Lord of the Rings

New episode later this week -- meantime, have a read:

https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/07/24/soviet-union-tolkien-art-dissidents/

A new episode? Why yes! Eagles eagles eagles.

https://www.megaphonic.fm/bythebywater/29

well, yeah

look carefully at the background of the image!

Amazon says its (as yet untitled) Lord of the Rings series will make its debut on Sept 2, 2022: pic.twitter.com/AJb9YRBTYX

— Dave Itzkoff (@ditzkoff) August 2, 2021

They've also shared this first image from the series: pic.twitter.com/9pyvZGiaMg

— Dave Itzkoff (@ditzkoff) August 2, 2021

I thought this was good, fucken long but early on a good quarter of it is about Bakshi's history, once he gets into the technical shit it's golden
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cr_rb_pitHk

Yeah one of my cohosts posted about this this morning. I was just thinking it would be good to have a 'making-of' book here but efforts like this help flesh it out for sure.

at first i thought that might be the scandalous x-rated tale of tom bombadil

would watch

As it happens, my other cohost did this the other day. (But in truth, the joke was mine.)

Dom Bombadil pic.twitter.com/tg7QN14kb7

— Jared Pechacek (@vandroidhelsing) August 16, 2021

"Who is Dom Bombadil, lady?" "He is." *pause* "He is zaddy."

would DEFINITELY watch

Our new episode is up! Gondolin, it falls.

https://www.megaphonic.fm/bythebywater/30

Also currently about halfway through The Nature of Middle-earth. There's quite a bit of math.

more pictures from Tove Jansson's Hobbit are at https://lithub.com/take-a-look-at-tove-janssons-illustrations-for-a-swedish-edition-of-the-hobbit/

moomin.com says in 2017 "Finnish publisher WSOY has released a new edition of the book in Finnish. The book Hobitti eli Sinne ja takaisin is illustrated by Tove Jansson."

New episode on Monday. In the meantime, enjoy.

In the Silmarillion Elwing appeared to the mariner Eärendil as a bird and helped him sail to Valinor and petition the Valar to save Middle-Earth.

— Baltimore Orioles (@Orioles) October 1, 2021

the orioles twitter account has been on fire lately

So we talked about the new book:

https://www.megaphonic.fm/bythebywater/31

It's twenty years of...this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1dU1HZ_73M

Our new episode on said first film will be out shortly.

And it is out! Enjoy!

https://www.megaphonic.fm/bythebywater/33

Meantime, the things you learn

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/lord-of-the-rings-oral-history-fellowship-b1975180.html

was just thinking, not apropos of the 20th anniversary - rather because I am watching the hobbit trilogy for the first time, they will surely do another cinematic adaptation of lord of the rings at some stage. maybe in another 10 or 20 years though?

Don't see why not, especially if the TV show gets any traction

Maybe a bilbo origin story

The exact state of rights is mysterious, but it seems like Warner Bros is holding on to their option, given the anime in the works that'll be set in Rohan during the time of Helm Hammerhand and is explicitly said to be in continuity with the Jackson films (so likely the same design for Helm's Deep etc.). There's absolutely room for a new version and doing it as a full adaptation via streaming could certainly work, but doubtful that Amazon's going to get the chance any time soon. Again, though, the rights state is ultimately mysterious, since there are four players -- the estate, Middle Earth Enterprises (aka Saul Zaentz's holding company for Hobbit/LOTR rights in specific), WB and Amazon -- and there's no public clarity on who is doing what.

Primes wheel of time adaptation suggests theyre not exactly flinging money around it looks like shit

I do wonder. Well, we'll find out in September.

Our new episode out in a few days; in the meantime, this whole thread is gold (he's about three-quarters through it)

1) throwing a guy off a cliff for an execution is metal as hell

2) what the hell is wrong with Idril?? Eöl is the worst dude, he imprisoned and eventually killed her aunt, and she’s still like “oh I don’t like this execution business, we should forgive him, I hate my dad now”

— Max Rebo’s Roadie (@KevKoeser) January 7, 2022

Bah, that's not the start of the thread:

some holiday break reading pic.twitter.com/R4KpZDoW52

— Max Rebo’s Roadie (@KevKoeser) December 23, 2021

idril otm, weirdly!!

Anyway, new episode? Why yes.

https://www.megaphonic.fm/bythebywater/34

And a new episode on the Shire, because why wouldn't we do that?

