Jamey DuVall from Movie Geeks United! writes: Just wanted to let you know that my podcast show MOVIE GEEKS UNITED!, available to a global audience throught he internet or iTunes, interviewed composer Howard Shore this past Sunday, September 23. You can access the show anytime on replay by visiting our page.
Category: Old Main News
Author Kristin Thompson writes: The recent announcement that a judge has fined New Line Cinema $125,000 is a major step forward in Peter Jackson’s lawsuit. On my blog, I’ve taken a stab at explaining some of the background of that suit and what this new development might mean for the Hobbit film.
It’s hard to remember now, when every respectable household contains the Special Extended DVD Edition of Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings, but the celebrated trilogy was once considered a somewhat iffy proposition. That’s part of the explanation for how Jackson, a rather obscure director from Kiwiland, was able to gain artistic control over what Newsweek once called “the most expensive and ambitious movie project in history.” And by filming in New Zealand, where he had built his very own world-class production facility, Jackson was able to use the Pacific Ocean as a moat, protecting him from Hollywood interference. The result was that rare thing, a global film franchise that bears a personal stamp — an intimate epic.
There is magic in the last line of The Lord of the Rings. To recap: the stolidly courageous Sam Gamgee, having watched his best friend, Frodo Baggins, sail towards the Grey Havens and into a kind of death, is left to walk back to the Shire where he finds his wife and children waiting with the promise of a quiet life far from the slaughter of the War of the Ring. J. R. R. Tolkien finishes with the sentence: “‘Well, I’m back,’ he said”. It is a touchingly understated conclusion which returns the prose to the homely simplicity of the inaugural chapters after the archaic epic mode of The Return of the King. However, as Diana Pavlac Glyer tells us in her scholarly and perceptive study The Company They Keep, this is not how Tolkien originally intended to finish his trilogy. He had in mind a further epilogue, set sixteen years after the events of the rest of the book, which would have provided another, superfluous glimpse into Gamgee’s domesticity. In this ultimately excised version, a grey-haired Sam reads stories of his adventures to his children, spinning them tales of wizards and orcs and walking trees. There is even the faint suggestion that Sam has been narrating the story of The Lord of the Rings itself, before, at last, we depart the Shire for good, leaving Sam and Rose in a state of connubial bliss, tale-telling by the fireside.
TheOneRing.net is celebrating! Click on the logo above to particpate in our ‘Hobbit’ 70th Anniversary celebration!
Sideshow Collectibles is joining in the celebration today:
“This weekend, Sideshow Collectibles.com is proud to join fans of J.R.R. Tolkien world-wide in celebrating the 70th Anniversary of the publication of ‘The Hobbit’! To help add to the celebration, we’ve arranged some special Sideshow mathoms for you! Check out our special LOTR discounts, our new Balrog Legendary Scale bust preview, a brand new LOTR-themed poll, and our ‘Ode to Bilbo’ comment contest, in which you could win a Shelob statue, King of the Dead Statue, a Cave Troll Hammer, or a Crown of the King of the Dead simply for participating. Follow the link to get all the details”