Tolkien Media Watch

[Lalaith]

Simon Cowell is the karaoke Sauron (http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/lostinshowbiz/2009/nov/13/simon-cowell-x-factor)

What is fun about this is that the author clearly knows her Tolkien very well...

[Rune Son of Bjarne]

It continues to be funny, even after she stops comparing him to Sauron. :D

[Bêthberry]

Using one fantasy to deconstruct another! Interesting how the Tolkien side holds up well while the other one . . .

Also, great thread title, Lalaith. It will be fun to see what other links and references to Tolkien in the media show up here.

[Lalaith]

Another one for you, this time off the telly...the political satire "The Thick of It" - absolutely sublime episode tonight, not least for this exchange:
Phil Smith (moronic Conservative policy adviser): We could be friends...me, Aragorn, the true king, you Boromir, your horn is broken and will be blown no more...
Olly Reeder (his obnoxious Labour counterpart): This inability to talk without using Lord of the Rings metaphors is one of the very many reasons we could *never* be friends.

The whole thing is here. Please don't watch if you're not interested in politics and/or don't approve of very full-on swearing:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00p270j

[The Saucepan Man]

... absolutely sublime episode tonightAye, ain't that the truth. And you beat me to posting the reference here. Is Armando Ianucci a fan, I wonder? :D

[Lalaith]

I've been meaning to post a clip from this for a while. The whole episode is LotR related but these are the most "pure" moments...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnOZzvpqO94

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpxF6sfyS1k

[Lalaith]

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-je4JzGossLs/Tb_QykLAWKI/AAAAAAAAA7U/dZOzOI7W7ws/s1600/sauronhat.JPG

[Mithalwen]

Well that is a vast improvement....

[Anguirel]

I think I love her and not just for the usual usurpation reasons

I mean, Medusa was fabled to be ecstatically beautiful, right?

[Mithalwen]

Oh Ang... dear.. surely their clothes were chosen in spite and malice by their mother becasue she didn't get invited? Best you can say for Beatrice is that Eugenie looked worse. If there is anything worse than wearing an outfit the coulour of surgical stockings and having an alleged hat stapled to your forehead it is being turned into a sofa.

[Lalaith]

I think I love her and not just for the usual usurpation reasons


I think I love the fact that you usually love girls for "usurpation reasons"...

[Mithalwen]

Oh yes, Lalaith, I shall now think of him as Grimoaldo, Duca di Benevento, as well as il Lupo Fenriso.

[Anguirel]

Oh Ang... dear.. surely their clothes were chosen in spite and malice by their mother becasue she didn't get invited? Best you can say for Beatrice is that Eugenie looked worse. If there is anything worse than wearing an outfit the coulour of surgical stockings and having an alleged hat stapled to your forehead it is being turned into a sofa.

I fully endorse all of this. Which is WHY I love her. Filial pride or what??

Lalaith: I would never dare usurp you, you will always be my supreme Non-Wolf-Luvvah

edit: qualification: I reckon Bea and Eug chose their eccentric costumes themselves out of loyalty, not that they had them foisted upon them by sadist matriarch

[Mithalwen]

Hopeless case clearly. I shall give you a looking-glass though as a wedding present....

[Lalaith]

Not quite sure where to put this bit of news, but today ex-PM Tony Blair revealed LotR as one of his Desert Island books.
"It has its share of wizards who become collaborators, good people who fall from grace, and those who are in some sense redeemed. For the scale and majesty of the invention, the details of the imaginary world created by Tolkien and the rich and deep themes of good and evil, nothing compares to it."

Full story here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/jun/24/tony-blair-desert-island-books?INTCMP=SRCH

[Galadriel55]

The quote was well said!

[Lalaith]

*sits back and waits for Ang or even old Saucie to leap on this like a duck on a June bug*

[Lalaith]

Charles Moore in today's Telegraph:
"If News International fails to get control of BSkyB, what sorcery can Mr Murdoch employ now? He finds himself in the position of Saruman in The Lord of the Rings. He has been exposed, and he is losing the battle for Middle Earth – or rather, Middle England. "

[Lalaith]

And yet another political Middle-Earth analogy:
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2011/0805/Tea-party-hobbits-Hardly-say-indignant-Tolkien-scholars

[Galadriel55]

http://blogs.suntimes.com/sweet/2011/08/obamas_scholastic_interview_lo.html

I'm not really sure where to put this, so I just put it here. It's not really political, but...