https://www.megaphonic.fm/bythebywater/35

Zeal of a convert---from ILB's Speculative etc thread:
I finally read The Lord of the Rings--finally, that is, after putting it down in early high school--thee appointed tyme of maximum susceptibility--upon realizing that I was expected to go epically Questing with a hero who had furry toes. Apparently a lot of detractors don't get past the first forty pages, or the first sentence, about Bilbo's elevetny-first birthday, but the whole point is the pull from light to dark and back again, and the way they get mingled---leaders on all levels, incl. drafted patrol leader Frodo, are subject to temptation, corruption (in the sense of physical and psychic wounds, some of them permanent/recurring--plus of course effects on Middle-earth, "the circles of the world," as mentioned briefly, in an end in one of the Appendices of this 1990s one-vol edition: circles, like the Ring, which must have their own kind of end, limits, be something, some thing, however elusively so, 'til the reader can peer through them, as Tom Bombadil does, and see something beyond. He does it and laughs, it's all nonsense to him, seeing his unchanged turf, but he knows it's real enough to others, with real enough, inescapable consequences for all, even a victorious Quest/Anti-Quest means the Grail/Anti-Grail will both save the world and destroy it, in terms of sucking the magic out of it (no spoiler, Gandalf tells Frodo that right off, when he drafts him for the destruction of the precious, corrupting Ring, cos magic's gone as far as it can go; time for the cycles continue by secular means, and slow down the death spiral, anyway)
One limitation: we're told the significance of most things as they happen---which is better than being swamped by codes, as can happen with Gene Wolfe--but an enjoyable exception is being allowed to ponder the fate of Sauron. I think (aside from his own obsessive psycylcling through Ages) seeing though his stone has intensified his focus on the Ring---stones don't lie, but their views, the contexts they create/intensify, given the viewer's own anxieties, antagonisms, hopes and dreads, have a lasting and sometimes entrapping affect on several characters. So yeah, I disagree with those who claim Tolkien doesn't do psychology--and the effect of the stone is not so far from science fictional concerns (note also the networking of stones).
And when the ship sails, it sails, buddy. Not that it doesn't leave some real nice (and not-at-all nice) stuff behind. "There's a feeling I get/When I look the West." Eh, guess I better go listen to some more of those folk-death-or-doom-metal promos (in recent years, Wino's way ahead of the pack). Also, now I need to check out the ancient albums of Cirith Ungol. But book-wise, should I read more Tolkien, beyond The Hobbit?
PS: search "Tolkien" on The New Yorker site, get lots of good results, especially Auden, Gopnik, and Anthony Lane.

― dow, Sunday, May 4, 2014 10:54 AM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Also the stress of leadership on all levels is a big part of the fateful psychology.

― dow, Sunday, May 4, 2014 11:05 AM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

worth putting on record again my love for these posts

And damn good posts they are, don't know if I've seen them before.

New episode out Tuesday -- our thoughts on the Valar as well as a certain new trailer and the like...

circling strings --> staccato stabs --> mournful theme

still floats through my head at odd moments fully two decades on from first exposure. i love Shore's scoring but this is the real shit imo

also having a pretty niche 'things you were shockingly old when you learned' moment right now as i realise for the very first time that blokey doing the end credits of each radio episode of LoTR is the same guy that did the little joke and then the end credits on Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which i somehow never noticed while wearing out my cassette tapes of both as a youth. Hitchiker's being the second Radio 4 series which carried me through an unhappy childhood (and the third being a series of adaptations of the Jeeves and Wooster stories starring Michael Hordern (aka Gandalf) as Jeeves - it all connects!).

God bless BBC Radio 4 circa 1975-1981, the pinnacle of public service broadcasting

enjoyed your post on the adaptation above also WD

still floats through my head at odd moments fully two decades on from first exposure. i love Shore's scoring but this is the real shit imo

It's pretty fantastic. Absolutely does the job. (A classic compare/constrast -- this versus the opening theme from Bakshi's version. In a word, no. Bakshi famously hated it too but had no say in the matter.)

very little of Bakshi’s vision does the job for me (music included).

Those radio adaptations were faithful to the tone of the books in a way that the films weren’t imo (although I do love the films on their own terms)

This is partly cause a 40 years old radio drama will always be weirder and scarier than a 21st century hollywood mega-blockbuster by default, the atmosphere is unbeatable and not something it would be easy to replicate these days.

Partly cause the cast was better.

And partly cause they nailed the vibe so precisely. the music and the sound for particularly. Whenever that haunting main violin theme comes in between acts or scenes it acts an extremely effective shorthand for the “journey”. You hear it and you know that the team is now ~on the road~, it works in a way that the panoramic shots of New Zealand don’t really touch for me. The producers knew what they were doing with that music.

Really enjoyed the posts itt thread on the subject of walking, rambling, travelling as one of the joys of these books and I think the radio series does a great job in nailing the mingled contentedness, adventure, excitement, terror (in appropriate measure depending on where the heroes happen to be rambling). Given the limitations of the medium an the necessary ditching of all the descriptive passages I think that’s quite an achievement

Off topic but as it was mentioned waaaaay way way upthread when the Tolkien radio adaptations were first mentioned - the 70s radio 4 version of Asimov’s “foundation” is a pretty good time if you’re at all interested. It takes full advantage of the medium by paring the unreadable prose to the bone and compensating for the dialogue by putting the usual 70s bbc radio cast of people with delightful theatrical voices to good use

Also has some lovely atmospheric sci-fi sound effects which were pretty good for 1973.

