Tag Archives: The Hobbit

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Nausea

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KTVI in St. Louis reported ”The Hobbit Making Some Movie-Goers Sick” on opening night, blaming the movie’s novel 48 frames-per-second rate for giving some viewers upset tummies.

David Bratman saw The Hobbit screened in the traditional format – he says it’s the movie itself that made him sick:

I saw it in 2D, 24 fps, and I still feel as if I’ve been bludgeoned by a giant stick.

Nobody who loves the book should be wooed thereby into seeing this movie (unless, poor sods like me, they feel they have to). Nobody.

I doubt I’ll have any more to say until the bruises begin to go down.

I expect to see it in the next couple of days and will report any adverse effects… 

Tolkien and the Hobbit

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PBS’ Newshour marked the opening of The Hobbit by interviewing Jason Fisher, editor of Tolkien and the Study of his Sources: Critical Essays (a collection to which Diana contributed) —

How did language play into his creation of mythology?

Jason Fisher: Tolkien envisioned a whole series of different languages; languages spoken by elves, men and dwarves. Because he was actually trained in what would become historical linguistics, which was mainly called philology in his day, he was trained in how languages related to one another and changed over time. He attempted to mimic [that evolution] in his own creative world.

Tolkien’s interest in language led him to create languages, and he therefore wanted to create a mythology and a world in which those languages might have been spoken. For him it started with languages, with words, with names, and from those he created narratives and full stories.

Second Breakfast at Tiffany’s

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Giant dwarves, unlike jumbo shrimp, is not an oxymoron among New York’s advertising painters.

In ”This Is How You Paint 150 Foot Tall Hobbit Dwarves”, Tor Books Art Director Irene Gallo returns to the topic of painting movie ads on a Park Avenue building. It’s a sequel to her interview with Dan Cohen of Art FX Murals about the ad for Batman painted on the same building (see Paint By (Big) Numbers).

Don’t miss it!

[Thanks to Janice Gelb for the story.]

Hobbit Twacks!

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The LOTR geneology project has created a visual aid for moviegoers…

Here are some choice links to stories inspired by the imminent release of Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.

(1) If you’re curious about the movie’s score, listen to the closing theme, ”Song of the Lonely Mountain” by Neil Finn.

(2) Christopher Tolkien’s first-ever press interview, published in Le Monde on July 9, is available online. Christopher is not a Peter Jackson enthusiast:

Invited to meet Peter Jackson, the Tolkien family preferred not to. Why? “They eviscerated the book by making it an action movie for young people aged 15 to 25,” Christopher says regretfully. “And it seems that The Hobbit will be the same kind of film.”

This divorce has been systematically driven by the logic of Hollywood. “Tolkien has become a monster, devoured by his own popularity and absorbed into the absurdity of our time,” Christopher Tolkien observes sadly. “The chasm between the beauty and seriousness of the work, and what it has become, has overwhelmed me. The commercialization has reduced the aesthetic and philosophical impact of the creation to nothing. There is only one solution for me: to turn my head away.”

(3) I’m betting the Tolkien estate wishes it could inflict on Jackson the same fate a court just inflicted on Global Asylum’s faux Hobbit film:

A U.S. District Court in California granted a temporary restraining order on Monday preventing a parody of “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” from going on sale three days before Peter Jackson’s movie opens in theaters nationwide.

Global Asylum, a film production company that makes parodies of blockbuster films, such as “Transmorphers” in place of ‘Transformers,” has made a parody of “The Hobbit” titled “Age of the Hobbits.” It was set to go on sale on DVD, Blu-Ray and online platforms December 11.

(4) Scholars interested in The Hobbit know all roads lead to… Milwaukee? Well, if not all roads, surely a superhighway or two. That’s home to Marquette University, where Christopher Tolkien deposited many of J.R.R. Tolkien’s original manuscripts:

Yes, Tolkien fans: the stories belong to the ages, but the manuscripts belong to Marquette University. It has been so since 1957, thanks to a very smart librarian, William Ready, who had been hired the year before to help fill a then-new Memorial Library. He approached the not-yet-famous Professor Tolkien through a British rare-book seller, struck a deal for less than $5,000, and in 1957 and 1958 the boxes from Oxford arrived: “The Lord of the Rings” and “The Hobbit,” in longhand drafts, typewritten manuscripts and page proofs, with revisions and rejected fragments, along with minor and then-unpublished texts and other papers. After the professor died in 1973, his son Christopher sent more papers still, until Marquette came to hold the vast machinery of Middle-earth in all its original parts, along with thousands of pages of articles, commentary and fan fiction — the vast forests and foothills of secondary scholarship now girding Mount Tolkien.