What Obama read as a youth: "I think I was getting into, like The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, and stuff like that. And I confess that I did read comic books as well, like Spiderman was one of my favorites. And then I read what I was assigned at school.
....But by the time maybe I was Malia's age, I was starting to read more serious books like, To Kill a Mockingbird, or some of the things that I see her reading now that made you think a little bit more. They weren't just kind of adventure stories, but they were also stories that taught me about social problems and taught me about how people interact with each other, and how some people are kind and some people are cruel. And history sweeps them along, and people have a lot of challenges in their lives.

I felt more than a bit indignant when LOTR was called "just kind of adventure story". It might not have been as "useful" to Obama the polititian as To Kill a Mockingbird, but it's certainly more than an adventure story.

[Inziladun]

Personally, I'd put LOTR on par with, or above, any of the so-called "serious" novels like Mockingbird.

If only the political sorts would take the lessons from LOTR to heart the world might be a better place, or at least a more pleasant one.

[Galadriel55]

If only the political sorts would take the lessons from LOTR to heart the world might be a better place, or at least a more pleasant one.

Professor@Uni: Now students, since you're all going to be polititians in the years to come, the first thing that I have to warn you about is one dreadfully tricky political situation: we call it the Saruman's Noose.

:D

Seriously though, I couldn't agree more.

I think what puts LOTR below Mockingbird in a polititian's eyes is that LOTR is a "long ago" story, with hardly any practical use today. And it's fantasy. "More serious novels" are probably those that are more relevant to today's life.

But I still strongly protest against classifying it as "just an adventure book". :mad:

[Galadriel55]

Yet another news article (http://blogs.edmontonjournal.com/2011/09/22/happy-hobbit-day-an-unexpected-party/)talking about Tolkien...

This one is much nicer. Although it basically doesn't say anything, it's a Tolkienite's story... I particularly loved these bits:

Despite the success of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movies, despite the buzz about his upcoming adaptation of The Hobbit, I don’t think kids and teens today are nearly as excited by Tolkien as we were back in my day. They have so many more literary options – and Harry Potter is an easier, faster, more exciting read, with less poetry and a far higher death count.

-made me laugh, though it's the sad truth.

But, as I joked with the guys here, I didn’t end up as Arwen, married to Aragorn. I grew up to be Rose Cotton, married to Sam Gamgee

-awwww.

Love like a hobbit.

- <3

And may the hair on your toes grow ever longer.

-Hurray for Tolkiendom! :D

[Mithalwen]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/gallery/2011/oct/24/hobbit-tolkien-in-pictures

Don't usually read the Grauniad but someone on Mustardland gave me the link for this.

[Mithalwen]

Oh and I am just now watching "Stephen Fry's Planet Word" an interview by Fry with Jackson on Tolkien whcih should be on the BBC i-player this week.

[Lalwendë]

Just a heads up, there seems to be quite a lot in the geek press at the moment about Tolkien, spearheading an upsurge in interest in fantasy in general.

Last month's SFX had Martin Freeman on the cover and a decent couple of articles about the upcoming Hobbit film, and on which of Tolkien's other stories may or may not make good viewing if adapted.

There's a Fantasy Special (http://www.sfx.co.uk/2012/03/19/special-edition-fantasy-magazine-preview/) edition of SFX out this week, which also promises 'everything you need to know about the Hobbit' (and lots of GRRM things). SFX Specials are generally very good, so it might be tempting...

And the latest issue of Sci-Fi Now (http://www.scifinow.co.uk/magazine-issues/game-of-thrones-the-avengers-the-walking-dead-and-more-in-scifinow-issue-65/) features The Hobbit in this month's bookclub section, with a good article which touches on the issue of canonicity of all things!

I'm sure there will be even more in newsagents over the coming months.

[Inziladun]

So this (http://lotrproject.com/blog/2013/01/09/gandalf-problem-solving-a-flowchart/) is how he accomplished his mission. Logic!

[Inziladun]

An interesting article (http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/apr/02/hobbit-tolkien-ring-exhibition).