was also thinking about this brushing up on the Witch-King today. that dude had a serious resume! many kingdoms crushed, millennia as Sauron's right-hand man, maintaining strongholds all over the place... and yet the hobbits and Strider are able to hold him and most of his squad off with... a campfire, iirc? works for the spooky head of the terrifying ghost-story posse we've been running from all through the book, but maybe not so much for a deathless age-old Witch-King.

from dr casino upthread, provoked a thought (most of the posts in that run of discussion do this and ive lots id like to go back to, such is the nature of lotr adolescent obsession shared so commonly and a very good thing it is)

that reducing these encounters to physical fights makes them smaller things that they are in my reading as a child, where strider isnt just a warrier he embodies a greatness, a presence, a power that is more than his sword

above point stands for a reader pondering it, and it softens criticism of Jackson handling it visually in one way because how can you direct it other than a scrap?

pondering of which question (i was walking dogs in a tussocky field which was good ground for tolkien ponderings i felt) led me to the other great creative work of the twentieth century, kung fu hustle, and how each blow dealt was at times (when the direction of each fight shifts to show it) laden with the metaphorical power of the training and spirit and knowledge and presence of the warrior dealing it.

i think tolkiens heroes, like his remnants of structures and cities and nations, embody more than the shell they are in and this is true for me as i read the above encounter

"embodies a greatness, a presence, a power that is more than his sword" --- this is a nice observation and i agree that many scenes in Tolkien play better and make more sense when read in this mode. somewhere else upthread i was also talking about the balance between 'legend' and 'history'; for me the mix of the two describes a lot of LOTR's unique "feeling." probably most of my "huh, this is weirdly unconvincing to my brain" reactions to aspects of Tolkien result from taking in 'legend' passages in a more 'historical' mode.

It's interesting to consider how characters can and do 'turn on' for certain scenes. Consider, thinking of Aragorn again, how in the first encounter with Eomer when he does the full 'here's my deal' bit both Legolas and Gimli are described as being quite surprised and astonished. Of course the hobbits provide a greater contrast in turn but that also makes his downshift moments interesting too -- thus when Pippin greets him with delight in Minas Tirith as Strider, Imrahil is all 'pfft' at the name and Aragorn's all "I like that name, translate it and deal with it."

Convince me it isnt a silly adventure novel and that it was worth giving up a great philogy career.

It's not "silly" so much as misguided. The Hobbit was a well-written children's book, very tight and engaging. LoTR is an inconsistent disaster. The only readable book is Fellowship; the 2nd is a slog and half of the 3rd is useless. Why does elven news travel instantly across the Misty Mountains, yet decades later Gimli still had no news about Moria? Why didn't they use the giant eagles to get at least a little closer to Mordor? Was Tolkien at all aware of deus ex machina?

Tolkien should have written another novel for his children, not created a sprawling system with little internal coherency.

frodo and the gang couldn't use the eagles because they would have been seen, and the whole plot depends on sauron not realizing that they were trying to destroy the ring until it was too late for him to stop them (he assumes that no one would 1) want to do this and 2) even be capable of it).

that first post bugs me every time i open this thread. tolkien didn't "give up" his career to write the books, he wrote them in his spare time.

I was about to say, it wasn't like he wasn't busy all that time!

criticising the second book as being a slog is like criticising a chicken for being a chicken

Also, the eagles aren’t fuckin taxis!

Quite. Our thoughts on the matter last year

https://www.megaphonic.fm/bythebywater/29

Maybe the eagles weren't taxis, but they sure flew in whenever Tolkien needed a good deus ex machina. And what about the news about Moria not spreading for decades? Surely the dwarf news service would have gotten around to reporting on events after a bit.

Chickens can do their own thing and it's all well and good but I'm not planning on reading a chicken any time soon.

now im not one to demand nobody can criticise the stuff i like in threads about them

but the level of discussion on the books from those who love them is by some distance above these posts you're bringing in, which are cheap flyby zings that could be dropped in by anyone who has read a six-tweet run of things that might annoy lotr book lovers.

maybe thats cool with you. i think tbh it makes you look a right dickhead.

Now now darragh, be gentle.

I think the thing about Moria is that nobody knows what happened. They went in, and they never came out, and nobody’s been in there since.

Now, you can argue (I would) that surely someone in dwarfdom would have tried to find out what happened to Balin & co - that no news and no communication with the rest of the world for - what, decades? - would have spurred some action. But we also don’t have a lot of info about how the dwarf community works in general; maybe they’re used to total radio silence & totally isolated pods & certainly not travelling very much esp compared to men & elves (one can easily imagine hobbits who went away to reconquer an ancestral homeland and never came back & nobody would have expected another expedition to go after them; it would have been like “wonder what happened to ‘em, pass the beer nuts.”)

for the purposes of defending my gentility, dickhead was my rewrite option

yeah, i always just got the 'isolated pods' vibe. though surely if the goal was to get Moria going again as a full-scale mining operation, then they would have expected to have gotten, some shipments of ore coming back by now, or something. once again, it's best not to dwell too long on the logic of some of this stuff, because it works so effectively in its mythic outlines. the motives make emotional and legendary sense, not practical sense.