is an emphatic “no.”
If you have a Tolkien/Middle-earth inspired poem you’d like to share, then send it to poetry@theonering.net. One poem per person may be submitted each month. Please make sure to proofread your work before sending it in. TheOneRing.net is not responsible for poems posting with spelling or grammatical errors.
Fact is that, while noting that people often tend to automatically respond negatively to change then rapidly adapt, the reader response has been largely unfavourable. Overall, people don’t seem to like Beorn.
It’s a reaction seemingly propelled by the crazy mane of hair that sweeps over Beorn’s head like a mohawk, and stretches down his back like a long, rangy mullet.
If you have a Tolkien/Middle-earth inspired poem you’d like to share, then send it to poetry@theonering.net. One poem per person may be submitted each month. Please make sure to proofread your work before sending it in. TheOneRing.net is not responsible for poems posting with spelling or grammatical errors.
A couple weekends ago The Hall of Fire followed up a discussion of heroism in The Lord of the Rings with one focusing simply on the aspects of heroism that members of the Fellowship exhibit during the Quest. For those who couldn’t attend, here’s a log.
Also, this coming weekend (Saturday August 17 at 6pm EDT (New York time)) we’ll be focusing on a movie topic — Beorn. That’s right, the shapeshifter of the Vales of the Anduin and hero of the Battle of the Five Armies. What do you think of Mikael Persbrandt, what are your thoughts on Beorn’s demense and hall so far, and what do you think of the spy image that we revealed last Friday? Those are just a few of the questions we’ll touch on, so don’t miss it! Continue reading “Hall of Fire chat log: aspects of heroism in the Fellowship”
If you have a Tolkien/Middle-earth inspired poem you’d like to share, then send it to poetry@theonering.net. One poem per person may be submitted each month. Please make sure to proofread your work before sending it in. TheOneRing.net is not responsible for poems posting with spelling or grammatical errors.
Ringer Tajik tells us of this fascinating analysis of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, and its two follow-ups by Mark Lee at Overthinking It that adds more fuel — and some hard numbers — to the gently simmering debate over the three-film decision that Jackson and the studios made in mid-2012.
If you have a Tolkien/Middle-earth inspired poem you’d like to share, then send it to poetry@theonering.net. One poem per person may be submitted each month. Please make sure to proofread your work before sending it in. TheOneRing.net is not responsible for poems posting with spelling or grammatical errors.
Continuing a series of articles from our international fan-base, contributor and TORn TUESDAY friend Tedoras brings us a thorough look at the most bemusing/amusing character in all of Tolkiens’ legendarium: the master of the Old Forest himself, Tom Bombadil.
If you have a Tolkien/Middle-earth inspired poem you’d like to share, then send it to poetry@theonering.net. One poem per person may be submitted each month. Please make sure to proofread your work before sending it in. TheOneRing.net is not responsible for poems posting with spelling or grammatical errors.
In my internet wanderings, I sometime stumble on cool Tolkien things. Not necessarily news, but interesting — like this transcript of a live chat with renowned Tolkien scholar Professor Tom Shippey (author of the acclaimed J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century) over on Tolkien Library to celebrate the release of The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun back in 2009.
A couple weekends ago 