[Thanks for these links goes out to David Klaus, Martin Morse Wooster and Andrew Porter.]

Lard of the Rings

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Denny’s invites you to stuff yourself as often as Hobbits with selections from its Middle-Earth-themed menu, coming November 6 as a tie-in with The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. And being a fan I’m sure you’ll give the idea some thought.

Items on the menu include Radagast’s Red Velvet Pancake Puppies, Bilbo’s Berry Smoothie, Gandalf’s Gobble Melt, “The Ring” Burger, Hobbit Hole Breakfast, Frodo’s Pot Roast Skillet, and the “Build Your Own Hobbit Slam” with optional items such as “Shire Sausage.”

The advertising campaign has already kicked off in Los Angeles. Around town are unbranded billboards displaying a message written in runes. Translation: “Middle Earth is coming to America’s diner.” English text will replace the runes on October 24.

SecondBreakfast_billboard1

SecondBreakfast_billboard2
TV spots promoting the menu will air beginning November 12.

Trading cards are part of the tie-in campaign, too, reports Advertising Age:

Denny’s customers will also receive a trading card pack with select “Hobbit”-inspired entrees that include collectible cards — there are 12 in total to collect — and Denny’s coupons. The chain will also put QR codes on placemats that will provide customers with additional “Hobbit”-related content such as videos, online games and a behind-the-scenes look at the national TV spot.

Hobbits eat seven meals a day – breakfast, second breakfast, elevensies, luncheon, afternoon tea, dinner, and supper. Once Denny’s publicity takes hold Taco Bell’s “Fourthmeal” will sound like nothing more than a healthy snack.

[Thanks to Janice Gelb for the story.]

Colbert in Hobbit

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Stephen Colbert of The Colbert Report will appear in a cameo in Peter Jackson’s “Hobbit” trilogy according to the Hollywood Reporter. Not in the first film, which arrives in theaters in December, but one of the remaining two.

So what does he play? It’d be hard to keep him from being typecast as a troll…

[Thanks to Janice Gelb for the story. But she’s not to blame for the punchline.]

Your change, sir: two gandalfs and a gollum

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New Zealand Post is issuing official legal tender commemorative coins celebrating the trilogy of films based on The Hobbit. Bilbo Baggins will appear on the $10 gold coin, and in a set of six $1 silver coins along with Gandalf, Thorin Oakenshield, Gollum, Radagast and Elrond. The rim of each of these coins is inscribed in both English and Dwarvish with the words ‘Middle-earth – New Zealand’

There also an ambitious US$900,000 plan to mark the first Hobbit movie’s premiere in Wellington, NZ as part of the country’s larger tourism campaign to rebrand the country under the tagline “100% Middle-earth.”

Every DVD and download of “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” will feature a Jackson-directed video promoting New Zealand as a tourist and filmmaking destination.

From the release of the first Lord of the Rings movie until 2006, New Zealand tourism increased 40%. They’re determined to capitalize on a similar opportunity with The Hobbit trilogy.

[Thanks to Andrew Porter for the story.]

How Rich Was Smaug?

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After his first attempt was pilloried by fantasy fans and bean-counters alike, Forbes writer Michael Noer has vastly increased his estimate of the value of Smaug’s horde. See “How Much is a Dragon Worth, Revisited” –

Citing errors in everything from the value of the “Arkenstone of Thrain” to the price of mithril armor, Fictional 15 fans critiqued nearly every aspect of my calculation, usually concluding that I had vastly underestimated the old flamethrower’s net worth. One reader, gvbezoff, pegged Smaug’s wealth to be $870 billion, calling it a “conservative estimate.” For context, that’s about 12.5 times richer than Carlos Slim Helu, the planet’s richest non-fictional being.

[Thanks to Janice Gelb for the story.]