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Old 02-25-2008, 10:18 AM   #66
Lalwendė
A Mere Boggart
 
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Join Date: Mar 2004
Location: under the bed
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Lalwendė is battling Black Riders on Weathertop.Lalwendė is battling Black Riders on Weathertop.
This one started with more of a fright than episode 2 with the Eagles that sounded a bit like the echo of a Tardis. The Nazgul really are scary in the radio version, I'd forgotten about that! That matches up with Tolkien's way of describing horror in very sparse tones, leaving plenty of gaps around the edges for the imagination to fill in the rest of the details...hearing a horror is so much more effective than seeing a horror in all it's detail.

They scared the cat too.

I was very pleased to hear one of my favourite little details included in Episode 3 - Bilbo chunnering about how the Council has been going on for ages and it's getting dangerously close to his dinnertime - it reminds me of being in boring meetings (although the Council of Elrond wouldn't be boring...surely?) and clock-watching for the tea trolley and plates of sandwiches to appear

Now following the films and the splendid Boromir it's very odd indeed to hear someone different portraying him when I've grown so used to the idea of Sean Bean in the role. In contrast to that, Elrond sounded better (sorry Mithalwen) on the radio. And as the lone person who didn't much care for the portrayal of Rivendell in the films (too girly) I enjoyed being able to imagine it for myself and the crackling fireplaces and Bilbo's words conjour up an idea of a quiet, scholarly place, unchanged for many centuries. After hearing that, I'm beginning to wonder if maybe Tolkien intended Rivendell to be like an alpine Oxford college? Hmmm...

I was also free to imagine Weathertop as a version of Silbury Hill.

Listening to this every Sunday has taken me back to the 80s, as that's when I first heard this, on Radio 4, Sunday afternoons after my dinner. You notice different things too, as you are having to concentrate all your thoughts just on listening rather than being distracted by pictures in a film or jumping ahead in the text when reading. That makes me remember again about how my old boss who was (is!) blind and would read by means of voiced texts had an amazing recall of tiny details - I'm sure a psychologist would be able to say what this phenomena is.
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