[Inziladun]

At least Gandalf's power saved (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/newzealand/10583525/New-Zealand-earthquake-topples-The-Hobbits-eagle.html) the other!

[Mithalwen]

Just had acquestion on the quiz show Perfection asking if Isengard were the capital of Macedonia.

[Inziladun]

Just had acquestion on the quiz show Perfection asking if Isengard were the capital of Macedonia.

Pfft. Everyone knows it's the capital of Iceland. :p

[Inziladun]

Unleash your inner Sam Gamgee with these "Shire-worthy Recipes (http://www.foodandwine.com/blogs/2015/09/22/7-shire-worthy-recipes-national-hobbit-day?ref=yfp)". :)

[Inziladun]

A very appropriate association (http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/08/researchers-crack-open-unusually-advanced-malware-that-hid-for-5-years/) with the Dark Lord.
Indeed, the evil seed fomented by him and his master continues to flourish.

[Mithalwen]

For those who can get BBC I player "Sleuths, Spies and Sorcerers - Andrew Marr's Paperback Heroes" may be worth a look. Episode 2 on fantasy fiction features Tolkien.. nothing new perhaps but some nice archive footage and an amusing 90 second summary of the features of the genre illustrated by the Hobbit films and the wry comment that Bilbo may be wondering how they stretched such a short novel over so long a film.

Did make the point that all the details had to be right in fantasy because you were already suspending so much disbelief.

The first episode was also good if you happen to share my interest in detective fiction.

[Inziladun]

This story (http://www.al.com/news/birmingham/index.ssf/2016/11/dna_and_the_story_of_our_speci.html#incart_river_h ome) isn't really anything new. To me the takeaway is that philologist Tolkien's "nonsense" word hobbit has indeed entered the popular lexicon in exactly the manner he discussed in his letters.

[Faramir Jones]

Thanks for the reference to the episode on fantasy in 'Sleuths, Spies and Sorcerers - Andrew Marr's Paperback Heroes', Mithalwen. I watched it when it was first broadcast, and enjoyed his attempt to give an overview of that genre.

There was one reference I appreciated, having thought of it for a while myself. Marr speculated that Tolkien's references to food in LotR might have been a reaction against the food rationing then in force, and which only ended the year that book first appeared.

[Inziladun]

I thought this (http://www.foxnews.com/us/2017/01/22/hobbit-book-returned-after-38-year-unexpected-journey.html) was neat. Not the usual audience one might expect for Tolkien! :cool:

[Lalaith]

This one is probably for UK Downers: in long-running BBC Radio 4 soap opera The Archers, the villagers are running a Lent Appeal where they have to pay a fine if they are negative about something. Linda Snell has agreed to read her husband's favorite book, the Silmarillion, and then pays £20 into the fund for the privilege of complaining about how awful it is, which she then does, for about five minutes solid. Quite funny if you are familiar with the characters involved:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09wvpbr

[Inziladun]

This isn't Tolkien, per se, but all the same, it's a nice feeling to be reminded of LOTR while eating breakfast.

[Galadriel55]

This isn't Tolkien, per se, but all the same, it's a nice feeling to be reminded of LOTR while eating breakfast.

Indeed. Little reminders or hints like that make me happy. Basically any nerdy reference makes me happy. Even if it wasn't meant as a reference. :D

[Inziladun]

Admirers of Saruman have crafted their own Palantíri (https://www.chron.com/business/article/Silicon-Valley-surveillance-company-Palantir-to-15607050.php), it seems.

I recall the Unfinished Tales essay mentioning a process called "shrouding", which could enable one to hide from the surveillance. Perhaps that could be my new calling in my impending retirement....;)

[Inziladun]

One's political leanings notwithstanding, I thought this (https://www.insider.com/texas-trump-lawyer-files-lawsuit-referencing-lord-of-the-rings-2021-1) was head-scratching, and amusing at the same time.

[Galadriel55]

One's political leanings notwithstanding, I thought this (https://www.insider.com/texas-trump-lawyer-files-lawsuit-referencing-lord-of-the-rings-2021-1) was head-scratching, and amusing at the same time.

Before becoming Gondor's first democratically elected king, Aragorn passed around voting pamphlets with the text:

Do you mind if Aragorn becomes king?
A) Yes, I don't mind
B) No, I don't mind
(Vote and you get to pick his nickname!)