Annalisa sends us news from Michael Drout’s corner of the academic world, including the Tolkien Encyclopaedia, and ‘on becoming a Tolkien Scholar.’
“I wrote in previously when Dr. Michael Drout of Wheaton College (“Beowulf and the Critics”) mentioned he was in talks to edit a new Tolkien Encyclopedia. It is now official and on his website he says that “The J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia” will be out in 2006, published by Routledge.
“He also mentions that there will be a large article on Tolkien in the November 16th issue of the Boston Globe (he was interviewed).
“And finally, in the October 19th entry of his blog he has some very interesting advice for graduate students interested in becoming Tolkien Scholars. Furthermore, he is also working on publishing the first issue of “Tolkien Studies”, the first academic journal focusing on the works of JRRT.”
I called Capitol 6 in a panic thinking my tickets were invalid. They didn’t help me much, so I called customer service at movietickets.com and spoke to Charles. He said my tickets should still be valid, and reccomended I call Capitol 6 again and ask to speak to a manager. I did just that, and spoke to a man named Tui (can’t spell, but that’s what it sounded like). He told me that there were a set block of online tickets, that I had bought out of those, and once those were sold, that was it for online tickets, and that my tickets are valid. I believe he said to pick up the tickets the day of the show, althoguh I can’t remember.
I thought this info might be of use to any distressed fans. I cannot vouch that everyone who bought tickets online will get them, as the 8.50$ tickets that were being sold were most likely invalid.
Courtney
p.s. The Capitol 6 office number (if calling from the Vancouver area) is 604-669-6600
Orlando was on ‘So Graham Norton’ tonight. He was mainly astonished at the information Graham gave him that there are now over a million web sites dedicated to him, but revealed the following about ROTK:
“The fans loved me sliding down the stairs in the 2nd film, and Pete was looking for something which, basically was going to top all of that. And he said it to me, he was, like, alright son, wait for this one! And I went out for 3 days of reshoots and basically was just hanging on wires, and climbing up things and swinging around….so its gonna be quite an extravagant thing, because by the time they’ve cut me swinging on ropes and flying all over the place in with the special effects they do really well at Weta Digital, which is Peter’s company, it’ll be killer! I hope, I think. I’m sure.”
The quick (1 minute) theatrical trailer for ROTK is (not surprisingly) mostly old footage cut in different ways, though there’s some new dialogue and a fair amount of fresh material and/or angles on some stuff.
For instance, we’ve seen the front end of Shelob already, but in the teaser they show Frodo in a more frightening and (I thought) more fitting Moria-like dark, staring at a set of glittering eyes as his phial begins to do its thing. This must be right before they start running from her. Elrond delivers his “become who you were born to be” line again, but this time it’s laid over that one shot of Aragorn walking into the citadel or whatever looking like he’s about to claim his destiny.
The text as I remember does not deviate too much from being along the lines of the initial preview, but there is a very exciting shot of what looks like Merry dragging himself to his knees in the midst of battle to draw his sword….made my heart jump, but they didn’t play up the context of it that much, so it was difficult to say anything (especially after just one quick viewing).
I’m going to burn the bridges here, so to speak, so I cannot reveal my sources, but we’ll all see it in its all-too-ephemeral glory in about a week anyway.
I know I’m far from being the only one who’s seen it, so there’ll probably be meatier details leaked out at any rate before the thing hits theaters.
Richard writes: It’s voting time again! Back in April, the BBC asked the public to name the UK’s favourite books. From a list of 100 comes the top 21 and LOTR is in there. Vote HERE.
Tonight, the BBC reviewed the 21 finalists and regrettably LOTR received the usual mockery. In the studio were a mixture of novellists, media presenters and entertainers who summarised their thoughts on each book in turn. When it came to Tolkien’s book the tone changed completely.
Whether this was due to programme editing I’m not certain, but as soon as someone admitted they liked the book they became the focus of derision. One such guest (a novellist whose name temporarily escapes me) was branded as “sad” as soon as he revealed that he had read the book five times. He immediately backed down by pointing out that this had all been before he was 20 years old. Well that’s a relief then – heaven forbid that a grown adult should read such material. I swear by the expressions on some faces that there were others in the studio who wanted to say something in defence of the book, but were not prepared to risk their professional careers in doing so.
Over the next eight weeks a celebrity will champion each book and tonight we received a preview of each. Outdoor survivalist Ray Mears is to be LOTR’s advocate. We shall have to wait and see, but if the presentation in the clip is anything to go by then the tone will be “tacky sword and sorcery” with the usual WW2 analogies. Yeuch! I dare say Ray Mears will make a good fist of it but I couldn’t help wishing Christopher Lee were doing it instead, but that might have come off as overt marketing for the films.
